WHEN RHETORIC MISSES THE MARK
§ Fearmongering – Exploiting people’s anxieties, often in a very hypothetical sense. “If my opponent is elected, he might sell us as slaves to gas-based lifeforms from the Crab Nebula.”
§ Pandering to biases – Knowing your audience well enough that you can exploit what they already think, especially if it’s both unreflective and deeply-held. “My opponent has been seen in the company of Swedes, and you know what they’re like.”
§ “Spinning” your data – While not technically lying, this involves deliberately misrepresenting some evidence so that it seems to say something other than it does. “A recent survey showed that 20% of young males play with Barbie dolls, so this is clearly normal behaviour.” The necessary counterpoint to that – that 80% of young males do not play with Barbie dolls – has been gracefully pushed to the side.
§ Innuendo – Implying something that, if you were to just come out and say it, would be understood as the lie or insult or flim-flam that it is. “My opponent would like you to think he doesn’t eat babies, but he’s never gone on record as saying he doesn’t.”
§ The wall of text – In which the vacuity of your position is obscured by intense and impenetrable verbiage. Remember Alan Sokal’s celebrated hoax as an example of this; his paper – “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” – was entirely meaningless, but was so drenched in popular buzzwords that a distinguished academic journal published it as a work of genius.
§ “The freshman’s folly” – Somewhat unfairly named (I’m sorry), this is the tendency to dismiss legitimately complicated or lengthy analysis as just being so much hair-splitting or gassy irrelevance. Basically, ascribing the “wall of text” label to something that is not, in fact, a wall of text. The reason it’s sometimes referred to as “the freshman’s folly” is that this sort of thinking is particularly common among certain (by no means all) obnoxiously self-satisfied undergrads. It’s also by no means the only folly one could ascribe to the obnoxiously self-satisfied, undergrads or otherwise.
As with all rhetoric, it’s important to remember that it’s not only “bad” people who will do these things, however extreme my examples above may have been. These are tactics that all of us employ, to whatever degree, and one of the elements of learning to write is figuring out how to eliminate them from our habits. The legendary Samuel Johnson had this to say:
To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practises on others: in conversation we naturally diffuse our thoughts, and in writing we contract them; method is the excellence of writing, and unconstraint the grace of conversation.
So much, then, for the unfair. Let’s consider the actually useless…
2. The Inept, the Misconceived, and the Useless
§ Very broad language – Making declarations about “everybody,” “we,” “all people,” etc. This is closely related to:
§ Very definite language – Making declarations about the totality of creation, or about how manifestly true something is; i.e. “Everything, always, completely, clearly, obviously, etc.
§ Addressing the reader or attempting to include him or her in what you’re saying – Don’t write your essays in the second person, as this puts your reader in the uncomfortable situation of having some essay tell him what he thinks, feels, cares about, etc. If this analysis proves to be inaccurate, you’ve made your reader your enemy even before you get to the substance of your arguments.
§ Speaking for anyone but yourself in a more general sense – The same holds true for making sweeping generalizations about groups or institutions. “Women feel…” “No Republican would ever…” “Dogs care about…” Much as above, you risk offending or alienating any readers who belong to these groups without actually exhibiting the qualities you ascribe.
§ Figures of speech, or informal language in general – These aren’t just unprofessional (though they are); they also present problems when it comes to having your work translated into other languages, or, even if left untranslated, read by those for whom English is not a first language. Certain figures of speech simply do not translate successfully at all, and something like “the shoe is on the other foot” or “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” would be utterly meaningless to someone who was not raised in an English-speaking culture.
§ Humour (most of the time) – This can work if you are naturally funny and have a good idea for a memorable or enlightening joke, but often it just falls flat. You’ve all seen the awkward silence after a failed joke; don’t let your reader have any chances to roll his or her eyes if you don’t have to.
3. Logical Fallacies
§ Ad Hominem
§ Holding up a fact (or an accusation) about the person making the argument as evidence that the argument is false. Note: only a fallacy if this is not actually relevant to the subject at hand.
§ A. “That appears to be a 90 degree angle.” B. “Of course you’d say that – you’re just a girl.” This is a fallacy.
§ A. “That appears to be a 90 degree angle.” B. “In fact, it’s 170 degrees; I should be surprised that someone could be so utterly wrong, but I know how bad at math you are.” This may be unkind, but it is not a fallacy.
§ The Red Herring
§ In which irrelevancies are foisted upon the reader in an attempt to distract them from the issue under discussion.
