An absolute is a term such as all, every, any, always, never, perfect, forever, everybody, nobody, etc., which refers to all members of a given set and/or admits of no qualification. One should be alert when using absolutes because a single exception can call an entire argument into question. Absolutes, however, are often used as a form of emphasis rather than as argument, and when so used they indicate enthusiasm or a desire to preclude misinterpretation (or both) rather than faulty logic. Consider the rhetorical intentions behind the technically meaningless "longer than forever" and "better than perfect." Or consider the retort "Everybody knows that" to someone's question (for instance) "What's a 'foul shot'?" Assuming that the person asking the question is honest, she, for one, does not know what a foul shot is, so the absolute (everybody) in the reply is clearly in error. What is probably meant by the construction, however, is something like "Everybody who knows anything knows that." That is, the statement is equivalent to the ("grammatically" nonsensical but perfectly clear) statement "You don't know nothing." The analyst should be very attentive to absolutes, particularly in terms of what the writer being analyzed hopes to accomplish with them. The analyst who encounters the phrase "all reasonable people agree," should be clear that this statement is not an argument, but an assertion which attempts to play on the reader's wish to be thought of as a member of the group "reasonable people."
An absolute is also a statement of fact or of principle which is held to be eternal and unchanging-as in the familiar phrase, "Absolute Truth." Albert Einstein asserted that the speed of light is an absolute, and that all other motion is relative to that absolute speed (see RELATIVE). This is the sort of meaning invoked when persons are asked if they are "absolutely" certain of something-that is that they are convinced that no possibility of error exists.
In rhetorical analysis think of "abstract" in relation to "concrete." It is George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" which made these concepts into rhetorical principles. S. I. Hayakawa has contributed as well with what he calls the "Ladder of Abstraction." The higher one is on this "ladder" the less one can count on being clearly understood. (See LADDER OF ABSTRACTION.), As an example, consider Orwell's distinction between the phrases "elimination of unreliable elements" and "shot in the back of the head." The first is abstract, the second concrete. Orwell says that abstract language is used in the "defense of the indefensible." For him it becomes a form of evasion, or a form of lying. It is used, and deliberately, when one doesn't want one's audience to see a picture, to imagine a "concrete" image. However, as Hyakawa's treatment makes clear, abstraction is essential to communication. The term "animals," for instance, is an abstraction. There is no such "thing" as an animal at the concrete level-there is this goat, and this sheep, and this elephant, for instance, but there is no physical equivalent for the abstraction "animal." If, then, I want to talk about a sub-group of animals, like "pets," or even a sub-group of that group (say "dogs") I still have no choice but to be abstract. Otherwise I can only talk about a specific pet, who is probably a pet because he or she is in some way unique (or at least I think, like other pet owners, that my pet is unique).
"Abstraction" also refers to a concept which has no physical referent. Religion, courage, choice, and freedom, for instance, are abstractions, but they are not abstractions of a group of physically extant beings (such as the word "animal" is an abstraction from a group of physically extant beings). The concept of abstraction is extremely important in relationship to the idea of existential import, and the discussion at that entry may clarify the foregoing.
Additionally, abstractions can be usefully considered in relationship to tropes, especially given that the trope which has become existentially viable (say "animal") comes to be associated with particular characteristics and hence constitutes a metaphoric invocation of those characteristics. (Consider, for instance, what is "meant" when one person refers to another as "an animal.")
To call an argument "academic," as to label an argument "rhetoric," constitutes an attempt to assign the discourse so labeled to a category somewhere outside of those modes of discourse which deal, supposedly, with "reality," or the "real world," or whatever word the categorizer chooses to label her own socioeconomic position. An "academic argument" in this sense is not an argument which deals with a subject in which people who live in the "real world" are seriously interested, although they might find the creations of the "intellectuals" interesting, or some sort of curiosity. The argument labeled "academic," however is understood as only a waste of time, unlike the argument which is labeled "rhetoric," which is potentially dangerous.
