Kent-Drury
ENG 291

Some definitions:

Question at issue: Any question that a writer and his or her audience does not already answer in the same way. Hence, it is the existence of questions at issue that motivates argumentation. --John Gage, Shape of Reason

Question at issue: A question about an issue that readers may assert or deny which leads to the need of the writer to take a stance and provide reasons in support for the validity or truth of that stance.

A strong thesis is a proposed answer to a question at issue.

The Purpose of Discussion

• to identify questions at issue, or genuine conflicts of opinion
• to create situations you must "write your way out of"
• to take responsibility for investigating the quality of your own reasons in light of the reasons of others

We are who we are, with our own values and "individuality," largely as a consequence of who we've interacted with, according to many twentieth-century philosophers, such as the Russian Mikhail Bakhtin. The greater the diversity of people we've interacted with, the more complex we are. A biological parallel, drawn from the nineteenth-century scientist Charles Darwin: An organism cannot exist in isolation; it is tied to all around it (air, water, nitrogen, food, other organisms, etc.). When it stops interacting, it's dead.

An assertion is worth writing about:

¶ Questions of fact: "Does this (whatever it is) exist?
¶ Questions of definition: "What is it?"
¶ Questions of interpretation: "What does it signify?"
¶ Questions of value: "Is it good?"
¶ Questions of consequence: "Will this cause that to happen?"
¶ Questions of policy: What should be done about it?"