Book Review: Thank You For Arguing Author: Jay Heinrichs Updated Edition. Three Rivers Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780385347754. 432 pages. After group class the other day, one of the participants and I got into a conversation about oratory and rhetoric. And I can’t talk about rhetoric without recommending my favourite book about speaking. If you don’t…
Demagogue, n.: A leader of a popular faction, or of the mob; a political agitator who appeals to the passions and prejudices of the mob in order to obtain power or further his own interests; an unprincipled or factious popular orator. (Oxford English Dictionary) In democracies the principal cause of revolutions is the insolence of…
We’ve made it. Sweet merciful mother of everything that’s holy, we’re at the end of the debates. Praise be, hallelujia. We’ve withstood the mud slinging, the ludicrous claims, the hurled invective, the hastily invented “facts.” I feel like we all need and deserve a long, hot shower. But not before another lesson in rhetoric. In debate…
Sunday October 9th represented Canadian Thanksgiving. I, along with many other of my fellow Canadians, gleefully stuffed myself full of turkey and pie, then settled down for a spectacular evening of sport. Mud was slung, invective was hurled. Tactics were tried and plays made, as calculated discipline on one side and flailing onslaught on the other. Oh…
Oh, how I love election season! Oh how I love debate night! Granted, I’d love it more if an evening of making pop-up rhetoric videos wasn’t bookended with a cranky, gassy, screaming baby, but such is life. In this Pop-Up Rhetoric video, we get into Red Herrings, Straw Man arguments, and Ad Hominem attacks. That’s…
I love rhetoric. I love political speeches. This means that election seasons are heaps of fun for me. I stayed up way too late on July 27 to create a new pop-up rhetoric video for you. This one pulls various rhetorical and oratorical devices, strategies, figures, and techniques from Joe Biden’s speech at the July 27…