When the term is used simply as descriptive rather than pejorative, (usually from within "the academy," understood as an institution of higher learning) it describes a mode of discourse which historically precedes the Rogerian (see) but closely resembles it. In its purest and most traditional form the academic argument, so understood, argues a need for a question to be answered, reviews the literature on the subject to show that no answer heretofore presented is satisfactory, and formulates an answer which is submitted to the judgment of the academic community of the subject in question. The academic argument attempts to appear "reasonable" and modest rather than enthusiastic and proselytizing. Since Rogers' approach derives from his clinical experience it is unlikely that the academic argument is its source.
In logic and philosophy (of which rhetoric is sometimes treated as a branch) the term "accident" is used in opposition to "essence." It is of the "essence" of gold that it has a particular specific gravity and atomic weight. It is "accidental" that it is cast in the shape of a horse. Hence, to say "One must here distinguish essence from accident," is to say that one should not deny a given principle or idea on the basis of a particular instance of its use. The fallacy of accident is to argue from a general rule to a particular case, the "accidental" quality of which makes it an exception. Take for instance the general principle that "If one disobeys the law, one should suffer the penalties for so doing." A fourteen-year-old, finding a woman unconscious and bleeding to death in a farm yard, breaks the glass on the door of the farm house to find a telephone. Not finding a telephone she takes a set of car keys and drives the woman to the nearest emergency room in a car she finds parked in the farmhouse driveway. She is charged with breaking and entering, burglary, car theft, speeding, and driving without a license, under the general principle which does not take into account the circumstances (accident) that mitigate the principle.
To accommodate is to "create space for." Rhetorically the term refers to an attempt on a writer's part to include those with differing viewpoints, or more particularly, to avoid offending and thus excluding them. In general it shows respect for opposing viewpoints by including them in the discussion and admitting the soundness of aspects of them. Rogerian argument (see) builds accommodation into its structure. See TARGET AUDIENCE.
Technically an "accommodator" would be "one who accommodates," but it here refers to words and phrases which are intended to signal that an aspect or aspects of an argument which lead to a disputed conclusion are being accepted as "givens" (see) or as "true" (see). Frequently encountered accommodators are "given," "granted that," "it is true that," "to be sure," "it is certainly the case that," "we will (or can) agree that," and so on.
Acronyms can be represented in two distinct typographical modes. One of these notices the history of the formation of the acronym, and the other signals the acceptance of the construction as a word like any other. I can write WASP (designating [w]hite [a]nglo [s]axon [p]rotestant) , or I can simply write, "Your refusing to talk to her just because of that tattoo was really a wasp thing to do." An acronym is any word formed of the initial letters of a series of words, or an arrangement of the initial sounds of those words. They are pronounced in two ways, however. NATO, UNICEF, NAFTA, snafu, and SWAT are pronounced as they would be were they normal words. G.I., F.B.I., D.A., and I.B.M., which are equally acronyms, are pronounced one letter at a time.
AD ABSURDUM (odd obb surd dum; to absurdity, or from absurdity, most frequently seen as "reductio ad absurdum," or even simply "reductio," re doosh ee oo)
The reductio is a frequently used mode of argument which rhetorics often treat as a fallacy, although it is not. To apply a reductio to the argument that we should not eat meat because it (usually) involves taking the life of an animal and "all life is sacred," one would reply that human survival depends on the consumption of organic matter (that is, matter that is either living or has been living). To be consistent with the "all life is sacred (and therefore should not be eaten)" argument one would have to give up lettuce as well as hamburgers, the consequence of which would be that one order of "sacred life" (the human) would die out entirely and plants and other animals would go on unconscionably consuming one another.
