Draft Thesis Statements

Koslowski, Roger, "Typeface: Thesis" 12/06 via Wikipedia Commons, GNU Free Documentation License

A thesis statement should provide the reader with an introduction of the purpose of the writing, in this case, answering how and why the author of our text uses what rhetorical strategies they do. The Craft Box on page 192 of Student's Guide helps to break the thesis into a step-by-step process in order to create one that will be effective in its purpose. Here are the best 2 thesis statements I could manage roughly:

1. In Dr. Larry Cahill's 2014 article "Equal =/= The Same: Sex Differences in the Human Brain", Cahill employs strategies such as personal stories and expertise, as well as a tone implying annoyance with the current situation to convince the reader through an appeal to both emotion and credibility of his argument. Cahill also includes subsequent use of historical and relevant evidence and statistics to provide context for the reader, helping him gain credibility and therefore agreeability even more.

2. Dr. Larry Cahill defies his audience's cultural norms and effectively achieves his purpose of convincing his neuroscience audience that sex difference matters through his evident statement of his purpose, contextualization through statistics and evidence of recent events, and appeal to the readers' emotion through an annoyed tone and dramatic personal experience.

As is evident, I haven't really narrowed down what I want to focus on in my body paragraphs. Drafting a thesis isn't too difficult on its own for me, but going solely off of one thesis might prove difficult for me as I'm writing my draft, as I can't decide whether I should focus more on rhetorical situation or strategy.

Reflection: I replied to Tyler and Thomas' "Draft Thesis Statements" posts. The thesis statements they came up with were not perfect examples, but that was helpful for me, as it made me feel slightly less bad about my own thesis statements being flawed, vague, and weirdly worded. Their thesis statements also helped me realize that vague and bland theses do not help the audience, so I should try to narrow mine down a little and make them more interesting!