Achieving Clarity and Precision

Flashcards to help the student study lecture notes and prepare for their upcoming exam.

Lexical Definition

To tell how a word is typically used in a language, what a word means in ordinary context. Helps eliminate semantic ambiguity.

Stipulative Definition

To assign meaning to a new word or to indicate that the usual word is used in a special sense, not covered by its lexical meaning.

Precising Definitions

To reduce or eliminate vagueness of the terms used.

Persuasive or Rhetorical Definitions

To persuade, to influence, to change attitudes of the reader or the public.

Definition by Genus and Difference

Assigns a meaning to a term by identifying a more general class and one or more specific details that distinguish that term from others in the same class.

Cognitive Meaning

Terminology that conveys information.

Emotive Meaning

Terminology that expresses or evokes feelings.

Ambiguous Statement

A statement has more than one meaning (interpretation), and it is not clear from the context which meaning is intended.

Syntactic Ambiguity

When an expression or a sentence is ambiguous due to a faulty or unclear grammatical structure (syntax).

Semantic Ambiguity

When a statement contains a term that has more than one lexical (dictionary) meaning, and it is not clear which meaning is intended.

Vagueness

An expression or a term is said to be vague if there are borderline cases in which it is impossible to tell if the expression applies or not.

C.A.B.L.E.S

A system to assess the credibility of information.

Initial Plausibility

How believable a claim seems to you.

Background Information

Our previous knowledge; beliefs that we have already accepted as true.

Interested Party

A person who stands to gain from our belief in a claim.

Rhetoric

The art of persuasion

Euphemism

A substitution of a term that normally carries negative or undesirable associations with the emotively neutral or positive expression.

Dysphemism

A substitution of a term that normally has neutral or positive associations with the emotively negative expression.

Weaselers

When inserted into a claim, helps protect it from criticism by watering it down, weakening it, or making it too general or abstract to allow for verification.

Downplayers

An attempt to make someone or something look less important or less significant.

Innuendo

A remark or question, typically disparaging, that works obliquely by allusion. The intention is often to insult or accuse someone in such a way that one's words, taken literally, are innocent.

Loaded / Complex Question

Is committed when a single question that is really two (or more) questions is asked, and a single answer is then applied to both questions.

Ridicule/Sarcasm

Includes telling an unrelated joke, using sarcastic language or simply laughing at a person who is trying to make a point.

Hyperbole

An extravagant overstatement.

Proof Surrogate

An expression used to suggest that there is evidence or authority for a claim without actually citing such evidence or authority.

Stereotype

An unwarranted, hasty generalization about the entire group.