Critical Thinking: Rhetorical Devices 3

seeing that you can use all these different types of of rhetoric to the slant we use all these different types of rhetorical devices to slang people's emotions to take a word or a turn and give it a not necessarily different meaning per se but I didn't tell them to a different sense to it and we've seen a couple different devices and a little bit more complex like bulletin question right what questions I actually got a certain structure dilemma hyperbole hyperbole is is more like the first type of thing but proof surrogate and rhetorical analogies of misleading comparisons they actually have some structure to them so now we're getting closer to talking about actual fallacies and that's what we're going to be doing for the next two chapters so what does hyperbole that's a term that I think we don't use a lot it's Ordinary fiction but you guys are familiar with it because you see it happening all the time if somebody's saying things in a hyperbolic way what are they what are they doing they're exaggerated very good will reduce things they're building it up sarcasm is something the different sarcasm is usually intended to tear things down and somebody gets angry they may end up engaging in a live perfectly well they're making more out of something than it is and the way that your book talks about it is it's extravagant overstatement which is that's actually a little bit of a thinker and purply itself it's a little hyperbolic because technically speaking any sort of overstatement could be hyperbole now I think it says a claim that exaggerate for effect is on its way to becoming hyperbolic depending on strength of its language and it uses this example it's her fur that you still see being used a lot today - just right this is a great example and here's why if you don't like somebody and you feel that they're being a little bit power-hungry or authoritarian it's a natural tendency to call them either ashes before another word that people will often say third a Nazi right now that's hyperbole because technically speaking who were the fascists or the actual I don't know there was it was a leader of the National Socialist Party that's of not C stands for fascist actually were a little bit before them and there have been some some other fascist regimes afterwards but mostly they're around you know the pre-world war ii between World War one and World War two it was a particular political philosophy there was a whole ideology - so now that buddy who you don't like because a fascist and people started throwing this term around from the time after the the Nazis and the actual fascists fell they started throwing this around as a way to attack people if you didn't like some of these some of these politics especially if they're on the right you call them fascists if they were controlling if they were telling you what to do even if they had the right to tell you what to do there are fascists and so nowadays there's a lot of people that have no idea what the term actually means and they use it fairly indiscriminately you know I have seen websites for example saying george w bush was a fascist - clearly not i mean if you actually know what the term means that's got to be a head coach another book came out a few years ago called liberal fascism making the argument that actually some of the the big names out there in contemporary politics and more in line with fascist policies but you know if you want to call obama fascist that's really stretching things isn't really to call anybody a nazi I must say the swastika somewhere you're stretching the truth well a quite is on the other side if you want to attach somebody on the Left what do you call what's the worst thing you could say what's up well actually um that would be angular right so let's put that one up so calling somebody racist there aren't a lot of people who aren't racist right there's various forms of racism but some people will use hyperbole and call people racists even when there's no evidence that they are you know really in order to call somebody a racist you need evidence otherwise you're just as we say playing the race track right and that doesn't do anybody any good I was thinking more like when you call somebody a communist Barack Obama's a communist because it's for socialized medicine or you know as we call here universal healthcare well you know you don't have to be a communist to before that because the Canadians have that and as far as I can tell the Canadians are not communists there's a few up there we actually have a communist party actually there's three countless parties the United States because they they don't agree with each other one is Stalinist one is one it was lemonis one is Trotskyite I think the other one is Maoist because different areas disagree another term that you see people use fundamentalist right fundamentalist Muslims fundamentalist Christians even they talk about fundamentalist Hindus and there is actually its technical use of the term it was kind of interesting there was a big big flap of their head in PR I don't know if any of you guys about that the CEO of NPR actually resigned over an incident that happened a few weeks ago where an NPR executive was caught on tape caught on a video saying some really derogatory things that show that that at least he and them an argument is that NPR as a culture is biased biased against people on the on the right and one of the things that I noticed because I used to teach religious studies is the call the evangelical Christians fundamentalists now if you know anything about the history of Christianity you know that those are two different groups as a matter of fact actual real fundamentalist churches split from evangelical churches over some of the submissions and they will tell you evangelicals are not fundamentalist fundamental they're never going to be a fundamentalist you have