Day 17: Logical Fallacies

Today, we'll be talking about logical fallacies.  You have to be careful of these in the logic of your arguments.


The Wikipedia page is actually a pretty good listing and overview of logical fallacies, and I even saw some of them in your papers...


They were good for the most part.  Stop worrying so much!


But I'd like for us to collaborate and make our own collection of logical fallacy definitions and examples.  Let's not just copy the Wikipedia page; let's do something of our own.


One of my personal favorites is the ad hominem fallacy.  We see this all the time in politics, and elsewhere...


An ad hominem fallacy literally means "to the man" from the Latin, and is simply an attack on the person rather than the issue at hand.


Here are two funny examples I found.

This time though, I don't want you to use your blogs.   We're going to collaborate using a program called Sync.in, which allows users to each update the same page at the same time like magic!  It's great and easy to use, and we'll just each post a fallacy there with its definition and an example from the internet, which could be in any medium: video, text, images, audio...


Grammar Review:
Sexist Language:


So, the English language has no neutral singular reflexive pronoun...


And I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking... "Gosh, I love grammar review."


What this means for you and me is that there isn't a generic way to refer back to a singular person disregarding his or her gender (there... you see that his or her?).


Let's look at some examples:


The stranger came across the room because they wanted to hurt Fluffy.


This is grammatically incorrect because they refers to... the stranger.  And the stranger is singular, but they is plural.


But we may not know the gender of the stranger.  So, if not, the only fix that we have is this:


The stranger came across the room because he or she wanted to hurt Fluffy.


Or, we could try to rewrite the sentence to get some other work around.


We use they incorrectly because of a hole in our language and because we want to be gender neutral.


Sometimes we even make up ridiculous sounding words to account for the lack...


Anyone who arrives at the door can let themself in using this key.


Most often, in your writing, you should just pick a gender.


Anyone who arrives at the door can let himself in using this key.


Some folks have tried to come up with a singular pronoun that could refer back to a singular noun, but none of them have stuck.  Here are a few of the failed contenders:  


Ne 
E
Ey
Hy
ThonVe
Xe
Ze
Zhe

Can you imagine writing, "If anyone is confused, zhe should ask a question"?


Your Daily Assignment:


Add your own fallacy, with its definition and a good example to the Sync.in page at http://sync.in/jVAO61GQNN.


Keep chugging away at those papers. The first draft is due Monday.


Keep hanging in there folks.  We've only got like two weeks left, only 8 class days!  You're going to make it!

Day 16: Reality and Stuff

I'm going to push back the grammar lesson to Thursday and move the other two lessons up for this week so that you don't have a blog post due the night before your big paper is due.  (*Hint: Your big research paper is due soon, you should probably go find some sources or something.)

So... check out the article by Susan Sontag that used to be in an old version of the Envision in Depth books.  But since it was removed from the version you're using, I'm giving you a pdf.  Here.  Read it.  I think it's really interesting.

Susan Sontag wrote some really interesting things about photography.  And in that particular essay, she writes about Walt Whitman and photographer Diane Arbus.

Whitman, you might remember from high school English, wrote poetry about everyday things and found them beautiful.  Poets hadn't really done that so much before.  Usually they wrote pretty things about pretty things.  But Whitman wrote pretty things about not so pretty things.

Like in this poem:

"A Noiseless Patient Spider"

A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

See?  He compares a spider to his soul.  Spiders aren't necessarily usually praised.  So, Whitman looked at life differently, and used some really strong pathetic rhetorical appeals to persuade other people to see things the way that he did.  Arbus also looked at things differently.  Sontag compares them in her essay.  Arbus also committed suicide fairly young, so you wouldn't want to follow her lead in every way, still, she stepped out of the bounds and made her rhetorical mark on the world.

They even made a movie (loosely based) on her life, where Arbus is played by Nicole Kidman though I haven't seen it.

.

So, Arbus was a freak.  And she took pictures of freaks.  Not really... buy what is she doing?  Why is she taking pictures of these people in this way?  What's going on with her images?  Here are a few of her photographs:

This is Diane herself.  I got to see some of her actual work in a gallery in Charlotte last year.

My personal favorite.  That little kid is holding a toy hand grenade.

These are not the kinds of people that are put on magazine covers.  So, how does Arbus, along with Whitman, view the world?  How do they view it differently than most people?  And how are they communicating the world differently than most people?

I want you all to write differently, to see differently, and to communicate differently.  You don't have to like Arbus.  I wouldn't hang her photographs up in my house.  But she does do something unique.  Rhetorical moves help shape the way we see the world, so in essence rhetoric is always shaping our reality.  

Rhetorician Lloyd Bitzer wrote that "Rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action. The rhetor alters reality by bringing into existence a discourse of such character that the audience, in thought and action, is so engaged that it becomes mediator of change. In this rhetoric is always persuasive."

What do you think?

