Analogy
 from Gr. analogos, a due ratio
 extended metaphor or simile
 comparison of two quite different things or
activities for the purpose of explanation; often
used in science writing.
 A child is like a tender plant needing care from
a skilled gardener.
 A mind is like a parachute…
 Limit your analogies; don’t draw them out to
the point of absurdity.
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Analogy: Textbook says/Ogden
says
 Textbook: “an analogy must truly illuminate. Overly
obvious examples, such as the one comparing a battle
to an argument, offer few or no revealing insights.”
 Ogden: “Wrong.”
 [Text is very useful on the same page (261-2) on
advertising & comparisons.]
Analogy: Example
 Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species
 Wanted to persuade audience of the concept of
mechanistic evolution—change and development
without Divine attention
 Darwin’s Concept: “Natural Selection”
 Given 1.] Variation in procreation—organic reproduction—exists
 Given 2.] Stuff [‘nature’] exists
 Darwin’s Argument: 1 + 2 = ‘natural selection’ = ‘fittest
organisms live and unfit die’=biological diversity.
 Darwin’s Analogy: “Artificial Selection”
 In animal husbandry, breeders select the strongest & best
speciens and breed them to create diversity.
Grant DePatie
 24 y/o young man from Maple
Ridge
 Tattooed his 3 siblings’ names
above his heart
 Bought $7000 mountain bike
instead of a car
 Graveyard shift at Maple Ridge
Esso, saving money for school to
become helicopter pilot
 Took the license number of a
fuelling car reported by a
customer of having its ignition
punched out.
Darnell Pratt

First Nations ancestry

Mother a crystal meth addict

Taken by Social Workers at 12 and
placed with an aunt.

Night of the crime, 16 y/o, drank 20
beer.

Jacked a car, stole $12 gas, ran over
the attendant, dragged him 8 km to
slow death by flaying & burning alive

Boasted to friends he’d heard the
screams as he dragged Mr. dePatie to
his death.

7 year sentence, ran away from
halfway house at his early parole
release
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Cause and Effect
(RCT)
 Exercise: “Why…?” “Because…”
 some uses of cause and effect
 to describe a process to a patient
 to promote a policy change to a supervisor
 to explain current events
 to check the validity of a explanation
 Different kinds of causes exist. (Duh!)
general material adapted from: Winifred Bryan Horner, Rhetoric in the
Classical Tradition, 1988 (RCT), & Reinking, J., et al., Strategies for
Successful Writing (SSW)
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Types of Causes
Causes can be classified by their


power to produce an effect or event
temporal relationship to the effect or event
Causal analysis uses both categories:

Smoking is both a contributory and a
remote cause of death for the smoker with
lung cancer.
Causes according to
power to produce an effect
 Necessary Cause: essential for the effect to occur; effect
can’t occur without the presence of that cause; but
presence of this cause alone doesn’t assure the effect.
 Sufficient Cause: could on its own produce or
precipitate the effect, but other causes may be involved.
Sufficient causes can help out necessary causes.
 Contributory Cause: helps bring about, but cannot by
itself produce, an event; a particular combination of causes
might be necessary.
Most occurrences have several sufficient causes, not just a
single necessary cause.
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Causes according to
temporal relationship to an effect
 Immediate Cause
 cause that directly produced the outcome or
effect.
 Remote Cause(s)
 a more distant factor or combination of factors
that eventually produce an effect.
 Causal Chain
 each event is the effect of the preceding one and
the cause of the following one
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Cause & Effect in Technical
Situations
 Troubleshooting:
 Known effects—find the cause
 Computer won’t start—not plugged in
 Engineering:
 Known cause—study the effects
 New type of pest control on Granville Island—effects on prey population.
 Problem Solving:
 Need causes & effects
 Improved urban design:
 causes of human satisfaction & dissatisfaction + causes of resource
management
 effect (invent & design) new urban layout and elements
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Aristotle’s Four Causes
1. Material cause: the physical properties
involved.
2. Formal cause: the aggregate of underlying
properties which amount to its unique identity.
3. Efficient cause: the initial motion or action
which began the event.
4. Final cause: the event's function or purpose -its end.)
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Aristotle’s Four Causes, con’t
Example: Game of Billiards
I pot the black in a game of billiards. Thwack! It's in; I win again.
1.
Material cause is the solid construction of the table, balls, &c.: if the cue
ball were tissue and the black jello, the effect (the potting of the black)
would not take place.
2.
Formal cause is the rules of billiards, the shape of the table, cue, rack,
and all the other contributing elements that shape and frame -- i.e. that
form -- the event
3.
Efficient cause, of course, is the mechanics behind the cue hitting the cue
ball.
4.
Final cause is Stephen Ogden winning the match and having his universal
supremacy at billiards re-affirmed for posterity . Or something like that.
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Aristotle’s Four Causes, con’t
Explanatory power for a BIG effect: Causes of WWI
1. Efficient Cause: The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Bosnian
terrorist / freedom fighter Gavrilo Princip.
2. Material cause: includes 1914 Europe's demographics, military
technology & ordnance, national-geographical, and perhaps the
crossover network of treaties in effect.
3. Formal cause: the ethnic, cultural and political histories of the
nations and Empires involved.
4. Final cause: …. for each historian, historiographer and theologian to
decide and to argue individually.
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Aristotle’s Four Causes, con’t
Explanatory power for
a BIG Workplace
‘Effect” is …..?
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Put events into a causal chain
(SSW, p. 206)
At a key moment, labour, business, and government leaders
abandoned ideological differences and constructed a shared
socio-economic strategy. These factors, in concert with strategic
investment in education and a focused effort to attract new foreign
investment, produced over 500,000 new jobs in the 1990s.
Ireland’s recent economic success has been achieved, in part,
through a social or strategic partnership. Armed with a consensus
on the problem, they took a long-term, strategic approach to
economic and social change. The steps they took established a
positive labour relations climate and stabilized the macroeconomic and fiscal situation in Ireland.
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Cause & Effect-Reasoning Errors
(SSW)
 Ignoring multiple causes.
 “neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security
before we live it in Palestine, and not before all the infidel armies
leave the land of Mohammed,” (O.bin L.10/7/01)
 “The only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to
stop it, eliminate it and destroy it where it grows.” (GWB,9/20/01)
 Mistaking chronology for causation.
 BC Liberals have caused increased waiting lists for medical procedures
(waiting lists might have lengthened no matter what party governed)
 (“Correlation is not causation.” Hospitals cause sickness because
hospitals are full of sick people.
 They married because they were in love. (love may have
developed because they married)
 Depression causes a spousal abuser to increase abuse (the abuse may
cause depression in the abuser)
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How To Present Cause & Effect