to hold that there are certain fundamentals that are so essential to Christian you know identity your fellowship that you can't compromise on those anybody who doesn't agree with those you have to back off back away from them so most Christians are not actually fundamentalist at any strong sense of the term they may be something else that's often equated that they made and literally true but that's not enough to make somebody a fundamentalist any more than liking power is enough to make one fascist or being for universal healthcare is enough to make one of Communists these are all ways to use language very enhance but very persuasively because what happens when you call so many more these things especially to call the racist they they get tick tock where you say they could affinity so you're looking more of the interaction between you and the person you're talking to what about the audience what is the audience how do they look at that person if you call them a racist very yeah were these all the fundamentalist or if you call them a communist or a factions so these are ways to use language and hyperbolic ways ways to use ways I shouldn't say that these are ways of using language hyperbolically that that can tear people down now you can do it positively to you know the book has this great example it says not all colors stronger colorful language is hyperbolic Oscar Peterson is an unbelievably inventive pianist now if that's actually true it's done hyperbolic but our most musicians unbelievably inventive now as a matter of fact this is this is something that you want to think about in the publishing industry and in the music industry also in television and movies there are people who are paid precisely to to write things that will make product seeing you know very excitement better the better than they are higher quality some of you may consider that as another job you know I was writing copy and they have to do this even for mundane things like what's amiss that Network where they sell things on TV QVC yeah most people that are hyper there they have to constantly talk and use hyperbolic language this is the best product this is going to revolutionize your life your whole life will be organized did you buy our filing cabinets years and years and years ago yeah it doesn't take me long to figure out that it wasn't something I wanted to spend much time watch it well that's them why are they doing now exactly they're trying to get you to narrow the window of decision making they're trying to short-circuit critical thinking we're going to talk about our problems and fallacies that are like that later on so hyperbolic language is one way to the slant things and let me say the claim can be hyperbolic without containing excessively emotive words these are all pretty emotional emotional charge words aren't they but if you say parents who are strict well here is that the example of fascists here oh the Oscar Peterson if you were going to say Oscar Peterson has the best pianist in the world now that's true is not hyperbole right but how many can be the best at any given time yeah that's that's what constitutes being the best so unless you actually have some evidence for him being invested best is not a particularly emotive termism neither is worst absolutely worst to be I suppose competition if you don't have reason for saying something that's really great or really bad then you're engaging in hyperbole whether there's a lot of you know emotional baggage throwing it or not now your book makes you really interesting point here hyperbole is an obvious lancing device you can tell when somebody's using it right if you know the facts if you know that Barack Obama is not in fact a communist or anything about some of the other things they say some of the conspiracy theories stuff he's the most one plant here to their people actually saying he's uh a Muslim plant here too weak in the United States against radical Islam okay well that's fairly unbelievable you want to see some evidence it could be true right but you have to show us evidence that's actually true now hyperbole is pretty obvious with it when it happens does that mean that because you see it happening and you label it you've taken care of it like it says here it has some sort of unconscious effects as well some sulfites even if you reject the exaggeration you may be moved in the direction of the basic claim so you might reject the claim that this guy Oscar Peter says the most immense of musicians but now because somebody is saying that you you start to think well he must be a pretty good musician and they did that may not be the case at all see when somebody won't think about it like like like this let's say there's over here is the words over here is the best and you know the exact middle that's somewhere around here completely neutral place so now any given person in any given thing your tendency is to place them here right so you know something about them now let's say you get into an argument with somebody about us this this musician beginning musician that you like and they say they are the absolute best no musician has ever produced things as good as they are you can think about you know 13 14 15 year-olds and they often make claims like that though that this band this is perfect they get me they speak to me right nobody has ever produced music like this before I mean if you find out that they see a lot of the music's samples and now you started out here right with your assumption because you're being a critical thinker they dragged you all the way to here what's the natural human tendency sort of meet in the middle somewhere and you may find yourself if people are using hyperbolic language thinking well they're not that great but they are pretty good but you may not have any evidence or that likewise when people are using hyperbolic language now think about our culture think about