What is reality, anyway?  Is it physical objects?  How do you know what's real when the entire world around you is rhetorical... that is to say shaped.  How could you persuade someone else that something was real?  Isn't this what we do all the time?  And can you really always trust your senses?  We've talked a lot about visual rhetorics that trick us, and what about rhetorics that trick our ears, or even our taste buds?

Does Arbus's photograph portray reality?  Does any photograph?

Grammar Review:

Active Verbs, again...

This is an interesting short story written with all active verbs, some pronouns, and even some sentence fragments.

Enjoy.

A short story by J. Robert Lennon

_____________________________

He noticed. He stared. She noticed. She smiled. He approached. She rebuffed. He offered. She accepted. He said, she said, he said, she said. They drank. They said. They drank. He touched. She laughed. They danced. He pressed. She kissed. They left. They did. He left. She slept.

He called. He called. He called. He begged. She refused. He called. He wrote. He visited. He called, called, called, called. She reported. He arrived, shouted, vowed, departed. He plotted. He waited. He visited. She gasped. He demanded. She refused. He grabbed. She screamed. He slapped. She ran, locked, called, waited. He panicked. He fled, hid, failed.

She accused. He denied. She described. He denied. She won, he lost.

They aged. She wed, reproduced, parented, saddened, divorced. He bided, waited, hardened. Fought. Smoked. Plotted, planned. Escaped. Vanished.

They lived. She thrived, he faded. He wandered; she traveled.

They encountered.

He sat, she sat, they ignored. He noticed. She noticed. He gaped. She jumped. She warned, he assured. She reminded, he admitted. She threatened, he promised. She considered. She sat. She asked. He told. He asked. She told. He smoked. She smoked. He apologized. She cried. He explained. He begged. He pleaded. She considered, resolved, refused. He stood. He clenched. He perspired. He spat. She flinched, paled.

He stopped. He slumped. He collapsed.

She stood. She pitied. She left.

They lived. They forgot. They died.

Your Daily Assignment:

Blog Post:  Write up a paragraph explaining how you define what reality is.

Day 15: Organization

Organization is something that some of us are good at, and others of us are not.  How many of your write by setting up a real, traditional outline before you begin?  Most people don't write that way.  If you do... you're special.

I do not write that way.

I sometimes, when I'm struggling, do something called boxing.

If I know that I have to write say 10 pages, and usually essays work out to be about 250 words a page in MLA formatting, then I'll take out 10 physical sheets of notebook paper.



Then, I'll start to box out a loose outline of how I want to fill in those 10 pages.

I'm make a box, and jot down a point that I want to make there, then make another box, and jot town the topic of my next paragraph.  It's like loose outlining but in physical space...

If this doesn't sound like it will work for you, BY ALL MEANS don't do it.

Or, I'll just jot down an interesting idea.  Then, I'll hit the enter key a couple times and jot down another interesting idea that may be somewhat related.  Then, I'll keep doing that until I have a Word document of some really interesting ideas.  Then, I go back and connect the dots, cut out the ideas that weren't so great, and make it flow.

But, you should do some kind of preplanning to help your organization not be like a hot plate of spaghetti.  (No. Spaghetti is good.  Maybe like a hot plate of prickly tentacles.  Yeah.  That works.)

Chapter 6 of Envision in Depth begins with an image of a film storyboard for the movie Serenity.  (I haven't seen it.  If you have, let me know if it's any good.  Also, notice how movie titles are italicized.  The rule is: If it can be published on its own, italicize it.  If it's published with other things like poems or short stories, put the title in quotation marks.)  All right.  So, movies actually give us a really interesting sense of how organization can be handled.  Chapter 6 gives the example of Kill Bill, Vol 1.  There are three images there from the film and their organization presents a certain kind of narrative.

If we watch the trailer, what kind of narrative do we get from the film?  What things do we see again and again that help tie the progression of images together?  How does sound help the organization?

How many cuts are in this short little trailer? (DON'T TRY TO COUNT THEM...  though you could try to count the number of cuts in one scene, such as the number of cuts there are in the kitchen fight scene.)  Films use cuts, shots, scenes, and so on to organize their content.  Essays use words, sentences, paragraphs, and so on to find their way to organization.

So, how is Kill Bill, Vol. 1 organized?  The same way that every kung fu movie is organized.

Hero kills bad guy.  Then another bad guy.  Then another bad guy until...

He (or she) gets to the big bad guy and kills them.  That's how every kung fu movie is organized.  That's how Kill Bill is organized.

What about this one?

How is Alice in Wonderland organized?  Alice meets one interesting and strange character.  Alice meets another curious character.  And so on... until she gets home.  Just like Dorothy.  This is the way these stories are organized.

And finally, what about this one?

How is Nightmare on Elm Street organized?  The same way that every scary movie is organized.  Bad guy kills one teenager; bad guy kills another teenager, until there's just a cute couple left to escape together and live happily ever after.  Also, with this trailer there are some interesting aesthetic choices to help give the story some continuity.  The girls singing.  The continued shot back to Freddy Kruger walking down that yellowish hallway dragging his claws across those pipes.  Good times.  Hope you're not scared.  Sorry if you are.

