Critical Thinking: Rhetorical Devices 1

so we start a new chapter and this one introduces a notion that we've had before which is called rhetoric and what is rhetoric rhetoric is persuasive use of language it's a study that's been around just about as long as philosophy as a matter of fact if you guys read two other bits of philosophy than the credo which I'm having you read for this class you'll find out that philosophy and rhetoric or sometimes at odds with each other are any communications majors or business like marketing I don't think we have any specialized things than that those are careers in which you'd focus on whether also if you're going to be a English professor actually an English teacher in high school you study what they call Bret Compton rhetoric and composition and rhetoric is not by itself bad so you don't have to get rid of rhetoric but rhetoric can derail critical thinking and it does that walkin by appealing to the emotions doesn't it also by appealing to arguments that on their surface seem like good arguments but often arms and in this chapter we're not focusing so much on arguments we're focusing more something at an even lower though how do you approach language and when you're talking about things I think all of you know this by now you can say things in many different ways right you can say the same term you can communicate the same basic information but you can put what we call spin on it and that spin has been very according to to what will make a change the word you use what did you say the setting here in or it or the audience are a few people sale audience and rhetoric really focuses on making the words persuasive to a particular audience now if you're being targeted with rhetoric then you should be a little bit wary right because maybe language just to appeal to you and may not be the best information and your book talks about a number of different techniques and we're going to look at several today so the first two these are closely related terms [Applause] euphemism and we don't use this one quite so much in our language but it's pretty nice deuces or dysphemism depending on how you one pronounce these are coming through Greek words this prefix I think you guys can figure out what it what it means think about dysfunction if you have a dysfunctional family how would you describe that family crazy yeah what's that not not functioning right so this means not or poorly and a means good or well and Fame isn't comfortable word that means to speak or say so something that's well said is a euphemism something that's forcefully said is discipline ism and we don't mean that it's poorly said of the sense that you stammer or you can't come up with a word of the spa or anything like that we mean that you choose a word that is going to make things look worse than they are and with a euphemism you do the opposite you pick a word that's going to make things sound better so if I say instead of talking about your test I say you have a learning opportunity coming up what am i doing I'm using a euphemism our time or you have an opportunity to serve your school we're always being given opportunities to serve our school what is that language convey to you if you start reading between the lines whenever somebody gives you an opportunity to serve how do you take that yeah for one thing opportunity is a little bit of a misnomer because opportunity conveys the idea that well you could take it or you couldn't take it often that's you're going to do it is it and then to serve that sounds a little nice to do work for for no pay that doesn't sound points of it does that's a more neutral description of the situation to be enslaved to the University okay that would be into service right because nobody is actually enslaved to the University we don't have people toiling in the basement you know not getting paid at all we do have a lot of people who don't get get paid that well at this place not so much the faculty and more the staff if you actually look at that salaries of people they're sometimes a little disproportionate and you can put spin on that one way and you can put spin on that the other one your book gives you a few good examples here like how many do have cars or thinking about getting car in the next two years or so so you should be attuned to this pre-owned was pre-owned me that's a euphemism it is descriptive it has been owned before what what does that convey it sort of a warm way of talking about car that it's used and they have somebody else's problems they got rid of that car either because they actually were the old lady when we drove it on Sundays or because they wanted a better car and if you're buying that car you may be buying some problems that's a euphemism and there's a lot of great examples here about politics people fighting against the government of the country like if you think about the revolution that's taking place in the Arab world right now how do you actually describe the protesters do you scrap describe them as Islamic militants do you describe them as freedom fighters or do you pick something in between which is much more likely where the truth booths or think about the labor dispute that's going out of Wisconsin right now I think we've been following that story it's pretty pretty big news and it's still going on people are saying this is the one chance that the unions had to actually you know stake their claim that maybe euphemism or just from ISM depending on which side here oh they're starting to use biblical language and talk about this as Armageddon that's rhetoric right there right this is actually about a bill that is changing a few things in collective bargaining it's not destroying collective bargaining or taking the union's away forever it's it's you know altering some of the things for some of the employees but it's made out to be to reduce from ISM that's the end of the world now is it good for those government employees is it you know if we talk about it as just pruning back excess that's a euphemism right talking about getting rid of some people's jobs so again the truth where is it somewhere in the middle so you want to be very careful about euphemistic and do semitic language lady says euphemisms and do some isms are often used in deceptive ways you can get paid by other people to come up with nice ways of saying things ways i think people feel good or scary threatening dismaying ways of saying things things that make people feel bad some people do this naturally i think all of you who have friends who tend towards putting things in the worse terms possible or family members right and then you have some people we often call these pollyannas or in temperature you know