Argument Mapping 1B
Anthropology 114
November 16, 2015
Leap Argument Mapping
The purpose of this paper is to map the argument structure for the article, “AIDS, Linguistics, and the Study of Non-neutral Discourse,” written by William L. Leap, Ph.D. In this particular article, there is one main central ethnographic claim and five ethnographic facts that support it. There are three poorer ethnographic facts that back the argument as well. Before I go into details, I will first define all the terms that prove to be essential to the argument’s understanding and meaning. Then, naturally, I will give the central ethnographic claim of the article. Finally, I will put light on the numerous chunks of evidence that are utilized in the article …show more content…
William Leap wrote this article to present on his findings of research on a series of interview with AIDS patients. “His argument pointed towards the fact that during these interviews, the AIDS patients tended to separate themselves from the disorder linguistically. What I mean by this is that they avoided certain speech forms and instead used other types of text, and this is the central ethnographical claim of this article. The five ethnographic claims show how this happens. The ethnographic conclusions were found by listening to the discourse of the interviews and analyzing text. The first claim is AIDS patients find themselves to be honest. The second is they are rational, logical, and strategic in discourse. The third is that they do not think of themselves as people who engage in high-risk behavior. The fourth is that they typically blame the choice of other people who engage in high-risk behavior for themselves contracting the disease.” The fifth ethnographic fact is that although they are honest in interaction, they seem to present their personal actions in a much more ‘modest’ way. The two ethnographic facts presented next are weaker ethnographic facts. I claim them to be weaker because they were based on prior research conducted before the study. The first of these weaker ethnographic facts is that AIDS patients adjust their verb tense during AIDS discourse at an attempt of distancing themselves from their disease. The second weak fact is that AIDS patients …show more content…
The five ethnographic facts were all found by listening in on four interviews with five respondents. Dr. Leap, who didn’t conduct the interviews himself, simply tuned-in to the recordings. These claims are still ethnographically accounted for because Dr. Leap did listen in on the interviews as if he was there, on site, listening to the discourses first-hand. When reading this article, it is obvious that the full-length interview is not cited, but the excerpts that are shown are enough to come to the conclusions of this argument mapping. The two weaker ethnographic facts were introduced before the interviews were given. The central ethnographic claim to this paper is concluded from the five ethnographic facts and the two relatively weak ethnographic facts that were found from ethnographically deduced research on the interviews. The ethnographic facts that were determined from the interviews were used as evidence to support the central ethnographic claim to the