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Assignment: Bias, Rhetorical Devices, and Argumentation The speech of Kane campaigning for Governor is full of bias. The bias starts from the opening seconds of the movie clip and continued through the speech. The man in the beginning of the movie clip demonstrated a bias in favor of Kane becoming Governor. These biases are created by labeling Charles Kane as a “friend of the working man” who is an ally of the under paid and under fed.
This same Kane campaigner offers up a negative bias towards the opponent Jim Gettys by labeling his time in office as an “evil domination”. These same negative biases are continued by Kane himself, calling Jim Gettys “downright dishonest”. All of these negative claims are being made without any supporting facts. The first fallacy I noticed is that Kane is claiming to be a friend of the working man and lower class. The second is the claim that Kane has already won the campaign for Governor, and the campaign has not even started yet, which is a fallacy of false conclusion.
The continued attacks on Jim Gettys are an ad hominen fallacy, because the attacks are towards Gettys not the argument at hand. The next fallacy I noticed is a circular fallacy or begging the question. Kane mentions that he wants to protect the under privileged, under fed, and under paid but quickly asserts that he is too busy to make any promises. Kane’s speech for Governor also contains a couple rhetorical devices. The first one I noticed is Kane putting extra emphasis on certain words and phrases, I believe this is done to imply something.
The first time this is done is when Kane said “I made not campaign promises. ” There was an extra pause or elaboration on the word “promises” implying the promises of his opponent were not kept. The next rhetorical device is when Kane said that he had more than hope, implying Jim Gettys has no hope or is hopeless. This type of rhetorical device is an antithesis. The next rhetorical device is of the same type. It is when Kane says he would make promises now if he was not too busy arranging to keep them.
This is the contrasting of two separate ideas into one, single, phrase. There some good and some weak arguments and counter arguments made in this movie clip by the campaign man in the beginning and by Kane himself. The argument that Jim Gettys is evil and dishonest is countered by the statements that Kane is the ally of the common man. This is a good argument because of the passionate method used to deliver the arguments, which makes up for the lack of supporting facts.
A weak argument is that every poll shows that Kane will be elected. This is weak because this would be very difficult to prove before an actual election event. There is nothing to back up this claim. Another argument made was at the end of the clip, Kane promises to set up a special committee to indict Jim Gettys for his wrong doing. This argument was made following the statement that Kane cannot make any campaign promises, this invalidates his own argument.