In this article, Greene states that in every argument the person arguing, has to have a chosen

position on a specific conflict and they have to have evidence that backs up their view
points. Without using evidence, the person on the refuting side will be able to dismember your
argument because you have no way of backing up your position. Greene also states that to
truly understand an argument, you have to understand all sides. If you only have knowledge of
your viewpoint then how do you actually know that is what you believe. Also, how can you
argue against something if you do not fully understand it. The author shows us that this is not
just used in writing, but it is also used in our everyday conversations. An example of this is the
story he provided from Kenneth Burke, about the parlor. This helps us to understand that
backing up a good argument is not just used in our writing, but also in our conversations that
we have throughout the day. Every community argues a viewpoint at one point or another,
and they need to have the evidence to back-up that position.
This text described the tools I had to use when I played football in high school. I was one of the
captains of the team and that meant if i saw something that could be done in a better way, I
was expected to speak up and express myself. Before school, my position group would meet
to watch film and talk about things we could improve upon, including the plays. Every once in
a while, I would have to write a play out on the board and explain it, but in certain cases, I
would try to convince my coach to change how the plays were run. In doing this, I would have
to explain my point of view, answer his questions on my ideas, and then defend why I thought
it was the better option. This is exactly what Greene is describing in his article. I chose a
position in an argument and then I explained why it was the better choice based off of
evidence. Like the example from Burke, my argument was mostly verbal, but I had to write
down my view point and use writing to help prove why I was correct. This fails to account for
the fact that most arguments are not just written out and made simple for people to
understand. They are complex and a lot of the time, you need to know a lot of the background
of a topic or group to even understand why they are arguing or what they are arguing about.