Notes for February 4

External Proof

I. Understanding extrinsic proof first takes us back to Crowley and Hawhee’s discussion of kairos and arrangement:

“The connections between kairos and arrangement become clear: attention to kairos in arrangement means knowing when and where to marshal particular proofs. Kairos suggests the possibility of achieving an advantage with optimal placements of arguments, propitious timing, or the combination of the two” (293).

A. Aristotle wrote that “intrinsic proofs have to be invented with the aid of rhetoric, while extrinsic proofs are situated within the circumstances of a case or issue, and have only to be used” (Crowley and Hawhee 268).

1. Invented proof emerges from our rhetorical strategies.
2. Situated proof emerges in the situation; we look to the situation for what is available to make our case; what we draw upon from the evidence available helps to make our case compelling, interesting, and even dramatic.

B. Ad Council Campaign: Think Before You Speak: http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=539

II. To elicit logical, dramatic, and rational audience processes, a writer uses evidence and reasoning.

There are two types of evidence:
A. Dramatic Evidence is used to connect audience lives to a message, author, and occasion.

1. Narratives: stories that have persuasive impact because they connect values, attitudes, and beliefs present in our own circumstances.

2. Testimony: involves eyewitness accounts of an event or an expert on a particular issue.

a. Peer testimony (proximate authority) involves those who have direct experience with an event.

b. Expert testimony (community authority) includes those who have particular studied expertise on an issue, object, or event.

3. Examples: "Aristotle's word for example was paradeigma ('model'). A rhetorical example is any particular that can be fitted under the heading of a class and that represents the distinguishing features of that class" (Crowley and Hawhee 171).

a. Brief/Serial Examples: “Adds totality to a author’s remarks by presenting, in scattered fashion, numerous instances of the same phenomenon” (Roderick Hart, Analyzing Argument 127).

b. Extended Examples: “Adds vivacity to a speaker’s remarks by presenting a detailed picture of a single event or concept” (Hart 127)

B. Rational Evidence is evidence that appeals to our logical senses in non-dramatic ways.

1. Statistics: numerical descriptions of particular phenomena.

a. Descriptive statistics: these statistics represent the actuality of what occurred.

EX: in a car of four that crashed on the highway: 3 people were injured and 1 was killed.

b. Inferential statistics: a numerical percentage based on a representative sample of people.

EX: In a study conducted of 100 college students 75% stated that they liked chocolate ice cream better than vanilla.

c. One key element with data: the networks of interpretation through which data are filtered (Crowley and Hawhee 281).

2. Fallacies of Missing Evidence: Question how data is gathered as well as the precision of the numbers.

a. Unrepresentative Data: drawing a conclusion from an unrepresentative or biased sample; is the sample from which the statistics are drawn a representative one?

EX: If one polls Seattle residents to describe their position on homelessness and then conclusions are drawn for the whole Pacific Northwest--the sample is unrepresentative.

EX: This year's survey includes responses from 6,209 LGBT students between the ages of 13 and 21 from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. ("Press Release" http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=539).

b.Biased sampling has to do with who is polled and how people are impacted by this information.

EX: If white middle class suburban folks are interviewed about the spread of HIV/AIDS and these statistics are used to create public policy for African American poor women who live in the inner city--we can assume the statistics are biased.