Evidence

Oh, yeah? Prove it!

The Logos of any piece of rhetoric revolves around claims and evidence. Claims are the “because” of your purpose. And evidence is the “prove it” part. 

Suppose you make the following enthymeme: “You should wear your seatbelt. It will make you safer.” You should wear your seatbelt is the purpose; you want your friends to buckle up. You back your purpose with the claim that it will make them safer. 

“Yeah?” one of your friends says, looking smug. “Prove it.”

That’s where the evidence comes in. You quote government statistics, scientific studies, and a story you read in the Wall Street Journal that described a horrible accident where all the seat-belted passengers survived. Congratulations! You’ve used the key sources of current facts: government, science, and journalism. 

Then you realize two problems with your evidence. First, those three fact sources are getting increasing pushback in our social media-saturated times; each source has a serious ethos problem. And, second, you’ve just bored your friends to tears.

You might want to use pop culture instead. Describe an accident in a movie or popular novel. Quote a song lyric. Tell a personal story. As long as they’re relevant, they count as evidence. Who says? Well here’s our evidence: Aristotle says. He wrote that anecdotes (he called them “parables”) and facts both count as evidence.

What kind of evidence you use depends on the audience and the occasion. If you’re writing an essay for class or in the AP Lang exam, the Big Three institutional sources—government, science, journalism—are a good bet. You almost certainly won’t get a teacher saying, “I don’t believe in science.” 

But Tania (who, remember, teaches AP Lang and scores the exam) says you should consider a whole range of evidence sources, including fiction. She lists a bunch of them by using the acronym REHUGO:

R = Reading.

You can use fiction and nonfiction text as supporting evidence to an argument. When using fiction, employ the author’s argument in the story as your evidence. Say you’re writing an essay arguing that it’s valuable to delve into the unknown. You make the claim that experience with the unknown makes you better able to deal with scary situations. For evidence, you use Lord of the Flies, showing how the boys lose their heads when they confront the unknown. 

E = Entertainment.

Pop culture references make the most entertaining kinds of evidence while showing that you don’t live under a rock. But choose wisely and keep your audience in mind. Your teacher may not enjoy a SpongeBob reference.

H = History. 

History examples make you look intelligent. Just make sure you get the history right, and watch using overused historical examples like Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Showing your deeper knowledge of history from across the world can make for impressive evidence for arguments. (History podcasts make for great sources: Listen to The Last Archive and Throughline.)

U = Universal truths.

Use them when your claim can be supported by a greater understanding of who we are as human beings. Just make sure your truth is really universal—in other words, be sure your audience believes it. A pacifist may not agree with the saying, “The best defense is an offense.” On the other hand, if you’re arguing for giving a share of your income to the poor, few people will object to the truth, “It’s better to give than to receive.” (Still, you might also include some science showing that charity makes people happier.)

G = Government. 

Law of the land! To all our constitutional scholars and hoping-to-be-lawyers- one-day students, this evidence is your thing. You could cite actual cases to make a point or reference the “law of the land” as evidence. Say your topic has to do with whether a principal at a school can deny clothing that may express social or political viewpoints. Here is your opportunity to cite the first amendment as evidence for the argument you make. But don’t neglect the government as a source of facts. Statistics on crime, health, food, ethnicity, religion—the list is almost endless—can be found in government websites. (Check out usafacts.org for a roundup of all kinds of government facts.)

O = Observation. 

You could also make this E FOR EXPERIENCE (which makes the acronym REHUGE!) Your observation or experience lets you relate a story you saw happening or recount the memory of something you experienced. Injecting your past into an argument can add good ethos [link tk] juju. Tania loved an essay one of her students wrote, arguing that Americans should be exposed to more than one language. The student told a sincere story of a Paris café where she got to speak French with new friends and even the café owner. Just be sure your audience appreciates your using the singular first-person pronoun. Some teachers object to your using “I” in an essay because it distracts from a scholarly tone. And take care not to use your experience to diminish your audience; think of any parent who drives kids crazy with tales of the olden days, or a member of any tribal group that denies your right to have an opinion. 

And don’t forget the exploratory sources of facts: SCIENCE and JOURNALISM!

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