The most celebrated wonder of a language, Secret of happy relations in literature, Modern entertainment, Complex fallacy, Inconsistency, No True Scots man, Post-hoc ergo propter hoc, Abuse of legitimate argument: Reduction ad absurdum, Tu quoque, The fallacy of fallacy, Quotes & Semiology

The most celebrated wonder of a language, Secret of happy relations in literature, Modern entertainment, Complex fallacy, Inconsistency, No True Scots man, Post-hoc ergo propter hoc, Abuse of legitimate argument: Reduction ad absurdum, Tu quoque, The fallacy of fallacy, Quotes & Semiology By Dr. Sohail Ansari

Conceived and worded by DR Sohail Ansari (originality of concepts and originality of words).

He believes that there can never be a zero scope for improvement and appreciates criticism if it is not for the sake of criticism.

The most celebrated wonder of a language

·        The most celebrated wonder of a language is said to be that it makes it possible in the field of imagination what is not possible in the field of experience. But to me, its real power is to be seen in saving a book of current affairs from becoming a mere item of antiquarian interest; ephemeral by definition can always be worth the study for its language sake.

Secret of happy relations in literature

·        Writer grants the possibility that the critic may be right and critic that he himself may be wrong, though neither believes it.

Modern entertainment  

·       Modern entertainment is only fun generating. It is the excitement spectators feel with each moment of players in a field and mistake these ephemeral moments for happiness. Happiness leaves a fellow as happy after the experience as he was during it.

Complex fallacy

·        That it is impossible to communicate through words is easily demonstrated. Words are misleading, for example, the best man in a group of thugs is different from the best man among nobles though the word best is same.

Inconsistency

Inconsistency is a logical failure: applying criteria to one argument, but not to others; however, political marketing practitioner justifies inconsistency.

·        Everyone is equal in democracy and no one is above law but if inequality is bestowed by the parliament so it must be honored: immunity president enjoys reflects the will of people.

No True Scots man:

Semantic argument includes a conclusion of something in the very definition of the word itself. This fallacy is a form of circular reasoning and can easily be countered by citing ‘exceptions’; however, political marketing practitioner attempts to make this fallacy seemingly impregnable.

·        All members of my party are the true believer of God and democracy and if any member is not so he is not a true member.

Post-hoc ergo propter hoc

A  fallacy of ‘after this’ therefore, ‘because of this’ however Political marketing practitioner proves cause and effect for two events those are otherwise only temporally related. 

·        The ascendency of his to power proved disastrous; tornado has never knocked at our door in our history.

Abuse of legitimate argument: Reduction ad absurdum

Stretching the logic to compel/force a conclusion that may not sound absurd to many; it follows the form that if the premises are assumed to be true it necessarily leads to an absurd (false) conclusion and therefore one or more premises must be false.

·       My detractors are skeptical of my achievements at my credit because they say that they have not seen any; therefore they must also be skeptical of the existence of the 7 wonders of the world, since they may not personally seen them either.

Tu quoque

If it is not possible to project ‘Mr. Clean’ image of a candidate so political marketing consultant applies Tu quoque and encourages the candidate to defend himself by saying: the Pot calling the kettle black.

·       If I am tainted with corruption so is he (opponent) but I have a moral courage to admit it. People must choose lesser evil

The fallacy of fallacy

‘Just because some one invokes an unsound argument for a conclusion, that does not necessarily mean the conclusion is false. A conclusion may happen to be true even if an argument used to support is not sound. I may argue, for example, Obma is a Democrat because the sky is blue __ an obvious non-sequitur. But the conclusion, Obma is a Democrat is still true.’

 Political marketing consultant, however, can invoke sound argument for a wrong conclusion.

·       He is honest because he belongs to a very respectable holy family.

(Media is the forum for intellectual combat. Partisans come up with their own defense. Political marketing consultant trawls all arguments and picks weaker ones for election campaigns so to prove that ‘because some people can not adequately defend their position, therefore, the position is false’. Another technique is writing under a pseudonym a mediocre article to defend legitimate position and then to counter this article with an elaborate argument to compromise it.)

‘When the question requires specialized knowledge, so a non-expert does not have the knowledge at their fingertips to respond and the absence of knowledge is taken as a proof against accepted fact.

·       The claim that Islam is the only true religion of the world can not be defended even in a Muslim country such as Pakistan as majority can not prove it.

·       A Few foreign technocrats grumble for juggling of figures or financial sleight of hand on the part of government. Government is by the people; therefore, accountable to people and people have no such complains. 

When the decision can not be challenged on the legal or logical grounds:

·       Supreme bar is the bar of public opinion; people by reelecting Mr. A have rejected the verdict of Supreme Court that Mr. A is a corrupt man.

Quotable Quotes on X and Y

Xenophobia

·        Xenophobic is a term imperial forces apply to all sane people alive to the danger of being swallowed by exotic influences. 

Yes to yes

·        Society dictates people who say ‘Yes to yes’ and people dictate society who ‘Say no to no’. 

Semiology

Weakness& Strength Of Semiology:

“The semiologist goes looking for descriptive categories within the material under examination itself, and picks out “ideal types” that best displays the characteristics the researchers regards as being of special significance” “Code” is one of the most important concepts in semiology; but as the attempts of Williamnson and Roland to specify the codes show that semiolgical approach alone can offer limited results__ a richness of details with respect to only a few “ideal types of ads.”

“ Semiology can not be applied with equal success to all kinds of ads. For example, Williamson does not take a random sample of ads and apply the semilogical method to them, but seems to choose ads specifically to illustrate her points. Because such a procedure courts the danger of self-confirming results, the conclusions should, strictly speaking, be confined to those instances alone and not generalized to the entire range of ads”.

 “Semiology is heavily dependent upon the skill of the individual analyst. In the hand of someone like Roland or Judith Williamson, it is a creative tool that allows one to reach the deeper levels of meaning-construction in ads. A less skillful practitioner, however, can do little more than state the obvious in a complex and often pretentious manner. As a result, in these types of studies there is little chance to establish consistency or reliability__ that is, a sufficient level of agreement among analysts on what is found in message.

“The semilogical approach stresses individual readings of messages, it does not lend itself to quantification of results; it is impossible to base an overall sense of constructed meanings on the examination of large number of messages. What insights may be extracted from this approach must remain impressionistic.”

“The real strength of semiology lies in its capacity to dissect and closely examine multiplicity of codes, and its sensitivity to the nuances and oblique references in cultural systems”.

“There is no intelligible discourse with out the operation of a code, and there is never just one code: ideological codes, social codes, cultural codes, personal codes, and so forth, and semiology helps us to obtain the full reading of the ad by decoding these codes.’’

 “Since advertising works by appeal to referent systems it generates meaning through process of connotation as well as denotation. It is only semiology, therefore, one that can analyze what message holds implicitly beneath”. While content analysis can not tell us anything about how audience may be ‘reading’ messages, because of no theory of significance’ Semiology highlights the way audience take part in the creation of meaning in messages; examine their role as participant in creating a code that unites the designer and reader.