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 To describe social science discourse as rhetorical is not to say that it is full of bombast, flowery phrases, or appeals to emotion, all aimed at deceiving. Rather, it is simply to acknowledge that social scientists attempt to persuade their peers by advocating their claims of knowledge in what Stephen Toulmin (1972) has called the "epistemic courts" of the various disciplines. Effective persuasion in these "courts" depends on the ability of social scientists to invent the substance of their arguments in accordance with the methodological assumptions and practices of their disciplines, to reason convincingly according to their fieldŐs particular logic, and to display their evidence and reasoning in the form and style of their genres. This book aims to teach students how to argue for a claim of knowledge in the epistemic courts where their interests will take them. |
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