Terms : Hide Images
| 14315036719 | Audience | The listener, viewer, or reader of a text. Most texts are likely to have multiple audiences. | 0 | |
| 14315042276 | Concession | An acknowledgment that an opposing argument may be true or reasonable. In a strong argument, a concession is usually accompanied by a refutation challenging the validity of the opposing argument. | 1 | |
| 14315060048 | Connotation | Meaning or associations that readers have with a word beyond its dictionary definition, or denotation. Connotations are usually positive or negative, and they can greatly affect the author's tone. | 2 | |
| 14315067144 | Context | The circumstances, atmosphere, attitudes, and events surrounding a text. | 3 | |
| 14315098090 | Counterargument | An opposing argument to the one a writer is putting forward. Rather than ignoring a counterargument, a strong writer will usually address it though the process of concession and refutation. | 4 | |
| 14315068746 | Ethos | Greek for "character." Speakers appeal to ethos to demonstrate that they are credible and trustworthy to speak on a given topic. Ethos is established by both who you are and what you say. | 5 | |
| 14315073292 | Logos | Greek for "embodied thought." Speakers appeal to logos, or reason, by offering clear, rational ideas and using specific details, examples, facts, statistics, or expert testimony to back them up. | 6 | |
| 14315076897 | Occasion | The time and place a speech is given or a piece is written. | 7 | |
| 14315081667 | Pathos | Greek for "suffering" or "experience." Speakers appeal to pathos to emotionally motivate their audience. More specific appeals to pathos might play on the audience's values, desires, and hopes, on the one hand, or fears and prejudices, on the other. | 8 | |
| 14315083377 | Persona | Greek for "mask." The face or character that a speaker shows to his or her audience. | 9 | |
| 14315084488 | Polemic | Greek for "hostile." An aggressive argument that tries to establish the superiority of one opinion over all others. Polemics generally do not concede that opposing opinions have any merit. | 10 | |
| 14315085793 | Propaganda | The spread of ideas and information to further a cause. In its negative sense, propaganda is the use of rumors, lies, disinformation, and scare tactics in order to damage or promote a cause. | 11 | |
| 14315091250 | Purpose | The goal the speaker wants to achieve. | 12 | |
| 14315094769 | Refutation | A denial of the validity of an opposing argument. In order to sound reasonable, refutations often follow a concession that acknowledges that an opposing argument may be true or reasonable. | 13 | |
| 14315098091 | Rhetoric | As Aristotle defined the term, "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." In other words, it is the art of finding ways to persuade an audience. | 14 | |
| 14315109040 | Rhetorical appeals | Rhetorical techniques used to persuade an audience by emphasizing what they find most important or compelling. The three major appeals are to ethos (character), logos (reason), and pathos (emotion). | 15 | |
| 14315112403 | Rhetorical Triangle (Aristotelian triangle) | A diagram that illustrates the interrelationship among the speaker, audience, and subject in determining a text. | 16 | |
| 14315113642 | SOAPS | A mnemonic device that stands for Subject, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, and Speaker. It is a handy way to remember the various elements that make up the rhetorical situation. | 17 | |
| 14315119801 | Speaker | The person or group who creates a text. This might be a politician who delivers a speech, a commentator who writes an article, an artist who draws a political cartoon, or even a company that commissions an advertisement. | 18 | |
| 14315118933 | Text | While this term generally means the written word, in the humanities it has come to mean any cultural product that can be "read" - meaning not just consumed and comprehended, but investigated. This includes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, political cartoons, fine art, photography, performances, fashion, cultural trends, and much more. | 19 | |
| 14315117377 | Subject | The topic of a text. What the text is about. | 20 | |
| 14315128078 | Alliteration | Repetition of the same sound beginning several words or syllables in sequence. (Let us go forth to lead the land we love) | 21 | |
| 14315136402 | Allusion | Brief reference to a person, event, or place (real or fictitious) or to a work of art. | 22 | |
| 14315141098 | Anaphora | Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines. (...not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are...) | 23 | |
