Movin' On Up

I would like to revisit my prior post on Novembers 8th titled, "Erosion." In my discussion of the Powerline blog post, by John, titled, "It's a Mystery" I only wrote of how he used countering in his writing. I would now like to add how he used forwarding in it also. I wish to do this because now that I have gained some more knowledge and a better understanding of Joseph Harris's terms 'forwarding' and 'countering' I see that you really can't countering without at least forwarding by illustration. This illustration is of another’s work that you are using in your writing which describes to us an overall picture. Very often this illustration becomes bias bending it toward or against your view to better enhance your opinion. John uses this form of forwarding within his piece. He directly quotes phrases from President Obama's radio address. Following this he then uses the Harris's idea of 'countering' by basically saying, "yes, but..." As a reader without the illustration from John I would not have been able to know what his article was discussing. I believe that forwarding before countering is a necessity to a good argument because it will inform the audience or even the opponent of what you are talking about. I don't think this is needed because you should assume everyone one is ignorant but because it gives valid support to your counter argument that the opponent cannot argue against. Putting to practice these concepts will turn a redundant "nutuh. yahuh. nutuh. yahuh" argument into a progressive argumentative discourse.