Assignment: Bias, Rhetorical Devices, and Argumentation

Assignment: Bias, Rhetorical Devices, and Argumentation
The” Citizen Kane” speech given by Charles Foster Kane in 1941 campaigning for Governor is full of bias. The bias starts from the very beginning of his speech by addressing his audience, attacking his opponent by using various fallacies of incorrect argument. First he begins with attacking “boss Jim W. Getty and his political machine” one example or another, where he is saying “There is only one man who can rid the politics of this State of the evil domination of Boss Jim Getty’s.” The tactics that are used here are for the reason of making himself to look better and stronger, in his point of views and political plan. This fallacy is called scapegoating, when you putting the blame for the problems on the opponent’s convictions and building confidence in the listeners. Kane in this example also uses Ad Hominen, which is where the candidate is verbally attacking his opponent rather than the argument. There is an example of gender and age bias: “The working man and the slum child know they can expect my best efforts in their interests.” Kane is indicating that men are the only ones working and that all the children are slum. Kane makes a statement about “the decent, ordinary citizens know that I’ll do everything in my power to protect the underprivileged, the underpaid, and the underfed.” In my opinion I believe, that this could be a begging the question fallacy; if he is saying that the underprivileged, the underpaid, and the underfed are not the decent, ordinary citizen he is talking about in this case it is.
He used also a metaphor rhetorical device where he compares two different things: “Now, however, I have something more than a hope”. “And Jim Gettys—Jim Gettys has something less than a chance” or another rhetorical device “Well,