| 14315153832 | Antimetabole | Repetition of words in reverse order (Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country) | 24 | |
| 14315176153 | Antithesis | Opposition, or contrast, or ideas or words in a parallel construction. (We shall...support any friend, oppose any foe...) | 25 | |
| 14315181679 | Archaic diction | Old-fashioned or outdated choice of words. (...beliefs for which out forebears fought...) | 26 | |
| 14315186914 | Ansydeton | Omission of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words (We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any for to assure the survival and success of Liberty). | 27 | |
| 14315195722 | Cumulative Sentence | Sentence that completes the main idea and the beginning of a sentence and then builds and adds on. | 28 | |
| 14315199817 | Hortative Sentence | Sentence that exhorts, urges, entreats, implores, or calls to action. | 29 | |
| 14315204544 | Imperative Sentence | Sentence used to command or enjoin. | 30 | |
| 14315207631 | Inversion | Inverted order of words in a sentence (variation of the subject-verb-object order). | 31 | |
| 14315212183 | Juxtaposition | Placement of two things closely together to emphasize similarities or differences. | 32 | |
| 14315214113 | Metaphor | Figure of speech that compares two things without using "like" or "as". | 33 | |
| 14315216475 | Oxymoron | Paradoxical juxtaposition of words that seem contradictory to one another. | 34 | |
| 14315219316 | Parallelism | Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses. | 35 | |
| 14315224690 | Periodic Sentence | Sentence whose main clause is withheld until the end. | 36 | |
| 14315226967 | Personification | Attribution of lifelike quality to an inanimate object or an idea. | 37 | |
| 14315229199 | Rhetorical Question | Figure of speech in the form of a question posed for rhetorical effect rather than for the purpose of getting an answer. | 38 | |
| 14315232482 | Synecdoche | Figure of speech that uses a part to represent the whole. (all hands on deck - "hands" means crew members) | 39 | |
| 14315236774 | ad hominem | Latin for "to the man," this fallacy refers to the specific diversionary tactic of switching the argument from the issue at hand to the character of the other speaker. (If you argue that a park in your community should not be renovated because the person supporting it was arrested during a domestic dispute, then you are guilty of ad hominem.) | 40 | |
| 14315260343 | ad populum (bandwagon appeal) | This fallacy occurs when evidence boils down to "everybody's doing it, so it must be a good thing to do." | 41 | |
| 14315264524 | Appeal to false authority | This fallacy occurs when someone who has no expertise on an issue is cited as an authority. (A TV star, for instance, is not a medical expert, even though pharmaceutical advertisements often use celebrity endorsements.) | 42 | |
| 14315275131 | Argument | A process of reasoned inquiry; a persuasive discourse resulting in a coherent and considered movement from a claim to a conclusion. | 43 | |
| 14315278434 | Assumption (warrant) | In the Toulmin model, the warrant expresses the assumption necessarily shared by the speaker and the audience. | 44 | |
| 14315283482 | Backing | In the Toulmin model, backing consists of further assurances or data without which the assumption lacks authority. | 45 | |
| 14315291543 | Begging the Questions | A fallacy in which a claim is based on evidence or support that is in doubt. It "begs" a question whether the support itself is sound. | 46 | |
| 14315294126 | Circular reasoning | A fallacy in which the writer repeats the claim as a way to provide evidence. | 47 | |
| 14315295932 | Claim | Also called an assertion or a proposition, a claim states the argument's main idea or position. A claim differs from a topic or subject in that a claim has to be arguable. | 48 | |
| 14315315922 | Claim of Fact | A claim that asserts that something is true or not true. | 49 | |
| 14315317777 | Claim of Policy | A claim of policy proposes a change. | 50 | |
| 14315320793 | Claim of Value | A claim of value argues that something is good or bad, right or wrong. | 51 | |
| 14315325216 | Classical oration | Five-part argument structure used by classical rhetoricians. The five parts are: Introduction (exordium), Narration (narratio), Confirmation (confirmatio), Refutation (refutatio), and Conclusion (peroratio). | 52 | |
| 14315341208 | Introduction (exordium) | Introduces the reader to the subject under discussion. | 53 | |
| 14315343951 | Narration (narratio) | Provides factual information and background material on the subject at hand or establishes why the subject is a problem that need addressing. | 54 | |
