Critical Thinking: Rhetorical Devices 2

yeah so chapter 5 started last class the build with rhetorical techniques ways of creating persuasion which are not necessarily bad there may be some some cases where you want to use euphemism and dismiss almost but it most cases is going to be manipulative that's going to be something that plays on people's emotions and imagination maybe previous commitments and it's a way of short-circuiting critical thinking the rhetorical techniques as we talked about Newcomb isms dysphemism rhetorical explanations rhetorical definition we're going to get two more rhetorical things later on we talk about stereotypes stereotyping is usually going to be something that's weighing against critical thinking no home you know there could be some reasons in some cases for why stereotypes exist it's probably going to be bad thinking if you're basing their nominees stereotypes though and then we left them buggies up in your window so now we get to probably the most interesting and the classical example of this is that you quit beating your wife it's one of those questions that you can't answer well because if you even buy into the question itself well the question is loaded with an assault riffle so what's the assumption in that case they there you are that you have that's all time so if you answered yes have you quit beating your wife but then you happen beating your wife that's bad right and if you say no that's even worse because why are you still beating them right so if somebody gets to ask a question like that and they are unchallenged if nobody actually challenges the loaded assumption that's built into that then it's a way of boxing somebody in and you could do this with all sorts of things you ask somebody a question like well you did something wrong are you stupid or just pretty wicked there's a loaded question right there and actually loaded questions are always examples there's there's some sort of assumptions out there and the question itself is always right and later on we're going to see a fallacy of false dilemma and loaded questions are you could think of them as a false dilemma no we're actually get to that in a later chapter but this is sort of good prep for them what do you have a dilemma you have two choices that you pick so I've used this example before class of a genuine diploma you know if you ask unbending me with the ring in your hand and the restaurant Leviathan is playing will you marry me the person who's being asked is now in a dilemma they have really two basic choices they'd say yes or they can say anything else and anything else is really going to you know the warmer on amount to $2 a spontaneous yes probably with a smile on their face or something else it's a time that we think you can choose two paths and in a real dilemma you can't get both and you can't hop down with it so there are there are a lot of real dilemmas that you face in your life right are you ready to go to class you're not going to class that's a dilemma it's one that you've solved already right but it's it's a genuine dilemma with a false dilemma you don't actually have a gift to alternatives and maybe they could both be true or you could opt out of both of them or maybe there's some sort of radiation between them so with a loaded question that's the sort of thing that we're dealing with what makes it a lot of questions that there's no presumption you can identify you know have you quit beating a wife yet the assumption is you're beating your wife there's another good one here in the book then you always love to gamble well you know how are you going to answer that have you always loved to gamble no well you love to gamble now I suppose that right there is the assumption the answer yes well the near a gambler also you could do this with any place you like if you always they always drink too much or is that a new thing for you that's implying that you do drink too much now right were you always a druggie have you always a beaten puppies have you always drown kittens pick any sort of vicious behavior that we identified so you see the geminal thing right like you click your book so the loaded question is not innocent it rests on a unwarranted or unjustified assumption there's no if there's no reason to think that the assumption is true the questions will be Russian I think this one is fairly clear right and here you notice your book doesn't devote a lot of attention to it why because I think we can turn on others really easily the next thing they talks about is sometimes they're called as they're in this book we use lawyers and I've also seen them reasonable works and these get used a lot in something that we've looked at before advertising what a weasel words allow you to do they allow you to make a claim and the claim the Pierces be fairly strong right now when you try to weasel out of something what are you trying to do you're trying to arrange things so that you're not held responsible so they make a strong plan but then they some extent and things like these work they are very effective when people are taken in by weasel words what happens is they're only what's being set they listen because it usually ties them with some sort of wish or desire that they have up to the strong claim and they don't notice the D intensification be taking back of the claim so if I say everybody in here could get in hey by the end of the semester what most students here is I'm getting an aching right that word could that's not saying everybody will get an A right that's lessening the claim that was fairly straightforward is not so much of the characteristic of weasel words built into look at some of the examples that your your forecast this is great one three out of four dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew go so there's like