AD BACULUM (odd bahk you lum; from power, from force, literally, "from the club")
Although often so represented, technically speaking the argumentum ad baculum is not a fallacy in that it simply sets aside logical consideration in the face of consequences. The authority figure who finally replies "Because I told you so" to an apparently unending series of "But why?" questions is arguing from force. This is not an appeal to authority (see AD VERICUNDIUM) because the authority has already been questioned; rather it says "I will no longer argue-I have the power." In the game of poker, that three deuces and a revolver beat three queens is another example.
AD HOC (odd hock, or add hock. sometimes odd hoke) (to "this")
The argument which is accused of being ad hoc is being labeled as a defense fabricated on the spot to suit the particular circumstances. The implication is that the argument is, therefore, inferior to other arguments with, presumably, more historical respectability. An ad hoc committee, from another perspective, is one which has a specific and limited charge, or purpose and the term here does not (usually) carry the pejorative associations of the "ad hoc" argument."
The ad feminam argument resembles the ad hominem except that the attack on the arguer (as opposed to an attack on the argument) centers on the supposed "nature" of her gender. See GENDER and NATURE, ARGUMENT FROM). The term, as here used, comes to us from the philosopher Jo Ellen Jacobs. At its most obvious level the ad feminam argument would involve, say in response to the statement "That is a pretty patriarchal attitude," "Well, that's exactly what I would expect a woman to say." The point here, as in the ad hominem, is that the statement is true or false regardless of who makes it.
AD HOMINEM (to the person, usually rendered as "to the man")
This is an attack on the sayer rather than on the said. The truth of a given statement must, of course, be independent of who is stating it. (If it is true that Elvis Presley is dead, it makes no difference who says so). When an attack on a position is personal as opposed to "factual," the question is if the position at issue depends for its acceptability on the credibility of the speaker. If, for instance, a witness who is a known liar says "I saw Sam shoot Bill," it is legitimate to question if the witness did or did not see this. However, the statement "Sam shot Bill" is true or false independently of who says it. Sam did or did not shoot Bill, no matter who says so.
An endorsement (see) is, in effect, the mirror image of the ad hominem.
AD HOMINEM CIRCUMSTANTIAL (to the circumstances)
This is similar to the above except that instead of the person being attacked, the circumstances in which the statement was made are attacked or are used as reasons to discount the statement. "GM is a great stock." "Where did you hear that?" "At a GM stockholders' meeting." "Oh." GM is or is not a good stock at any given time regardless of where or in what circumstances the statement was made.
AD MISERICORDIUM (odd mis ur uh cor dee um, from pity, literally, from "heart pain")
The classic example of this appeal is the attorney who argued that her client who had been found guilty of murdering her parents should be shown mercy by the court on the grounds that she was an orphan. This argument is related to ad populum (see) but is more specific in that it refers to only those commonly held values which invoke pity. Typically such appeals are to very particular circumstances and try to avoid involving related issues. See INDUCTIVE ARGUMENT.
AD POPULUM (odd pop you lum, to the people, to the gallery, band-wagon, "common practice")
Such arguments attempt to link one subject to another subject which is held sacred or abhorred by the "masses,"-such things in American culture as the flag, Mom, apple pie, baseball, freedom, and so on, and conversely, communists, atheists, and homosexuals. Such associations are problematic on two grounds: (1) that such a link exists is asserted rather than argued (see ASSERTION), and (2) that a value is commonly held, or held by great numbers of people, is no evidence of its truth. One such ad populum argument which is seldom noted as such is the appeal to the greatness of the past. Often this is tied to the "the world is going to hell in a hand-basket" argument (this isn't the way it used to be, so it must be bad).
An affectation is a "put on" style. The person who is accused of being affected is being presented as being "unnatural," in the sense that she is thought to be behaving in a manner which is superior to her proper "place" in life. An affected style is one which is perceived as "fake" as the result of the writer using a particular choice of diction and sentence structure ("The reader, at this juncture, may well wish to pause and invest a moment in contemplation of the ephemera of quotidian existence. . .").. An American, for instance, could "affect" a British accent in an attempt to pass herself off as cultured. The analyst should note that a description of a writing style as affected assumes that there is a "natural" way to write, which would seem to refer to an "everyday , matter of fact, ordinary" tone, which the analyst will recognize as representing a rhetorical choice on the part of the writer as much as would the use of any other tone. Thus a value judgment concerning the writer's ability may be less analytically useful than consideration of the possible rhetorical intention of the tone or the tone shift.
