47 Rhetorical Fallacies
Rhetoric often depends on reasoning through various means, but not all of those means will be logical or carry good intentions. A fallacy is the use of faulty logic or reasoning, often based on unsound arguments or crafted with the intention to mislead an audience.
When thinking about the logic of an argument, we should be on the lookout for logical fallacies, which can be hard to spot sometimes. For instance, sometimes fallacies are committed when reasoning by way of past cases (called casuistry), when reasoning by what is probable based on common knowledge (enthymemes), or when unnecessarily strict reasoning is used (syllogisms). Likewise, a certain logic may be more fallacious when used with a particular audience in a particular context. Demonstrating one’s logic about death through the use of a syllogism may be inappropriate to include in a graveside eulogy, whether it is strictly logical or not. On the other hand, a “red herring,” though fallacious, may be used to distract a jury to the benefit of the accused. The point is that fallacies pop up in all kinds of places, and it is probably good to assume that your audience will call you out on using them. For this reason, we need to understand some common fallacies that will help you to become a critical thinker and an exceptionally persuasive communicator.
When first learning about fallacies, many people turn to Yourlogicalfallacyis.com, which is a visually engaging site that explains about two dozen common logical fallacies with a card-like style. As the site authors state, “a logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning. Logical fallacies are like tricks or illusions of thought, and they’re often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people. Don’t be fooled!” Their website features each major fallacy with an icon and brief description. “Ambiguity,” for example, says:
You used a double meaning or ambiguity of language to mislead or misrepresent the truth. Politicians are often guilty of using ambiguity to mislead and will later point to how they were technically not outright lying if they come under scrutiny. The reason that it qualifies as a fallacy is that it is intrinsically misleading… When the judge asked the defendant why he hadn’t paid his parking fines, he said that he shouldn’t have to pay them because the sign said ‘Fine for parking here’ and so he naturally presumed that it would be fine to park there.
Arguments with fallacies may still be powerful enough to persuade an audience — but the more skill we have in spotting them, the less likely we are to fall for this type of rhetorically unsound, sometimes even sloppy reasoning. In this PBS video, the speaker discusses five common fallacies you can use to argue more confidently in any context (but especially on the internet).
Additionally, Knachel’s Fundamental Methods of Logic has a useful chapter on logical fallacies. Some of the most common fallacies are appeal to emotion, appeal to force, Straw Man, Red Herring, and Argumentum ad Hominem. As you read through these logical fallacies, think about where you may see fallacies in your daily life. There may be groups you associate with that use one of these more often than the others, or that make a point to explicitly avoid using them. Regardless, as you read you may pause to ask yourself: “In my writing and speaking, do I exploit any of these logical fallacies?
Straw Man
This fallacy involves the misrepresentation of an opponent’s viewpoint—an exaggeration or distortion of it that renders it indefensible, something nobody in their right mind would agree with. You make your opponent out to be a complete wacko (even though he isn’t), then declare that you don’t agree with his (made-up) position. Thus, you merely appear to defeat your opponent: your real opponent doesn’t hold the crazy view you imputed to him; instead, you’ve defeated a distorted version of him, one of your own making, one that is easily dispatched. Instead of taking on the real man, you construct one out of straw, thrash it, and pretend to have achieved victory. It works if your audience doesn’t realize what you’ve done, if they believe that your opponent really holds the crazy view.
Red Herring
This fallacy gets its name from the actual fish. When herring are smoked, they turn red and are quite pungent. Stinky things can be used to distract hunting dogs, who of course follow the trail of their quarry by scent; if you pass over that trail with a stinky fish and run off in a different direction, the hound may be distracted and follow the wrong trail. Whether or not this practice was ever used to train hunting dogs, as some suppose, the connection to logic and argumentation is clear. One commits the red herring fallacy when one attempts to distract one’s audience from the main thread of an argument, taking things off in a different direction. The diversion is often subtle, with the detour starting on a topic closely related to the original—but gradually wandering off into unrelated territory. The tactic is often (but not always) intentional: one commits the red herring fallacy because one is not comfortable arguing about a particular topic on the merits, often because one’s case is weak; so instead, the arguer changes the subject to an issue about which he feels more confident, makes strong points on the new topic, and pretends to have won the original argument.
Appeal to Emotion or Argumentum ad Populum
The Latin name of this fallacy literally means “argument to the people,” where ‘the people’ is used in the pejorative sense of “the unwashed masses,” or “the fickle mob”—the hoi polloi. It’s notoriously effective to play on people’s emotions to get them to go along with you, and that’s the technique identified here. But, the thought is, we shouldn’t decide whether or not to believe things based on an emotional response; emotions are a distraction, blocking hard-headed, rational analysis.
Think about Hitler for a minute. He was an expert at the appeal to emotion. He played on Germans’ fears and prejudices, their economic anxieties, their sense of patriotism and nationalistic pride. He stoked these emotions with explicit denunciations of Jews and non-Germans, promises of the return of glory for the Fatherland — and also used techniques within well-produced settings and hyper-sensational speechifying. There are as many different versions of the appeal to emotion as there are human emotions. Fear is perhaps the most commonly exploited emotion for politicians. Political ads inevitably try to suggest to voters that one’s opponent will take away medical care or leave us vulnerable to terrorists, or some other scary outcome—usually without a whole lot in the way of substantive proof that these fears are at all reasonable. This is a fallacious appeal to emotion.
Appeal to Force or Argumentum ad Baculum
Perhaps the least subtle of the fallacies is the appeal to force, in which you attempt to convince your interlocutor to believe something by threatening him. Threats pretty clearly distract one from the business of dispassionately appraising premises’ support for conclusions, so it’s natural to classify this technique as a Fallacy of Distraction. There are many examples of this technique throughout history. In totalitarian regimes, there are often severe consequences for those who don’t toe the party line (see George Orwell’s 1984 for a vivid, though fictional, depiction of the phenomenon). The Catholic Church used this technique during the infamous Spanish Inquisition: the goal was to get non-believers to accept Christianity; the method was to torture them until they did. An example from much more recent history: when it became clear in 2016 that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president, despite the fact that many rank-and-file Republicans thought he would be a disaster, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee (allegedly) sent a message to staffers informing them that they could either support Trump or leave their jobs. Not a threat of physical force, but a threat of being fired; same technique.
Argumentum ad Hominem
Everybody always uses the Latin for this one — usually shortened to just ‘ad hominem’, which means ‘at the person’. You commit this fallacy when, instead of attacking your opponent’s views, you attack your opponent himself. This fallacy comes in a lot of different forms; there are a lot of different ways to attack a person while ignoring (or downplaying) their actual arguments. To organize things a bit, we’ll divide the various ad hominem attacks into two groups: Abusive and Circumstantial. Abusive ad hominem is the more straightforward of the two. The simplest version is simply calling your opponent names instead of debating him. Donald Trump has mastered this technique. During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he came up with catchy little nicknames for his opponents, which he used just about every time he referred to them: “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio, “Low-Energy Jeb” Bush. If you pepper your descriptions of your opponent with tendentious, unflattering, politically charged language, you may get a rhetorical leg-up.
To summarize, logical fallacies are flaws in reasoning that are widely used. You can avoid falling into these logical pitfalls by making reasoned claims supported by credible evidence. Keep your arguments clear and ethical by avoiding logical fallacies and you’ll have more success persuading audiences.