...Moore−Parker: Critical Thinking, Ninth Edition 5. Persuasion Through Rhetoric: Common Devices and Techniques Text © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2009 Chapter Persuasion Through Rhetoric 5 It’s just the way things are: Images and impressions tend to sell more products than good arguments do. At least some of the images are fun. Common Devices and Techniques W hen the military uses the phrase “self-injurious behavior incidents” regarding detainees at Guantánamo Bay, it means what most of us call “attempted suicides.” In fact, when the word “detainees” is used, it means what most of us call “prisoners.” “Waterboarding” sounds at first like something you’d expect to see young people doing on a California beach, not a torture technique that involves forced simulated drowning. Less remarkable, perhaps, but possibly more relevant for most of us, we’ve heard the term “downsized” used when someone is fired or laid off. “Ethnic cleansing” covers everything from deportation to genocide. What we have to say may be important, but the words we choose to say it with can be equally important. The examples just given are cases of a certain type of linguistic coercion—an attempt to get us to adopt a particular attitude toward a subject that, if described differently, would seem less attractive to us. Words have tremendous persuasive power, or what we have called their rhetorical force or emotive meaning—their power to express and elicit images, feelings, and emotional...
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