PAPER 4: ARGUMENT (1st draft of final research paper)

Earlier papers were about gathering data, looking for
patterns, and trying to answer a question, in short they
were exploratory. Now based on what you've learned, you
have earned the right be an expert who has an opinion that
someone else needs to hear. Of course what we have learned
in earlier papers will have credibility because it's based
on first-hand experience, and thus can be seen as good
empirical scientific data (especially if you used the
prewriting toolkits above rigorously and fairly).

But such evidence is open to the charge by those who don't want to
"count" it as "anecdotal," just one person's opinion. You
can counter this to a certain degree by corroborating your
findings by giving surveys to other players, or even doing
careful notes of observations and/or interviews of other
players, but if you can find other researchers who have
done larger studies, perhaps with different tools, that
support your findings, you will be much more likely to be
persuasive. That means research, but it also means
evaluating what sources you think are credible (you might
want to use Rhetorical analysis to help with this; basic
background http://people.ucsc.edu/~pmmckerc/rhet1.htm. How
to do rhetorical analysis is on How to Be Brilliant
handout http://people.ucsc.edu/~pmmckerc/howbrill.html).

Also, you can use this paper to investigate your creative
process; Roger von Oech says you can't know whether your
creative process works unless you go the distance, all the
way from Explorer, Artist, Judge and Warrior, so this
paper does that. It will also be good preparation for the
final project (imagining a game) , which will be an
argument that your project is doable and that you are
qualified to do it, and it will directed to someone whom
you need to make/let it happen (a foundation, a potential
partner, a government agency, even your parents ;) You
can even do it in the appropriate format of a grant
proposal or business plan if you want, but since my job is
make sure you can do academic writing, run this by me so I
can make sure you have the skills you need (it might just
be a matter of adding an MLA formatted bibliography).

The Judge role will help you decide if this is the idea
you want, but don't let it paralyze you. You can always
throw the idea back to the Explorer and/or Artist and let
it cook some more. Also recall that part of the purpose
of this project is to help you think and work through
potential problems, and that often involves time, bouncing
ideas off other people, and research.


The word "essay" comes from the French, meaning to try or
to weigh (related to our word in English "assay"). In
this case you'll be doing both, you'll try out an idea for
something you 'd like to do, exploring its feasibility.
As this is a prospectus for your final paper, it should
be something that you can research, and preferably
something you'd enjoy researching.

Not only is persuasion essential in doing anything
insanely great, but in fact really important in our
everyday lives as well. It's also the hardest kind of
writing to do, since it requires that you predict with
great precision what effect your words will have, perhaps
on someone that you've never met thousands of miles away.
However, it builds on skills we've been developing all
quarter, such as finding research and explaining sometimes
complex technical ideas in clear simple language. Our
prewriting strategy here will be will be especially
important: a dialogue with an opponent (to gather
arguments, counter-arguments, and understand values at
stake/play). This dialogue technique was described in
class and is also on the course website:
http://people.ucsc.edu/~pmmckerc/reshowto.html.

The Lunsford handout on argumentation will be useful in
generating arguments, and in organizing them.

Having a basic understanding of rhetoric will also up your
odds of getting others to agree with your position.
Here's the very least you need to know,
http://people.ucsc.edu/~pmmckerc/rhet1.htm, which has a
link to a more complete version.

Your argument should be about four pages, and you should
have three or more research sources (if only to assure
yourself they are available). The fuller research paper
will be assessed on how successful it would be with the
audience you specify, but you can try them out on this
version too. We'll use rhetorical analysis to determine
this. The questions are at
http://people.ucsc.edu/~pmmckerc/termfdbk.htm


If you have questions or suggestions, let me know