Rhetorical+Appeals+and+Fallacies+notes

The Art of Rhetoric: Aristotle’s Persuasive Appeals Rhetoric: Appeals: how the writer/speaker tries to convince the audience. Logos Ethos Pathos
 * Dictionary: the art of speaking and writing effectively
 * Aristotle: the ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion
 * An appeal to logic or reason
 * Academic papers, corporate informational documents are logos-driven.
 * The reader must ask whether or not the logic follows. Are the statistics skewed or unrepresentative?
 * An appeal based on the character or reputation of the author, speaker, or source (where do you see it?)
 * Effectively, “I’m a great guy, so you should believe what I’m saying?”
 * Ethos does not concern itself with the veracity (truth) of the argument, just the credibility of its source.
 * Reader needs to consider whether or not the source is credible.
 * Appeal based on emotion.
 * Most advertising is pathos-driven.
 * Attempts to persuade by stirring the emotions of the audience
 * o Love, pity, sorrow, fear, greed, lust, etc.
 * Does not concern the veracity of the argument.
 * The reader needs to consider, “Is the writer simply ‘playing’ me?”

Fallacies
 * Stereotype – a hasty generalization about a group
 * False analogy
 * o An analogy shows similarities between two things
 * o A false analogy is clearly off base: If we can send a spacecraft to Pluto, we should be able to cure the common cold.
 * Post hoc ergo propter hoc
 * o Latin: Comes after this, therefore caused by this
 * o Correlation does not mean causation.
 * o Assumes that one thing that follows another was caused by the first.
 * Either . . . or fallacy
 * o The assumption that there are only two options and only one of those is satisfactory.
 * o We can either go to Hawaii for vacation or stay home and do nothing.
 * Non sequitur
 * o Latin: it does not follow
 * o When a claim is made that is unrelated to the overall argument
 * Straw man fallacy
 * o Setting up an imaginary opponent who is so weak he can be knocked down by the argument.
 * o An oversimplification or distortion of the opponent’s view
 * Ad hominem attack – to the man
 * o Attacking the personality of the opponent, not the argument
 * Misleading quotation
 * o Deliberately misleading a reader with use of ellipses ( . . .)
 * o Using a piece of a work to skew the meaning
 * Biased language
 * o Diction (word choice) that chooses words with loaded meaning
 * Bandwagon –
 * o everyone does this, therefore it’s a good idea
 * Confirmation bias
 * o We want to believe what we already assume is true.
 * o We don’t investigate; it’s safer than finding out information we don’t like.