SC105 Final Exam Review

Persuasion

Process of creating, reinforcing, or changing people’s beliefs or actions

Who wrote “Rhetoric”?

Aristotle

Forensic rhetoric

What happened in the past?

Deliberative rhetoric

What will happen in the future?

Epideictic rhetoric

What is happening in the present? / How should we understand the present moment?

Burden of proof

Standards or expectations that define reasonable arguments within public controversies

Stasis theory

Process of identifying the central issue about which we are trying to persuade an audience

Question of policy

What action, if any, should we take?

Question of value

Based on personal moral belief.

Degree? Cost? Impact?

Question of definition

What exactly is our matter of concern?

Question of fact

What do we know for sure?

Saliency

Level of interest or concern our topic has with our audience

Exigence

Imperfection marked by urgency that requires us to respond through speech or action

Claim

Debatable assertion put forth by speaker

Qualifier

Word or phrase that indicates level of confidence (probably, usually)

Reservation

Stated exception to claim, or condition in which we no longer hold confidence in them (unless, until)

False cause

When speaker assumes that because one event precedes another, it must have caused it

Ad hominem

When speaker substitutes an attack on a person for refutation of that persons arguments

Warrant

General assumptions, rules, or principles that connect evidence to claims

Reasoning

Reaching a conclusion based on the support of evidence

Inductive reasoning

Reasoning from particular instances or examples to general conclusions

Deductive reasoning

Reasoning from an accepted generalization to a conclusion about a particular case

Causal reasoning

Reasoning that aims to prove relationships between causes and effects

Analogical reasoning

Inferring that what is true of one case will be true of another similar case

Enthymeme

A rhetorical syllogism where you leave out certain parts of reasoning because they are a given

Rebuttal

Exceptions to our claim specifically derived from considering counterarguments

Backing

Additional support for a disputed argument

False dilemma

We only have two choices or alternatives, but more do in fact exist

Begging the question

Assumes the very thing they hope to prove, thus arguing in a circle

Faulty analogy

Compare things that are not actually related

Slippery slope

Cause will inevitably lead to undesirable effects of increasing consequence or scale, ultimately resulting in a worst case scenario

Appeal to ignorance

Because something has never been proven wrong, it must be right, or vice versa

Bandwagon

Urging listeners to accept something simply because others believe it

Appeals to tradition

Must do things the way they have always been done

Qualities of positive ethos

Trustworthiness, competence, open-mindedness, dynamism

Ethos

Ancient Greek term for ethical proof, or the audience’s perception of the speaker’s credibility, intelligence, and motives

3 types of credibility

Initial, derived, terminal

Pathos

Appeals that generate emotional response

Amplification

Repetition to emphasize

Anaphora

Regular repetition of the same word or phrase at the BEGINNING of successive clauses or sentences

Consonance

Repetition of consonant sounds

Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds

Alliteration

Repetition of first sound in an initial group of words

Anadiplosis

Repetition of the last sound in a phrase as the first sound of the next phrase

Parallelism

Recurrent syntactic similarity where several parts of a sentence or several parts of a sentence are expressed alike to show equal importance of the ideas

Chiasmus

Words are repeated from first to second part in reverse order

Antithesis

Juxtaposition of of opposing or contrasting ideas

Isocolon

Parallel structure with similar grammatical structure and equal symbols

Asyndeton

Removing conjunctions

Polysyndeton

Adding extra conjunctions

Syllepsis

Placing two nouns together with different meanings for description and rhythm