No Bounds

            There are bounds. There are bounds as to just how friendly a male stranger can be to a six year-old girl without breaching the line of sexual predator. There are bounds as to how many times I can talk back to my mom without my being sent to an isolated boarding school in the middle of nowhere. And just like there are bounds for everything, there are bounds for the use of rhetoric. These are called “rhetorical fouls.” In the game of logic and rhetoric, it’s wise to abstain from achieving one of these, seeing as fouls usually don’t help you win the game.

            In Juliana Castro’s blog, she talks about rhetorical fouls and says, “I think of this foul like the foul ball in baseball. The pitcher and the batter are both ready, each with their own set of skills ready to show it off to the world. The pitcher and the batter can both commit fouls if you think about it. the pitcher can manipulate the ball so that the batter can't hit it, therefore ending the "argument" or baseball play. The batter can hit a foul ball and that can also put an end to the bas argument.” I found this a very apt description of the overall subject matter of chapter fifteen. The likening an argument to baseball players ready to play, and then each one having the power to just end the argument by creating a foul. But of course, when they create a foul, they might be ending the game, the argument, but they’re actually harming the outcome of the game towards their opponent’s favor.

           

            In way, a rhetorical foul is a quick way of ending an argument, and yet it is also a deadly one. It’s stupid. A few example of these would be humiliation used to debase the other person (basically resorting to deviating from the argument in hand and winning by pathetic—and not the good pathetic—abasing), innuendo, threats, nasty language, and/or utter stupidity. But I’d reckon the concluding one would be plainly obvious to anyone with a remotely functioning brain. Stupidity isn’t something I’d ever imagine would aid someone in an argument. Unless they’re trying to prove to Collegeboard that they are qualified to be given extra time on the SATs. I do know people who have done that. You would be surprised.

            Rhetorical fouls aren’t wrong, per say, they simply “make deliberative argument impossible.” They are the “out of bounds” like that of a sixth grader getting his twenty-two year-old teacher pregnant (Have you not seen the movie That’s My Boy?”) or a girl breaking into dance in the middle of her grandmother’s funeral. Just avoid them. As for the innuendo part, if some of you are still a little iffy as to just what that is, let me just give an example:

            A girl is trying to stick her straw into her coke cup, but fails to do so. Her friend says, “Just stick it in,” and the girl responds with, “I’m not that hard-core.” They are, of course, talking about a mere straw and a cup, but there is a slight sexual connotation enlaced in their words. Another example would be the following cartoon, in which the woman says something having to do with a motorcycle, but anyone can tell she is talking about something completely different.

           

            Say hello to the world of subtle sexual innuendos in child cartoons.