§ “Your question about the budget is excellent, and I think in a broader sense it just goes to show that voters everywhere are concerned with the direction in which this country is heading. This concern is nowhere more clearly manifested than in the issue of immigration policy…”
§ NB. Very popular in politics.
§ Genetic Fallacy
§ Related to the Ad Hominem, it sees the previous actions and history of a person or institution used to cast doubt on what’s going on now. This can often be illuminating, but it becomes a fallacy when there’s no logical relation between the then and the now.
§ “Prof. Sokal has a history of being involved in publicity-seeking ventures and academic jokes. To hear him claim that Prof. Fischer is guilty of plagiarism is precious, but irrelevant.”
§ On the contrary, the evidence of plagiarism would stand (or fall) on its own regardless of who was presenting it.
§ Affirming the Consequent
§ Drawing a related though asinine conclusion from the premises.
§ Rain makes things wet. John is wet. Therefore John was out in the rain.
§ Dogs have fur. My cat has fur. Therefore my cat is a dog.
§ Strawman
§ The creation of an artificial (typically exaggerated) position in place of that actually proposed by an opponent. This position is then destroyed in place of the actual one, but victory is declared all the same.
§ A. “I prefer pie to cake.” B. “Your infamous anti-cake bigotry is a disgrace to the principles upon which this nation was founded. What next? Shall cake-eaters be sent to prison? Is there no stopping you?”
§ A. “I think we should place a greater emphasis on the classics in high school English classes.” B. “A is an elitist who hates regular people.”
§ NB. Closely related to the Red Herring. They often go hand in hand
§ Begging the question
§ “Proving” your conclusion by providing premises that themselves assume the conclusion is true.
§ John always tells the truth. He told me so himself.
§ A. “Mike only believes in ghosts because he’s a credulous buffoon.” B. “How do you know he’s a credulous buffoon?” A. “Because he believes in ghosts.”
§ False Dichotomy
§ The error of insisting upon an exclusive number of possibilities when more are, in fact, available.
§ You either like pie, or you like cake; there is no middle ground.
§ Equivocation
§ Using one word or concept in two different senses.
§ Murder is a crime. A group of crows is called a “murder” of crows. Therefore those birds over there are committing a crime.
§ A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Therefore, a bird in the hand is worth President Bush.
§ Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
§ Assuming that B is caused by A just because B follows A.
§ John sneezed, and then the train exploded. He must have magic powers.
§ I drank a glass of milk, and shortly afterward began bleeding from my eyes and ears. I must be allergic to milk.
§ Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
§ Assuming that B is caused by A just because the two occur together.
§ Better known as the problem of correlation vs. causation
§ The rise in global temperatures has been accompanied by a decline in the number of pirates worldwide. We need more pirates if the Earth is to be returned to its rightful temperature.
§ Loaded Questions
§ Asking questions for which no non-incriminating answer is easily possible without the answerer seeming evasive.
§ Is it true that you no longer beat your wife?
§ A. “I prefer pie to cake.” B. “Will your lies about cake ever end?”
Dubious, Sometimes Non-Fallacious Fallacies
§ The True Scotsman – The insistence that an apparent entity’s inability to exhibit the qualities that entity claims for itself is because it is not truly that entity. Often used in religious and political discussions; A. “Republicans presided over the largest expansion of government power the US has ever seen.” B. “They must not have been true Republicans.” This is often labelled as a fallacy because it is a convenient tool for evading responsibility for the actions of anomalous individuals or making it harder and harder to pin down just what the definition of “Republican” or “Christian” or “Libertarian” (or what have you) actually is. However, in situations in which being a part of a given group or bearing a certain title really does hinge upon the voluntary acceptance of certain ideas and/or a refusal to do certain things, rejecting those ideas or doing those things could in fact be enough to discredit the individual as a representative of that group. Thus: A. “John, a Christian, murdered that man.” B. “But John doesn’t believe in God, thinks the Bible is complete ficton, and follows none of the Ten Commandments.” Thus, though John may identify himself as a Christian (for whatever reason), his complete nonadherence to any of the things that could meaningfully signal that he is one suggests that he should not be taken as a representative of that particular group.
§ The Slippery Slope – The insistence that one thing happening now will unavoidably lead to worse and worse consequences in the future. This is often true, though, so be careful in labeling it fallacious when you encounter it.
Now, you will use THREE of the strategies discussed here to construct a piece of dangerous rhetoric. It must be written and visual, and the topic can be one of your choosing. Plan carefully before executing.