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Category Archives: Rhetoric
Ten Convenient Beliefs In The UC Berkeley Departments of English and Rhetoric
Berkeley’s English and Rhetoric departments share faculty, seminars, and a creed. English runs hard toward postcolonial, ethnic, and identity-centered literature. Rhetoric runs toward Continental philosophy, critical theory, and the analysis of power. The two read literature and rhetoric as tools … Continue reading
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LAT: Trump’s war rhetoric is coarse. It’s also heard differently, depending on the audience
The Los Angeles Times piece reads Trump’s Iran rhetoric through a framework built on traditional presidential norms. That framework assumes wartime rhetoric must do three things: justify the war on moral grounds, show some respect for casualties and the enemy, … Continue reading
Decoding Trump’s Rhetoric
Donald Trump’s style is not built around logical coherence or policy architecture. It is built around coalition maintenance, dominance signaling, and emotional clarity. He’s the great prole whisperer. First, it is epideictic more than deliberative. Classical rhetoric divides speech into … Continue reading
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BS Is Usually More Effective Than Lying
From the below video: If deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception. And this in turn ought to select for a degree of self-deception—rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not … Continue reading
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Arguments For The Sake Of Heaven
I once had a girlfriend for about a year, and during that time, I don’t remember ever needing to explain myself to her. By contrast, most of my girlfriends have been a bit bewildered by my sarcasm. They weren’t big … Continue reading
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NYT: The Debate Style That Propelled Charlie Kirk’s Movement
My dad was good at arguing. He devoted his life to arguing. He got a PhD in argument (Rhetoric). He developed a following from his ability to argue. None of this endeared my dad to me or to my brother … Continue reading
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Why Do We Argue?
David Pinsof writes: The goal is to subtly punish people for questioning our dogmas or dissing our allies. When we argue about politics, we’re playing The Opinion Game—the secret war over social norms. And the norm we want to establish … Continue reading
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Five Chapters on Rhetoric: Character, Action, Things, Nothing, and Art
I love this 2015 book by Michael S. Kochin: * Daniel Webster: “True eloquence… must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.” * Webster shows how this true eloquence results not merely in words or speeches … Continue reading
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From Argument To Assertion
Michael S. Kochin writes in Argumentation 23, No. 3 (August 2009).: There are, however, two fundamental rhetorical difficulties with laying out one’s premises, reasoning, and conclusions. Since arguments are anticlimactic if they are explicit, the speaker who is excessively explicit … Continue reading
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Is Ad Hominen A Logical Fallacy When Applied To Internet Debates? (8-2-21)
08:00 That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=138784 10:00 Ad hominem, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem 15:00 John Locke, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke 32:00 Argument from authority, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority 48:00 Bernadotte Everly Schmitt, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadotte_Everly_Schmitt