When all else fails, rob the poor
Choose one of the editorials listed in
the Resources section above and analyze it for rhetorical fallacies.
Identify the fallacies in the article and explain how and why the writer uses
them and whether they undermine his/her overall argument.
1.
The title
2.
“Mug a janitor and you'll be lucky to
get bus fare to flee the crime scene.”
3.
“Attempts to collect from the already
poor are often not just punitive but self-defeating.”
The title right off the bat grabs your attention. This
article is supposedly defending the poor. But after reading through the article
several facts are incorrect, such as the right for the military to refuse
people who are in debt. The article offends minimum wage workers by dishing out
complete rudeness to janitor workers. The author practically defeats himself by
trying to defend people who are already in debt/ in jail. You don’t go to jail
for nothing, and you most certainly don’t start off owing ridiculous amount of
money for nothing either.
I noticed that there was no proof given for pretty much anything the author said. He didn't call out a study by name, or a specific study. This pretty much makes his whole article invalid and his point lost.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and Matthew on this article. By insulting the average person, the audience is automatically turned off. Also by not specifically saying where he gained his information from he looses a lot of respect from the audience as well as damages his/her credibility. Also, the fact that several of the facts are wrong add to the idea that the writer does not know what he/she is talking about. When writing an article of this caliber and about such a touchy issue the writer needs to makes sure they have all the facts before making an accusation. The argument given in this article could have been a great one if only the writer had put a little more time into his/her research.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, I agree. The author didn't spend very much time researching his facts and didn't cite any specific studies for reference.
ReplyDeleteOnly thing about your analysis I didn't agree with is that the military may choose not to recruit someone if they are in debt. While it's not an absolute, if you have things like bankruptcy/foreclosure/etc on your credit report it can be harder to get into the military (especially for a job that requires a security clearance).
@ Claire,
DeleteYeah i wasnt to sure about the military thing. I should have looked into it more :/ But i think that if the military is really that desperate, then having that bad of said credit and such, then they should look over the papers and look at the person. At least to make the decision.
Thanks for your response :)
I agree with all of you. You could tell that the research done was very poor and extremely vauge. The writer did stick with their initial argument but did not explain the others side argument very well, if at all. she included a lot of examples but did not back them up at all with some type of validity. Some of the facts are wrong. Maybe it was thought that we would not notice? All in all I have read better. Learn the facts. Know facts about both sides than come up with a valid argument.
ReplyDelete*vague
ReplyDeleteI agree with every thing about what you said in your analysis. The writer did get a good amount of things wrong in his/ her article. I think that he/ she needs to do better research on the things their writing about.
ReplyDeleteI am agreed with u that how the author tries to manipulate readers. In most of the case she throws a fact about a particular subject, but her conclusion from that fact is completely one way conclusion. For example, she said that there is a law in New York that bans people to put their feet on other seats. Her conclusion about that statement was that the government only made that law to fine poor people because of it! This could not be a good reason .There could be lots of reasonable causes for passing this law which none of them are not mention here. The author’s argument is not valid because this example and lots of other example in the article could not be an accurate, and supportive for her thesis.
ReplyDelete