SOAPS
Subject: Haiti
Occasion: Katrina was the occasion for the swift aid
Audience
Purpose
Speaker
Tone
Toulmin Model
Claim: point being made, argument
Data: supports claim
Warrant: what both sides agree on, finding common ground
Qualifier: limits claim
Backing: supports warrant
Reservation: acknowledges the other side of argument
Fallacies
Scare Tactics: persuasion by fear
Slippery Slope: outcome of unfortunate events
Non-Sequitor: not enough data to support claim
Either-Or: only two choices
Sentimental Appeal: panda
Bandwagon: trend
Dogmatism: only one choice
Moral Equivalence: wrong is wrong
Equivocation: half truth
Straw Man: attacking an argument that isn’t there
Ad Hominem: attacking the person not the argument
Faulty Analogy: making a comparison between two things that have no similarity
Tu Quo Que: you did it too
Hasty Generalization: stereotype
Faulty Causality: because of this, therefore
Begging the Question: question that doesn’t need to be asked
False Authority: because I said so
Tropes
Balanced Sentence: side by side, good and bad
Chiasmus: reverse grammatical structure
Epanalepsis: first and last word is the same
Ellipsis: omission of a word
Personification: giving inanimate objects human qualities
Interrupted Sentence: subordinate clause in the middle
Loose Sentence: subordinate clause at the end
Litotes: stating the obvious
Epistrophe: same word repeated at the end of a sentence
Hyperbole: exaggeration
Anadiplosis: the last word in a sentence is the first word in the next
Allusion: outside reference
Zeugma: when the verb governs the whole sentence
Euphemism: polite way of saying something harsh
Periodic Sentence: information comes at the end
Antimetabole: Live the life you love, love the life you live
Rhetorical Question: ?
Alliteration: repeated sounds
Anaphora: same word starts a series of sentences
Oxymoron: jumbo shrimp
Pun: play on words
Signifying: teasing
Claims
Claim of Definition: what it means
Claim of Policy: call on action, bandwagon
Claim of Cause: what happened
Claim of Value: judgment
Rhetorical Strategies
Ethos: appeal to ethics
Pathos: appeal to emotion
Logos: appeal to logic
Thesis
3 whats and so what
Writing Formula
Author’s name
Adjective
Term/Rhetorical Strategy
Strong Verb
Function
2 Examples
Rogerian Argument: finding common ground
Books
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinback
Who died first? Grandpa
Old Man and the Sea – Hemmingway
What sports did they talk about? Baseball
The Crucibles – Miller
Who cheated on his wife? Proctor
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
What did the picture of the girl that the soldier carried around do? Volleyball
Farewell to Arms - Hemmingway
What is Henry’s best friend’s name? Rinaldi
Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
What happened to the man after he killed Gatsby? He killed himself
The Sun Also Rises What was Jake’s injury? His leg is wounded
The Catcher in the Rye – Salinger
Who writes movies? D.B.
Where did Salinger go to school? Boarding school
Ethan Frome – Wharton
What happened to Ethan? He ran into a tree
Rewriting a Prompt
The following letters constitute the complete correspondence between an executive of the
Coca-Cola Company and a representative of Grove Press. Read the letters carefully. Then write
an essay analyzing the rhetorical strategies each writer uses to achieve his purpose and
explaining which letter offers the more persuasive case.
Syllogism – cannot be argued
Major premise, minor premise, conclusion
Enthymeme – can be argued
Major premise, minor premise, conclusion
Deductive reasoning
General to specifics
Inductive reasoning
Specifics to general
Goals
Intermediate: pass this class
Ultimate: graduate from high school
Arguments
Formal: argument you find in dictionary
Operational: argument of its function
Quantitative: numbers
Qualitative: data