How do you interpret linguistic elements and rhetorical techniques? - Chapter 2

Linguistic phenomena

The interpretation of speech or text is often hampered by all sorts of linguistic phenomena in everyday language. A number of these phenomena are discussed below.

Ambiguity

A sentence is ambiguous if there are several ways to interpret it. In lexical ambiguity , a word has two or more meanings; a ‘bank’ can both be by the side of the river s well as an institute that helps you save money. The context often helps to correctly interpret the word. However, if the two meanings of a word are close together, this becomes more difficult. For example, if someone says: the average mortgage has doubled in the last six years, he can mean that the mortgage that people took out six years ago has doubled. However, he can also mean that the average mortgage that is now taken out is twice as high as the average mortgage that was taken out six years ago. In syntactic ambiguity , the sentence order allows different interpretations, such as in the sentence "woman admits to having driven dangerously in court" (she admit, in cort, that she has driven dangerously before, or she admit that she took the car into the court and drove dangerously.).

Vagueness

Vagueness is often confused with ambiguity but does not indicate the same. Many charged words that appear in public language use are vague, such as 'rights', 'liberal' or 'sexism'. For instance, ‘this is war’, can mean many things. Words can also be vague in a more philosophical way, such as "orange," "thick," and "city." With such words, there is no clear demarcation for when something can or cannot be called that.

Primary and secondary connotation

Each noun and an adjective refers to a specific amount of things, which is also called the range (extension) of the word. For example, different types of squares fall within the scope of the word "square." The primary connotation of a word corresponds to the definition (for example, a ram is a male sheep). However, words also have additional characteristics (for example, a ram has a woollen coat and horns); these are not necessary for the definition and fall under the secondary connotation . This distinction is important for, for example, recognizing vague words; it is often difficult to say which properties fall under the primary or secondary connotation. In addition, the secondary connotation can be used as a rhetorical force. A special form of this is the secondary connotation of metaphorical use of language. If you call someone a pig, this is mainly about the secondary connotation of the word (dirty, greedy, etc.).

Rhetorical questions

Rhetorical questions have a questioning form, but indirectly contain a proposition that is supposed to be a generally known fact. However, the latter is not always the case.

Irony

There is irony when what someone says is actually the opposite of what they want to convey (for example, "what a nice weather" when it rains and storms). One’s tone of voice often indicates the use of irony.

Implicit relative sentences

With implicit relative sentences, a comparison is made with a certain group, but that comparison is not explicitly stated. This is for example the case with "we have a low apartment rent", or "she has an above average salary". They compare or average with something, however, it is not quite stated what this something is. These sentences are often vague and have little informative value.

Problems with quantifiers

Quantifiers are words that indicate a quantity or a frequency, such as "all", "too much", "nine", "always", etc. Quantifiers can cause three problems. First, quantifiers are not always used with sufficient precision (for example, when you say, "all students are poor", while you actually mean "a lot" or "almost all"). Secondly, some quantifiers themselves are vague, such as "some." Finally, people often omit quantifiers, such as “students don't put enough effort in their work”. With sentences like those, it is often not clear whether you mean all students, most students, the students at your school, etc. You can use counterexamples to test such generalizing sentences.

Quantifiers and generalizations

A generalization is a statement about a category of things, such as "all eggs have an egg yolk". Here we can make a distinction between soft generalizations (where actually quantifiers are implied as "often" and "usually"), and hard generalizations (where really quantifiers are meant as "none", "never" or "always"). Hard generalizations are often used for prejudices about certain groups of people, which  is dangerous, because people often interpret hard generalization as such.

Rhetoric moves

An attempt to convince without giving a good reason or motivation is called rhetoric. This includes the categories rhetorical moves and fallacies. Fallacies are argumentative but contain generally incorrect or poor reasoning. Rhetoric moves are non-argumentative and appeal to feelings and emotions instead of reason.

There are different types of rhetorical moves. This way they can appeal to specific feelings. Calling on novelty appeals to the desire for new things and trends and our fear of missing out on trends or improvements. (FOMO) Calling on popularity appeals to our desire to go with the masses and our confidence that popular products are better than non-popular ones. Recourse to pity or guilt appeals to our conscience through the generation of pity or guilt (such as advertisements for charities). Appealing to cuteness appeals to the appeal of cute things, such as children, (young) animals or animations. Also appealing to sexiness, wealth, status, hipness, etc. appeals to the attraction that we feel with these things. Calling on fear is widely used in politics, for example when exaggerating the danger of immigrants to make people opt for a stricter immigration policy. Appeal to derision takes place when a speaker or writer attacks the position of the opponent by pulling it into the extreme and thus making it ridiculous.

In addition to appealing to specific feelings, there are a number of other commonly used rhetorical moves. The direct attack often takes the form of a simple slogan, such as "drink cola!". Buzz words are words that have a lot of rhetorical power because of their rich secondary connotation, such as "change" in political campaigns. Scare quotes indicate the use of quotation marks to make the words of an opponent charged or ridiculous, such as "My opponent will have his 'reasons' for his actions". When acting on an ambiguity , the vagueness or ambiguity of a word or concept is deliberately used. For example, if the newspaper says that a certain person has "ties" with a terrorist organization, most people assume that that person is a terrorist. However, there are several other - less negative - ways in which someone can have a connection with that organization. Acting on implication means assuming the implications that a sentence brings. If a politician says, "If the government raises the income tax, the working families will suffer," it implies that the government actually intends to do this. However, that is not said literally and does not have to be that way. Another move is to ask leading or complex questions . An example of this is when you say, "Are you still beating your wife?", this assumes that it is true that you are beating your wife. The raising of a smokescreen indicates distracting the attention of the subject through rhetoric (for example, subtly changing the subject). A final rhetorical move is the use of the spin technique , where rhetoric is used to adjust the opinion of others. For example, if the government gives money to banks, they use the term "injecting liquidity" to make an extra impression on people.