Oakland Community College Moore and Parker Quote Analysis Discussion

Moore and Parker say on p. 133, that

“we as critical thinkers must be able to […] distinguish the between the logical force of a set of remarks and its psychological force”.

Using a rhetorical device presented in Ch. 5, give an example of this, clearly presenting both the logical force as well as the psychological force of your chosen set of remarks.

Example: “The (middle-aged) substitute teacher said we were noisy in Social Studies class today, and so we would all have our time at recess cut in half. You should have seen the look on her face when Pat said to her – “Yeah, OK, boomer.” That took the wind out of her sails. She won’t be cutting our recess down again!”

In terms of the logical force of what Pat said here – there was none really. There is no substance here. No reason was provided for why the substitute teacher’s decision was unfair or somehow inappropriate. Moreover, becoming middle-aged and being of the so-called baby-boomer generation is not anything to be ashamed of.

In terms of the psychological force, Pat was being sarcastic with the “Yeah” and the “OK” words. Pat was not agreeing to what the teacher did, nor did Pat really think it OK. In addition, Pat also used a dysphemism when calling the teacher a ‘boomer’ . The word ‘boomer’ was intended to induce a negative attitude towards the teacher. Evidently, that teacher took that to heart, the putative insult seemed to carry some negative weight.

It is to be noted that rhetorical devices are context-dependent. In some contexts, a ‘boomer’ is simply a term for a being a member of a generation. “OK, boomer” is not really horrible thing to say (!), but typically it is used as a mild dysphemism.