Writing Assignment 3 Prompt
Description: In this writing assignment, students will be practicing how to detect rhetoric, bad definitions, and fallacies. For the given examples, use the files on Blackboard to determine which rhetorical devices, definitional problems, or fallacies make the examples irrational, suspect, or unacceptable. The purpose of this assignment is for students to begin to refine their ability to reject irrational arguments or merely persuasive techniques by detecting the common modes in which they occur.
Directions: For the following three sections, perform the tasks as described:
1. For the below examples, list the rhetoric device which you think is most clearly present.
a. A patriot is a person who is always faithful to the government, the symbols, and the traditions of America, and will not question them publicly. So professional athletes who critique and protest these institutions, traditions, and symbols are unpatriotic and deserve punishment for dissent.
b. Oh, Senator Cruz doesn’t know how to tweet; that’s what his staffers are for. So when he watches porn he’s not capable of accidentally tweeting a like for it. That was one of his godless staffers. He’s a good Christian politician we can count on, I promise.
c. She is a free spirit, so she might be hard to get in touch with about the meeting.
d. What kind of pizza should you get? Whichever kind your doctor said would be best for your high-blood pressure and exercise regiment.
e. A vote for a third party candidate is as politically meaningless as screaming into a pillow. You might as well just vote for the candidate you least agree with.
f. Those in fly-over country simply don’t have access to the basic information they need to make proper assessments of politics.
2. For the following definitions, explain, in just a sentence or two for each, why each definition is bad (i.e., “It doesn’t meet the criteria of scope, descriptiveness, non-circularity, clarity, or objectivity because….”):
a. Farm: A farm is a large tract of land which grows crops to sell. b. War: An evil enterprise in which humans show their innate depravity. c. Homework: Like filling out hospital forms but without the medical
situation. d. Sailboat: A watercraft with sails.
3. For each argument below, list which fallacy you think is most clearly present. a. Mark says that the legal drinking age should be raised to 25, but Mark
drinks like a fish so we shouldn’t accept his claim. b. Almost every civilization in history has believed that there is some kind of
afterlife, so it can’t be true that there is nothing after death. c. People always stereotype athletes as unintellectual idiots but they don’t
ever give any reasons for this. Anyone who saw our game last weekend would agree that our team was full of athletic skill, devotion, hard work, and teamwork. If you simply give athletes a fair look, you’d realize that they are not deserving of such stereotypes.
d. The citizens of the country are all quite poor. Therefore, the country itself has no wealth at all.
e. I think smoking American Spirit cigarettes is best, because they are made of natural tobacco without all of the chemical additives.
f. Until we see a birth certificate, Barack Obama is from Kenya. Without this information, he’s not an American.
g. If we allow students to protest cold dorms on campus, then we’ll have to eventually concede to them. If we conceded to them on this, then they’ll protest other things, like parking prices, tuition, or student union hours. We’ll then have to eventually concede on all of these issues and more, until students control the entire University with their whims. Therefore, we can’t allow students to protest cold dorms on campus.
h. I have to warn you now that we’re dating, I once dumped somebody who was otherwise perfect just because they weren’t liberal enough. So I think you should reconsider your political values.
