1. In the essay “Sweatshirts to Sweatshops,” many of the universal intellectual standards are violated. To begin with, the speaker talks about the “little girl…working hour after hour…trying not to collapse from the heat…” and that violates the fairness of the argument. He is trying to manipulate the audience by appealing to their emotional side. This argument is not based in factual evidence, and therefore, could be dismissed by the audience. There may not be a little girl in this exact situation described, and therefore, this statement is irrelevant. This could be corrected by leaving the entire story of the “little girl” out, or an interview of a child that works in the factory could be conducted giving a first-hand look into the
This is a poor choice for the speaker because he does not put the blame where it belongs, but pushes it off onto someone else causing the audience to agree with him based on their guilt, not facts. The speaker uses post hoc in his essay as a means to convince his audience that buying shirts is causing these factory workers to remain working in poor conditions. Post hoc is when a cause-effect relationship is suggested just because one thing happened before another. The speaker says that by buying sweatshirts from the school, they are oppressing the workers. In reality, the oppression come from government standards of the country in which factory is located. Finally, the speaker uses ad populum, a device that appeals to audiences and their natural yearning to be a part of a group. At the beginning of the essay, the speaker calls the audience “[f]riends.” This automatically groups the speaker and the audience together pushing the audience toward agreeing with the speaker without ever hearing any facts. The essay is flawed now because the speaker is not getting people to agree with him based on facts, but on