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CHAPTER 2: CLAIMS

■ Rhetoric of claims—many claims tend to use a standard format with three components

■ Grounds: Descriptions of the troubling condition

■ Basic rhetorical recipe

■ Typifying examples/atrocity stories which shapes the public’s perception of what the

condition is like; notice, however, that these stories do not reflect typical cases

■ The problem is named and given an orientation (e.g., medical condition, scientific

trouble)

■ Statistic(s) offered that implies (imply) how severe the troubling condition actually is;

notice that big numbers are preferred because they suggest that the condition is

widespread and thus serious enough for others to pay attention

■ Additional grounds

■ Claims that the problem is getting progressively worse

■ Familiar type of problem

■ Profiles of both victims and villains

■ Claims that many different kinds of people are hurt by the troubling condition—range

claims

■ Challenges to other ways of constructing the social problem

■ Warrants that state why we should be concerned about the troubling condition; focus on

why we ought to care

■ Utilize values (standards of good and bad, right and wrong that a majority of people

share)

■ Since different people hold to different values, it is best to use multiple warrants in

order to cover as many possible reasons why people should care as possible

■ Conclusions: What should be done about the social problem; the solution

■ The proposed solution must be in line with the grounds and warrants put forth by the

claimsmaker

■ Might offer both short-term and long-term goals (policy changes)

■ Claims and audiences

■ Claimsmakers must try to create claims that others will find persuasive

■ Valence issues: Topics that nearly everyone will agree are significant social problems;

easier for claimsmakers to make certain kinds of claims about these social problems

■ Position issues: Topics over which it is unlikely that most people will ever come to

consensus; more difficult for claimsmakers to persuade most individuals, so often target

those who think like themselves

■ Audiences are differentiated or segmented

■ Different social demographics often create smaller audiences that worry about only

certain kinds of social problems

■ These segmented audiences may have different interests and ideologies.

■ Tactics for claimsmaking to various kinds of segmented audiences

■ Preach to the choir; make claims only to those who think as your group does

■ Seek out the widest possible audience for a claim, often using multiple grounds and

warrants to accomplish this claimsmaking goal

■ Audiences are not passive but active; they might seek out some claims, reject others, and

pick and choose what makes most sense to them

■ Successful claimsmakers are aware of this and pay attention to how the audience is

responding to their claims

■ Social problems marketplace

■ At any given time, there are numerous claims about a variety of social problems which

are being made and which are bombarding the audience

■ Claimsmakers struggle to get the audience’s attention and keep refining their

claimsmaking in an effort to be more successful

■ Even if their issue has become well established as a social problem, claimsmakers need

to keep refining their claims so that the problem does not become stale and lose the

attention of policymakers and the general public

■ How do claimsmakers refine claims to keep audience attention?

■ Domain expansion: Redefine/broaden the definition of the problem, thereby adding in

more possible victims to help and villains to control

■ Piggyback: When a newer claim builds on an older, more established social problem’s

claimsmaking, saying that “it is just like X,” where X is the more established problem

■ Most claimsmaking campaigns that are not about valence issues will inspire counterclaims.

■ Often involve disputes over grounds or warrants: “Stat wars” over which statistics are

more reflective of the “true” situation or debates over ideologies (usually linked to

warrants)

■ Usually both sides nuance and modify claims as a response to counterclaims by the

other side(s)

■ Cultural resources

■ While it is possible to create claims however claimsmakers want to, in practice claims need

to make sense to the intended audiences and to the claimsmakers themselves

■ Thus claimsmaking requires that claimsmakers be attuned to the cultural context where the

claims are being made

■ So claimsmakers must tap into cultural resources—the well of words, ideas, and images

that most people (of that culture) see as reasonable

■ Any one culture contains a large number of words, ideas, and images to choose from

■ It is also not necessarily internally consistent and cohesive, which allows claimsmakers

about the same social problems to construct it in a variety of ways

■ Culture is constantly changing, so claimsmakers need to be aware of any shifts in

meaning and other changes.

■ Cultural resources both limit and enrich the claimsmaking process

■ Constrains claimsmakers by making them ground their claims in what others are likely to

see as practical and reasonable

■ But within the realm of the reasonable, claimsmakers will have a broad range of words,

images, and ideas from which to select

■ Case study: Threats to the American Dream as a Cultural Resource