A concept we need to obsolete: the topic sentence.

I presume, in this discussion, that as English teachers we value precision in our language.  Otherwise, as Orwell has written so eloquently, our slovenly writing becomes slovenly thinking, which in turn reinforces our slovenly writing.  If this presumption is true, though, we have some housecleaning to do.

We were taught about topic sentences in grade school:  my wife, who made a career as a 7^th grade English teacher, tells me her district introduced the concept in 4^th grade.  They are also defined in our college handbooks (Hacker, Sommers, A Writer’s Reference, 7^th Ed) and online resources (Purdue OWL).  Hence, they are a familiar entity we’ve grown up with, hardly worth thinking about.  

So let’s, for once, think about them.

First, it seems a useful question to ask if real writers write topic sentences.  Erika Lindemann, in A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers (3^rd), cites studies that conclude, “anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent of the paragraphs written by accomplished professionals do not contain topic sentences” (emphasis in original).

There are pedagogical reasons to expect topic sentences in every paragraph:  classrooms are laboratories, and we are teaching basic structures; students need structural constraints in order to control what can amount to a flood of words; we only have so much time to read student writing, so we need to control length as well as structure.

But if we are going to defend this practice, we need to be at least honest about how artificial it is, and have students read arguments which consist of several paragraphs.  Martin Luther King’s four-paragraph defense of disobeying unjust laws in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” might be helpful here.

The Online Oxford English Dictionary defines “topic” initially in terms of the word’s application in ancient rhetoric’s “commonplaces.”  This leads to the third definition, which is what we normally associate with the word:  “The subject of a discourse, argument, or literary composition”.  No argument here, I would think. 

As a “grammar” term, the OED extends the definition:  “The part of a sentence which is marked as that on which the rest of the sentence makes a statement (comment), asks a question, etc.”  As usual, the OED editors provide examples taken from published prose, but in this case the models are about topicalization, not illustrations of the definition in use.  Presumably, the illustration has no meaning out of the context of a paragraph.

The problem with the definition and our application of it is its inadequacy to describe real writing.

Look at the paragraph below:

Any project that aims to challenge modern ideas by recalling older ones risks falling into nostalgia.  Defenders of rhetoric often invoke a utopian past in which wise and eloquent politicians provided effective leadership through the majesty of their words alone.  A glance at the journalism about recent presidential campaigns about the candidates’ lack of eloquence and in wistful comparisons with figures from the past, such as John F. Kennedy.  But the same magazine that lodged such a complaint during one recent campaign had also run an article after Kennedy’s inaugural address that looked back nostalgically to Adlai Stevenson…

Which sentence of the first two is the “topic” sentence?    Both refer to the romanticization of the past by people offering alternatives to the present.  The second mentions the domain of examples from rhetoric, and the specific examples given show the never-ending quest for the perfect example of “good rhetoric."

   

Isolated from its fellow paragraphs, we cannot really answer the question.  

Does it help to know that the book the paragraph comes from is Saving Persuasion by Bryan Garsten?  Now we see the second sentence is doing more than offering illustrative examples of an abstract approach to arguing from the past.  They are instead pertinent to the content of the entire work.

I raise this issue, because the definition of “topic sentence” assumes a self-contained context that a reader, particularly an unsophisticated one, may not understand or perhaps will miss if reading carelessly. 

The first difference between the two sentences is that only the second specifically mentions “rhetoric,” thus narrowing the scope of the more general first sentence (making it lower on the Abstraction Ladder than the opener). 

The other difference is that the second, being narrower, makes a specific claim that pertains to the topic—the issue at hand, nostalgic claims about a golden age era of deliberative rhetoric.

“Topic sentence” doesn’t account for what Garsten is doing:  using a broad introductory statement to pave the road for the claim of the paragraph, which is defended by several examples. 

Furthermore, this example demonstrates that we can’t treat paragraphs outside the context in which they appear.

Lastly, this paragraph rhythm is not unusual in non-fiction writing.

I want to assert two additional premises:

1)  All writing is argument.  Even expository writing makes the implicit claim that an explanation or description offered portrays what the writer claims it portrays.

This is just to say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold   

      

       Wm. Carlos Williams

This poem seems like pure exposition, except it concludes with “they were delicious/so sweet/and so cold,” which is the language of judgment and motive, that is, of claims.  It “states a case” for why the narrator ate the plums which didn’t belong to him and pleads for forgiveness.

2)  Stephen Toulmin’s scheme of argument structure is an appropriate model for teaching the foundations of argument to college students of any ability.

Consequently, the better word for us to use to identify the issue at hand and the attitude toward it is “claim,” using Toulmin’s terminology.

Thesis sentences are claims.  But theses are defended by multiple arguments, each with its own claims and evidence.  Those arguments may be “found” among the classical commonplaces and frame the content.

Thus we move from grade school vocabulary to the world of adults, a worthy place for college composition teachers to be with their students.