the people that are always making things sound better than they are do have any words for that these days well yeah optimist pessimist but this goes a little bit further than just being an optimist okay so i think you you have that concept down and this leads us into another closely related [Music] what we call horrible definitions and rhetorical explanations and this is a little bit higher order right so with euphemisms and do some isms you can pick terminology that makes something sound good or sound bad when you're asked to give a definition of something you can use euphemisms or Dusen isms to make it sound good or sound bad rather than talking about it neutral language you can define something so that the case that you want to have the person take is already taken for granted so there's certain ways of defining things that you can put a spin on likewise with explanations why is this happening well those dirty liberals are our advocate or those crazy right wingers those are rhetorical explanations if you're using loaded language like that to explain something you're not really explaining it because when somebody is asking for an explanation unless they're just looking to be tricked or as how you you know support their case they're really looking for you to tell them why something happened or how something is taking place they're not looking for you to give us instead right and when you're asking somebody else for an explanation are you looking to be misled but I hope not and maybe if you're a masochist all right so your your book has a few good examples of this and it brings up abortion there's an interesting sort of joking this with your toric with definitions there's a politician who's asked so what's your stand on abortion and this is a litmus test right this is one that that politicians sooner or later have to take a stand now and some of the politicians are very clearly against abortion right some politicians are very clearly for abortion you know someone actually come out and say it's a positive good or you know it should be funded by the state or things like that and one politician reportedly I think this is probably made up one politician said well if by abortion you mean the sacrifice millions of unborn children to the whims of irresponsible people every year and I'm definitely against abortion now by abortion you mean an elective procedure that every woman has a right to have if she so chooses and which is protected by us what then I'm for it yeah now there's the problem neither one of those is an adequate definition of what's going on is it they pick out one side of the issue and a lot some of you exhibited sort of shocked at somebody being able to say if they take that position on both sides right but why can they do that well rhetorical definitions don't capture what something adequately is don't adequately capture something else if you had to define abortion probably a better way of doing it would be talking about the destruction of an unborn again do you choose the word fetus or do you choose the word child it may be difficult to come up with the definition in this case that doesn't already have some commitments to it because if you say child what's the conclusion you have to throw it's murder right if you say fetus well that doesn't sound quite so so bad but that is Eliot the opponents of abortion say while you're kind of candy coating thanks for actually because what kind of fetus is it dog fetus snake Thea's right so I mean there this is one of those areas where you may not be able to find a non rhetorical definition and in that case you want to find something that's closer and we have really any controversial issue you can think of ranging from global warming or now we don't vote climate change since they whether that's a good example they had to change the name right from global warming to global climate change why do I have to do that and if you remember but five years ago it was always global warming yeah because it actually in some in some cases it's cooler and well and it can't call it global warming if in fact it's resulting in deity or snow and more cold temperatures so you call it global climate change is that a euphemism and do scream ISM part is if there's some sort of slant going on there maybe and that's something to think about really any controversial issue that you can pick it's possible to produce rhetorical definitions for it likewise rhetorical explanations this is even more complicated right when you're given an explanation you you have not just a single claim something is this you have a whole set of things well this happened because this and because this and this led to this or if you want this to take place then you have to this and this so if we say take something like why is there a revolution taking place in the air world right now why are you know millions of people against their governments and some of them you know up in arms more governments cracking down on protesters but you have the opportunity to give a lot of rhetorical explanations because those people are ignorant and can't be trusted with democracy and have to be ruled than iron eeeh I think that's probably a rhetorical explanation but there are people out there getting that explanation because those people are animated by the inner spirit of freedom to rise up against oppression worldwide that's a rhetorical explanation to because actually we talked a lot of protesters they're less interested in freedom per se they're much more interested in why does food cost so much or why did it give my uncle away in the middle of the night and kill oh you know or why can't we assemble so again you've got to be very careful when people are providing you explanations of things yeah I guess that's the guy next door fight round abusive you know I'm not I'm not using the computer today so everybody clear about how you can use rhetoric and euphemism juice Tremezzo horrible explanation rhetoric definition there's actually something that's kind of funny I thought you'd get a kick out that ties in with us a little bit and I'll let you try to figure out where exactly fits in it's often called a rhetorical conjugation or another word that you'll see emotional conjugation and sometimes he's actually named after a particular philosopher Bertrand Russell who didn't make these up popularize these by talking about them on the radio now in the old days when we used to teach grammar in school which they don't do very much anymore you have what's called conjugation of verbs and if you take a foreign language to do conjugation right and so your first person second person third person and what's the first person I you and then he's your cookie right