Language Essay
Language misuse and fallacies of language are things that are often found throughout everyday written language today. People like to try and make their writing sound more interesting by filling it up with lots of clutter, lots of fallacies and by not following Orwell's rules of good writing. Writing is a form of expression and should be used to its potential and should inevitably make some sort of impact on the writer. The majority of people misuse language regularly and it is affecting our ability to understand what the true meaning of language really is. Some excellent fallacies of thinking can be found in the article "A long hard look at Conservatives" which was published in the Toronto Star on February 29 2004. Throughout the article you can find many examples of overgeneralizations, meaningless words, and also false causes. Some of the examples from the article that would be an example of an overgeneralization would be when the author writes that it would be a radical change to Canada if the Conservatives won the federal election. If the conservatives do win the election it doesn't mean that there will be a "radical" change to Canada but there could be some sort of change. Whether it may be beneficial
How do they know that another country needs to be invaded just to make things better? They don't know that invading countries are the right thing to do. In that statement they are saying that because of the Tory tax cuts there is an increase in violence and gangs when it could have been something else that caused the increase. An example of red herring is "imagine if premier Dalton McGuinty's government kept a promise and began to reinvest in public education. The last paragraph of the article is very accusatory because they are making fun of the Tories and calling them unfaithful, half- baked flops. Another example of false cause is, "City council should listen to its youth cabinet, which ahs recommended that funds should be spent on recreation centers in areas where youth is most at risk, rather than on a police firing range. Red herring is an attempt to evade the real issue by drawing attention to an irrelevant one. An example of this would be when the author talks about how the conservatives want to protect the traditional definition of marriage. The fallacies discovered included: false causes and red herrings. If people were to follow Orwell's rules of writing and avoid thinking fallacies people would be better riders and the language would be more easily understood. An example of a baseless conclusion is, "Washington says another country needs to be invaded, as was Iraq"(Appendix A). The third article that was used was called, "Liberals merely buying time on rebirth of Henderson" (Appendix C). This article had excellent had excellent examples of false cause and red herring. "There was more fizzle than sizzle" is an example of meaningless words because who really knows what the actual definition for sizzle and fizzle are. Another fallacy of thinking that appears quite often throughout this piece is false cause.
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Acceptance Essays
