Logical Fallacies
Misleading information designed to pull the audience off-track from the main point.
What is red herring?
Researching the rhetor and their expertise on topic.
What is authority?
What you're convincing the audience to believe and/or do.
What is purpose?
The way the author presents themselves to the audience as credible, trustworthy, or ethical.
What is ethos?
In these novels and the films based on them, a young boy discovers he is a wizard and defeats He Who Must Not Be Named.
What is Harry Potter?
Distorting the position of the opponent and then attacking the distortion instead of the opponent's actual position.
What is straw man?
This lack of credibility might be based on political leanings or funding disclosures.
What is bias?
The people whose minds need to be changed by your argument or are capable of taking action to implement your solution(s).
What is target audience?
An appeal to intensities, emotions, and embodied experiences.
What is pathos?
In this novel and the movie based on it, a bow-and-arrow wielding heroine fights for her life in an arena.
What is The Hunger Games?
Using an "either/or" statement which presents only two options when there are actually many.
What is false dichotomy?
This criteria discourages the use of sources more than 10 years old.
What is currency?
The rhetor's attitude towards the topic.
What is stance?
An appeal to the logical ordering of arguments or facts, statistics, and reason.
What is logos?
What is Game of Thrones?
Drawing a conclusion from too few examples, or too little evidence.
What is hasty generalization?
A source trying to sell a product to its audience wouldn't be considered credible according to this criteria.
What is end-goal?
The format you use to communicate your argument.
What is genre or medium?
Inductive and deductive reasoning are two examples of this rhetorical appeal.
What is logos?
In these novels and the movies based on them, a fellowship of hobbits, elves, dwarves, and men attempt to defeat evil and destroy the one ring.
What is Lord of the Rings?
For example, "If we allow people to marry others of the same gender, then soon people will be asking to marry dogs and cats!"
What is slippery slope?
If most of my sources provide evidence that disproves one of my sources, that contrary source would be said to lack this.
What is support?
An appeal to timing in a rhetorical situation.
What is kairos?
Two premises and a conclusion, forming a logical argument.
What is a syllogism?
In this novel & the TV series based on it, Beth Harmon pictures a chessboard on the ceiling above her in bed at night.
What is The Queen's Gambit?