Rhetorical Appeals

Logos

Offers the audience a clear, reasonable idea developed through reasoning and logic.

Bandwagon

Urges the audience to accept a position because a majority of people already do.

Straw man

States an opponents argument in an exaggerated form, or attacking a weaker, irrelevant portion of an opponents argument.

Intelligence

Appeals to an audiences reasoning or wisdom.

Ethos

Offers the audience evidence that he or she is credible.

Snob

Appeals to an audience's taste for the finer, and usually unobtainable, things in life.

Equivocation

Allows a keyword or term in an argument to have different meanings during the course of the argument.

Altruism

Appeals to an audience's sense of goodness or morality.

Slippery slope

Assumes a chain reaction of events which result in a terrible outcome.

Appeals

Rhetorical devices used to help persuade an audience.

Ad hominem

A personal attack of an individual instead of the issue at hand.

Flag

Waving or patriotic- appeals to an audience's sense of patriotism.

Anger

Appeals to an audience's sense of anger, outrage or hate.

Pathos

Draws on the audience's emotions so they will be sympathetic to the communicator's ideas.

dilemma

Either /or thinking (or false ________)- Implies that one of two negative outcomes is inevitable.

Plain Folk

Appeals to the experiences of the common man.

Logical fallacies

Ideas with flawed reasoning.

Generalization

Bases an inference on too small a sample as the basis for a broader generalization.

Appeals

Do not necessarily make an argument credible; however, they can make the argument more relatable or believable.

Fear

Appeals to an audience’s fears or anxieties.

Flag-waving or patriotic

Appeals to an audience’s sense of patriotism.

Intelligence

Appeals to an audience’s reasoning or wisdom.

Begging the question (or circular thinking)

Assumes the idea you are trying to prove as being true

Cause/Effect

Assumes that the effect is related to a cause because the events occur together.

Either/or thinking (or false dilemma)

Implies that one of two negative outcomes is inevitable.

Non Sequitur (or “does not follow)

Irrelevant reasons are offered to support a claim

Red herring

Introduces a topic unrelated to the claim.