so it's kind of a joke and you do with the regular verbs in English we have some verbs that are a little bit screwy like his or to be right I am you are he or she in yes so for example I am strong in principles you are star he is a obstinate ass three we three ways of saying same thing right one of them is a euphemism the other ones a what dysphemism right and the other one is much more neutral you can do this with pretty much any euphemism induced invisibly like so what's a quality you might nice tribute to somebody anything what's up you do it all day long anytime you say something about somebody well that's probably reduce distance okay so I am not so bright today and we want to get to India let's use a way to stronger EDI more now we need something that's not quite so bad for the you you are stupid right now again already the word stupid has some emotional residence but there could be some people that are genuinely stupid and when we say that somebody stupid we're saying something different than they're ignorant you know ignorant people are just lacking information stupid people general you know are genuinely not smart they draw the wrong conclusions they make dumb decisions so I'm not so bright that sounds good yeah or I could say I'm challenged but you know working against it on that you're stupid and he's a idiotic Laura again rhetorical force these are three ways of referring to the same thing but putting very different spin on them right there so that's something worth keeping in mind your book also talks about another thing that we talked about quite a bit already now if I retreat systemically and that's a stereotype right and we've talked about this before what's what's going on when your stereos I think what are the elements of that do stereotype about just a single you're talking about a room and you're saying that the group has some sort of quality usually it's going to be bad I don't believe there could be good stereotypes I told you the story of Charles water tonight I tell you guys now I had a friend named Charles wine yeah this is back in college back in the early 90s and he was a little guy about this tall and he was Chinese news from mainland China he'd been in the Chinese Navy so he was actually kind of tough but it didn't actually know any martial arts now bad that I don't think a lot of people would make this mistake at this point but back then a lot of people assume that if you were Asian you knew martial arts this guy was a hothead - so he would get him he'd get into arguments at bars with a whole bunch of guys in Stern using foul language and collars and all sorts of things in both Chinese in English and of course what happens that and then they want to beat you up all right this is the way things work at bars and what would he do he'd get into a fighting stance and then everyone would leave him alone and why because they had a stereotype in their life they thought well he belongs to this group so therefore he must have this this quality being a martial artist or something like that it seemed to many kung fu movies or karate movies or something like that so sometimes the stereotype could be good you know that the stereotype there's another one of Asians - Asians are all super-smart you can find some some not so bright Asians out there a lot of that has to do with with traditional culture turns out and the ideal of Education interestingly to put them put anybody in America for long enough and they start to the rest of Americans work ethic tends to sound bad the performance tends to go down a bit even though diet changes things there's something interesting there is this perception of Japanese that Japanese did not have the same sort of physical problems that Westerners did like acne for example and that was true so one is the Japanese diet remained more or less the same once they had a more Western diet which consisted a lot more meat and a lot more dairy acne what size of children also went oh that's why you can find a lot more younger people who are closer in size to sort of Western standards throughout Asia throughout the rest of the world because as dietary things go off eNOS got a nutrition or meat you end up bigger right a lot of those things are stereotypes they're often based on what information about a group and we talked about how this happens you meet two or three people from a group and now you think you know all about that group those could be on representative members of the group or the group to just be a lot more diverse I mean if you have to generalize about Americans America is a pretty diverse society isn't it how do we usually form teams to America these days we pick people right and we pick them we want to be sort of a you know representative example of America so how do we select them a little bit of everybody yeah we should have the right proportions so whatever team we have should be at least after with them all right and we should have somebody from each race and we defined race in really weird ways the way we define race is not the way that everybody else defines race they don't draw the same lines as we do in part because our understanding of race is a little bit skewed think about Asia is Asian really a race it's a racial category so imagine now if you're stereotyping about Asians our Indians and Chinese more similar to each other than they are to Westerners two totally different cultures they don't they don't look a little like like each other either you know South Asians and East Asians two very different groups racially in terms of genetics and all that sort of stuff even within what we call racial groups you know not all Chinese look alike as a matter of fact if you spend a lot of time of Chinese people you'll find that they don't really resemble it each other very much at all any more than most Westerners do if you actually spend a lot of time with people then you start becoming attuned to all the differences between them if you don't spend a lot of time with them then they really do all look alike as a matter of fact one question I mean they can tell the difference between light skin and dark skin right but when Westerners go China in most parts of China we literally do all look like there are all big nose people you know compared to the Chinese actually that's that's the slur word for Western that beats it it's kind of way of putting something about big nose if you actually spend time with people then you're less likely to stereotype because you realize that they are in fact diapers even within the same group you can you can do this with any group that you pick you can do this with religions you know if you know a few Muslims suddenly you know everything about