By: Sean Savoie

            I mentioned that I would write a poor argument that contains the logical fallacies studied in Argumentation and Logical Fallacies. Please refer to that section of the website to review argumentation. The following argument contains eight logical fallacies described previously, including: ad hominem argument, begging the question, either-or reasoning, false analogy, false authority, non sequitur, post hoc reasoning, and the straw man. Read the following argument about bilingual education to see if you can identify the logical fallacies. Some aspects of the essay may be effective, yet the logical fallacies make it entirely ineffective. I will number each sentence so that we may review the problems with the essay in detail. Keep in mind that there are other types of logical fallacies, yet these eight are most common. 

            Faulty example:

            1)As a policy, bilingual education, the teaching of immigrant students using the native language and the language of their home country, creates many more problems than it can ever solve. 2)The many people who believe that bilingual students could have far more convenient lives do not know what they are talking about. 3)Firm policy must establish that all resident children of the U.S.A. are taught in English.

            4)The First Amendment to the Constitution does clearly stipulate that people have Freedom of Speech, yet this does not mean freedom of language in public services. 5)Communication through language is the only way that a country can remain united, and with the recent influx of enormous numbers of immigrants, this unity is already threatened.6) The devastation caused by a lack of communication is evident from the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center; the CIA and FBI were not communicating with each other, and the result was disaster.

            7)In a fully bilingual educational system, it is true that immigrant students would have an easier time competing with American-born students for entrance to college, yet challenges such as these make the immigrant students stronger. 8)Greater challenges lead to greater success. 9)Andrew Carnegie has said, “The man who dies rich dies disgraced”. 10)From this we can see that money is not the goal of education. 11)The truest goal of education is integration allowing new immigrants to adapt to an American way of life. 12)Right around the time bilingual education first became a serious topic of debate, the number of immigrant high school graduates dropped 4%, showing that even false hope of an easy way through school was negatively affecting students.

            13)Refusing to learn to speak English does not help any person in America.14)This is an English speaking country. 15)If people do not speak English, there is no way to express differences of opinion or exercise the rights granted in the Constitution. 16)This would basically make the Constitution meaningless and must be prevented at all costs. 17)Water always seeks an equally distributed level upon which it can be at peace. 18)In this same way new immigrants must learn English. 19)The Constitution must not be allowed to weaken. 

            The above essay is truly horrible. In fact, it is so bad that it was difficult and painful for me to write. The problem with the essay lies not in the use of English or grammar or even structure, but rather with the extremely bad logical reasoning employed to argue the point. The study of rhetoric is the study of how to use language and logical reasoning to convince people that your point is valid. Unfortunately, as we can see at the highest levels of responsibility, as in the recent State of the Union speech, rhetoric is effectively used to confuse or misguide people. For thousands of years, people have again and again been fooled by beautifully or powerfully spoken words. Hitler was a very charismatic speaker. Understanding faulty reasoning is, therefore, essential not only for the writer but also the reader and listener.

            There are 19 sentences in this essay. We should take a look at how the sentences are logically faulty.           

            Sentence: