Qeg

In this course, when we talk about sides and stakes, we are talking essentially about exigency--whether something matters, in practical and specific terms. See, the Toulmin/Rogerian are very focused sorts of arguments, suited to arguing specific positions in specific debates. Thus, in order for them to work effectively, the essay has to tackle something that matters, in real-world terms. It has to have a reason, and a point.

What this means is that your topic will require two things to establish exigency:

• a “live” public debate

and

• specific contexts and information

For the first, we need a debate that is actually occurring in the real world, and has impacts beyond the personal or individual. For example, arguing about something like Women's Suffrage gets us nowhere, because it's a dead debate—nobody in any position of effective power is arguing that women should lose the vote, so there's really nothing at stake, nor any reason to debate. There was a time when this mattered, in terms of public discourse, but that time has passed. Also, it has to matter on some formalized public scale. For example, arguing for or against spanking is certainly timely, but unless you're focusing on laws regulating spanking in some way, it is essentially a private debate—each family unit decides for itself, within the context of the law, what approach it will take to corporal punishment, so it has no significant public element.

Thus, a “live” public debate is something that is happening now, has at least two distinct sides, and will have some sort of real-world impact (stakes) in the public sphere.

For the second, we need a context for the debate, especially when we consider debate models that play out in many different places, or on different levels. Many (perhaps even most) issues and topics of debate fall into this category. For example, consider gun control (one of the topics on the banned list, so fair game here)—it is a live public debate, but it is too broad, in this form, to satisfy the second requirement because it is so varied. The practical implications of “gun control” involve a multitude of actual and proposed regulatory measures, undertaken on several different levels of government. Laws are different from state to state, and from municipality to municipality, and there are a few federal laws/regulations riding on top of the whole mess. “Gun control,” for all the fiery speechification and such devoted to it, is actually a relatively meaningless concept, because it has no specific context. In order to establish exigency, you'd have to focus on something very specific—for example, arguing for or against a proposal in state X that would ban firearms in all public buildings or the like. This would give you the context, and specific detail, that you would need to put together a good and relevant Toulmin/Rogerian.

Thus, specific contexts and information allow you to take a vague and general topic of debate and ground it in something with real-world implications and applications.

Exigency is one of the more difficult elements of the Toulmin essay project. Hopefully this helps clarify the expectations a bit. As always, if you have further questions, please let me know.