a.k.a. rhetorical cause and effect
To explore cause and effect, a writer can
organize (arrange) & present ideas:
1. in terms of causes
2. in terms of effects
3. in terms of the event itself as a cause or an
effect of another event or idea.

A writer can choose to focus on just one event
or issue within the chain.
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How Essays Present Cause & Effect
(RCT, SSW)
1. from known cause to probable effect(s)


The 2010 Winter Olympics will help the BC economy.
Bad mortgages have caused bank failures.

sample discourse (document / speech) structure:
 Introduction: identifies cause
 Body
 Effect #1
 Effect #2
 Effect #3
 Conclusion
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How Essays Present Cause & Effect, cont.
2. from known effect to its cause(s)

e.g., medical diagnosis - from symptoms to suggested cause;
high debt load among post-secondary students, which
results from …….

sample discourse (document / speech) structure:
 Introduction: identifies effect
 Body
 Cause #1
 Cause #2
 Cause #3
 Conclusion
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How Essays Present Cause & Effect,
cont.
2a.from effect to effect: assumes that cause
producing one effect will also produce others
If you have a sore throat caused by a virus, you may
also develop a fever.
Bankruptcies resulted from U.S. bad lending policies
(note: what’s the bias here?)


 Sample structure:


Introduction: identifies main effect
Body
 Effect #2
 Effect #3
 Effect #4

Conclusion: identifies cause
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How Essays Present Cause & Effect,
cont.
3. using a causal chain

Because of a poor night’s sleep, a student wakes up late and
arrives late to an exam, on which she does badly.

Sample Structure



Intro: poor night’s sleep can lead to poor exam results
Body of essay
A. Cause 1: little sleep
B. Effect 1: late arrival
C. Cause 2: late arrival
D. Effect 2: poor exam results
Conclusion
How and why can causal chains be reductive?
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Causal Analysis - exercise
 Why is gang violence on the rise in the
Vancouver area?
 Why did the federal election have the results
it did?
Analytical Patterns
- Cause(s) to Effect(s) – What type(s) of cause?
- Effect(s) to Cause(s) – how many effects? What
type(s) of cause?
- Causal Chain: Effect Causing/Effect Causing …
Midterm preparation: Outline a Causal
Analysis of “It’s the Oil”
 Consider the essay in context of Conspiracy Theory
 Examples:
 ‘Truthers’—’9/11 was an inside job.’
 ‘Birthers’—’Barak Hussein Obama is not an American
 The Da Vinci Code: ‘the Catholic Church is responsible for all the ills of
woman.’
 Hillary Clinton: ‘a vast right-wing conspiracy
 CONSPIRACY THEORY:
 Dogmatic reasoning—i.e. reasoning from pre-held opinions
 Unfalsifiable: any counter-explanation is used as proof.
 Self-affirming: self-satisfied feeling of being in the know
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KISS Principle of Essay Organisation
 Keep It Simple Stupid
 Four-part essay structure
 One paragraph Introducing the essay to come
 One paragraph on the contrast
 One paragraph on the comparison
 On paragraph to say what happen in ¶s 1. & 2.
 Critique your partner’s essay against this form
Factor
A factor is a
contributing
cause to an
effect.
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