rhetorical fallacies and persuations

emotional appeal

appealing to emotions like love, fear, or pity rather than logic

ethical appeal

appeals to the audience’s sense of morality

concession

acknowledging on the opposing point before refuting it with a counterargument

loaded words

using emotionally charged words with strong positive or negative connotations to sway an opinion

analogy

drawing a comparison between two similar situations to support a point — similes and metaphors for example

anecdote

using a brief short personal story to illustrate an argument

deduction

reasoning that moves from a general premise to a specific conclusion

hyperbole

exaggeration used for emphasis or persuasion

understatement

deliberately downplaying a situation to make it seem less serious (irony)

parallelism

repeating sentence structure for emphasis and rhetorical effectp

rhetorical question

posing a question with an obvious and compelling answer to persuade an audience

ad hominem

attacking a persona instead of addressing their argument

ad populum

arguing that something must be true or right because a lot of other people believe or do it as

appeal to authority/prestige

assuming an idea is true because an authority figure or someone with status supports it

appeal to fear

using fear rather than logical reasoning to convince an audience

begging the question

assuming something is true without providing evidence

either/or reasing

oversimplifying an issue by presenting only two options

generalization

drawing a broad conclusion based on insufficient evidence or too few examples

non sequitur

making a conclusion that does not logically follow from the previous statements

post hoc, ergo propter hoc

assuming that because one event follows another, the first must have caused the second ( correlation does not equal causation)

red herring

introducing an unrelated or secondary topic to divert the attention from the main issue

poisoning the well

using loaded language to negatively frame a topic before discussing it

straw man

misrepresenting an opponent’s argument to make it easier to refute