Lecture 2 Flashcards
What is a fact?
The actual state of the world.
What are the three main kinds of linguistic phenomena?
Lexical (words)
Syntactical (grammar, structure)
Relative.
Describe lexical ambiguity.
Word or phrase could have more than one meaning.
Describe syntactic ambiguity.
Arrangement of words could cause multiple interpretations.
E. G: “we should not tolerate these homeless people on our street”
What is relative ambiguity?
Not knowing what comparison to take into account.
E. G: she earns an above average salary.
What is equivocation?
Falsely taking something to be equivalent. Occurs when there is ambiguity.
What is vagueness?
Where there is no precise meaning or that meaning is unclear.
What is a quantifier?
Words and phrases telling quantity of things. To understand a claim we need to know quantified domain.
What are soft and hard generalisations?
Soft: has a few exceptions.
Hard: absolute. No exceptions.
What are scare quotes?
Quotation marks a writer uses to distinguish the self from the quoted expression.
What are leading questions?
Rhetorical ploy of using questions to mislead an audience into assuming.
What is rhetorical force?
The rhetorical aspect of what a sentence means. It’s the emotive language around the proposition. E. G: she is a single mum is a more rhetorically charged way of saying she is bringing up her children on her own.
What is implacature?
Meaning which isn’t stated but can be reasonably taken as intended given the context of the sentence.
E. G: she hasn’t been kicked out for missing her classes.
This doesn’t explicitly say she hasn’t been doing well in school but we can infer that she hasn’t been.
What is a definition?
What it takes for something to qualify as being a particular type of thing.
E. G: a square must have 4 equal sides totalling 360 degrees to be a square
What is a rhetorical ploy?
Non argumentative way of persuasion. They pretend to give reasons. But the true persuasion is non argumentative.
What is a fallacy?
An argumentative method giving reasons to accept conclusion. However the reasoning is bad.
What is an appeal to novelty?
Attempting to persuade based on something being new therefore different and better. Appeals to not wanting to miss out or our fear of being outdated.
What is an appeal to popularity
Like novelty it appeals to our want to not miss out. But also persuades us to adopt beliefs of do a certain thing b
What are appeals to compassion, pity and guilt?
Tries to evoke one of these emotions towards the recipients of the suggested act or belief. It hits our conscience compelling is to donate to a charity that evokes the compassion for example.
Appeals to cuteness/sexiness.
The product we are urged to buy is associated with this trait making it seem cute or sexy. This helps remember the product.
(same thing applies to wealth, status, power, coolness)
What is appeal to ridicule?
When the speaker or writer attacks their opponents position by making it seem ridiculous.
E. G: Obama gets called a socialist. Retorts by saying they’ll call him a communist cuz he shared toys in school. This neutralises fear and makes the claim silly.
What is a direct attack/hard sell
A direct attack could be a simple slogan like ‘say no to drugs’. The aim is we internalise and believe this. A hard sell would be this direct attack repeated persistently.
What is a smokescreen?
Avoiding discussing an issue by diverting to a related issue to the one at hand.
What are buzzwords?
A hot word with lots of rhetorical power.
What is Jargon?
A way of speaking or writing using words unfamiliar to the audience. Or using familiar words in unfamiliar ways. Has strong rhetorical power and implies being in the know. E. G: the usage of “heads up”