To allude to something is to refer to it indirectly, and allusions vary greatly in how clearly they indirectly refer. Consequently it is seldom sufficient simply to assert that X is an allusion to Y-one usually has to present clear evidence to support such a claim. For example, it can be argued that the essay title "Of Whales and Wisdom" alludes to John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men (four words, two of which are the same, and those that differ both begin with the same letter, as in the purported source) or that the essay title "Four-letter Words Can Hurt You" alludes to the playground retort "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." To say, however, "In this crisis, how far are we going to pursue the Moby Dick of parity?" is not to "allude" to Melville's whale, it is to directly refer to him.
In rhetoric, as opposed to exposition, ambiguity, the capacity of being interpreted in more than one way, is, like the passive voice, a useful tool to avoid allowing the potentially hostile reader to focus early on a particular point of difficulty instead of reading further into the argument. This technique lends itself particularly well to the Rogerian argument (see) in which a basic strategy is to keep the reader involved until the point of the tentative conclusion. Ambiguity, in this sense, may be thought of a sort of functional lack of clarity. If, for instance, I wanted to avoid immediately alienating an audience made up of people who consider homosexuality "unnatural" (which is, in itself a highly ambiguous term) I might write about a "normal" distribution of the "components that fall within the range of what constitutes the sexually attractive" without any direct reference to same-sex attraction. Many more terms are ambiguous than might first appear, and here the analyst is referred directly to the entry for "definition." It is important to remember, then, that the "ambiguous" is "unclear," in addition to being multiply interpretable (One might say, for instance that Tiger Wood's "race," or Mick Jagger's "sexual orientation," are "ambiguous.") Any term about which you could say "it all depends on how you define it," may be thought of as "ambiguous." See EQUIVOCATION.
As understood in "rhetorical analysis," analysis is the separation of a unit (speech, essay, paragraph, sentence) into its parts for the purpose of hypothesizing about the intended function of the part in relationship to the whole. To analyze is not, therefore, to find fault with, or to fix ("cure"). Analysis is often referred to in metaphoric terms as "breaking down." "Breaking down" certainly has some negative associations, but analysis, at least as it is being considered here, carries none of them. The expression "break it down for me" means separate it into its constituent parts so I can see how it is intended to operate. One could also think of it in terms of an unfamiliar machine which one disassembles to see what makes it work. See RHETORICAL ANALYSIS.
To argue from analogy is to assert that what we already know of one set of circumstances can be seen as similar to another, and indeed similar enough so that what has happened in one case can be assumed to happen in the other. Analogy is never proof (see) and is rather judged according to its "strength." A strong analogy agrees in many points with what it is compared to, a weak analogy in a few or none. Naturally, all analogy, if pursued far enough, will break down (on the simple basis that no one thing is another thing, and hence the comparison will at some point fail).
Perhaps the most famous analogy is the so-called "Argument from Design" which asserts that because natural things in the world appear to have some purpose, like something that I make has some purpose (ax, plow, whatever), it therefore follows that since I did not make the natural things in the world, some force much greater than I must have. Therefore, God exists. Notice that this is not a proof, it is rather an argument, and its strength depends on the reader's estimate of the degree of correspondence between the things compared.
