CLAIMS IN A TEXT

 a claim is an arguable statement--an idea that a speaker or writer

asks an audience to accept.
 3 primary types of claims:
1. Claims of fact - assert that something is true or not true.
2. Claims of value - assert that something is good or bad, more or less desirable.
3. Claims of policy - assert that one course of action is superior to another.
1. CLAIM OF FACT
 tries to establish that something is or is not the case.
facts which are common knowledge or easily proved need not be
argued about. But other claims of fact may be based on questionable
statistics or unreliable authority or biased interpretations.
EXAMPLE:
This is who I am not. I am not a crack addict. I am not a welfare mother. I am not
illiterate, I am not a prostitute. I have never been in jail. My children are not in gangs. My
husband doesn't beat me. My home is not a tenement. None of these things defines who I
am, nor do they describe the other black people I’ve known and worked with and loved
and befriended over these 40 years of my life.
Nor does it describe most of black America, period.
Yet in the eyes of the American news media, this is what black America is: poor,
criminal, addicted and dysfunctional. Indeed, media coverage of black America is so one
sided, so imbalanced that the most victimized and hurting segment of the black
community—a small segment, at best— is presented not as the exception but as the norm.
It is an insidious practice, all the uglier for its blatancy.
In recent months, oftentimes in this very magazine, I have observed a steady
offering of media reports on crack babies, gang warfare, violent youth, poverty and
homelessness—and in most cases, the people featured in the photos and stories were
black. At the same time, articles that discuss other aspects of American life—from home
buying to medicine to technology to nutrition—rarely, if ever, show blacks playing a
positive role, or for that matter, any role at all.
Day after day, week after week, this message—that black America is dysfunctional
and unwhole—gets transmitted across the American landscape. Sadly as a result, America
never learns the truth about what is actually a wonderful, vibrant, creative community of
people.
2. CLAIM OF POLICY
 Policy claims argue that a certain condition should exist. They express a writer's
sense of obligation or necessity. Consequently, we can recognize policy claims
fairly easily since a specific class of verbs, the modal verbs, convey the meanings
of obligation or necessity. The modal verbs that convey a sense of obligation and
necessity are should, must, need, ought to, got to, and have to. Some examples of
policy claims are

• We should legalize drugs.

• We ought to register and license guns the same way we do automobiles.
• Drivers under the age of 25 with even the slightest amount of alcohol in
their blood should have their licenses revoked for 5 years.
• We need to tax alcohol and tobacco more heavily since the use of those
products accounts for a disproportionately large fraction of medicare costs.
 Supporting a policy claim can be very difficult. The writer must first
convince the reader that current policy on some issue is not working,
second convince the readers that the writer has a better policy, and
finally move the readers to act on the writer's suggestion.
3. CLAIM OF VALUE
 asserts a writer's sense of values, a writer's sense of right and wrong,
good and bad, just and unjust, the beautiful and the ugly.
 makes judgments, and like all claims readers need to evaluate the
evidence and assumptions supporting such claims. Value claims try to
prove that some idea, action, or condition is good or bad, right or
wrong, worthwhile or worthless.
reveals much about a writer's personal beliefs. And so it is that many
value claims are defended or attacked because different people have
different sets of values: witness the abortion debate.
EXAMPLE:
Nowadays, says one sociologist, you don’t have to have a reason for going
to college; it’s an institution. His definition of an institution is an arrangement
everyone accepts without question; the burden of proof is not on why you go, but
why anyone thinks there might be a reason for not going. The implication is that an
1 8-year-old…should listen to those who know best and go to college.
I don’t agree. I believe that college has to be judged not on what other
people think is good for students, but on how good it feels to the students
themselves.
I believe that people have an inside view of what’s good for them. If a child
doesn't want to go to school some morning, better let him stay at home, at least
until you find our why. Maybe he knows something you don’t. It’s the same with
college. If high-school graduates don’t want to go, or if they don’t want to go right
away, they may perceive more clearly than their elders that college is not for them.
It is no longer obvious that adolescents are best off studying a core curriculum that
was constructed when all educated men could agree on what made them
educated, or that professors, advisors, or parents can be of any particular help to
young people in choosing a major or a career. High-school graduates see college
graduates driving cabs and decide it’s not worth going. College students find no
intellectual stimulation in their studies and drop out.