week four

• Rhetoric


  Where we use words to persuade others of our conclusions
• Aristotle's 3 modes of persuasion:

  1. Ethos - character of speaker
  2. Pathos - putting audience in frame of mind
  3. Logos - the proof
• Logos

  • Good (sound/cogent) argument for conclusion is often a good way to persuade
• Ethos (personal character)

  • Speakers use language to demonstrate their authoritative + virtuous character
  • Argument will carry more weight
• Pathos (audience)

  • put audience into frame of mind
  • appeals to prejudices, desires and emotions
• Rhetorical devices

  • rhetorical questions
  • alliteration
  • anaphora
  • personification
  • triads
• The Gish gallop

  • Someone rapidly presents an excessive number of arguments to overwhelm
• False balance

  • Someone presents themselves as taking a sensible position that is informed by two extremes
• Sealioning

  • Feigns ignorance of a topic and bombards with questions
  • target will eventually snap + respond in uncivil manner
• Pathos fallacy - appeal to emotion

  • emotionally charged language
  • appeals to fears, insecurities and nostalgia
• The case against rhetoric

  • Ethos + pathos can be seen as manipulative
  • You're relying on influencing emotions of audience
• Lexical ambiguity 


  Single word has more than one meaning
• Syntactic ambiguity


  The grammatical structure of a sentence allows it to be read in more than one way
• The fallacy of equivocation

  • Bad arguments slip between 2 or more meanings
• Fallacy of amphiboly 


  conclusion is drawn from a premise that is syntactically ambiguous
• Vagueness 


  When boundaries of a word's extension aren't clear