Beginning rhetorical analysts tend to refer to any analogy whose implications they do not like as a "false" analogy. This is a worthless designation for our purposes because, as above, all analogies are finally false, as all metaphors finally break down. To say an analogy is false, or even weak, is tantamount to saying "this is not a persuasive analogy," which of course is unacceptable because it begs the question "to whom?" Analogies "work" or don't on the basis from which the audience receives them. Like metaphors they typically present a concrete image for an abstraction. If, for instance, I compare "the problem of poverty" to a water leak in a basement, I do so on the hope that the reader will find the image somehow apt. I can't show the reader "poverty" since poverty is a quality, not a "thing." I can give the reader examples of poor people, but poverty, in a sense is what "contains" them, and is not, in itself, visible. So to talk about poverty in any concrete way I must either talk about specific instances of poverty or discuss it by analogy. See METAPHOR, of which analogy can be considered an elaborated or developed form.
Unlike analogy, which is intended to invoke points of similarity between two categories (one of which is usually abstract), negative analogy hopes to establish points of dissimilarity. Consider that there are two basic ways to describe a thing or a concept-one can say what it is like, and then what it is not like. This may be like the process that the mind goes through as it tries to identify and classify any unfamiliar object (or concept): the primary search is for an existing category into which an item or concept can be fitted, which search process necessarily entails the rejecting of some (or all) of them, and thus recognizes unlikeness, or dissimilarity. Thus it is valuable to know what a thing is unlike as well as what it is like. I began this paragraph with the word "unlike" in an attempt to both introduce the term "negative analogy" and simultaneously present an example of it. Negative analogy occurs in a wide number of common expressions, among which, in addition to "unlike" and "dissimilarly," are "not to be confused with," "as distinct from," and the everyday "different from."
Analogies and negative analogies often attempt to appeal to a reader on the basis of their wit, as in the bumper sticker which reads "A Woman Without a Man is like a Fish without a Bicycle." The hope here, presumably, is that the reader may respond, "But what does a fish need with a bicycle?" and then on consideration see that that is exactly the point of the analogy.
"Drug related crime is completely out of control. On my way to the Senate today I could see federal agents making a drug arrest in the park across the street from the White House itself." So might begin an argument in favor of increased spending for law enforcement, or a federal agency dealing with narcotics. An anecdote is a short narration of a "story" of an incident which is seen to be interesting, pathetic, cute, outrageous, illustrative, or funny. Most often the story constitutes a launch point for the argument to be presented and becomes a part of the evidence offered in support of the argument. That it is an anecdote distinguishes it from documented evidence of other sorts, so the form lends itself well to being crafted into a precise example of whatever point is to be argued. In that anecdotes are "off the record," are not "official" data, and hence difficult to impossible to verify, they can be easily constructed to perfectly fit the point. Often they draw their strength in an argument from the ethos (see) of the writer-the perception that the writer is an honest person and so would not make up the story that she narrates as having recently occurred to her (and most often very recently-even on the same day, as an event that suggested that an argument needed to be presented in the first place). See INDUCTIVE ARGUMENT.
APERCU (aa per sue) *******get the symbol
The term would be used by an analyst in a structure such as "The writer here presents, as apercu, that women, on the average, are shorter than men." That is to say, the comment is that the writer does not present her statement merely as an observation, but as if it were an insight, as if it were a particularly astute perception. "And then it came to me, women are shorter than men. " This example is deliberately unsubtle because what I mean to stress is that to describe a presentation as "apercu" is to talk about the manner of presentation rather than to make a comment on the actual "insightfullness" of the comment itself. Like objectivity (see), apercu describes a rhetorical pose rather than confers a positive evaluation. See also EPIPHANY.
A second meaning of apercu is as a name for a summary, outline, or synopsis.
An aphorism is a brief and usually easily remembered statement which asserts a value or a supposed "insight." Their attractiveness is probably more to be attributed to the cleverness of their expression than the profundity of their content. Because they usually ask the reader to invest some work in decoding or figuring out their elliptical phrasing the reader who "gets it" tends to be less critical of the content than if it were stated in a lengthy and ordinary way. Additionally, aphorisms are often felt to have "passed the test of time," and to hence contain "wisdom" which would, were it not accurate, have fallen out of the language. Here, technically, the appropriate term is "adage" or "saying" rather than aphorism. The authors of adages and sayings are "the folk," "anon." or "traditional," whereas aphorisms, when quoted, pick up part of their cachet from the mention of the author's name, as in "Time is money"-Benjamin Franklin (which then can be ironically replied to with "Time is waste of money"-Oscar Wilde).
