Lecture 2

Question 1

What is a fact?

Answer 1

The actual state of the world.

Question 2

What are the three main kinds of linguistic phenomena?

Answer 2

Lexical (words)
Syntactical (grammar, structure)
Relative.

Question 3

Describe lexical ambiguity.

Answer 3

Word or phrase could have more than one meaning.

Question 4

Describe syntactic ambiguity.

Answer 4

Arrangement of words could cause multiple interpretations.

E. G: “we should not tolerate these homeless people on our street”

Question 5

What is relative ambiguity?

Answer 5

Not knowing what comparison to take into account.

E. G: she earns an above average salary.

Question 6

What is equivocation?

Answer 6

Falsely taking something to be equivalent. Occurs when there is ambiguity.

Question 7

What is vagueness?

Answer 7

Where there is no precise meaning or that meaning is unclear.

Question 8

What is a quantifier?

Answer 8

Words and phrases telling quantity of things. To understand a claim we need to know quantified domain.

Question 9

What are soft and hard generalisations?

Answer 9

Soft: has a few exceptions.
Hard: absolute. No exceptions.

Question 10

What are scare quotes?

Answer 10

Quotation marks a writer uses to distinguish the self from the quoted expression.

Question 11

What are leading questions?

Answer 11

Rhetorical ploy of using questions to mislead an audience into assuming.

Question 12

What is rhetorical force?

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

What is implacature?

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

What is a definition?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

What is a rhetorical ploy?

Answer 15

Non argumentative way of persuasion. They pretend to give reasons. But the true persuasion is non argumentative.

Question 16

What is a fallacy?

Answer 16

An argumentative method giving reasons to accept conclusion. However the reasoning is bad.

Question 17

What is an appeal to novelty?

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

What is an appeal to popularity

Answer 18

Like novelty it appeals to our want to not miss out. But also persuades us to adopt beliefs of do a certain thing b

Question 19

What are appeals to compassion, pity and guilt?

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

Appeals to cuteness/sexiness.

Answer 20

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)

Question 21

What is appeal to ridicule?

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

What is a direct attack/hard sell

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

What is a smokescreen?

Answer 23

Avoiding discussing an issue by diverting to a related issue to the one at hand.

Question 24

What are buzzwords?

Answer 24

A hot word with lots of rhetorical power.

Question 25

What is Jargon?

Answer 25

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”