our especially our political culture where people are tearing each other down all the time and they're claiming that these other side is completely destroying America or the middle class or pick whatever you want well again you started out here right now this you should have unless you had some bias because you once the evidence they dragged in here that's the meet ya here if this happens often enough then what happens this is not your this is not your sort of starting point isn't it they're gonna keep using more hyperbolic language next time you're meeting a little bit closer before long you're buying into a highly ideological each armed position one way or the other for the absolute best of the absolute worst and this is not people acquire biases hyperbolic language plays a significant part of that there's actually a comedian remote was what they're talking about relationships and the lines sort of like this they were saying and have your relationship there's one person who is the same person and then there's the other person who's kind of the crazy person and they don't care how crazy they are you know if you think about it yeah there are a lot of relationships where one person kind of compensates for the other thing they smooth things now it could be that they have an anger problem or maybe they do something embarrassing that they shouldn't do and the other person has to kind of smooth things over and so you know the comedians advice was be that person because otherwise you're stuck being the person who's smoothing things over and so since you know there's got to be one crazy person when a sane person in the relationship and being the same person as a lot of work why not be the crazy person so this is it was a guy remember his name he suggests that you know your girlfriend says I really don't like so-and-so and then so you should say oh yeah she's terrible I think we should go burn her cops do eventually then then of course the girlfriend will say oh no no no I don't know what we're not going to do that so anything and now you get off the hook right you don't have to smooth things over what would that be that would be being the hyperbolic right and if you think about it are there people in our culture who do that sort of thing who make other people take the responsibility for smoothing things out for explaining them yeah a lot of our a lot of our clinical commentators on left and right do that a lot of our celebrities say crazy things that I have to have people you know fixing things for them afterwards I don't think that that can be fixed although actually she did do an interesting bit of damage control he put out a video that is a spoof of himself I think he's being interviewed again or something I can't remember but if you actually all the things that he's the crazy things that he said in that that first interview he's not by Mike Fuller's by winning yeah but he's still a lot of other things too like he has a dynasty a tiger god but anyway in in this disapprove he makes fun of himself I think in English like selling tiger blood or something along those lines let's go surrogates so what's a surrogate we use that term really only in one context that I have a surrogate mother - so what is a surrogate as a substitute so if you're thinking about any reason to accept some and return the proof do we just need you know Canada well it could be that later you know maybe not when we talk about proof we mean something pretty strong knowing if you have the proof of something then you can actually rely on so we have proof isn't some sort of reason to accept some sort of let's say so saying something let's say some explain sir get us some sort of substance like studies show but they don't tell you what the studies are what do they do in a way here's something I'd like you to think about this is a surrogate for goods and services originally paper money was actually backed up by by what by other forms of currency like gold or silver nowadays it's not actually the case and there was a big enough to do when they first switched away from the gold standard and they had a lot of currencies to float but what gives us any value yeah the fact that you can go into quick stop and exchange it for exchange for much to the $1 bill pack of gum right or 1/3 of a gallon of gas or candy we're there to go yeah not a king-size candy bar they say it's okay this is a surrogate though and if you find yourself unable to has changed us for goods and services very quickly this was any value that it has I mean it actually made a nice paper so you'd still need a nice little top up spills like that right think about countries were that whoever the currency doesn't doesn't matter doesn't mean anything doesn't mean have any value what he happened there well there were too many cases where the money was just being used as a surrogate and didn't he have anything backing it up didn't have any proof you might say now I can make up an imaginary study to fit any sort of thing that you want because I mean I've been doing this for a long time so I think I'm pretty quick and light on my feet and I'm not a con man I'm not a advertising person so imagine what somebody who would like to manipulate who could do proof surrogates and conversations if you're in the habit of saying okay I'll study the study says so I'm going to accept it if you're in the habit of accepting proof surrogates you're going to be misled about a lot of things especially when people choose to manipulate you because you can say that's that the studies show anything you want as a matter of fact quite often this goes through the the journalism thing that we talked about a couple of weeks ago reporters walk and get stories wrong they will say a study shows that bipolar disorder is totally based in chemistry and then you may actually go and look at the study if it's a good newspaper article especially I'm glad we'll