# Assumptions, Warrants, and Enthymemes

* Arguments function with claims and grounds, and you can ask the STAR questions about the connection between claims and grounds. You will be expected to craft explicit, clear, well-supported arguments. But you should also always **look out for what is taken for granted** in any text. All arguments have to assume something; otherwise an infinite regress of “Why?” questions would forever defer the argument from getting launched in the first place.
* If an audience understands and accepts certain basic facts and definitions, the arguer usually moves on to other stases and does not provide explicit support for some claims.
* This phenomenon is nothing new. Aristotle noticed it way back in ancient times and came up with a term for it, the enthymeme (pronounced *EN-thuh-meme*). According to rhetoric scholar George Kennedy, in Ancient Greek, the word enthymeme meant “something held in the mind,” with the audience co-creating meaning by filling in from a common well of accepted arguments and support. Some of the most powerful and effective arguments seem to rely on an assumption that the audience will fill in what is accepted, and expect explicit arguments only on other matters that are not yet fully accepted.
* Enthymemes are at the heart of rhetoric and argumentation. As Rita Copeland, a scholar of classical studies and literature, explains it,

> The word “enthymeme”… comes from the word *thymos*, meaning heart, mind, spirit, desire or soul as manifested through the passions. It signifies the seat of emotions and intuitions, where inferences, judgments, and intentions are made. As the key device of persuasion, the enthymeme is a kind of junction box between emotion and deliberation.

* Every meme, and much humor, relies on the audience supplying the unstated connections. This is why humor that has to be explained is not funny. Here is an example of joke that works as an enthymeme:

{% hint style="info" %}
\
\
\&#xNAN;*My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance. We’ll see about that.*<br>

What is the missing part that the audience fills in?
{% endhint %}

{% hint style="info" %}
Can you think of examples of memes and jokes that work as enthymemes, with the audience filling in the unstated part?
{% endhint %}


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