The Toulmin Method for the Argumentatively Impaired.
If you are like me and arguing or persuading someone to do anything is pretty much the last thing you would ever do leading to no experience with argumentation, leading to a lack of skills in doing it, and then around back to really hating to do it. And if you, like me, prefer a live and let live mentality to let people that believe differently than you do just say whatever they want without feeling the need to critique them, you may benefit from learning the Toulmin Method.
In Steven Toulmin's 1958 book The Uses of Argument, Toulmin put forth his thoughts and methods about argumentation and the critique of arguments. A summation of the method includes analyzing the claim, then analyzing the reasons and evidence, checking for and examining the warrants and noting any rebuttals (Green 2022 325). In more detail this translates into figure out exactly what it is that the author is arguing for which is called a claim, and then check to see if the author has made any statements of qualification or exemption (Green 2022 316). In other words, did the author say it is always such and such a way or are there cases where this might not be true. Once you've decided what the argument is about you can locate any reasons that the author thinks are persuasive, and if the author gave evidence to support those reasons (Green 2022 316). An argument is only as good as the evidence that supports it, so analyze the quality of the evidence for accuracy and believability (Green 2022 316). Check for underlying assumptions that the author is making (Green 2022 317). These unstated assumptions are known as warrants (Green 2022 317). When you figure out these contextual beliefs and perceptions, you can ask if they are accurate, believable, and true (Green 2022 317). Finally, you will notice anytime the author seems to anticipate objections to the argument and give reasons why the objections aren't valid. This is also known as a rebuttal (Green 2022 318).
Should I ever be convinced of the warrant in this assignment that there is a reason to argue with anyone about anything, being able to break down the argument in this way seems reasonable. As far as I can tell the way this is most often used online is to either teach the method, offer curriculum for teaching the method, bedevil college students with essays or offers to write college essays, or otherwise send you to questionable internet sites that threaten to take down your computer with a nasty virus. This seems logical because anyone who was making a reasoned Toulmin's method critique or evaluation of someone else's argument is not going to say, "Hey, I'm making a Toulmin's method critique of an argument here."
Here are a couple of the sites I came across.
Critical Thinking | Dale Carnegie Training
https://www.englishessaywriters.com/toulmins-model-of-argumentation/
Green J. (2022). Analyzing arguments: the Toulmin method. Communicating online. McGraw Hill Education. (pp. 315-326). The United States of America
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