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Rhetoric

Rhetoric Midterm

In the text box, enter your question (label it QUESTION, in all caps) and directly beneath it your answer (ANSWER in all caps). Be sure to include your name in your post.

As a guide to the kinds of questions I'm looking for, use the 30 midterm review questions posted on the EXAMS page of the course website. As an alternative to writing out an answer, you can refer us to a particular page in one of our textbooks or a page (provide URL) on our course website. You may post as many questions and answers as you like up until the evening of the midterm exam. However, I will have finished making up the exam by Sunday night, October 21, so if you'd like to see your question considered for the exam, post it by Sunday evening. I can't promise that I'll use your question (or even a version of it), but the review should be helpful in any case. Each evening I'll check the postings on the forum and correct or delete any misinformation that I might find there. Posting questions and answers isn't a requirement, but there's not a single good reason not to post at least one Q & A.

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Subject:		midterm q&a--section A
Name:		eva
Date Posted:		Mar 14, 08 - 4:02 PM
Email:		eve_pandora@hotmail.com
Message:		QUESTION PARALEPSIS and EVIDENCE "Another way that is used is to put your wife on the payroll. Let me say, incidentally, that my opponent, my opposite number for the Vice-presidency on the Democratic ticket, does have his wife on the payroll and has had her on his payroll for the past ten years. Now let me just say this-- That is his business, and I am not critical of him for doing that. You will have to pass judgment on that particular point, but I have never done that for this reason: I have found that there are so many deserving stenographers and secretaries in Washington that needed the work that I just didn't feel it was right to put my wife on the payroll-- My wife sitting over there." ANSWER In this excerpt from Richard Nixon's "Checker's Speech" (1952), Nixon defends questionable campaign financial arrangements by shifting the attention onto his opponents. In this case, he calls out his Democratic opponent for Vice President by employing paralepsis, emphasizing a point by seeming to pass over it. Nixon makes his subtle attack seem like a coincidence with the insertion of the word "incidentally," and then says that his opponent's wife's position on the payroll is not Nixon's "business," nor is he critical of the man for it; but in saying so, Nixon emphasizes his point that politicians' wives should not be on the payroll (work out the logic of that for yourself!). Nixon uses evidence (facts, documentation, or testimony used to strengthen a claim or reach a conclusion) about his opponent to illustrate why Nixon is the ethically superior candidate, while the testimony of his wife Pat Nixon on the television screen strengthens his ethos as a family man.
Replies:
Re: midterm q&a--section A by Nordquist · Mar 16, 08 - 8:56 PM

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