Rhetoric, Appeals and Fallacies

 Your communication toolkit. The ability to find the best means of persuasion in any situation. Three rhetorical strategies:  Pathos: Appeals to the emotions of an audience  Ethos: Appeals to the ethics of the audience or to the authority of the speaker  Logos: Appeals to logic

 Appeals to emotion;  Examples: when a TV commercial shows pictures of cute kids or puppies/kittens, it is using Pathos.  Pictures of wounded soldiers on a battlefield  A grandfather playing with his grandchildren  A US flag with the sound of “God Bless America” playing

 Appeals to ethics;  Quoting Alan Greenspan in an argument about the economy  Interviewing your grandmother about family history  The 10 Commandments  The Golden Rule

 Appeals to logic  Examples: the scientific method  Using statistics  Using forensic evidence

 When good arguments go bad. The following slides give examples of different categories of fallacies.

 When a claim is restated and passed off as evidence.  Example: Politicians are all dishonest because no honest person would run for political office.

 This fallacy suggests there are only 2 choices in a complex situation.  Example: Either we bail out our banks or our economy will enter a Depression.  Either you marry me or you will end up an old maid.

 When you compare two situations which are not really comparable.  Example: To end World War II the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan. To end the Afghanistan war, we should drop a nuclear bomb on the country.

 A broad claim made on the basis of a few occurrences.  Example: It was a really hot summer – this is definite proof of global warming.  Example: Jane’s mother is always too strict – she grounded Jane last weekend.

 Ties together two unrelated ideas. One thing does not necessarily follow another.  Example: The University receives a lot of donations; therefore, it should not have to raise tuition.  Example: Racism is wrong. We need affirmative action.

 The overall claim may be true, but the argument is too simple.  Example: No one would run stop signs if we had the death penalty for doing it.  Example: All teenage crime can be linked to hormones.

 Assumes events which follow each other have a cause-and- effect relationship.  Example: The stock market goes up every time Dallas wins the Super Bowl.  "The difference between the post hoc and the non sequitur fallacies is that, whereas the post hoc fallacy is due to lack of a causal connection, in the non sequitur fallacy, the error is due to lack of a logical connection." (Mabel Lewis Sahakian, Ideas of the Great Philosophers. Barnes & Noble, 1993)

 Excuses or weak explanations for behavior.  Example: I flunked the test because the teacher hates me.  Example: She wouldn’t go out with me because I don’t have a car.

 Maintains that one thing will inevitably cause another thing.  Example: If we allow gay marriage, soon people will be marrying their pets.

 Everyone else is doing it.  Example: Everyone else copied a paper from the Web – so should I.

 Using words/names to try to define people or groups  Example: President Bush was a right-wing conservative.  Example: President Obama is a socialist.

 Sets up the opposite argument in a way that it can easily be defeated.  Example: Environmentalists will not be satisfied until not a single human being is allowed in national parks.