a book points out there's two different weasel words built in there one is surveyed if they say three out of four dentists surveyed how many dentists that they actually have to observe it for that to be true yeah so if crashed planes that I don't think that crest will be interviewed five people that have crest claims four out of five dentists recommend crust that could be only five dentists Pole so that's not a representative sample unless they're actually telling you what the figures are you don't know how strong the claimants it sounds very strongly doesn't true out for four out of five that's a pretty good percentage in this one it's got another interesting weasel word how many dentists recommended that you actually chewed oh yeah there they tend to be against that if you are going to be chewing gum now yeah they would they would prefer that it be sugarless because they don't want your teeth to rot because of you no sugar in they go right but generally not recommending so something is being taken back here as well right it says nothing indicates that there's a sample of dentists surveyed even remotely represents the general population the dentists actually have a answer the question if a patient of yours insisted up chewing gum would you prefer them to be sure that lesser or government that they have a in favor of the sugarless but that's not the same thing as recommending that's sort of like saying you know if you're going to perform an operation on yourself you should probably sterilize the instrument but should you perform an operation on yourself no doctors we would recommend that unless you're you know in a plane crash on the Andes and there's nobody around so you have to be careful of these these sorts of words and then that he goes on this is let's make up a statistic let's say 98% of American doctors believe that gaspin is a contributing cause of grade syndromes and the other two are unconvinced so now notice the word that he uses their song some doctors question whether an aspirin causes this right and for any given medical thing you can find some doctors somewhere somebody who's got a medical license who doesn't believe in it who thinks that if it doesn't work and for any really practiced any any practice ranging from the totally crazy to the slightly kooky to the just unsupported you can actually find some doctor who supports it if you say some how many doctors do you have to have tips on one right so if somebody is using the word song in an average you don't actually know how many people are favorite likewise with crime some of us will be victims of crime how many of us we don't know so if we're going to think about whether to it's a higher duty or to carry pepper spray or you know we don't know what else we want to know what the actual statistics are we don't want weasel words because weasel words they allow this entire range they sound very strong but they're actually weakening things and the trouble is you don't actually know where things fit in there a lot of advertisements use that think about poverty advertisements oh how many of you play the lottery none of you play the longer it was just a few how did the advertisements always go do they show the millions of people who don't win anything no they don't they never show somebody's ripping up their tickets and kata Oh doing it apparently you can buy lottery tickets fake lottery tickets I just found out about this last week you can buy fake lottery tickets as a gag that actually convinced the person that they've won like a million bucks or $10,000 and then of course I'm back it's us whether your odds of winning zero right as opposed to like fifteen thousand to one so one of they show instead of me as well they'll show like a big ball of money and it rolls through the guy's house or money raining down morning and say oh yeah yeah and they use that for a Publishers Clearing House today right which is still going strong Publishers Clearing House was another great example of weasel words because have you guys any of you gotten those things they come in the mail and they say you have one yeah what a part and now if you look at the fine print there's an if there and that is the weasel work the evidence if your number matches the winning number but it reads as if you've already wanted a lot of car dealerships do this to these days there's some of these these I don't know that you would call them they're not quite advertisements there yeah there ways to try to get you to come down to the dealership yeah yeah up to is another example weasel words because if you say up to a thousand dollars thousand dollars sounds great most people focus on that the up to means it could be just you know yeah that's the lowest amount that we have in our culture right I will give all of you up to fifty points of extra credit that doesn't mean I'm going to give you any points across your head I'm not actually committing myself so much there so lady says words that sometimes weasel like perhaps possibly maybe among others those can be used as weasel words they can also be used to plan innuendos you can say well perhaps they're telling the truth if you say that about somebody remember about innuendo you're saying they usually lie you're implying now lengthen like he points out though not every use of words and phrases like this is a weasel sometimes they're reasonable when they're being used to sort of you know sucker you into looking at the straw playing sometimes they're used to do what we call so if I for example you're asking me about how am I going to do on the final exam if I said well I mean your performance so far has been you know getting these on the exams and you seem to be understanding what's going on in the class and if your previous performance is a good index of your later performance I think