Page 241 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

208 Part 3 Putting Theory Into Practice

perience if it is to have impact. For a speech to
have impact, the narratives need to have prob-
ability and fi delity.

Warrants

Once we have provided grounds for a claim,
we need to connect the grounds and the claim.
As previously stated, Toulmin calls this the
warrant. A simple example will illustrate this
point. I look out the window in the morning.
It’s an overcast, windy, gray day. I grab my
umbrella before I head out the door. I’ve rea-
soned from grounds (clouds and wind) to the
claim (I need my umbrella). What links the
two? Clearly, my experience has taught me to
believe the warrant that clouds and wind are a
sign of impending rain (see Exhibit 8.4). We
do not always have to state the obvious if we
know our audience will mentally fi ll in the
warrant. But on more complex issues, or where
we don’t know what warrants the audience
might accept, it may be necessary to spell out
this linkage.
In this section we describe fi ve commonly
used types of warrants. These are ways we can
explicitly connect our grounds with the claims
we make. To the extent that we are able to link
our evidence with our claims, we are likely to
be successful in convincing our audiences to
Stephen Glass was caught fabricating stories for the New accept what we say. The fi ve most common
Republic when his story on hackers didn’t ring true. types of warrants are these:

• Authority
• Generalization
• Comparison
• Causal
• Sign

Authority Warrants

When we rely on the opinions of experts to support our claims, we are using
authority warrant
an authority warrant. An authority warrant asserts that the claim is to be
Reasoning in which the
believed because of the authority of the source. This is the reason it is important
claim is believed because
that we tell our audience why the people we quote are experts whose opinions
of the authority of the
source. matter. If a doctor tells us to lose weight, we are likely to trust her judgment and
at least try to shed the unwanted pounds. If Oprah Winfry endorses a particular

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