Test Bank Answers Language The Code Of Persuasion Ch.4

Chapter 4 “Language: The Code of Persuasion”

Multiple-Choice Questions

Mark all answers that apply for each question. The correct answers are show in bold type.

1. Characteristics of school shooters’ profiles show which of the following?

_____ A. They have been bullied.

_____ B. They have been humiliated by words.

_____ C. They are “bad seeds.”

_____ D. They live in the inner city.

1. Eldon Taylor said words are threats and territorial imperatives. He also said words are tied to which of the following?

_____ A. Identities.

_____ B. Self-images.

_____ C. Mental disorders.

_____ D. Desensitized youth.

1. General semantics can be defined as which of the following?

_____ A. The study of grammar.

_____ B. The study of languages.

_____ C. The study of the relations among language, thought, and behavior.

_____ D. The study of physics.

1. Alfred Korzybski started the semanticist movement. Which of the following ideas is he most associated with?

_____ A. Science and sanity.

_____ B. Linguistic conferences.

_____ C. The map is not the territory.

_____ D. Interdisciplinary teams.

1. A pejorative term that prejudges a person and negatively objectifies them as a group member or the “other” represents:

_____ A. Hate speech.

_____ B. A stereotype.

_____ C. Fighting words.

_____ D. A rant.

1. Words have three functions that include which of the following?

_____ A. Commercial.

_____ B. Cognitive.

_____ C. Affective.

_____ D. Behavioral.

1. Who said that the world is independent of our will regardless of what we call it?

_____ A. Alfred Korzybski.

_____ B. Ludwig Wittgenstein.

_____ C. Eldon Taylor.

_____ D. Lewis Carol.

1. Kenneth Burke divided words into four types and the third was “logology,” which deals with what?

_____ A. Material things.

_____ B. Sociopolitical matters.

_____ C. Words about words.

_____ D. Supernatural realm.

1. Editors Keith Walters and Michael Brody wrote a book, What’s Language Got to Do with It? (2005) and their answer was:

_____ A. Very little if anything.

_____ B. Everything.

_____ C. More scholarship.

_____ D. Greater creativity.

1. Clyde Haberman said that language touches the psychology of conflict. Which example did he use to illustrate martyrs and terrorists?

_____ A. The Iraq War.

_____ B. The Vietnam War.

_____ C. The Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

_____ D. The war in Afghanistan.

1. Weller Emler said, “Anyone who has the temerity to speak of ‘truth’ usually finds that he is performing verbal dances around the word truth, rather than letting truth perform for itself.” He added that the solution is to let which of these speak for itself?

_____ A. A dusty answer.

_____ B. Semantic nuances.

_____ C. A captured truth.

_____ D. Facts or the things themselves.

1. George Lakoff has examined speech forms such as “My mind was racing” or “I saw the light.” These examples are:

_____ A. Analogies.

_____ B. Metaphors.

_____ C. Similes.

_____ D. Synonyms.

1. Metaphors have which of the following powers according to Lakoff?

_____ A. To influence our worldview.

_____ B. To frame an argument.

_____ C. To create social and political ideologies.

_____ D. To make the world perfectly clear.

1. According to Don Jacobs, Rush Limbaugh, the popular talk show host, uses what form of language most frequently to influence his large following?

_____ A. Jargon.

_____ B. Objective language.

_____ C. Emotional language.

_____ D. Liberal orthodoxy.

1. David Crystal wrote The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left (2007). Which analogy did Crystal use to describe several countries’ desire to keep their language pure?

_____ A. Melting pot.

_____ B. Salad bowl.

_____ C. Fondue.

_____ D. Fruit cocktail.

1. Within the United States there are many enclaves where groups maintain their unique cultures alongside the dominant culture. These are best referred to as:

_____ A. Ghettos.

_____ B. Co-cultures.

_____ C. Subversives.

_____ D. Illegal aliens.

1. Walter Lippmann believed that wars encouraged envenomed and impassioned nonsense, but which of the following is the solution?

_____ A. A propaganda campaign.

_____ B. A public philosophy.

_____ C. Educational initiatives .

_____ D. A semantic curriculum.

1. Words have three axis or components. Which of the following does not belong?

_____ A. Denotative.

_____ B. Narrative.

_____ C. Connotative.

_____ D. Functional.

1. Ossie Davis in a speech declared that his enemy as an Afro-American was which of the following?

_____ A. The white majority.

_____ B. The history of slavery.

_____ C. The English language.

_____ D. The Black Power movement.

1. A pejorative term means that the word is:

_____ A. Scholarly.

_____ B. Ambiguous.

_____ C. Negative.

_____ D. Borrowed.

1. Who wrote a letter from the Birmingham Jail to explain his position on demonstrations during the civil rights movement?

_____ A. Dr. Ralph Abernathy.

_____ B. Roy McKissick.

_____ C. Ossie Davis.

_____ D. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1. The author of The Feminine Mystique, which was influential in the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, was:

_____ A. Bella Abzug.

_____ B. Hillary Clinton.

_____ C. Betty Friedan.

_____ D. Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

1. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been criticized for her rhetorical style primarily because:

_____ A. She does not feminize her style and uses power like a man.

_____ B. She uses powerless speech.

_____ C. She is disorganized and subjective.

_____ D. She is soft-spoken, self-effacing, and compliant.

1. Cheris Kamarae claimed that challenging the linguistic system as well as the structures and institutions it produces, such as education, politics, religion, and the economic system, would reveal what?

