Enthymeme in Argument: What is it and How to Use it

When making persuasive arguments, one must assume some of the things about the reader, for instance; the readers should be speaking the language as well as understanding some of the fundamental realities about the world. Without the assumptions, it could be hard for people to communicate or even persuade one another over some things. If people were to communicate without the use of assumption, communication will be complicated because one should be pausing to specify or explain the assumptions, and the arguments will be extremely long and repetitive as well. Use of enthymeme plays a significant role in communication even though it hides the premises in a discussion that might slip without noticing, the case can be still persuasive (Paglieri & Woods, 2011). One important thing to consider is the writers to ensure that they see all the premises because if the reader notices an assumption that the writer did not, the argument will be less persuasive because the writer will not anticipate possible doubts of the reader.

Political speeches, literature, as well as advertisement usually use the enthymeme because it makes the audience to make conclusions and trigger them to read deeper to enable them to have a clear understanding of the idea or premise. Enthymeme forces the readers to make the final step and in the process strengthen the argument of the writer as well as hiding the underlying notion in which the case depends. One example of enthymeme is "the Gun has the defendant's fingerprints on the trigger. He is guilty". The hidden premise of the above example is that when a person uses an object, in this case, a gun, they leave fingerprint marks on it, which shows the person who has used it. In the enthymeme above the Gun has the fingerprints of the defendant, meaning that he is the one who used the Gun and therefore guilty. The example is simple to understand and thus enables the reader to have a clearer understanding of the use of enthymeme in enhancing the arguments.

Reference 

Paglieri, F., & Woods, J. (2011). Enthymemes: From reconstruction to understanding. Argumentation, 25(2) , 127-139.