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| Rhetoric | the art of persuasion through language (as opposed to persuasion through force or through bribery). In other words, rhetoric is convincing people who don’t already agree with you, using pathos, ethos, and logos. |
| Pathos | using the audience’s emotions to persuade them. It’s convincing people by making them feel pity, affection, guilt, etc. Aristotle associates pathos with the heart and the color red. |
| Ethos | using your own reputation to persuade someone. It’s presenting yourself as trustworthy, knowledgeable, fair, unbiased, etc. Part of it is not being rude to people who don’t already agree with you. Aristotle associates ethos with the hand and the color yellow. |
| Logos | using logic and factual evidence in an argument, convincing the audience that your conclusion is the smartest option. Aristotle associates logos with the head and the color blue. |
| Audience | the audience of a text is the people you imagine reading (or listening or watching) |
| Argument | a conclusion that is supported by evidence. The formula for an argument is E + (A) = C, which is for Evidence + (Assumption) = Claim. |
| Claim | what an argument is trying to convince you of. It’s the “what” of an argument. What does the author want you to believe by the end of the argument? A claim is often an opinion. |
| Evidence | the support given for the claim in an argument. It’s the “why” of the argument – why you should agree that the claim is true. |
| Counter-claim | a claim made by someone who doesn’t agree with your claim. If that counter-claim is supported by evidence, it becomes a counter-argument. |
| Rebuttal | a response to a counter-claim (or counter-argument), using evidence and reasoning to prove that the counter-claim is wrong and your claim is right. |
| Assumption | what the author of the argument is taking for granted. It’s what is left out of an argument, but must be true in order for the argument to make sense. |
| Objective | you look only at the facts and do not let your personal beliefs, opinions, or biases influence you. It also means presenting information without the filter of your personal beliefs. |
| Subjective | you let personal beliefs, opinions, or biases influence you. |
| Fact | something that can be proven to be true or false. |
| Opinion | a judgment or belief. Unlike facts, opinions cannot be proven to be true or false. |
| Imply | to suggest or hint, without stating something directly. Another way of saying this is that you give the evidence, but you don’t directly state the conclusion (or claim). |
| Infer | to put evidence together and draw a conclusion (or claim) that’s implied but not stated. When you infer, or make an inference, you put clues in the text together with your background knowledge. |
| Logical Fallacy | a weakness or flaw in an argument. It’s a mistake, a reason why the argument should not convince you. |
| Red herring | the fallacy of introducing high interest, irrelevant information to draw the audience’s attention away from the weaknesses of your argument. It’s a form of misdirection. |
| Ad hominem attack | Latin for “at the man.” Instead of arguing against someone’s ideas (facts, reasoning, etc), you attack them as a person. The false assumption is that a bad person cannot be correct. |
| Correlation vs. Causation | When two things are happening at the same time, and you mistakenly conclude that the first thing must be causing the second thing. (It could be coincidence, or both things could be caused by a common third thing, etc.) |
| Equivocation | When someone intentionally slides between two meanings of a word in order to mislead the audience. |
| Circular Reasoning | stating the conclusion twice (usually in different words), and pretending that you stated the conclusion once and then gave evidence to support it. For example, cherries are my favorite fruit because they’re my favorite. |
| Inductive Logic | starting with examples, and moving from there to an abstract rule or generalization. |
| Deductive Logic | starting from a rule or generalization and using that to figure out how the world works. |
| Author's purpose | the reason he or she decides to write about a particular topic. |