have links back to the original stuff and you're going to check it out because I doubt that's not what the study said at all or they'll say a study has proven that X Y Z and then you go and you find out there were only 60 people in the study but it's about a population of millions right or even even better than that I've got a study in a recent book claimed an author so and so has proven that men and women think about things in fundamentally different ways well you know you might want to actually take a look at that book and see whether that author has any good reasons for what they're saying we're very eager to try to find you know meeting information about things especially things that we don't know that much about but would like to know about we don't want to be too accepting of them in foreign sources say that's about their good well you know what you want to know who are those sources and there may be cases where reporters can't give their sources for instance if they're doing something about an undercover investigation if they reveal that their source story about the mob is Jimmy so-and-so than Jim Jones was probably get killed isn't it so you're not going to reveal all of your sources but if it's something about you know something fairly mundane they ought to be forthcoming with where their information is derived studies shows they give you this example of a proof surrogate of the Wall Street Journal I remember this because my family is this is about the referendum that took place in Quebec where Quebec actually in the Canadian Federation as opposed to the United States where we fought a war about this if the province decides it wants to leave the Federation it can by a majority vote of all the people within the province and so Quebec which is the french-speaking area of Canada they were you know kind of ticked off and they they thought we're going to leave and it was 49 4 and 51% so they almost I almost did leave Canada and Wall Street Journal says we hope politicians on this side of the border plan paying close attention to Canada's wreck around the bucket back Canadians turned out on Moss to reject the referendum there's every reason there's the proof survey there's every reason to believe that voters in the US are just as fed up with the social engineering that loves people together as groups rather than treating them as individuals so what's the purser again there's every reason to believe well what are they actual reasons to believe anybody can say that anybody can say my side has all sorts of support but until you actually see the support you shouldn't agree with them you shouldn't you shouldn't just give them credit yeah yeah let's say for example they say recent survey but they don't give you any cat who was surveyed how many people were surveyed what the range of options were a recent survey shows that we haven't think about the advertiser four out of five dentists yeah you know yeah I think that's a good that's a good example where something that fits one rhetorical device can also to prove surrogate in part because they're not providing any information about who are these dentists were surveyed how many were surveyed now if they like let's say on their website they're backing up that claim with well we actually surveyed 5,000 dentists in San Antonio Chicago and Portland now there's no proof circuit or they're actually giving you the proof they're not just giving you a promissory note you might say police says the true surrogates they're not real proof or evidence they don't mean that proof doesn't exist it just means that it hasn't been supplied to you and if you're a critical thinker then you would hold the cent until it's given to you like it says the best proof surrogates suggest sloppy research or I would actually say sloppy modes of thinking and presenting data right if you're not you know if you don't get them used to the habit of actually giving people evidence to believe what it is you're saying that's kind of sloppy agent and you can get away with that a lot of contents but the higher you go up the more competent people are the more they're going to challenge you the more they're going to say where's your evidence why are you actually saying how can how can you back it up so you want to get in the habit of not using true surrogates like it says to us sometimes they can be just propaganda or ways of manipulating people so your analogies and misleading comparisons is an analogy that's the term you get what's going on in the analogy I'll give you an example of one that you may have seen it when you were taking the SAT well you wouldn't see it on this particular is too simple but do I just a puppy as camp is - there you go get right I wasn't maybe eighty one thing bees and other things yeah now why is that an analogy you're looking at the relationship what's the relationship between dog and daughter there's an older version of the younger thing right so yeah kitten you look for the same relationship and there's an analogy between them so now you can make good analogy so that's a good analogy because they actually do have that thing in common when you're drawing analogies between things you may sometimes stretch it a bit far so for example your book is is this something that's still have a current issue social security all right I'm going to do work only the only once you start working you'll and you'll start seeing this thing plankton on your your statements and that's a good chunk that they take out that's social security all that money is going into sort of a general fund and the money that you're putting in is that being funneled back out to pay for people who are receiving Social Security benefits and older people who retired people on disability and also paced around widows widowers you know their children for instance with my dad died my mom received Social Security checks for my sister and I until we were 