So, how can you organize your papers?

Chronological, Logical, Scatalogical (not really...).  Good to bad?  Best argument last?


Make sure the organs of your papers are in the right place.  This is organization, after all.


Grammar Review:

Parallelism:

When you make a list, that list should make logical sense.  Speaking of organization, when you list things, they should correspond grammatically, as well as logically.

So, when I write:

I want to give you a pickle, a flounder, and to smile at you.


Well... it's just not parallel.

The first two things in my list are nouns, and the last one is a verb.  This is a problem.  They all need to be the same.

So, we can fix it by writing:

I want to give you a pickle, a flounder, and a smile.

See?  Parallel as a pie.  Careful of this; it's a silly, but easy, mistake to make as your jamming along in your  writing mode.

Your Daily Assignment:


Find some form of organization (in any medium!) and report back on how it's organized.  Big to small?  High to low?  Linear?  Symmetrical?  Cause to effect?  What?  Share an image or video or link on your blog too.

Day 14: Field Trip!

So, I'd like to keep pushing your concepts of what's rhetorical.  A tough question to answer is what isn't rhetorical.  When dogs bark, are they communicating?  So, we've got magazines and websites and essays and books and videos and conversations and and and...


But today, I'd like to show you one other kind of rhetoric, sculpture.


Art is communicative, so is architecture.  Heck, a path in the woods is rhetorical in that it persuades you to go a specific way.  So, there are all sorts of very immersive forms of rhetoric that craft experiences for us, and that is really interesting.


What does this statue communicate?





Or how does the long dark wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC designed by Maya Lin use pathos, and convey a certain ethos?





So, today, I'd like for us to go on a field trip together!  Find a rhetorical space (on your own).


Normally, during the semester I take my students to the structure on the cover of the DK Handbook...  I won't give away its secret, but you should check it out sometime.  It's a silo on campus.





So, go... explore.


Grammar Review:


It's summer, so many of you have lied out in the sun...


http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/lay-versus-lie.aspx


Your Daily Assignment:


Blog Post:  Today, go take a walk somewhere.  Or a drive.  Find a sculpture or some other kind of rhetoric that we haven’t discussed yet.  Consider how that new form is conveying its message, its argument.  Take a picture of it, and post it to your blog along with a few sentences of your thoughts about this different form of rhetoric.

Day 13: Interviews

So, the NPR story was... well, about cultural differences.  I hope you noticed the difference between listening to an interview and reading one since it was put together by NPR, my favorite radio station.


But what about it?


Was it funny?  How did the interviewer make it interesting?  What kinds of questions did he ask?  How is this different from your own essays?  I mean, all of your essays are okay... (grades coming soon to a theatre near you)... but they're not like this.  They're still very formal.  And formality is good!  But it doesn't mean that the content needs to be uninteresting.  On top of all that, the essay is probably one of the least likely forms of rhetoric that you'll use to persuade in your future career... so how's that five paragraph theme working for you?


But getting back to the NPR interview, interviews are a great resource for adding a little flair to your content.  And think about who you're interviewing.  If you're writing about environmentalism, it's different interviewing your mom as opposed to interviewing the head of the Land Management Program at Clemson University.  So, think about that.


And you've got to think about your questions.  And often, when you ask a question, you might get crazy answers like this:

Poor girl.  But then there are masters of interviewing, people who do it for a living.  And I'm not like a Lady Gaga fan, but Ellen does an amazing job of talking to her here like she's a real person, and it surprised me the first time I saw it.  How does Ellen do such good interviews?

Then, there's this scenario...  Joaquin Phoenix appeared on the Letterman show like this, and Dave Letterman, the master of wit, handles a failure like a pro. 

This was a huge deal when it came out.  People were confused.  Then... Phoenix came back on the show, and here's the result...

Turns out it was a farce for this move: http://www.imstillheremovie.com/.  Crazy right?

Terry Gross, from NPR, is THE JEDI MASTER OF INTERVIEWS.  You can listen to an interview with Jay-Z here.  It's long, and I don't expect you to listen to all of it; I'm giving you a lot of content here, but it's good.

And sometimes, with interviews you get really weird responses, like the examples below, but you've got to keep asking questions...

 Is it serious?  Humorous?  Reliable?

So, how can you get good interviews?  You've got to be able to maneuver people, and plan ahead with good questions.  There's an art to it...  and make sure you always thank your interviewee!!!

This would be a good source for an alternate "form" for your upcoming research paper.

Grammar Review: 


Who versus whom:


So, in favor of interviews... I figured I'd give us multiple perspectives on our grammar lesson today.  The answer often depends on whom you ask!

And then, of course, there's "For Whom the Bell Tolls."  (Sorry, I got carried away with video embedding today...)

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/who-versus-whom.aspx

Your Daily Assignment:

Think of two questions that you could use for your paper.  Jot them down on your bloggy-blog-blogs.