| 14315350698 | Confirmation (confirmatio) | Usually the major part of the text, the confirmation includes the proof needed to make the writer's case. | 55 | |
| 14315355588 | Refutation (refutatio) | Addresses the counterargument. It is a bridge between the writer's proof and conclusion. | 56 | |
| 14315358887 | Conclusion (peroratio) | Brings the essay to a satisfying close. | 57 | |
| 14315360853 | Closed thesis | A closed thesis is a statement of the main idea of the argument that also previews the major points the writer intends to make. | 58 | |
| 14315365660 | Deduction | Deduction is a logical process whereby one reaches a conclusion by starting with a general principle or universal truth (a major premise) and applying it to a specific case (a minor premise). The process of deduction is usually demonstrated in the form of a syllogism. | 59 | |
| 14315379452 | Either/or (false dilemma) | A fallacy in which the speaker presents two extreme options as the only possible choices. | 60 | |
| 14315381197 | Faulty analogy | A fallacy that occurs when an analogy compares two things that are not comparable. (For instance, to argue that because we put animals who are in irreversible pain out of their misery, we should do the same to people, asks the reader to ignore significant and profound differences between animals and people.) | 61 | |
| 14315395630 | First-hand evidence | Evidence based on something the writer knows, whether it's from personal experience, observations, or general knowledge of events. | 62 | |
| 14315397958 | Hasty generalization | A fallacy in which a faulty conclusion is reached because of inadequate evidence. | 63 | |
| 14315401593 | Induction | From the Latin inducere, "to lead into"; a logical process whereby the writer reasons from particulars, using specific cases in order to draw a conclusion, which is also called a generalization. | 64 | |
| 14315409260 | Logical fallacy | Logical fallacies are potential vulnerabilities or weaknesses in an argument. They often arise from a failure to make a logical connection between the claim and evidence used to support it. | 65 | |
| 14315412662 | Open thesis | An open thesis is one that does not list all the points the writer intends to cover in an essay. | 66 | |
| 14315414680 | post hoc ergo propter hoc | This fallacy is Latin for "after which therefore because of which," meaning that it is incorrect to always claim that something is a cause just because it happened earlier. One may loosely summarize this fallacy by saying that correlation does not imply causation. | 67 | |
| 14315425609 | Qualifier | In the Toulmin model, the qualifier uses words like usually, probably, maybe, in most cases, and most likely to temper the claim, making it less absolute. | 68 | |
| 14315434137 | Quantitative evidence | Quantitative evidence includes things that can be measured, cited counted, or otherwise represented in numbers -- for instance, statistics, surveys, polls, census information. | 69 | |
| 14315451820 | Rebuttal | In the Toulmin model, a rebuttal gives voice to the possible objections. | 70 | |
| 14315455613 | Reservation | In the Toulmin model, a reservation explains the terms and conditions necessitated by the qualifier. | 71 | |
| 14315465864 | Rogerian arguments | Developed by psychiatrist Carl Rogers, Rogerian arguments are based on the assumption that having a full understanding of an opposing position is essential to responding to it persuasively and refuting it in a way that is accommodating rather than alienating. | 72 | |
| 14315472020 | Second-hand evidence | Evidence that is accessed through research, reading, and investigation. It includes factual and historical information, expert opinion, and quantitative data. | 73 | |
| 14315477554 | Straw man | A fallacy that occurs when a speaker chooses a deliberately poor or oversimplified example in order to ridicule and refute an idea. (Politician X proposes that we put astronauts on Marts in the next for years. Politician Y ridicules this proposal by saying that their opponent is looking for the "little green men in outer space") | 74 | |
| 14315491735 | Syllogism | A logical structure that uses the major premise and minor premise to reach a necessary conclusion. | 75 | |
| 14315493422 | Toulmin Model | An approach to analyzing and constructing arguments created by British philosopher Stephen Toulmin in his book, The Users of Argument (1958). The Toulmin model and be stated as a template: Because (evidence as support), therefore (claim), since (warrant or assumption), on account of (backing), unless (reservation). | 76 |