_____ A. Principles of social relations.

_____ B. Who should be dominant in politics.

_____ C. Why history should be rewritten.

_____ D. Why women are from Venus and men are from Mars.

1. Kenneth Burke wrote of “God” terms, which are best described as:

_____ A. Terms individuals are willing to embrace and die to uphold.

_____ B. The Ten Commandments.

_____ C. The thou shalt nots.

_____ D. The supernatural.

and Questions

1. School shootings have nothing to do with language or the power of words.
2. There is a direct linear relationship between the development of semantic distortions and mental disorders in modern society.
3. Words are not the possession of any one person, class, or nation but shared vehicles to transfer meaning from one to another.
4. John Condon said that words give us the freedom to describe the world and to capture that reality perfectly.
5. S. I. Hayakawa said general semantics is the study of the “relations between language, thought, and behavior: between how we talk, therefore how we think, and therefore how we act.”
6. Alfred Korzybski was a mad scientist who believed that if we used the scientific method we could cure insanity.
7. Stereotypes are prejudicial clusters of descriptions or images that objectify a person or group that denies their individuality.
8. The cognitive function of words deals with thought or comprehension.
9. The affective function of words deals with the behavior that words motivate.
10. Children chant “sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can never hurt us,” and this is .
11. Your given name has no consequences regarding how you are treated or the impression you make. (
12. Kenneth Burke saw words and phrases as terministic screens that encourage or force us to see reality in a particular way.
13. George Lakoff believed that metaphors that describe the act of thinking provide commonplaces for philosophical theories.
14. Light is a common metaphor for thought or grasping an idea.
15. George Lakoff stated that language reframes a situation, and the “war on terror,” which President Bush adopted after the “regime change” rhetoric used earlier, changed the policy to define Iraq as the front in the war on terror.
16. Words do not affect our attitude toward social–political issues; only the action or facts do.
17. The “third-person effect” means that we recognize the power media has over our own perceptions.
18. According to Walter Fisher, storytelling has no place in political campaigns or serious matters of state.
19. Rush Limbaugh used reasoned speech to reach his audience without the infusion of emotional language.
20. The average high school–educated audience of mass media broadcasts prefers a speaker who talks around 170 words per minute.
21. “Homeland security” is an example of a God term.
22. Our linguistic world has the characteristics of a melting pot, yet some countries prefer the salad-bowl attitude where their languages are free from foreign influences.
23. The number of non–English speaking residents in the United States reflects a growing co-cultural influence, with Chinese being the first language after English.
24. The United States is becoming increasingly bilingual, with Spanish challenging the dominant culture.
25. Walter Lippmann’s “public philosophy” is based upon natural law and civility.
26. Connotative meaning of words is the dictionary meaning that is commonly accepted.
27. The connotative meaning of the word “black” caused Ossie Davis to describe the English language as a great liberator of Afro-Americans.
28. Dr. M. L. King Jr. wrote “Letter from a Montgomery, Alabama, Jail.”
29. Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke at the Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights despite the threat her husband made that he would leave town if she did this.
30. The feminine model for speech according to Borisloff and Merrill is direct, confrontational, forceful, and logical speech.
31. The examination of labels and stereotypes is part of the Black Power movement, the women’s movement, and the gay rights movement.
32. Sigmund Freud said, “Anatomy is destiny.”
33. Hillary Clinton uses the feminine style of speech that is soft spoken, self-effacing, and compliant, and this has enabled her to gain national and international stature.
34. A paradigm is a model or perspective for viewing the world.
35. Rappers own the “N word,” and the use of this pejorative term has no consequences for them, other artists, or their audiences.
36. Terrorism is a devil term.
37. Connotative meanings are idiosyncratic responses we have to specific words.
38. Language is the code of persuasion because words have the capacity to motivate, deter, and direct thought, feelings, and action.
39. School shooters are frequently students who have been bullied and tormented with names or labels.
40. Words do more damage to people than things in our culture according to Eldon Taylor.

Essay Questions

Please answer all parts of each question and be specific, offering examples or other evidence to support your answers.

1. Explain Eldon Taylor’s essay on school violence and the power of words.
2. Explain what general semantics is and include in your answer the views of Alfred Korzybski, John Condon, and Wittgenstein from this chapter.
3. Kenneth Burke in The Rhetoric of Religion (1961) offered four realms to which words may refer. Explain these four categories of words and give examples of each.
4. Clyde Haberman wrote of the power of words to define who was the martyr and who was the terrorist using the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Explain how the language of war persuades receivers that one side is just and the other side is the enemy.
5. Explain George Lakoff’s work on metaphors and how they influence our worldview. Begin by defining what a metaphor is and then explain what all of this has to do with persuasion.
6. Explain the language strategies and tactics that Rush Limbaugh uses to influence his broadcast audience. Be specific and give examples.
7. Discuss the findings of the U.S. Census on co-cultures in the United States and include in your answer the consequences or blessings of having a multilingual country. Use specific examples and references.
8. Explain what Walter Lippmann’s “public philosophy” was and why he felt it was necessary; then take a critical position on his proposal by evaluating it for today’s linguistic environment.
9. Explain the denotative, connotative, and functional axes of words. Give examples within each category to strengthen your answer.
10. Ossie Davis’s speech commented upon the power of words to create stereotypes. Explain his position on the English language and black and white synonyms.
11. Explain the content of Dr. M. L. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” What persuasive appeals did he use? Who was his intended audience?
12. Discuss Hillary Clinton’s rhetorical style and what conventions she violates. Include in your answer a definition of the masculine and feminine styles of discourse and general audience expectations.