Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The Bedford Researcher: Chapter Twelve

Chapter 12 was about developing an argument. First, you choose statements or arguments that support your thesis statement. This varies depending on what genre of document you are writing. Then you find evidence to support the reasons. You also need to decide how to appeal to readers. You can use voice of authority, emotional appeal, principles, values, and belief appeal, character appeal, and logic. The second part of the chapter was about how to assess the integrity of the argument. This can be done by checking for fallacies based on distraction.
A red herring- irrelevant and distracting point
Ad hominem- attempt to discredit an idea or argument because you think who its associated with cannot be trusted
Irrelevant history- history that is not related to the subject

Fallacies based on questionable assumptions
Sweeping generalizations- ignoring the fact that there can be exceptions
Straw-man attacks- oversimplifying or distorting peoples arguments so you can dismiss them
Citing inappropriate authors- citing source with a strong bias, treating paid celebrity endorsements as expert opinions, etc.
Jumping  on a bandwagon- suggests that if enough people believe something, its true

Fallacies based on misrepresentation-
Stacking the deck- presenting evidence for only one side of an argument
Base rate fallacies- found in arguments containing statistics
Questionable analogies- fake analogies

Fallacies based on careless reasoning-
Post hoc fallacies- arguing that something happening first, caused something else to happen
Slippery slope arguments- warning that a single step can lead to a bad situation
Either/or arguments- present two choices, one of which is usually a bad one
Non sequiturs- statements that don't follow logically from previous statements
Circular reasoning- restating a point that has just been made as evidence itself



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