Islam well you know sit down and talk with about a hundred or a thousand Muslims and you'll you'll find out that there's a lot of different ways of living out on those one life and there are differences in their views on how should they do this how should they do this some things are very prescribed and you should pray a certain way five times a day but actually there's four different legal schools just with no Sunni Islam which is the majority and they prescribed different motions for for prayer so you have been very careful in stereotype and like it says where do our stereotypes come from we've talked about this before sometimes they come from experiences and sometimes they just come from well somebody said this and I believe and some of this can come through our media remember we talked about Bugs Bunny cartoons because so do any of you remember the old Bugs Bunny cartoons have any of you seen them they're pretty racist have you ever your watch their depiction of Chinese people or black people or Mexicans when you get a chance go onto YouTube and just type in Bugs Bunny racist and you will see Bugs Bunny doing all these very stereotypical imitation about people right why was it a kid back well because you know that was part of the society because these stereotypes were seen as just well everybody knows this about Mexicans where everybody knows this Chinese the last thing we're going to talk about is innuendo and this is really interesting you guys all know this chart right you knew endo I think you've heard it before what what is it when somebody uses innuendo what do you understand no no I would like to hear you've already used your saying something without committing yourself to it it's a way of maybe putting somebody down or implying something without having to take responsibility for so your your your book has this great example ladies and gentlemen I am proof that there's at least one candidate in this race who does not like a drinking problem okay now if a politician says that they're very clearly saying something about their opponent aren't they what are they implying yeah or if you know I am the I am I'm proof there's at least one candidate in this race maybe there's three cabinets they're all else except for me you can say this about a lot of people and a lot of different ways I'm going to give you another example in Glendale which I myself actually use have you ever heard the expression damning with faint praise it comes from Shakespeare and it made its way into our language if you're damning somebody with thing praise what you're doing is you are saying something good about them but you're saying it in kind of a very non-committal way that's actually implying that they're no good so if this is why I don't write letters of recommendation for for students that don't earn me a zerbies right because what would I have to say about them well they passed my class well if you say they have they passed my class but you didn't say that they got a name what does that actually say they didn't really work you know as hard as they could have in my class and this is what I know about them so if somebody is asking for a letter usually I said well this is what I'd have to say about you do you really want the letter usually the students say no no I thought something saying that I'm the best person in the world most qualified for the job and some students I can say that right if you asked me we've talked about this before if you asked me about colleagues who I don't hold in high esteem well I criticize them no I'll say things like they're a very nice person what am i implying what's with built into the situation you asked me about is this professor good doing other stuff well there are very nice person they don't know their stuff right something is being implied in the situation employers usually don't want to bless you unless you've been really good they don't want to say much when you use them as references and Parkers are afraid of getting sued if you don't get the job so if you really screw up in a job and then you know to put them of reference they'll get called and then what they'll say is well all we can tell you is that they worked here from this point to this point if the ATS all they have to say yeah what's being in quiet you don't want this person working for you they work for us for too long that was you know they were long enough for them to make a bad impression you can use innuendo in a lot of ways to convey things and here's another good one I didn't say the meat was tough I said I didn't see the horse that's usually outside what is that telling here what's that that it's nasty right well I'll divorce me right we don't actually eat horse meat in our culture they do actually in France in some places it's kind of a delicacy and some some less developed countries also eat horse meat for us if you say that meat is horse meat you're actually saying it's bad it's nasty it's tough did I only mean privately in the places where it's eaten yes yeah but I don't think that that's not most places and it does actually give you a few examples of condemning a faint praise and they use this words so far or surprisingly where I suppose if you say so and so it's done good work for us I suppose you're insinuating something right maybe they didn't do good work for you you're not quite sure so all of these are ways of slanting language notice none of these are actually using an argument yeah these can all be parts of arguments and why is this important well when you're making arguments about controversial topics or when somebody's making arguments to you about controversial topics they may use language in such a way as to try to change your feelings about things if you find out that somebody is a socialist labor union organizer where you find out that somebody is a defender of workers rights those convey two very different impressions don't they especially down here in the south where we blame socialists apparently it's part of the culture so if somebody is using language like this in arguments you want to be careful you want to serve it to take a step back and say is there a better way to describe this rather than just immediately tying in to it and you know what it's going to be most tempting to do this when will when will this be the greatest danger for you what's up elections maybe I was thinking more when it's really working when you find yourself agreeing with that and you start saying yeah they're dead up watch out

Channel: Fayetteville State University

Views: 69,653

Rating: 4.8470588 out of 5

Keywords: Rhetorical, Devices

Id: 8mXtcxZdPPE

Length: 37min 16sec (2236 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 15 2011