Developing Strong Claims
After having analyzed evidence, a writer can produce a strong claim about the evidence for his or her readers. In other words, the point of analysis is to produce strong claims. But what makes a claim strong?
A strong claim is:
- debatable: is not a fact but can be right or wrong; potential counterarguments exist.
- derived from and supported by analysis of relevant evidence.
- specific: uses key terms and strong verbs to offer a viewpoint on narrowly defined subjects.
- insightful: offers new, unexpected, or not-obvious ways of seeing or understanding a subject; it goes beyond obvious or common interpretations.
Exercise
Using the criteria for a strong claim, review the following and identify which of the sentences you think makes a strong claim and why.
Which of the two following claims are stronger? Why do you think that is a strong claim and that the other is a weak claim?
- Claim 1: I don’t get why people like this movie; it’s bad.
- Claim 2: Although the movie is memorable because of its unique plot, it does not succeed as a horror film because there are too few moments that produce terror in viewers.
Of these sentences, which do you think is the strongest claim? Why? Why are the other sentences not strong claims?
- Claim 1: Crime rates have increased in recent years.
- Claim 2: Violence on television is responsible for increased crime.
- Claim 3: Increased crime rates in recent years are a serious cause for alarm.
- Claim 4: Although many have argued that the argument is oversimplified, new data suggests that violence on television is responsible for increased crime.
Of these sentences, which do you think is the strongest claim? Why? Why are the other sentences not strong claims?
- Claim 1: World War II was an extremely violent war and may have been the most violent war in history.
- Claim 2: It was my study of World War II that led me to reevaluate my conception of violence.
- Claim 3: Despite its violence, World War II was a just war.
- Claim 4: Violence can be justified only by a callous balancing of violence against violence—I can murder you, only if you planned to murder others.
- Claim 5: Violence can be justified.
Of these sentences, which do you think is the strongest claim? Are any of the sentences claims?
- Claim 1: I combated the stereotypes in part by trying to disprove them.
- Claim 2: I was keenly aware of the unflattering mythologies that attach to Asian Americans: the we are indelibly foreign, exotic, math and science geeks, numbers people rather than people, followers and not leaders, physically frail, but devious and sneaky, unknowable and potentially treacherous.
- Claim 3: The irony is that in working so duteously to defy stereotype, I became a slave to it. For to act self-consciously against Asian “tendencies” is not to break loose from the cage of myth and legend; it is to turn the very key that locks you inside.
- Claim 4: There was a time when assimilation did not quite strictly mean whitening.
- Claim 5: To be sure, something is lost in any migration, whether from place to place or from class to class. But something is gained as well.
