Question 2

"Audience fallacies" occur when generalizations are created about a certain audience based off of broad statements that are not backed up by any real proof or factual evidence. "Authorial fallacies" on the other hand occur and become problematic when a person writes something, really anything, or makes claims without having information to support it. Many times stereotypes and assumptions are connected to both types of fallacies. We try to avoid these fallacies in our writing to avoid sounding ignorant or uneducated on the top we are writing about. We do not want to make assumptions about our audience without proving how we know and why we know who they truly are. Also as the writer, we do not want to spew out information or claims that have no evidence or substance to back them up; every good argument or analysis needs substance and factual proof behind it; ideas and information about a topic do not just come from anywhere, there is always either a direct or indirect source. One example of "audience fallacies" is an example we discussed earlier this semester in class, the assumption that suburban housewives drive hummers because they do not care about the environment. Here, as the writer, we are making assumptions that housewives as an audience do not care, so they drive big SUV's. In actuality, we know nothing about them and for all we know they could be very caring people. This one broad statement creates a stereotype and associates them with a negative identity. An example of "authorial fallacies" would be the recent controversial article about immigration in the United States published in the Sandspur. Here, the author chose to claim that her view on immigration was right, when in reality it is not necessarily true, because even though it was her opinion, she did not back up her argument correctly.