TEKS Talk - SLA Authors Purpose image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Author's purpose and craft: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student uses critical inquiry to analyze the authors' choices and how they influence and communicate meaning within a variety of texts. The student analyzes and applies author's craft purposefully in order to develop his or her own products and performances.

Provide small groups of students with the text for an advertisement that includes rhetorical devices and logical fallacies. Task students with reading the text and identifying specific examples of rhetorical devices and logical fallacies. Have students complete a graphic organizer to guide their work as they discuss the differences between rhetorical devices and logical fallacies.

List the text example

Is it a rhetorical device?

Does the author include repetition, analogies, or juxtaposition to prove how reasonable it is?

Is it a logical fallacy?

Does the author make the idea appear more reasonable than it really is?
     
     
     

 

Further Explanation

This SE requires students to understand how writers use specific phrasing, sentences, and example types to make the argument clear and relatable to the audience. Students should be aware that writers can use some of these same devices to manipulate language and misrepresent the facts supporting an idea, creating logical fallacies that make an idea appear more reasonable than it realistically is. Students should be able to recognize and describe the differences between the two strategies.

Students should understand that writers can use specific constructions in phrasing, sentences, and example types to make their arguments clear and relatable to the audience. Rhetorical devices such as repetition, analogies, or juxtaposition can help writers illustrate their perspectives and prove how reasonable their positions are, which can make the argument more convincing. However, students should also be aware that writers can use some of these same devices to manipulate language and misrepresent the facts supporting an idea, creating logical fallacies that make an idea appear more reasonable than it realistically is. Students should be able to recognize and describe the differences between the two strategies.
an incorrect or problematic argument that is not based on sound reasoning; also known as faulty reasoning (e.g., sweeping generalization, circular reasoning, red herring, hyperbole, emotional appeals, stereotype, hasty generalization, etc.)
a technique that an author or speaker uses to influence or persuade an audience (e.g., rhetorical questions, repetition, analogies, juxtaposition, parallelism, rhetorical shifts, antithesis)