that you'll get a B I'm qualified now right I'm not actually using weasel words I'm not trying to trick you but I can't narrow it down so you will definitely get a B because I don't know the future and you know just with just a with the stock market with grades how do they host the phrase know that they have in every single stock up in my previous performance does not necessarily indicate future performance I think is how it goes what are they doing there their qualifying there their assessments your book has an example of police work right police work is very rarely 100% definite you know when people go to court when people are arrested and people go to prison it's not every case where you know they checked every single lead out closed off every possible alternative prove conclusively not only beyond a reasonable doubt with young any doubt that the person was guilty but they can say well probably that's the case there are a lot of things there you know so it's not as if we should then suddenly say well everybody's been convicted on reasonable words but that's not the case your book has an example of somebody saying it's possible to submit that's why it is possible that's not necessarily these although if it's being used with rhetorical force that it could be or it could be so all of you can see how these work fairly clear about them okay another mostly related one is what your book calls down players this is a little bit murkier right back when I love this material before I see students writing so luring together down players leads word innuendo and that's okay because sometimes these techniques can overlap with each other sometimes they can be used in conjunction with each other sometimes they can merge into each other what does it down player down clearly says ISM temp to make something or something look less or more or less significant so that's not a bad definition so when might you do this or went like somebody do this to you well if if your case isn't that good and the other person's case is good then you know one way to deal with them just use down the layers let's say they have authorities on their side well what can you do you can't try to in their authorities that's this one way of frozen commons profession okay that's what that's a good example yeah let's say you're you're getting together having some sort of decision right I remember when I was a kid my mom started doing this we have these family meetings and got the family meetings we had to each come up with a budget and that was kind of a pain but was a good thing to learn and if we wanted to get any money for things it had to be in the budget right so I had to learn how to budget things and then we would bring up issues and before we would make a decision you know actually there was a decision that we got to participate in a lot of the decisions she was the parent she made right but if it was a decision that we got to participate in she would make us make up a pro economist and did I mean you never do anything like that when you're kids you may want to start considering doing that for your own life especially you know end up having a spouse or some other partner because you won't see hi hi to them I died with that mom not everything I can tell you that not only my experience or the collective experience of nearly everybody who's been in a relationship throughout the history of time right you won't see eye to eye with them on everything so pro economists you know listing the advantages and disadvantages of things now if you want to do the if you really wanted to think you're gonna have a tendency to downplay the concept well that's not really a disadvantage because that's not that way yeah or you know if that happens we can take care if you're if you really don't want to do this then you these prosigns well yeah it does sound like a really great opportunity but you know most of these things don't pan out and you probably really wouldn't like that anyway so we're not going to go with them so yeah the ground this may feel as a good example something we're down players could come into play if you have authorities then you know the other person may try to downplay their authorities worse if you have actually sometimes if you have competing authorities you might try to downplay the other person's authorities and your book gives some good examples of this one way you can do it is by using stereotypes we talked about this before if you're talking to a crowd that's conservative then if you point out that these opposing expert is liberal that might do the trick right even if they're right likewise if you're in a liberal crowd and you clear out that the opposing person has got a voting record of being a conservative Republican or something like that that may disqualify them in the the other people sighs unnecessarily wrong though right because if they're really an expert they're an expert unless you can actually prove that they are biased it's not a good technique why can they use the phrase just another that person is just another so-and-so so that's down below now it's trying to minimize their it's got this great example here to mirror and merely alright somebody is a mirror yellow or somebody's a mirror and college professor the word mirror the way it works it tends to make us think of things as being little or as being less important so how many of you have actually done any martial arts if you can understand this example kids Kim tells you that she has a yellow belt inside that martial art of Cujo and her sister has a mirror green belt so it sounds like her sister is not as good as she is what's the problem there yeah in most martial arts systems doing a white belt to a yellow belt that's the next stage to an orange belt to green to blue to brown black you know and if it's you know if