Jessica McKee

  1. Ad Analysis

    Advertisements comprise thirty percent of the material aired on television, and many of us will view more than two million commercials in our lifetimes.  The A. C. Nielson Company reports that, by the age of sixty-five, the average U.S. citizen will have spent nine years of their life watching television—twenty-eight hours a week, two months a year. And in one...

    Published on Feb 02nd 2012

  2. Fallacious Ethos

    Ad Hominem (Argument to the Person): Attacking the person instead of the argument. For example, "You say I shouldn't drink so much, but you drink every day." The validity of the argument (drink less) can't be based on the behavior of the person making the argument. Instead, the validity of the argument should be evaluated on its own terms—separate from...

    Published on Apr 16th 2012

  3. Fallacious Kairos

    Red Herring: Introducing irrelevant facts or claims to detract from the actual argument. For instance, our invasion of Iraq was predicated, in part, upon the connection between the attacks of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. The war was described by some as an appropriate response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, but in reality, the connection between Iraq and Saddam Hussein was...

    Published on Apr 16th 2012

  4. Fallacious Logos

    Appeal to Nature: Suggesting a certain behavior or action is normal/right because it is "natural." This is a fallacious argument for two reasons: first, there are multiple, and often competing, ways to define "nature" and "natural." Because there is no one way to define these terms, a writer cannot assume his or her reader thinks of "nature" in the same way...

    Published on Apr 16th 2012

  5. Fallacious Pathos

    Argument by Dismissal: Rejecting an idea without providing a reason or explanation for its dismissal. For instance, there is a tendency to cry "socialism" when faced with calls for a single-payer system in the ongoing health care debate. Such a dismissal of the single-payer system may include the observations, "This is America!," or, "You are free to live elsewhere if...

    Published on Apr 16th 2012

  6. Intrinsic Authority

    Intrinsic Authority refers to the authority that comes from the rhetor herself. It might come from her work experience or college degrees or generally good morality, or it might come from how well she demonstrates that she can speak or write about her topic. Related Concepts: Appeals to Authority; Authority (in Writing & Speech); Critical Literacy; Ethos; Fallacious Ethos; Interpretation,...

    Published on Dec 17th 2019

  7. Logical Fallacies

    Logical Fallacies refers to errors in reasoning that lead to faulty conclusions. In classical logic, an argument is sound only if all of its premises are true and the argument is valid. And an argument is valid only if its conclusion follows logically from the combination of its premises. For example, Plato’s classic syllogism, “All men are mortal; Socrates is...

    Published on Apr 16th 2012