Question 1

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. (We'll comment on features we find obscure, unusual, or tricky.) B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"The executives responsible for the recent corporate catastrophes popularly known as Agent Orange, asbestos, and the Dalkon Shield are not in jail and will not go to jail. With the exception of informed victims, few of us describe these cases in the language of crime, even though in each case there is a wealth of evidence that victims were put at unacceptably high levels of risk of severe injury and death and that corporate executives knew of the risks, yet failed to take appropriate preventive action. Even Morton Mintz, the award-winning Washington Post investigative reporter and author of At Any Cost: Corporate Greed, Women, and the Dalkon Shield, a powerful indictment of the
A.H.Robins pharmaceutical company, does not use the word 'crime' in telling the sordid tale of the Dalkon Shield."
-From Russell Mokhiber's "Criminals By Any Other Name," The Washington Monthly

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Question 2

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"I see that Mr. [Clint] Eastwood is up to his expansionist tricks again. Last time, when he couldn't get his way with the Carmel [California] Planning Commission, he got himself elected mayor and fired the members of the commission. That'll teach 'em to cross Dirty Harry! And now he wants to build a development of huge estates for his rich and fancy friends up in the hills, complete with a private and oh-so-exclusive golf course and all the other luxury amenities that we non-movie stars can hardly imagine. Since Mr. Eastwood already owns about half of Northern California, I hope somebody stops him before he turns the bulk of his property into encampments for the rich."
-Paraphrase of the remarks heard on a talk radio station

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Question 3

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"Some of the ill will [at Dartmouth College] has been provoked by a student-run newspaper called The Dartmouth Review. Ten of the dirty dozen who destroyed the shanties [built on the Dartmouth campus as an antiapartheid protest] reportedly work for the six-year-old weekly, a New Right mouthpiece that is run independently of the college and has the support of such leading off-campus conservatives as William
F.Buckley, Jr.Considered troublemakers by the administration and many faculty members, and disowned by former supporters such as Rep.Jack Kemp, the Review's editors traffic in outrage and offense."
-Newsweek

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Question 4

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"The arms buildup that President Reagan gave us is an albatross around our necks. We spent a trillion dollars on it. Do you realize how much a trillion dollars is? That's a one with 12 zeros after it. That's $4,000 for (or rather from) every man, woman, and child in the United States. And what was it all for? bAre we any safer now for having spent all this treasure? Do you feel any safer now than you did before? Our children, who will eventually have to pay for all this because of the national debt, will look back on us as a generation of lunatics."
-Letter to the editor of the Bellevue (Ind.) Star-Reporter

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Question 5

Gary Hart followed the pattern when he 'declared his "interest" in the presidency' (as the Washington Post chastely put it) by announcing that he won't run for reelection to the Senate this year.
Good luck to Hart. I voted for him once before and wouldn't mind voting for him again. But really. Is this necessary?"
-"TRB from Washington," in The New Republic

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Question 6

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. (We'll comment on features we find obscure, unusual, or tricky.) B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"It [the feminist movement] was crazy. The lunacy, unfortunately, wasn't confined to sex. Male reviewers abased themselves before Miss [Susan] Brownmiller's book Against Our Will, and the male editors of Time magazine, in a spasm of liberal gallantry, named her as one of its 12 Women of the Year, thereby atoning for five decades of Men of the Year."
-Joseph Sobran, "The End of Feminism"

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Question 7

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage:
I'm not among those who wonder why the senator hasn't made a full disclosure of his financial dealings prior to taking office.

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Question 8

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"The U.S. government (that's you and me, by the way) is about to give away a resource that's worth more than any national park or national monument in the land. If the public were to hear that Yosemite or Yellowstone National Park were to be handed over, at no cost, to a major corporation, what do you think would happen? There'd be howls of protest, of course. But an even bigger giveaway is in the works: the awarding of large segments of the broadcast spectrum to the broadcasting systems. They'll be able to turn huge profits from the new resources. And how much comes back to the public? Not one dime. Handouts like this raise the level of corporate welfare to mind-stretching new heights!"
-Letter to a local newspaper

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Question 9

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage:
That the proposal before us is a good one is, surely, obvious.

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Question 10

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage:
What explains the mad dash to distribute free condoms in our public schools? The misguided and ridiculous notion that kids are going to have sex no matter what.

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Question 11

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. (We'll comment on features we find obscure, unusual, or tricky.)
B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"Citizens for a Clean Community caused quite a commotion the other day when it announced its campaign to end the sale or rent of so-called adult and X-rated videos and movies."
"There immediately came the usual charges of censorship and free speech violations-as could have been predicted."
"We certainly would be the first to defend someone's right to read or view whatever they please. But make no mistake, those who are offended by this smut have every right to express their frustration by protesting its distribution.... And this kind of material is completely debasing and has no redeeming value whatsoever...."
-Cascade News

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Question 12

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"Britain has done all it can to sabotage the development of the European Community. For a while it was Margaret Thatcher, and after that her equally right-wing successor, John Major, who served as mouthpiece for the isolationist camp in Britain. It's clear to any intelligent listener that the people they're really speaking for are not the average people in the street, who would benefit from joining the rest of Europe, but a small number of the English super-rich who don't want to rock the boat. As long as Britain remains independent, they get to pull the strings-and make the profits. These money types are joined by a few nineteenth-century throwbacks who are arrogant enough to think that England has an empire to protect and exploit."
-Editorial, Athens Courier