it's uh if it's the kind of place where they're they're just turning out black belts then they have a whole bunch of steps in between and you get paid for each one on the way one of the ones that my kids went to they actually had like you know first you have the white belt and you get a yellow string then you get the yellow belt but then they would get an orange stripe and that's a little bit silly but you notice there's actually sort of a ranking system and somebody may say Mir think about professors which sounds better teacher associate professor were assistant professor yeah now a lot of people don't know which is which we know that the professor just with the word by itself that's that's the top but which is actually higher assistant or associate some people make assistant is so I'm an assistant professor here and let's say Richard Hall who's just down the hall from here he's he'd made associates guess last year actually so let's see he comes in and I said well you don't want to listen to him he's a mere associate professor I'm an assistant professor you didn't know the difference I would be using down pleasure and you would think that somehow I have a higher rank than you don't you people who don't know the rank and military systems or police systems a person's a beer captain you know listen to the lieutenant's death no lieutenant is lower rank than the capital right and every service you pick so those are all types of deep down players there's another one that it talks about which is using quotations and sometimes you see people doing this with their hands and gestures they go someone says the supposed expert right and they they go like this to imitate quotations what are they doing there by putting it in quotations you're saying it's not really what the word says so someone so has them expert well you're trying to say they're not really an expert that actually some people think they're nice but they're not really you can do this with anything you like professor Sadler said XYZ if you're if you're doing that like in a newspaper article you're doing that with the intent of you know using a downed employer look for somebody if there's talking about me that way look for them to be trying to discredit whatever it is that I'm saying and someone if they do this about you to see you know things about your qualifications treated quotation like look out somebody is trying to use down players why do we do this well again to try to persuade people using rhetoric your book has a couple of good examples of this she got her degree from a Correspondence School right there's actually some correspondence schools that are quite good but what's the general reputation for correspondence schools John borrowed Hanks umbrella and Hank hasn't seen sense bar being used there and yes they're stolen so now it says a lot of conjunctions like nevertheless however still and luck and also we use it downplay claims that precede them so here's the here's one example although it's true that pesticide plants are an integral part of the Green Revolution that has helped to feed millions of people it was just such a plant that developed a leak and produced a terrible tragedy that's one way to talk about something here's another way to talk about the leak at the plant was a terrible tragedy all right however there's the down fire we must remember that such pesticide plants are an integral part of the Green Revolution that's helped to feed millions of people it's downplaying the fact that people died because plant also giving the effects of a context there's this great example consider the remark shot as one by one six votes only might be down if there are a thousand votes that's a pretty close election somebody knowing one by six votes guaranteed that these days if somebody won by six votes there will be a recount what if it's a department meeting and your department only has eight people and you're electing the department chair and shabbos one by six blows what's the story that yeah one way a landslide she won't Levin's so it really depends on the context doesn't and the word only there could be a way of tricking you into buying some sort of claim that's not true or not accepting it's true now there is something that the book points out here that I think is useful to emphasize at this point like it says as mentioned earlier slanders and what do they mean by slanders all these different rhetorical techniques that can use like euphemism juice from this on some of these can't be avoided even you know things like like merely or only they like to think it says they give our writing Flair intros and nobody wants to take your your interesting characteristics away from you but you want to be aware of when you're using these because you will be tempted to use things to oppose people that you don't like they're possible you don't like and you really want to be aware of these when other people are using these on you or against causes that you do like like it says learning to appreciate effects that subtle and not so subtle manipulations of language we have about you and if you do that you can actually become a better writer that's one reason why they teach when they call it you know composition is actually rhetoric and composition we're teaching you how to make your writing appeal let's go on now to force left and this is a term we don't use anymore it used to be a kind of a common term once a horse laughs doesn't mean that you actually sound like them like it's where you just sort of laugh out loud at that somebody can ridicule them he says the kind of rhetorical device we call horse laughs uses the use of ridic includes the use of ridicule of all kinds you can just start laughing at some of these things I've actually done this not not actually meaning to but I have been asked questions