Scare Tactics, the first book on the subject, provides a theory of the
structure of reasoning used in fear and threat appeal argumentation.
Such arguments come under the heading of the argumentum ad baculum,
the `argument to the stick/club', traditionally treated as a fallacy in
the logic textbooks. The new dialectical theory is based on case studies
of many interesting examples of the use of these arguments in
advertising, public relations, politics, international negotiations, and
everyday argumentation on all kinds of subjects. Many of these arguments
are amusing, once you see the clever tactic used; others are scary. Some
of the arguments appear to be quite reasonable, while others are highly
suspicious, or even outrageously fraudulent. In addition to the examples
taken from logic textbooks, other cases treated come from a variety of
sources, including political debates, legal arguments, and arguments
from media sources, like magazine articles and television ads. The
purpose of this book is to explain how such arguments work as devices of
persuasion, and to develop a method for analyzing and evaluating their
reasonable and fallacious uses in particular cases. The book shows how
such arguments share a common structure, revealing several distinctive
forms of argument nested within each other. Based on its account of this
cognitive structure, the new dialectical theory presents methods for
identifying, analyzing, and evaluating these arguments, as they are used
in specific cases.
The book is a scholarly contribution to argumentation theory. It is
written in an accessible style, and uses many colorful and provocative
examples of fear and threat appeal arguments that are suitable for
classroom discussions. The matters treated will be of interest to
professionals and students in law, critical thinking, advertising,
speech communication, informal logic, cognitive science, rhetoric, and
media studies.
