English Language Arts and Reading.7.9.G

The student is expected to

explain the purpose of rhetorical devices such as direct address and rhetorical questions and logical fallacies such as loaded language and sweeping generalizations.

author's purpose strand teks talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Author's purpose and craft: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student uses critical inquiry to analyze the authors' choices and how they influence and communicate meaning within a variety of texts. The student analyzes and applies author's craft purposefully in order to develop his or her own products and performances.

Give a speech or presentation to students that includes rhetorical devices, such as rhetorical questions, or logical fallacies such as loaded language or sweeping generalizations. Have students explain why each is included and how it supports or calls into question the points in the speech or presentation.
 

Further Explanation

This SE requires students to understand how writers use specific phrasing, sentences, and examples to make an argument.

Students should understand that writers can use some of these same devices to manipulate language and misrepresent the facts supporting an idea, creating logical fallacies that make an idea appear more reasonable than it realistically is. Students should be able to recognize and describe the differences among strategies.

Students should recognize and describe how writers use specific constructions in phrasing, sentences, and examples to make their arguments clear and relatable to the audience. For example, authors might directly address the audience (using you or the actual names of members of the audience) or incorporate rhetorical questions that make the audience feel as though they are actually invested in a two-way conversation as opposed to being passive recipients of a message. Students should consider the author's purpose and explain why particular rhetorical devices are used.
words, terms, or phrases that have strong emotional overtones or connotations and are meant to influence and appeal to an audience by evoking negative or positive emotional reactions that extend beyond the literal meaning of word or phrase
Students should understand that writers can manipulate language and misrepresent the facts supporting an idea, creating logical fallacies that make an idea appear more reasonable than it actually is. For example, an author might create a sweeping generalization purposefully meant to imply that a rule can be applied to a specific circumstance just because it tends to be generally true. Students are expected to identify these flaws in logic and be able to describe why the author has chosen to use them.
a technique that an author or speaker uses to influence or persuade an audience (e.g., rhetorical questions, repetition, analogies, juxtaposition, parallelism, rhetorical shifts, antithesis)
questions asked to create dramatic effect or make a point meant to be considered by the audience and not actually answered by the audience
a writer or speaker’s use of a general statement meant to apply to many cases when some cases may include specific or unique details that make the assertion invalid

Research

1. Battersby, M., & Bailin, S. (2013, May). Critical thinking and cognitive biases. Paper presented at the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation Conference, Ontario, Canada. Retrieved from https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ossaarchive/OSSA10/papersandcommentaries/16/

Summary: The authors examine how reasoning errors and fallacies easily work their way into writing. The article is an overview of a pedagogy that helps students to identify reasoning errors. 

2. Henning, T. (2011). Ethics as a form of critical and rhetorical inquiry in the writing classroom. The English Journal, 100(6), 34–40. 

Summary: In this article, teachers are encouraged to provide students with opportunities to use rhetorical inquiry as a framework for writing. Henning considers the connection between critical thinking and ethics should not be defined in static terms but instead should be comprehended as a dynamic framework to examine inquiries, choices, and behaviors. Writing teachers recognize the need to critically evaluate the modes of information, resources, and writing because students find it difficult to engage in reading that involves critical thinking, flexibility, and rhetorical questions such as, "what if."