by students sometimes that are so bizarrely off-the-wall that you just you know you just can't help laugh you notice I haven't done that here in this in this past and I know that all this semester I don't think so but every once in a while somebody will have something that's just so ridiculous yeah myself I like the LAN so I have a hard time not laughing at that sort of thing now some people will do that just to try to put people down right laughter is a very powerful school as a matter of fact sometimes laughter can be very useful for its hacking injustice you know sometimes it may be your only tool usually here in the United States it's not but sometimes making fun of things satire ridicule that can change people's minds I can deflate the sense that authorities are undefeatable and it has been used ridicule has been used to attack a lot of unjust regimes but it can also just as much been used to attack ordinary people making sure claims as a matter of fact the regime can you know any regime that's in place can make somebody look ridiculous especially if they have control over you know here in the United States nobody actually has control over say the media right some countries the media of state control so you know think about China for example most of the media in China is State Controller of these state censor as a matter of fact even the Internet in China when the revolution started in Egypt China actually blocked searches of the word in Egypt I think it's still hard so if you're in China you type in Egypt into a search engine nothing will come up so in a case like that the regime can also use techniques like this if you're somebody who says well we want democracy in China there are a lot of people who do they can just make fun of you look at that that would be an example this political points do the streets over there all the time like it says one may simply laugh outright at a claim you know send aid to Russia when they start laughing they can laugh at another claim then the lines another first you know support the Equal Rights Amendment sure when the ladies start buying the drinks that's a little bit dated the Equal Rights Amendment was something they were trying to pass when I was a kid and it was supposedly going to grant or secure equal rights for women in the workplace and some other things I don't really even remember the specifics because I was so young when they were debating it it never passed yeah but you see the general idea here right will support equal rights when the women start buying the drinks that's kind of funny right today it's still you go out to the bars are women buying the majority of the drinks that's part of the dating scene or you know whatever scene you want to call the club scene but no what was it being used for in this case it's being used to attack a political proposal so it's being used as a rhetorical technique yeah you can you can tell them unrelated joke you can use sarcastic language sometimes you can just repeat what the person is saying but you know change the tone of noise and then they look stupid don't think that that's a technique there are people who actually built their entire careers off of Santa think about Jon Stewart's The Daily Show which unfortunately more students get their news from actual news shows early said was what statistics were a little while ago John Stewart is not actually giving you any straight news he's he's a comedian so I think of The Colbert Report was really over the top Colbert pretends to be a sort of a hardcore right there he's actually what's he doing there he's actually using satire to attack political opponents and this is done this is done quite frequently you can do this visually to think about when you see those political cartoons how do they procreate Obama what's the one feature and political cartoons that they there's a man his ears right they have you know big Dumbo like why do they do that that's a way to try to sort of deflate a person's authority George Bush's father George Bush Senior I remember a few he was portrayed blessed as being a win so they would always draw him with a purse carrying a purse around he was Reagan's vice president say you've seen this sort of Reagan's laughs there's all sorts of a visual imagery like that when you can do things that kind of pump people up visually think about those the Obama campaign was very good with using that you remember that famous red white and blue hope and the show success that's stage you that's you know a form of rhetoric as well but you can use it the other way to try to diminish it person and that's what people do with their opponents do they do that in the advertiser do you remember that that's that in some way ever the they were attacking the south yeah one of the ones that we saw who was Quiznos remember the dog jumping in the blackboard ads that I put it for you guys because not a lot of me who actually took a look at those blackboard ass there wasn't a particle of one though there's a candle there not count little Winston at yeah with friends party yeah yeah you know advertisements sometimes they look belittle their opponents and then again that's a rhetorical technique what happens when we start laughing at somebody we tend to think less of it don't worry whether we mean to or not so I'm actually going to leave it off here because if hyperbole takes a little bit longer to explain so again I'd like to emphasize for you with these rhetorical techniques you want to start becoming 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Channel: Fayetteville State University

Views: 15,337

Rating: 4.9463086 out of 5

Keywords: Loaded questions, Weasel words, Downplayers, Use of humor, Satire, Sarcasm

Id: Ep8oJlyAlXE

Length: 38min 55sec (2335 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 16 2011