That statement which is described as "aphoristic" is brief, carefully worded, and presented as if it were a principle. See APHORISM.
The "apology" or the "apologetic" are frequently employed rhetorical forms and can be considered as aspects of the tone described in the entry for "modesty." In offering an apology or presenting something in an apologetic tone, the writer emphasizes to the reader that the reader is in the position of power in the relationship, that it is she who can accept or reject the apology. The appeal of such an approach probably lies in the notion that forgiveness is a virtue and in granting it one becomes a better person. The reader has, in other words, an opportunity to feel better about herself, and will associate some of the feeling with the writer who has asked for her forgiveness. She can say, in effect, "All right, I forgive you. Now what was it you wanted me to consider?" An anecdote (see) which the writer tells "on herself," is an often invoked form of apology. In offering an apology for a particular statement or action, the writer has a special opportunity to have the matter reflect as favorably as possible upon herself because she can define the terms and bring the rhetorical usage closer to the earlier use of the word where it meant offering an explanation rather than as an expression of regret (John Henry [Cardinal] Newman's 19th century Apologia Pro Vita Sua, or Plato's "The Apology" (Socrates' supposed statement immediately prior to his execution).
An aporia is a puzzling condition or situation. The rhetorical application of aporia is to pretend to an inability or confess to an actual inability to resolve a problem or answer a question. One might say of a political figure one was attacking, "I don't know what he lost first, his ability to tell the truth from a lie or his ability to behave morally." The device is often used when the question is being begged. A homely version of it is the often heard comment "How can people be so stupid?" uttered when something the speaker disapproves of has just happened
APOSIOPESIS (apo seeo pee sis)
Aposiopesis is much more common in speech than in writing, but in that writing which seeks the tone of the vernacular (see) it occurs frequently enough for the analyst to need a name for the practice. "In response to this, she said. . . ,well I think it would be better not to tell you what she said. The hoped for effect is that the reader considers herself in a more immediate relation to the writer who is presenting thoughts as they occur rather than censoring them through the revised forms we are used to in writing (which would produce, instead of the previous sentence, something like "I won't repeat what she said in response to this.")
The term can also refer to clearly implying an object or idea without specifically naming it. "In reply to what X suggests, I would say that had I known I was in a pasture when this argument started I would have been much more careful where I put my feet down." This second meaning for the term is another usage more frequent in speech than writing, but which again, when it does appear in writing, often seeks the mood of the immediacy of speech.
APPROPRIATE (uh pro pree ate; verb)
To appropriate something, as we might use the term in rhetoric, is to take an argument or a position from another, usually (although not necessarily) in a way that the other would not approve of. To appropriate, thus, is not to borrow (which involves the permission of the person borrowed from), it is to seize. It is argued, for instance, that so-called "Right to Life" advocates have "appropriated" the demonstration tactics of civil rights and antiwar activists. To use "appropriated" as a description of an activity in this way is intended to denigrate those supposedly doing the appropriation. One would not, for instance, say that civil rights demonstrators "appropriated" the methods of Ghandi because their activities would be seen as an extension of the principles behind Ghandi's efforts in India rather than in opposition to them. The use of the term, thus, constitutes loaded diction (see) in that it asserts an "ownership" of a methodology by a group of which the writer approves.
