Exam 5: Planning and Forecasting

Provide a critical assessment of the following comparative general claim: I cook better than my friends.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: Perhaps we shouldn't serve this cheese to the guests, dear. It seems to be a bit, uh, mature.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: Chewing tobacco is not only messy but also unhealthy (just check the latest statistics).

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: From a letter to the editor: "In Sacramento, money talks, which is why our politicians kowtow to the local developers. So much for voting for honest people whose primary concern should be people, not money." -Sacramento Bee

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content. "Some of the ill will [at Dartmouth College] has been provoked by a student-run newspaper called The Dartmouth Review. Ten of the dirty dozen who destroyed the shanties [built on the Dartmouth campus as an antiapartheid protest] reportedly work for the six-year-old weekly, a New Right mouthpiece that is run independently of the college and has the support of such leading off-campus conservatives as William F.Buckley, Jr.Considered troublemakers by the administration and many faculty members, and disowned by former supporters such as Rep.Jack Kemp, the Review's editors traffic in outrage and offense." -Newsweek

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: All that effort spent giving Kuwait back to the Kuwaitis was like taking a crime syndicate away from one Mafia boss and handing it to another. The Kuwaitis already own half the civilized world, and we've put them back in the driver's seat. Their so-called "justice" system is handing out cruel punishments to alleged collaborators, many of whom were simply trying to stay alive during the Iraqi occupation.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: "Some feminists edge nervously away from Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, who are the Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan of feminism...." -Time

Provide a critical assessment of the following comparative general claim: The increase in the number and support of conservative think tanks has been substantial since the mid-1970s. The American Enterprise had twelve resident thinkers when Jimmy Carter was elected; today it has forty-five. The Heritage Foundation has sprung from nothing to command an annual budget of $11 million. The budget of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has grown from $975,000 ten years ago to $8.6 million today. Over a somewhat longer period, the endowment of the Hoover Institution has increased from $2 million to $70 million. -Adapted from Gregg Easterbrook, "Ideas Move Nations"

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: Handguns are made only for the purpose of killing people.

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. (We'll comment on features we find obscure, unusual, or tricky.) B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content. "It's past time that you and I and every other American asked some cold, hard questions." "Who lost Iran?" "Who lost Afghanistan?" "Who lost Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia?" "Who crippled the FBI and the CIA?" "Who sold the Russians computers and other sophisticated equipment, which have been used to stamp out freedom?" "Who is keeping our kids from praying in school?" "Who lets hardened criminals out on the street to kill, rape, and rob again before their victims are buried or out of the hospital?" "Who says that America should do little if anything to help human beings who are daily being killed and beaten up by Marxist dictators?" "The answer in every case is LIBERALS." "But America is waking up to what the liberals have been doing to it." "To quote Michigan professor Stephen Tonsor, 'New Deal liberals are as dead as a dodo. The only problem is they don't know it.'" -Richard Viguerie, The New Right

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: What explains the mad dash to distribute free condoms in our public schools? The misguided and ridiculous notion that kids are going to have sex no matter what.

Construct eight sentences, each illustrating a use of this slanter: dysphemism.

Provide a critical assessment of the following comparative general claim: In 1985, more people were killed by handguns in the United States than in Great Britain.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: "... despite the idealist yearnings in the body politic that this [the baby boom] generation supposedly epitomizes, the darker side of the lust for power is still present. Just witness the saga of the collapse of the once-promising career of Mayor Roger Hedgecock [former mayor of San Diego]." -Larry Remer and Gregory Dennis

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: Perhaps the "religious leaders" who testified at the state board of education's public hearing on textbooks think they speak for all Christians, but they do not.

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. (We'll comment on features we find obscure, unusual, or tricky.) B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content. Members of the baby boom generation, the generation that is now becoming yuppies instead of growing up, refuse to see the light. After being the center of the universe during the sixties and seventies, they expected to own it by the mid-eighties. They grew up believing they would have tremendous jobs, wonderful houses, exotic travel, great marriages, and beautiful children as well as European "personal" cars, fancy music systems, high-tech kitchens, and wine in the cellar. But it isn't turning out that way for most of them. Having glutted the professional marketplace, they live on depressed salaries; their dependence on immediate gratification causes them to spend like sailors-on the right stuff-driving prices of their playthings through the roof. But they are addicted to their ways. Those who moved to Manhattan can't bear the thought of living anywhere else but can't afford to live there. According to the New York Times, single-room-occupancy hotels that used to house the poor now contain tenants who cart in their stereos and tape decks, their button-down shirts, and their Adidas running shoes. One young woman says her bathroom is so filthy she showers with shoes on. This insistence on doing it right bespeaks a refusal to grow up disguised as a commitment to-what?-"quality of life?" One no-longer-really-young professional says, "It used to be you moved to the suburbs for the children. But on some level we still think of ourselves as children." Peter Pan, call your office. -Very freely adapted from George Will, "Reality Says You Can't Have It All," Newsweek

Construct eight sentences, each illustrating a use of this slanter: misleading comparison.

Provide a critical assessment of the following quotation. Discuss rhetorical flourishes and slanting techniques, if any, including otherizing, demonizing, fear or hate mongering, and fostering xenophobia. Some passages may fit more than one category. "I think President Obama is the most radical president this nation's ever seen. And in particular, I think he is a believer in government control of the economy and of our everyday lives. In my judgment, we are facing what I consider to be the epic battle of our generation, quite literally the battle over whether we remain a free market nation." -Ted Cruz, found at Brainy quotes

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: "Can [former Representative Jack] Kemp or anyone believe that $27 million in 'humanitarian' aid would replace all that South Africa has done [to support Angolan rebels]?" -Anthony Lewis, New York Times

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: Jimmy Fallon? Yeah, he's about as funny as a terminal illness.