ILS1: Introduction to textual analysis Seminar 6 Activity 1: Logical Fallacies 1. Which of the following is an example of a red herring? A. “All dogs are mammals. My cat is a mammal. Therefore, my cat is a dog.” B. “I had lunch with Donald, then I felt sick. Therefore, Donald made me sick.” C. “You asked what I’ve done to counteract global warming. In my first two years in office, we’ve had lower than average temperatures.” 2. Which of the following quotes from George Orwell’s novel 1984 is an example of the bandwagon effect? A. Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war, but it was evident that there had been a fairly long interval of peace during his childhood, because one of his early memories was of an air raid, which appeared to take everyone by surprise. Perhaps it was the time when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colchester. He did not remember the raid itself. B. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. C. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. 3. Which of the following statements is the best ad hominem definition? A. An argument that is backed up by evidence and logic. B. An argument that attacks a person’s character rather than the validity of his or her point. C. An argument that is a lie. 4. Which type of fallacy is present in the following paragraph? When they put on a show, and it’s a hit No one tries to censor it Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong. And when a book is selling at it’s best It isn’t stopped; it’s not suppressed. Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong. A. Genetic Fallacy B. Circular argument C. Bandwagon 1
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.