Thursday, January 31, 2008

Blog 7

Please choose one of the following topics (all have to do with "Love is a Fallacy" by Max Shulman) and write a 1-2 page blog on it. You may work with a partner if you wish. Please include both of your names if you choose to do so).

1. Please analyze the artistic features of "Love is a fallacy" by Max Shulman from four aspects (lexical, syntactic, rhetorical, and discourse analysis), and examine how these techniques help reveal the stylistic beauty of the essay as well as the personalities of the three characters.

2. Please summarize the theme and sub-theme of this story and then offer your opinion on the author's purpose, audience, and methodology.

3. Please compare "Love is a Fallacy" to "Plato's Cave" and reveal how Shulman uses humor to explore similar thematic content as focused on in the latter.

4. Please discuss how "Love is a Fallacy" utilizes logical fallacies to make its points.

7 comments:

cmateus said...

Feliciano, Mateus 1
William Feliciano
Claudia Mateus
Dr. Hofheimer
2/01/2008
Blog 7
Love is a fallacy
Option 2
The main theme would have to be centered on the speaker in the essay. The whole point of his actions are based on one of the fallacies that he is trying to teach Polly; specifically, hypothesis contrary to fact. He hypothesized that because he was intelligent he could make her intelligent. In other words, the author encompasses all of the fallacies by making the main character a victim of the very fallacies he is impressing upon the female he is pursuing.
The sub theme, from a reader’s perspective, is to use comical examples to explain logical fallacies.
The author’s purpose is to educate. He is using an alternative means to educating, however. Whereas typical text uses a lot of technical wording to teach, the author’s method makes it easier to remember the individual fallacies by using common language and examples.
The author main focus is to use comedy and logic to state his argument. The main character stereotypes Polly believing he could incorporate fallacies to build the perfect girl.
Feliciano, Mateus 2

Polly however fascinated by the fallacies she had learned it doesn’t make her fall in love with him. Justifying the main characters desire to create the perfect girl, he finds a beautiful one but not necessarily smart. He teaches her the logic of fallacies in his reasoning that Polly would be with him because she would be better with a man of his caliber.

Angelina said...

The main character was a lawyer who, to say the least, was very intelligent as well as cocky. He was looking for a woman who had everything. In his opinion perfect woman should have; beauty, brains, etiquette etc. His friend Petey was a faddist. He wanted whatever was popular at the moment and at the moment, it was a raccoon coat. So the lawyer asked Petey for his girl Polly in exchange for a raccoon coat. Polly had everything minus the intelligence the lawyer was looking for in a girl. He took her out and trained her to learn logically. He taught her the different types of fallacies. In the end, he wanted her to love him and she told him “logically” all the different reasons and fallacies of why she could not date him. When he asked her logically to give him a reason as to why she would date Petey over himself she replied that Petey had a raccoon coat. The lawyer tried to teach fallacies when in fact he was guilty of using them.

Jason O. said...

Love is a fallacy uses many types of logical fallacies to prove its point. The author does a superb job adding humor into the treatise by having the education of Polly backfire on the unnamed main character. After the author establishes the arrogance and shallowness of the main character, he begins to wind a tale which in the end catches him by surprise. After Polly has been taught many fallacies, she turns them on the person who taught them to her. She catches the boy using hasty generalization, false analogy, ad misericordiam, and hypothesis contrary to the fact. He is taken aback by her ability to aplly what she learned and begins to plead with her to go steady with him. The irony happens when her reason for not going steady with him is because she agreed to go steady with Petey, the kid which agreed to dump her in exchange for a raccoon coat. Ironically, the reason Polly wants to be with him is because he has a raccoon coat.

Keller said...

Jason Olney, Bobby Keller
Dr. Kerry Hofheimer
ENG210 Critical Thinking
7 February 2008


Love is a fallacy uses many types of logical fallacies to prove its point. The author does a superb job adding humor into the treatise by having the education of Polly backfire on the unnamed main character. After the author establishes the arrogance and shallowness of the main character, he begins to wind a tale which in the end catches him by surprise. After Polly has been taught many fallacies, she turns them on the person who taught them to her. She catches the boy using hasty generalization, false analogy, ad misericordiam, and hypothesis contrary to the fact. He is taken aback by her ability to aplly what she learned and begins to plead with her to go steady with him. The irony happens when her reason for not going steady with him is because she agreed to go steady with Petey, the kid which agreed to dump her in exchange for a raccoon coat. Ironically, the reason Polly wants to be with him is because he has a raccoon coat.

Carter, A said...

Please summarize the theme and sub-theme of this story and then offer your opinion on the author's purpose, audience, and methodology.

I believe the theme of this story is to intellectually teach fallacies. I beleive the author's purpose was to teach fallacies in a way that one could understand and retain. His audience is intended to not only reach students who need to learn to think logically but to logicians as well.

Unknown said...

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. See the link below for more info.


#thinking
www.ufgop.org

Unknown said...

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