Welcome back to AP Daily.
Today we're going to take another look at skill 3C,
looking at ways that claims are qualified.
We're going to do some reading.
We're going to look at how authors qualify their claims.
And today what we're going to really focus on are the ways
that writers limit their claims.
When they don't want to go too far,
my students would say they don't want to do too much.
They want to bring it down and be like,
okay, yes, this is my claim,
but I don't want to go all the way in that direction.
I don't want to go all the way in the other.
Like we were saying in the first section of this,
we don't want to generalize.
So this is what professional writers do
when they're trying to not generalize.
I'm Stephanie Hyatt.
I am with you from Lehigh School in Huntsville, Alabama,
and I am glad to be back to talk about this with you.
All right, what are we going to learn today?
Our standards day is this.
Writers may strategically use words, phrases,
and clauses as modifiers to qualify or limit the scope of an argument.
So basically what we're talking about is how an author
or a writer might throw something in to limit the scope
of what they're saying.
Did you notice the minute ago when I said,
basically, by saying, basically, I'm saying,
okay, we'll add this level,
but by saying, basically, I'm saying to you,
there could be another way of seeing this, right?
That's exactly what we're looking for today.
We want to see how writers do that
and why it makes a difference.
So we're going to apply the skill to rhetorical
analysis.
That's where we analyze what other writers have said and done.
It's also really valuable for you in multiple choice
because a lot of the multiple choice type stuff you're doing,
you're looking for like that tone,
you're looking for specific choices regarding
diction and development,
and those things oftentimes are developed
by these words that create those limits for us.
So let's look at this idea.
In any argument for any question, right?
There is the idea that I could pose a question for you
and you could be 100% yes,
absolutely always that is exactly what I believe.
Or I could ask you a question and you could be like,
no, absolutely not, never.
Do you like dogs?
Yes, I love dogs.
They are the best animals in the whole world.
No, I hate dogs.
They're stink and they chase you around and they bite, right?
Two completely different points of view.
But the reality is that the vast majority of our opinions
are not 100% yes or 100% no,
they are qualified opinions.
So we use words like often frequently,
commonly when we're describing our point of view.
Often I like dogs,
most dogs seem to be really nice.
Frequently I find that they are pleasant to be around.
Commonly I enjoy their company.
Or maybe you find yourself closer to the know
and you're saying things like,
ah, sometimes I like dogs.
And frequently I see a dog that I like.
Rarely there's a dog that doesn't smell too bad.
Oftentimes writers will use some version of these words
in these situations as they are qualifying an argument, right?
They will set up for us.
The idea that I am going to provide you with parameters
and these parameters are what define this argument.
In these situations, I really like dogs.
I like dogs when there's a controlled environment
and I know the owner well and the dog is friendly, right?
That would be a specific controlled environment situation
that clearly would let us have that argument.
So how do professional writers deal with this
when they're writing about something a little more complicated
than do I like dogs?
Well, let's look at an example.
This is from Margaret Thatcher's eulogy
for President Ronald Reagan.
And here's how she opened that eulogy.
We have lost a great president,
a great American and a great man,
and I have lost a great friend or a dear friend.
In his lifetime, Ronald Reagan was such a cheerful
and invigorating presence that it was easy to forget
what daunting historic tasks he set himself.
He sought to mend America's wounded spirit
to restore the strength of the free world
and to free the slaves of communism.
These were causes hard to accomplish and heavy with risk,
yet they were pursued with almost a lightness of spirit.
For Ronald Reagan also embodied another great cause.
What Arnold Bennett once called the great cause
of cheering us all up.
His policies had a freshness and optimism
that won converts from every class and every nation
and ultimately from the very heart of the evil empire.
Now, if you think about what eulogy is, right,
eulogy is a speech that delivered once someone has died.
We've seen quite a few of those that have appeared on the AP exam.
A eulogy is not necessarily not normally going to be given
in a sad way to mourn the loss of someone,
especially not someone like Ronald Reagan
who had lived a full, very long life, right?
So we don't really see a tone here of sadness.
Instead, we see a tone of sort of celebration,
remembrance, friendship, all of those things
kind of come together and looking at this tone.
And we see that when we analyze her diction
when we look at these specific words that she has used.
Notice what comes up first, great and dear.
Now, those are two different ideas, right?
For someone to be a great man, a great person,
a great human, a great president.
That's talking about him in terms of like his stature
as he would be viewed.
Whereas a dear friend is very personal.
So we go from the impersonal to the personal here, right?
These are actually words that are qualifying
the relationship that she had with him, right?
She didn't see him in terms of his greatness.
She saw him in terms of being dear, his dearness as it were, right?
So that is a qualifier.
Another qualifier she throws at us in his lifetime.
So not now, but in his lifetime,
he was such a cheerful and invigorating presence.
This is a qualifier.
She's basically setting up the parameters
for what she's talking about.
I'm going to talk to you about the Ronald Reagan
I knew when he was alive.
Notice how she throws an almost in there, right?
And look where that almost is.
They were pursued with almost a lightness of spirit.
In other words, it was heavy with risk.
Other people might have been burdened by this,
but he was almost light, right?
And then finally, we've got this word ultimately
and ultimately from the very heart of the evil empire.
So in other words, not at the beginning, but eventually,
these are words that qualify her argument
and the position that she's taking regarding who Reagan is
and how he should be remembered.
Let's look at a little bit more of this.
Yet his humor often had a purpose beyond humor.
In the terrible hours after the attempt on his life,
his easy jokes gave reassurance to an anxious world.
They were evidence that in the aftermath of terror
and in the midst of hysteria, one great heart at least
remained sane and jocular.
They were truly grace under pressure
and perhaps they signified grace of a deeper kind.
Ronnie himself certainly believed that he had been given
back his life for a purpose.
As he told a priest after his recovery,
whatever time I've got left,
now belongs to the big fella upstairs.
And surely it is hard to deny that Ronald Reagan's life
was providential when we look at what he achieved
in the eight years that followed.
And so if we look at this, we see a collection of words,
right?
We start with these first three often, at least perhaps.
And these are definitely qualifiers where she's saying,
I'm not going all the way with this argument.
I'm not going to tell you that this is always true.
Then she moves into certainly and surely.
She's moving into those more absolute words.
And you can see as we're analyzing that diction,
what we're analyzing, because you never want to see,
don't ever say on the essay, the author uses diction.
The author's not using diction here.
The author is using qualifying diction and then absolute
diction in order to show this shift in the argument, right?
So that's what we want to find.
So what should we take away from this one?
Qualifying an argument.
Pay attention to those modifiers.
Look for those adverbs as well.
LY verbs.
Look at those adjectives.
Look at the specific nouns.
This is that diction analysis that I know you're doing in class right now.
This is where you're getting into that.
Look for gradations of tone and meaning.
Look as it as it moves through and we see those shifts
find the shifts because the shifts are going to show you
how the author is moving through the argument and how the
the argument is growing and changing as the speech
grows and changes.
That's it for today folks.
Thank you for taking time to join me.
Good luck as you move forward with that diction analysis.
