Exam 5: Rhetoric,the Art of Persuasion

Provide a critical assessment of the following comparative general claim: You'd be better off if you got more sleep.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: Perhaps we shouldn't serve this cheese to the guests,dear.It seems to be a bit,uh,mature.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: "If we stop the shuttle program now,there are seven astronauts who will have died for nothing." -An unidentified U.S.congressman,after the space shuttle disaster of January 1986

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: The conservative mind is rigid and inflexible,like an orange peel that's dried out in the sun.

Provide a critical assessment of the following comparative general claim: Reading novels is a more productive use of one's time than going to movies.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: I simply won't go into those cowboy bars;they're full of guys who disguise their insecurities with cowboy boots and hats.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: "If it ain't country,it ain't music." -Bumper sticker

Provide a critical assessment of the following comparative general claim: Doctor Mohanty is younger than me.

A)Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage.B)Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content. "The environmental lobby used to be the watchdogs of government and industry,barking at their heels and snapping at them when they tried to grab at the country's virgin resources.In the nineties,the environmentalists have begun to look just like the people they're supposed to be watching.Representatives of the Audubon Society,the Sierra Club,the Wilderness Society,and the National Wildlife Federation look just like other Washington,D.C.bureaucrats,lined up with their folded lap-top computers inside their attaché cases,all of them desperate to become the next assistant secretary of the interior." -Paraphrase of an anonymous environmentalist's remarks on a radio program

A)Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage.B)Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content. "[S]o frantic is the education industry for raw material (students),institutions are not only lowering standards (requiring only 'a pulse in one hand,a check in the other'),they are discounting tuitions,advertising sushi and waffle bars in the students unions and prime cable service in the dorms where,[author Anne] Matthews says,some students hibernate for days 'eating red licorice and channel-surfing.' Some institutions send bounty hunters abroad in search of wealthy foreigners." -George Will

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: A "provost" is the head academic officer in a university,whose chief function is to dream up work for faculty committees to do.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: "Early in the third phase of the Vietnam War the U.S.command recognized that the term 'search and destroy' had unfortunately become associated with 'aimless searches in the jungle and the destruction of property.' In April 1968 General Westmoreland therefore directed that the use of the term be discontinued.Operations thereafter were defined and discussed in basic military terms which described the type of operation,for example,reconnaissance in force." -Lieutenant General John H.Hay,Jr. ,Vietnam Studies

Provide a critical assessment of the following comparative general claim: Compact discs produce a clearer sound than do vinyl records.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: "...despite the idealist yearnings in the body politic that this [the baby boom] generation supposedly epitomizes,the darker side of the lust for power is still present.Just witness the saga of the collapse of the once-promising career of Mayor Roger Hedgecock [former mayor of San Diego]." -Larry Remer and Gregory Dennis

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: In March 1997,thirty-nine members of the so-called Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide in Rancho Santa Fe,California.The event was connected with the Hale-Bopp comet,which was at that time making its brightest appearance to observers on earth.The cultists believed a spaceship following the comet would "take them away" from earthly matters,provided they had undergone sufficient "spiritual metamorphosis."

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: Professor Jones,who normally confines his remarks to his own subject,ventured out on a high-wire to comment on the commission's findings.

A)Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage.B)Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content. "Must the NFL-fat,sassy,the General Motors of professional sports-meet a similar crisis [to the one the National Basketball Association went through in the eighties] before it tries to solve its own plague of drugs? "For years,since Don Reese's personal revelation and charges of league-wide drug involvement,the NFL has lived under a cloud of suspicion.Initially,it seemed the front offices,deeply concerned that their image remain pristine,chose to look the other way.Now they've acknowledged the problem,and have chosen to push for testing;this year,eight franchises asked their players to undergo post-season analysis,but each was refused." -Tom Jackson,Sacramento Bee

A)Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage.B)Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content. "The arms buildup that President Reagan gave us is an albatross around our necks.We spent a trillion dollars on it.Do you realize how much a trillion dollars is? That's a one with twelve zeros after it.That's $4,000 for (or rather from)every man,woman,and child in the United States.And what was it all for? Are we any safer now for having spent all this treasure? Do you feel any safer now than you did before? Our children,who will eventually have to pay for all this because of the national debt,will look back on us as a generation of lunatics." -Letter to the editor of the Bellevue (Ind. )Star-Reporter

A)Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage.(We'll comment on features we find obscure,unusual,or tricky. )B)Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content. "The executives responsible for the recent corporate catastrophes popularly known as Agent Orange,asbestos,and the Dalkon Shield are not in jail and will not go to jail.With the exception of informed victims,few of us describe these cases in the language of crime,even though in each case there is a wealth of evidence that victims were put at unacceptably high levels of risk of severe injury and death and that corporate executives knew of the risks,yet failed to take appropriate preventive action.Even Morton Mintz,the award-winning Washington Post investigative reporter and author of At Any Cost:Corporate Greed,Women,and the Dalkon Shield,a powerful indictment of the A.H.Robins pharmaceutical company,does not use the word 'crime' in telling the sordid tale of the Dalkon Shield." -From Russell Mokhiber's "Criminals By Any Other Name," The Washington Monthly "Catastrophe," "powerful indictment," and "sordid" are obviously emotive;the rest is more subtle.

Provide a critical assessment of the following comparative general claim: Beer drinkers are 23.2 times more likely than teetotalers to have unhappy marriages.