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Question 13

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. (We'll comment on features we find obscure, unusual, or tricky.) B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
Well, it looks like the wimps are coming out of the woodwork all over the place. If you're a man, the fashionable thing to be these days is "sensitive." Articles with titles like "Babies and Men," "The Divorced Father," and-can you believe it?-"Men Cry Too" are cropping up all over the place. You'd think today's males were unleashing the bottled-up agonies of a couple of thousand generations from the way they like to step into the spotlight and bare their sensitive souls to anybody who'll listen. They say there are more divorces today, and maybe because of the safety of numbers, a divorce is an excuse for a guy to become a softhead; the summons server may as well deliver a license to cry in public.
If a kid wants his modern daddy to come out and toss a ball around, he'll have to drag him out of the kitchen first. After making him take off the apron, of course, so he won't embarrass his kid in front of his buddies.
It's a good thing the women are getting out there and learning to run the world. Today's men are busily forgetting how to do it.

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Question 14

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage:
"A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that as many abortions as possible are performed."
-Rush Limbaugh

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Question 15

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. (We'll comment on features we find obscure, unusual, or tricky.) B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.

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Question 16

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"[S]o frantic is the education industry for raw material (students), institutions are not only lowering standards (requiring only 'a pulse in one hand, a check in the other'), they are discounting tuitions and advertising sushi and waffle bars in the students unions and prime cable service in the dorms where, [author Anne] Matthews says, some students hibernate for days 'eating red licorice and channel surfing.' Some institutions send bounty hunters abroad in search of wealthy foreigners."
-George Will

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Question 17

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage:
The conservative mind is rigid and inflexible, like an orange peel that's dried out in the sun.

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Question 18

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. (We'll comment on features we find obscure, unusual, or tricky.) B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"It's past time that you and I and every other American asked some cold, hard questions."
"Who lost Iran?"
"Who lost Afghanistan?"
"Who lost Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia?"
"Who crippled the FBI and the CIA?"
"Who sold the Russians computers and other sophisticated equipment, which have been used to stamp out freedom?"
"Who is keeping our kids from praying in school?"
"Who lets hardened criminals out on the street to kill, rape, and rob again before their victims are buried or out of the hospital?"
"Who says that America should do little if anything to help human beings who are daily being killed and beaten up by Marxist dictators?"
"The answer in every case is LIBERALS."
"But America is waking up to what the liberals have been doing to it."
"To quote Michigan professor Stephen Tonsor, 'New Deal liberals are as dead as a dodo. The only problem is they don't know it.'"
-Richard Viguerie, The New Right

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Question 19

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. (We'll comment on features we find obscure, unusual, or tricky.) B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
Members of the baby boom generation, the generation that is now becoming yuppies instead of growing up, refuse to see the light. After being the center of the universe during the sixties and seventies, they expected to own it by the mid-eighties. They grew up believing they would have tremendous jobs, wonderful houses, exotic travel, great marriages, and beautiful children as well as European "personal" cars, fancy music systems, high-tech kitchens, and wine in the cellar. But it isn't turning out that way for most of them. Having glutted the professional marketplace, they live on depressed salaries; their dependence on immediate gratification causes them to spend like sailors-on the right stuff-driving prices of their playthings through the roof.
But they are addicted to their ways. Those who moved to Manhattan can't bear the thought of living anywhere else but can't afford to live there. According to the New York Times, single-room-occupancy hotels that used to house the poor now contain tenants who cart in their stereos and tape decks, their button-down shirts, and their Adidas running shoes. One young woman says her bathroom is so filthy she showers with shoes on.
This insistence on doing it right bespeaks a refusal to grow up disguised as a commitment to-what?-"quality of life?" One no-longer-really-young professional says, "It used to be you moved to the suburbs for the children. But on some level we still think of ourselves as children." Peter Pan, call your office.
-Very freely adapted from George Will, "Reality Says You Can't Have It All," Newsweek

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Question 20

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
"Must the NFL-fat, sassy, the General Motors of professional sports-meet a similar crisis [to the one the National Basketball Association went through in the eighties] before it tries to solve its own plague of drugs?
For years, since Don Reese's personal revelation and charges of league-wide drug involvement, the NFL has lived under a cloud of suspicion. Initially, it seemed the front offices, deeply concerned that their image remain pristine, chose to look the other way. Now they've acknowledged the problem, and have chosen to push for testing; this year, eight franchises asked their players to undergo post-season analysis, but each was refused."
-Tom Jackson, Sacramento Bee

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Quiz 5: Planning and Forecasting

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: I'm not among those who wonder why the senator hasn't made a full disclosure of his financial dealings prior to taking office.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: That the proposal before us is a good one is, surely, obvious.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: What explains the mad dash to distribute free condoms in our public schools? The misguided and ridiculous notion that kids are going to have sex no matter what.

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: "A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that as many abortions as possible are performed." -Rush Limbaugh

Isolate and discuss the rhetorical devices that appear in the following passage: The conservative mind is rigid and inflexible, like an orange peel that's dried out in the sun.