An argot is a vocabulary or selection of idiom (see) which is (supposedly) not intelligible to those who are not members of the group using this language. The word is frequently, although not necessarily, associated with the underworld and hence sometimes is intended to carry the suggestion that its use is a deliberate attempt to be incomprehensible to those not members of the group. Thus for a writer to describe something as "argot" is to impute the negatives associated with secrecy, plotting, etc. Ironically, however, the entertainment media have made such argots part of their stock-in-trade. Rock and rap music and mafia movies have employed the argots of organized crime, drugs, ethnic solidarity, and even surf talk to such an extent that the coded communications have become, as it were, public domain. As example, here are a few words which might at one time have been considered argot, and are, at least rhetorically, used as if they still are. Wack, score, hit, line, man, gnarly, piece, packed, and of much older distribution, honky, gringo, suit, and straight.
Argument is understood as opposed to "assertion" (see), and refers to a set of statements (some of which are often assumed rather than stated directly [see ENTHYMEME]) from which a conclusion is held to follow. In rhetoric the term is not restricted to the usual "argument with" or "don't argue with me" structure which assumes that an argument for something is necessarily an argument against something else. Argument, at some point always involves assertion (each premise [see], for instance, is an assertion) but presents these premises as evidence for the conclusion offered. Typically, arguments are classified as either inductive or deductive (see, and also see SYLLOGISM).
To assert something is simply to say that it is so or is not so. If one says that something is so insistently enough, or often enough, one is sometimes believed. An assertion is not an argument, and consequently depends for its acceptability on the credibility of the writer or on its being believed by the intended audience. Is the writer's saying that such and such is true sufficient to make a given reader believe it? Is what the writer is asserting commonly enough believed by the intended audience that it does not need to be argued? The premises of an argument, the statements on which the argument is based or from which the conclusion is held to follow, are assertions. So while an assertion is not an argument, arguments are composed of assertions from which a conclusion is drawn. See PREMISE and SYLLOGISM.
It may be helpful to think of asserting (making an assertion) as occupying a position on the strong end of a series of words dealing with the relative assurance or tentativeness with which a given position is presented. That tentativeness, although assertion is associated with a "strong" statement, is usually not associated with weakness but with the goal of solving a problem. Presenting something firmly or loudly does not make one correct, and indeed, depending on the audience, may produce doubt in cases where something stated as a suggestion or a possibility would not. Here is one of a number of possible lists ranging from most accommodating (least assertive) to most assertive.
offer
suggest
submit
present
propound
propose
claim
state
assert
See ROGERIAN ARGUMENT and ACCOMMODATION.
The argument from association is allied to the ad populum argument (see) and sometimes to the ad hominem circumstantial (see). To argue that X must be a criminal because she is continually seen in the company of known felons is an argument from association (we popularly know this as "guilt by association"). X could, however, be a criminologist, a sociologist, a parole officer, and so forth. To put an item in a list of things commonly held to be good is also association (we might call it "virtue by association"). Of course the applications of this are not limited to people. To talk, for instance, about "astrology, spirit mediums, palm reading, phrenology, orgone machines, and psychoanalysis" is to "assert" an association between psychoanalysis and the other items of the list that are commonly regarded as discredited. Hence the attempt to establish this association is negatively loaded against psychoanalysis. (See LOADED DICTION.)
Assumption has a number of different senses. A "surd" (see), for instance, is an assumption-that which we accept for the moment so that the argument can proceed. Often we find the word "assumption" used in the same way as "opinion," that is, to derogate the statement in question, as in "That's just an assumption." The problem here is that an "assumption" is in this case usually being compared to a "fact," and again usually in a naive way (see FACT). In rhetoric it is not sufficient to object to a given statement on the simple basis that it is an assumption. The question is, instead, is the statement an unwarranted assumption (see WARRANT), an unjustified assumption, a naive assumption, and so on.