18 so Social Security does a lot of good there's been a lot of talk in the last 10 years about what are we going to do about Social Security well you know why is there why is it still alive issues well people are living a lot longer than they expected them to and when Social Security was set up most people weren't living to 65 nowadays people can live to 80 90 care so that's one issue are there as many people putting into this no it was when they created it there was again it was sort of a disproportionate what would you call it the curb workers so you can any given population before certain things takes place in modern society let's say this is the age and here's the number you're going to have a lot of younger people and then as time goes up people die off so there's not as many older people as there are you know little it was there are younger people and who are the people that are actually working in contributing very very disparate I have the younger people well not not children but now what happened that's really securing things you guys have heard of the baby boomers you know I conveyed boomers are now actually retired they're the generation from for most of you they're your grandparents generation they're mine my parents generation you guys are considered the millennial generation on consider Generation X right so here's the problem the baby boom came in May this big right now that's okay when they're contributing actually your generation is bigger to citizens like my generation is half the size the baby boomer generation so when he happens with when the wave goes on now you get this you have all these people that have to be provided for but you have less workers right well because that generation is larger for one thing like I said the baby boom generation is about twice the size of my generation so for every two of them there's there's only one of us contributing whereas it used to be you know switched around and they're going to live for a long time so they're going to collect Social Security benefits for a lot longer and like to do now so you have social security and what's the Miss Mayton comparison Social Security is like a Ponzi you get one of bugs it's he myths when a doctor there's a guy who did one but what is an actual Ponzi scheme whose name different guy named constant who was the first guy to come up with this scam some corporations that are rather shady actually have been accused of being somebody's at the top of the pyramid right and what they do is they bring a couple other people into the scheme and they are promised a certain reward for participating in the scheme but where is the money for their reward uncomfortable it's not coming from the investment that this person is making they have to get some other people involved in the scheme and then they get by the scheme right now the guy on top gets an even bigger cut and each tier has to find more victims essentially and the people on the bottom are thinking they're seeing these other people they're getting rich and they're saying wow that's a great money-making opportunity I've got to get it out now and what they're doing is they're just feeding the money up the chain ultimately the money what's going to happen sooner or later you run out of people at the bottom then the whole thing is going to fall apart and people as okay because they're going to get out while the getting is good and they're gonna take their millions with them all of these people are going to screw direct sales yeah any any sort of thing insert a scheme that expects you in order to for you to get your portion of the cut expects you to recruit other people maybe a Ponzi scheme so you should be suspicious of anything anything like that now is social security a Ponzi scheme that's that's the question and it was compared to a Ponzi scheme one well I'll think about it promise Social Security work we we are productive members of society we pay money into it and also we were supposed to get money out that makes us some even worse that is a now notice what what's going on some vital difference between these is being pointed out some some characteristic that they don't shift you're right how does a scheme is not elected the other thing is Social Security the money is actually going somewhere it's not just going to somebody at the top of the pyramid and people in the you know the Ponzi scheme the person at the top of the parents the same person the Social Security is more like like this you have generations each generation is pain for the previous generations retirement so in a way that people who retired earlier and the baby boomers who are who are going to exhaust if there's the problem Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Social Security money will actually brought out just about the time that I'm supposed to start collecting 2035 actually I won't collect 25 because what do they do they extend the and so I think right now I have to be something like 68 and a half maybe 69 by the time that it's time to collect maybe they'll boost it up to 75 well that's if you want to really but you don't get all the air you're in your income with that now is it a Ponzi scheme well no because each generation is is paying so that it will actually move up with a positive skin you don't move up if you were at them the fifth tier you're at the fifth tier and when the positive skin fall apart you are going to be screwed and somebody will actually have all the money with Social Security and Social Security goes bankrupt it just you know it's going to break down because there won't be enough income being derived at these levels to pay for the next generation but what's happening here each generation gets to go Bob so you guys would be this generation right here if they can fix Social Security in another 20 years you're going to be this generation and then another 20 years you'll be this one and then