Rhetorical ploys and fallacies behaviour, but there are others that occur frequently. Try to think of some and find some examples of your own. The direct attack and hard sell The direct attack is the simplest of all rhetorical ploys. It occurs most frequently in advertising, though it also appears in political campaigning. It often takes the form of a very simple slogan. For instance, 'Say no to tuition fees!', 'Drink cola!' Notice that we are given no reason to say 'no' or to drink cola. The belief of those who employ the direct attack is that the more we hear or read these commands and internalise them, the more likely we are to do as they advocate, despite having been given no reason to do so. We often talk about 'giving someone the hard sell'. The hard sell is simply the direct attack repeated persistently. Children are notably effective with it. The persuader just keeps it up until the subject of their attack gives in and does as they want, the persuader thereby having influenced their target by verbal means without giving reasons for doing as they command. Buzzwords
This is the technique of using fashionable or otherwise currently 'hot' words or phrases that are loaded with rhetorical power due to their rich secondary connotation. (If you don't feel familiar with the concept of secondary connotation, have another look at the relevant section of Chapter 1.) Buzzwords can be enormously provocative and therefore hard to tame, and this makes them especially problematic for the critical thinker. If we want to make an objective analysis of a passage or speech act, we should rephrase what is said or written in such a way as to eliminate the buzzwords, and then embark on the analysis. Here is an example of a passage containing several buzzwords: The Prime Minister's solid stance against European Union bureaucrats' latest attempts to create yet more employment rights for European workers and yet more financial burdens for European employers sent a message to business that his Government would continue to stand tall in its commitment to the free market and to wealth creation.
The writer uses the terms 'bureaucrats', 'business', 'free market' and 'wealth creation' as buzzwords to manipulate readers' sympathies towards the Prime Minister's anti-European stance. In combination with the rhetorical import of some of the other words used in the passage, these
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