Exam Cheat Sheet
Misuses of Language (Linguistic Misuses)
1. Ambiguity – a term/sentence has 2 or more diff reasonable meanings
a. Lexical詞匯Ambiguity e.g. I don’t like love games
b. Syntactic Ambiguity e.g. The CE wants ICAC to help corrupt officers
2. Shift/distortion of meaning – original meaning is shifted from 1 sense to another or distorted inappropriately
e.g. stricter discipline doesn’t mean to torture children; when was you the richest?
3. Incomplete meaning – A sentence may be grammatically correct but its meaning is incomplete
e.g. Buy 1 get 1 free; HK sportsmen are not rubbish; Life is meaningful
4. Emotional Expression – denote (designate: use a term to pick out the person/object in this world) vs connote (to imply: suggest a way of thinking abt sth/someone) AND firm vs stubborn; manipulate vs monitor
5. Vagueness – when u know the meaning of the term but there is not clear cut instruction to tell u how to apply it in an absolutely correct way (only 1 meaning) e.g. amount in cooking; sexual relations by Bill Clinton
6. Contradictory terms put tgt(oxymoron) e.g. –ve growth; friendly fire; conditional self-rule
Informal Fallacy – fallacies that can be discovered through analysis of content of the argument
A. Linguistic Fallacy
1. Equitation(ambiguous lang) reading bk is better than nth; the more u study, the less u know
2. Fallacy of composition-assume characteristic of part will cause the same chracteristic to the whole e.g. Messi and football team; Tong Leung and film
3. Fallacy of division-characteristic of wholepart e.g. Real Madrid; Ferrari; ppl from London(freedom)
4. Weak Analogy e.g.renting a flat rather than buying is like flushing $ down the toilet; Mencius性善如水下流
B. Fallacy of Omission
1. False Dilemma-Presuming mistakenly there are only 2 solutions/options to a particular problem
2. Appeal to Ignorance-saying that a claim is true because it hasn’t been proved false e.g. 2nd hand smoking
3. Straw Man-to attack a weakened/distorted version of an
1. Ambiguity – a term/sentence has 2 or more diff reasonable meanings
a. Lexical詞匯Ambiguity e.g. I don’t like love games
b. Syntactic Ambiguity e.g. The CE wants ICAC to help corrupt officers
2. Shift/distortion of meaning – original meaning is shifted from 1 sense to another or distorted inappropriately
e.g. stricter discipline doesn’t mean to torture children; when was you the richest?
3. Incomplete meaning – A sentence may be grammatically correct but its meaning is incomplete
e.g. Buy 1 get 1 free; HK sportsmen are not rubbish; Life is meaningful
4. Emotional Expression – denote (designate: use a term to pick out the person/object in this world) vs connote (to imply: suggest a way of thinking abt sth/someone) AND firm vs stubborn; manipulate vs monitor
5. Vagueness – when u know the meaning of the term but there is not clear cut instruction to tell u how to apply it in an absolutely correct way (only 1 meaning) e.g. amount in cooking; sexual relations by Bill Clinton
6. Contradictory terms put tgt(oxymoron) e.g. –ve growth; friendly fire; conditional self-rule
Informal Fallacy – fallacies that can be discovered through analysis of content of the argument
A. Linguistic Fallacy
1. Equitation(ambiguous lang) reading bk is better than nth; the more u study, the less u know
2. Fallacy of composition-assume characteristic of part will cause the same chracteristic to the whole e.g. Messi and football team; Tong Leung and film
3. Fallacy of division-characteristic of wholepart e.g. Real Madrid; Ferrari; ppl from London(freedom)
4. Weak Analogy e.g.renting a flat rather than buying is like flushing $ down the toilet; Mencius性善如水下流
B. Fallacy of Omission
1. False Dilemma-Presuming mistakenly there are only 2 solutions/options to a particular problem
2. Appeal to Ignorance-saying that a claim is true because it hasn’t been proved false e.g. 2nd hand smoking
3. Straw Man-to attack a weakened/distorted version of an