In Practice
This type of discussion is extremely useful in emotionally charged topics since it downplays emotional and highlights rational arguments.
Young, Becker and Pike identified four stages:
- An introduction to the problem and a demonstration that the opponent's position is understood.
- A statement of the contexts in which the opponent's position may be valid.
- A statement of the writer's position, including the contexts in which it is valid.
- A statement of how the opponent's position would benefit if he were to adopt elements of the writer's position. If the writer can show that the positions complement each other, that each supplies what the other lacks, so much the better.
Read more about this topic: Rogerian Argument
Famous quotes containing the word practice:
“Theory can leave questions unanswered, but practice has to come up with something.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)