you'll have pay dirt right when you get to collect so if they can fix it it won't be anything like as losses so that's anticipate in comparison when people make that comparison why are they doing that what gold are they have in mind well they wanted to change this security systems so that you can do private investment they had some sort of agenda in mind there isn't other examples of rhetorical analogies your book has a good example Hillary's eyes bulge just a little like a Chihuahua's how does that sound or it will the decisions yeah if you're comparing first of all good thing about somebody's eyes bulging out that's not good by itself right and if you're comparing somebody to a chihuahua that's that's not the nicest comparison to make why would somebody do that well there's some sort of rhetorical force there they also include comparisons David berries description of parents having kids is like having a bowling alley installed near brain what would be the comparison there it was a bowling alley yeah not to the lab cacophonous constantly it's you know that crashing the pins and the balls you love it in bowling alleys before right so having kids is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain what was the point that he's trying to to make there this is a humorous comparison right is this having kids really like having that that sound constantly in your head no so it you know if you took it at its word that would be a misleading comparison a lot of you worse things would be then your book gives you a few questions that you should keep in mind when you're thinking about comparisons or about analogies one is information missing talks about unemployment one of the big issues currently now if they say that the unemployment rate has gone down is that necessarily good news well let's say those eight is let's say the unemployment rate actually does go down because it does sometimes is that is that necessary well yeah what about the unemployment rate itself what does it measure yeah so if people have quit their I forget exactly the designation there's a designation for people that have just quit looking for work altogether they've sort of opted out of the system they're not being mentioned so let's say 5% of the population let's say 5% of the population isn't that close if you have a 5% unemployment rate but there's another 5% of the population that just isn't even looking for work that's a really big problem and that 5% unemployment rate that sounds really good is masking a deeper problem so you want to know if there's if there's information that's missing is the same standard of comparison being used you often heard of comparing apples to oranges and all that expression what do we mean when we say that do I make things work unlike systems or unlike issues if we want to pick up Charlie Sheen again there's crazy and then there's Charlie Sheen or you can talk about selecting somebody could be a somebody could be well-known in the local area like in other area celebrities but that's not quite the same as having that notoriety that people who are on TMZ and there's a qualitative difference there it's hard to make comparisons sometimes when you go from one level to the next and then if you're comparing numbers what are the actual units there are they using the same numbers are the items comparable are they are they in fact comparable they have this great example in the book about baseball players use it's why do they put an asterisk next to some of their statistics to show them you know if let's think about somebody who's around before that there was there was steroids Babe Ruth kind of erratic in everything was hockey was really hot name was a you know big fat guy could really knock him out of the park but he didn't do as much as say Barry Bonds but Barry Bonds because these you know guerrilla arms why because he is a steroids can you compare the record of one person to another in those circumstances probably not because the steroids gives such an incredible advantage to the person uses them even if you don't use steroids can you compare currents baseball players to past ones I mean the current baseball players they work out all the time they have very strict regimens is that what they were like with 1950 these guys have to go out drinking at night come in if you know hungover hit the ball you know pan around the field now it's a very different kind of kind of game it's the comparison expresses in the average this is another thing to be very careful averages aren't just them they don't actually represent any one individual figure unless that individual is perfectly average so nobody actually has 2.3 kids right but that's the average children for householders when they're using averages you want to be fairly careful in making assumptions based on those because any given population you know I'm here getting graded you know on the CEOs in the middle and most of the students get to see when they actually do a real curve and get in your classes very few students get an after if your students get a name you're all familiar with this so what's the average the average the see but does that mean that that this person right here got C no they could be anywhere on this on this curve so you want to be careful when you're comparing averages on the averages especially when you're going from okay this is average before this is this average so therefore this thing connects to this thing those things you know one of the things maybe on this end of the average the other thing may be done this end of the average so we're going to be very careful about that so I'll see you all of you on Monday have a good weekend transparency after 6:00

Channel: Fayetteville State University

Views: 10,267

Rating: 4.9327731 out of 5

Keywords: Hyperbole, Proof surrogates

Id: OTVBWN1IP3U

Length: 46min 52sec (2812 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2011