RECOGNIZING REASONING AND IDENTIFYING CONCLUSIONS

Reasoning is, of course, presented in language, but not all communications in language
involve reasoning, so we need to be able to pick out those features of language which tell us
that reasoning is taking place. It is clear that we use language for a variety of purposes. For
example, we may use it to tell a joke, to insult someone, to report factual information, to
describe a scene or a personality, to tell a story, to express our feelings, to explain why we
have acted in a particular way, to ask questions, to issue orders. What most uses of
language have in common is the attempt to communicate something to others.
Sometimes we want to persuade others to accept the truth of a statement, and one way of
doing this is to offer them reasons or evidence in support of this statement. This is the
essence of argument. The simplest examples of arguments occur when someone who
believes some statement will present reasons which aim at persuading others to adopt this
same point of view. In more complex cases, someone may wish to assess and evaluate
someone else’s reasoning, or someone may be reasoning about their own or someone else’s
reasoning. We all use language in this way, often without thinking of what we are doing as
being something as grand as ‘presenting an argument’. For example, someone might say:
He must be older than he says he is. He told us he was forty-two, but he has a
daughter who is at least thirty years old.
Here reasons are being offered for the conclusion that ‘he must be older than he says he is’.
So this simple, everyday piece of communication is an argument.
Here are some more very simple examples of argument. As you read through these
examples, think about which statement the author is trying to get you to accept (that is,
the conclusion), and which statements are being offered as reasons for accepting the
conclusion:
The bus is late. It must have broken down.
That bird can’t be a robin. It doesn’t have a red breast.
You should try to appear confident in your job interview. The employers are looking
for someone who can speak confidently in public.
Children learn languages much more quickly and speak them more fluently if they
start to learn them at an early age. So if you want your children to be bilingual, you
should speak two languages to them from the time they are born.
She didn’t turn up for their date. She obviously doesn’t really want to be his
girlfriend. If she’d wanted a serious relationship with him she wouldn’t have missed
the date.