To attribute a statement of a position to a particular source is a frequently used rhetorical device and as with many other devices it can be used either positively or negatively. My favorite example occurs in Orwell's "Politics and the English Language": "Our civilisation is decadent and our language-so the argument runs-must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes." It is very unlikely that anyone ever postulated the position that Orwell attributes to "the argument" that he will oppose in quite this way, but Orwell uses the organic "decadence" (decay) metaphor to provide an occasion for his suggested substitution of a mechanical metaphor in considering the language as an "instrument" rather than an organism which will (like all organisms) inevitably die. One might argue that this is a straw man argument (see), but it functions also as an example of how attribution can be used to the detriment of one's opposition. It should be noted that in the presentation of the "argument" Orwell neither identifies a particular group of people with it nor gives any particular indication of his negative view of it. Indeed students who have read the essay carelessly will often say that Orwell believes that the language is decadent (probably because it is so commonplace to say that our civilization is decadent and that it seems obvious that our language is a part of our civilization).
Most often an essayist will use attribution to either distance herself from or reinforce a position. It is vital to the rhetorical analyst to observe when the writer is speaking in her own voice and when she is attributing a statement to another. A position to be incorporated, endorsed, partially endorsed, or attacked may be presented over a fairly lengthy part of an essay, with only a brief statement before or after indicating that it does not originate from the essayist herself. See CITATION.
AUTHORITY, ARGUMENT FROM (Latin form, Ad Vericundium)
The argument from authority is complex in that it raises the question of who constitutes an authority, especially if two "experts" will testify to opposite conclusions. But it is additionally complicated, as often occurs, when the "authority" invoked is held to be supernatural or to be speaking for the supernatural. For instance, appeals for "civil disobedience" often refer to disobeying a man-made law in favor of obeying a "higher" law. The problem comes in dealing with the "ethos" (see) of the person telling us what that "higher law" is, or where it is to be found and what it means. For instance, the statement "God tells us to . . . ," or "The Bible tells us that . . . ," raises the question, "According to whom?" This can be fairly tricky. When, for instance, on the death of a pope, the college of cardinals casts ballots on who from their number will be the new pope, Roman Catholic theology does not see the process as voting, but as moving toward the revelation of the will of God. Thus the cardinals do not express their authority but instead "reveal" the authority of God. On the temporal plane the question of authority, as above, is complicated by there being no such thing as a "final" authority, and, consequently, arguments from authority being met by arguments from other authorities. What is important to bear in mind here is that an argument from authority has never "proved" (see) anything. This is hardly to say, however, that such arguments should be rejected out-of-hand; rather they should be considered in terms of the qualifications of the authority invoked to pronounce on a particular issue.
John Paulos, in his A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper tell the story of three duck hunting statisticians. The first fires six inches above the duck, and the second six inches below, at which the third exclaims "We got it!" "In fact," we might say, they missed it. But "in fact," because ducks are hunted with shotguns, it is likely that the spread of the pellets from the combined shots was sufficient to bring down the duck (that double the "average" number of pellets in 12 gauge bird shot spread to x diameter at a range of y meters would suffice for a bird of z size). In Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegone, all of the children are above average, and one can, with similar logic argue that some sort of a "B" is the "average" grade in college courses. These things depend, of course, on how we define that apparently unambiguous term "average." What is average depends on what you are counting, what, in other words, defines the perameters of your data-base. Although it is a joke, it is possible for all the children who inhabit a given town to be above average, provided that the population from which the average was derived was considerably larger than just the population of children in the town itself. It is frequently important to distinguish between the average (mean) and the middle (median, the point at which there are equal numbers above and below the figure given).
We seem to face in two distinct directions concerning our uses of the notion of "average." On the one hand we deplore the average as being hum-drum, everyday, without "distinction" of any sort. On the other, the "man in the street," the "average American," the "people," and the "public" are revered as a democracy's source of strength and wisdom. See STATISTICS.
Bear in mind, moreover, the conceptual difficulties involved in the concept of "average" when other than a numerical value is intended. Of what race is the average person, what gender, what political views? We could presumably come up with figures for weight, height, age and IQ, but beyond that the concept is nearly insupportable By one measure, for instance, given that women outnumber men, the average "person" has slightly less than one testicle. And if one is to utilize greatest number to establish the representative average (rather than a "construct"), and if one is not to be parochial, the "man in the street" is an Asian woman. See BALANCE.