Teaching Argument Writing with Frankenstories

Instead of making a logical argument to convince an audience’s mind, an appeal to emotion seeks to manipulate their hearts.

Emotion is a very important part of persuasion. It helps us decide what to care about.

The point here isn’t “don’t use emotion” or “disregard persuasive attempts that include emotional appeals”, but to be wary of “arguments” that only appeal to emotion—they should have evidence and reasoning to back up their claims!

This is the assertion that because everyone is doing something, or believes something, that it must be good or true.

Appeal to popularity is not always a fallacy though.

• In democracies, we decide who our leaders should be based on popularity—”These people should be in government because most people voted for them” is perfectly good reasoning.
• But “These people will be good leaders because most people voted for them” is a fallacious appeal to popularity.

This is the assertion that because a leader or celebrity is doing something, or believes something, that it must be good or true.

Appeals to authority are very useful in persuasion—they allow you to use the character and credibility of the authority as a proxy for your own character.

This is why celebrity advertising is so common—no one really cares what Coca Cola's marketing team has to say about Coke, but they do care what Selena Gomez has to say about it.

But to be legitimate arguments, appeals to authority should be backed up by reasoning and evidence.

This is the assertion that something is good because it is natural, or bad because it's unnatural.

This argument about cultured meat contrasts "absurd" "unnatural" cultured meat with "fresh" natural produce:

Eating meat grown in a lab is an "absurdity" and "unnatural" practice that takes away from "fresh" produce.

That's according to Hugh, a chef, who was speaking to Lunchtime Live about the emerging lab-grown meat market.

(Source: NewsTalk)

Anecdotes and tales of personal experience are often used as evidence in arguments, and sometimes they’re the best evidence we have at the time.

Anecdotal evidence becomes fallacious when it is used to dismiss other (stronger) evidence.

There is one caveat to this—when arguing about specific situations (as opposed to general trends), anecdotes may be considered strong evidence. 

• For example, a witness testimony identifying Old Granny Maple as the Saturday Night Bank Robber is more compelling than statistics saying that most bank robberies aren’t committed by women in their over 70s.
• But it would be fallacious to point to Old Granny Maple committing her robbery in order to dismiss those same statistics in an argument about whether women should be placed under increased police surveillance due to the chances they might go out and rob a bank.

Write like they are trying to convince you to buy something.

R1: Introduce issue & make claim
R2: Back up claim using the support of an authority figure or celebrity.
R3: Back up claim using its popularity or prevalence as supporting evidence.
R4: Evoke a strong emotional response to garner support for the claim.
R5: Conclude argument in whatever way you like.

Example: It's like there's a party in my head, and everyone's invited