Write a paper in which you analyze an argument (written, audio, or video), that you think is insincere or deceptive in some way. Your analysis should take the form of an argumentative essay in which you are using evidence from the text to persuade the reader to accept your claim that the author is being deceptive/insincere. Your thesis statement should make a claim about the argument’s deception. Your body paragraphs should explain the deception in such a way as to prove your claim that the argument is, indeed, deceptive.
The Requirements
Must use some of these terminology
❖ The Big Lie
➢ A large-scale and obvious distortion of the facts repeated.
➢ Repeat a lie enough times and some people will come to believe it.
❖ Firehosing (Aka: “Flood the Zone With Shit” or “The Tucker Two-Step”)
➢ a propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels (such as news and social media) without regard for truth or consistency.
❖ Weaponized Nonsense (Aka: Performative Absurdity)
➢ Absurd statements and actions
➢ Funny at first, but dangerous upon reflection.
➢ Designed to erode fundamental democratic rhetoric and make reasoned debate impossible.
❖ Projection
➢ Projecting one’s own crimes/sins upon one’s enemies
➢ Designed to erode fundamental democratic rhetoric and make reasoned debate impossible.
➢ A projection says more about the projector than the person they are accusing.
❖ The Dog Whistle
➢ The use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition.
❖ Scare Tactics
➢ Politicians, advertisers, and public figures sometimes peddle their ideas by frightening people and exaggerating possible dangers well beyond their statistical likelihood.
➢ Can also be used to stampede legitimate fears into panic or prejudice.
❖ Symbolic Manipulation
➢ The use of symbolism and metaphor to short-circuit logic and effect people subconsciously.
❖ Fallacies
➢ “Argumentative moves flawed by their nature or structure.
➢
➢ Either/Or Fallacy
■ reduce a complicated issue to excessively simple terms (e.g., “You’re either for me or against me”)
■ Designed to obscure legitimate alternatives
➢ Slippery Slope Fallacy
■ Exaggerates the likely consequences of an action, usually to frighten an audience
➢ Overly Sentimental Appeals
■ Use tender emotions excessively to distract readers from facts.
➢ Bandwagon Appeals
■ Urge people to follow the same path everyone else is taking
➢ False Authority
■ Occurs when writers offer themselves or unqualified authorities as sufficient warrant for believing a claim
➢ Dogmatism
■ The belief that a truth is self evident and no arguments are necessary.
➢ Ad Hominem Arguments
■ Attack the character of a person rather than the claims he or she makes:
➢ Hasty Generalization
■ An inference drawn from insufficient evidence
➢ Faulty Causality
■ The faulty assumption that because one event or action follows another, the first causes the second
➢ Begging the Question
■ The claim is made on grounds that can’t be accepted as true because those grounds themselves are in question.
➢ Equivocation
■ Tricks of language that give lies an honest appearance
➢ Non Sequitur
■ An argument whose claims, reasons, or warrants don’t connect logically.
➢ Straw Man
■ Attacks arguments that no one is really making or portray opponents’ positions as more extreme
➢ Red Herring Fallacy
■ Changes the subject abruptly or introduces an irrelevant claim or fact to throw readers or listeners off the trail.
➢ Faulty Analogies
■ Inaccurate or inconsequential comparisons between objects or concepts.
➢ Paralipsis
■ Speakers or writers say they will NOT talk about something, thus doing the very thing they say they’re not going to do.
MLA formatting and citations (use time stamps for audio/video)
MLA Work Cited page.
This is the video:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?471458-1/president-trump-coronavirus-task-force-briefing
