Fallacy statement

Introduction

A fallacy is an error made in reasoning while making some statement or argument. Fallacies can be created unintentionally of intentionally with the aim of deceiving other people. The majority of common fallacies involve arguments, even though some may involve definitions, explanations, or other reasoning products. The term fallacy can also be used to broadly indicate false beliefs of the causes of that false belief. In this document, some examples of fallacies in the media and advertisements are discussed while stating which type of fallacy each example fall in.

Types and Examples of Fallacies

A bandwagon fallacy is an argument that is falsely backed by the tenet that if many people agree on a particular thing, then it is true. An example of the bandwagon type of fallacy is found in Trump’s speech quoted by Saunders (2016), "I only wish these cameras would spin around and show the kind of people that we have here. The numbers of people that we have. I just wish they'd for once do it." This boastful argument from Trump was used to suggest that since many people come out for his support when he holds rallies or that because he has a mass of supporters following him on Twitter, then he is the best president. Although that was a decent predictor that perhaps he would receive numerous votes, that popularity did not mean that his policies were smarter compared to his opponent’s.

The other fallacy statement is a logical fallacy, and this can be found on Shepard Smith’s argument while he was engaged in a conversation with Obama on the support for gun control legislation on January 22, 2013 Smith said that, "If we stuck with the polls…we would have had slavery longer than we did" (huffingpost.com, 2013). This was a logical fallacy, or ad hominem attack from the news anchor, Shepard Smith because it attacks the American people besides being partly an appeal to racism. This type of fallacy is one where the maker of a given statement is attacked instead of the argument itself. In the case above, Smith is trying to say that the Americans are wrong to believe in the gun control since they are people who support slavery longer than it was sanctioned by the law. Such an appeal to racism is a specific type of ad hominem whereby the arguer is accused of racism to discredit any argument he may be attempting to make.

The other type of fallacy is the false dilemma; an argument mostly in advertisements that limits the possible choices with the aim of avoiding consideration of other choices (Sheehan, 2013). For instance, in the advertisement of MasterCard, they use the false dilemma, "There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there is MasterCard." A person who only presents a handful of choices and then implies that a given a choice should be made on that short list of choices commits a false dilemma (Rubin & Jordan, 2008). Firms make false statements regarding their products with the aim of convincing consumers to purchase their products. It tends to convince the consumers or buyers that the products are as it is being advertised which many times turns out to be a false belief.

Conclusion

The paper has examined some examples of fallacies and the types of fallacies in which they fall. Those fallacy types that were discussed include bandwagon fallacy, false dilemma fallacy, and the ad hominem plus the specific examples that fall under these types of fallacies. Fallacies can make people have false tenets on certain things or people because they are meant to deceive people to believe what is not true.

References

Huffingpost.com (2013). Shep Smith on Guns: If we stuck with the polls, we’d have had slavery a lot longer.

Rubin, P. H., & Jordan, E. R. (2008). An Economic Analysis of the Law of False Advertising. In Economics, Law and Individual Rights (pp. 18-43). Routledge.

Saunders, G. (2016). Who are all these Trump supporters?

Sheehan, K. B. (2013). Controversies in contemporary advertising. Sage Publications.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at Melda Research in custom written research paper if you need a similar paper you can place your order for a custom research paper from essay writing service USA.

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