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In chapter 10, this section mainly talks about what problems should be taken notice while writing a certain type of article like argumentation. At the beginning paragraph of “What to avoid”, it points out the common logical fallacies people might carelessly make. However, those fallacies become overly interesting while appearing in the form of advertisement. But why is that? I think the reason that creates such irony in this situation results in the fact that people usually make logical fallacies as a matter of common sense. Therefore, they will not be aware of the mistake. Instead, they seem to accept it, and moreover, be convinced by such nonsense.

There are thirteen logical fallacies in category, which are followed by hasty generalization, non sequitur, begging the question, red herring argument ad hominem, faulty use of authority, argument ad populum, either/or, hypostatization, bandwagon appeal, straw man, faulty analogy and quick fix. Among these fallacies, there are two fallacies I wanted to talk more about in this short review.

 

 

The first one is hasty generation. I think this fallacy happens quite often not only in the form of advertisement, but also in our daily speech. For that often, we draw sample from too small or selected subjects. To explain this more thoroughly, take the cover advertisement of a Honey Nut Cheerios as an example. By putting three simple words large and clear on the bottom of a picture of a bowl of cereal, “ America’s favorite cereal”, they have their message pretty obvious. Those words, especially the highlighted “favorite”, tend to make its costumers first believed in and eventually agree with the ad. There might be several conditions happen in this stage. If the American customers saw this they will think, “Oh, if this cereal is favorite by most Americans, why wouldn’t I?” since this question involved in the identification as an American. While in another case when someone who had never been to American sees this cereal, he might come up with a thought like, “Oh, so this is the kind of cereal the Americans like most? I wonder how it taste.” Meanwhile putting one of the boxes into their grocery car, since most of the time, we have the statement in mind that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

 

 

The second is faulty use of authority. In this type of fallacy, it is typical to see companies promote their products with famous people featuring in the advertisement. In the slide we can see that singers drinking Pepsi, Jesus holding on Mentos, actor giving you a charming smile while pretending to get a spoon of Häagen-Dazs. How strange? What does these people know about those products? Singers are definitely not some sort of soft drink expert. I bet how much does Jesus knows about Mentos. And as for Bradly Cooper, he is just selling his charming face in that ad. Yet, customers did not find anything strange in those ads, because of the admirations toward those famous people.

Even though considering ads under such circumstances may have them appear like nonsense, I think advertisements are meant to break all the roles. Stuck in a conservative thinking of what to do and what not does not fit in the characteristic of advertisement. Advertisements are meant to fly with its creativity.