《高级英语》 精品课程

第二册

长江师范学院外国语学院

长江师范学院外国语学院

Love is a Fallacy

Unit 5

Teaching Aims

1) To familiarize students with basic knowledge of logical fallacies.

2) To help students to learn the way of characterization in the text.

3) To help students to appreciate the humor of the author.

Learning of Logic Fallacies 1. Dicto Simplicity 2. Hasty Generalization 3. Post Hoc 4. Contradictory Premises 5. Ad Misericordiam 6. False Analogy 7. Hypothesis Contrary to Fact 8. Poisoning the Well

1.Dicto Simplicity

—the fallacy is committed by an argument that applies a general rule to a particular case in which some special circumstances make the rule inappropriate.

Car is fast. Therefore every time we hang out, we should drive a car.

Dog is a pet. Everyone likes it. Post education is beneficial. so everyone

should at least get a bachelor degree. Japanese waged a war to Chinese, which had

nothing to do with humanity but everything to do with aggression. Therefore every Japanese is guilty and should be condemned.

2. Hasty Generalization

--- The converse fallacy of accident argues improperly from a special case to a general rule.

A sports program is interesting. An entertainment program is interesting. A TV series is interesting. Therefore every TV program is interesting.

Tom is a prime student. Jane is a prime student. Jack is a prime student. All the students therefore in this class are prime students.

I haven’t seen a UFO; Jason hasn’t either; Ms Yan hasn’t probably; so no UFO at all.

3. Post Hoc

---The fallacy of false cause mislocates the cause of one phenomenon in another that is only seemingly related. Post hoc mistakes temporal sequence for causal connection .

Don’t sing this song. Every time you sing this song, the baby gets sick.

I never drink purified water, each time I do I’ll get diarrhea.

He is very wealthy, so he must be healthy. His eyes are very big, so he must have good

eyesight.

4. Contradictory Premises

--The conclusion is contradictory to the premise

This is the mightiest sword which is able to shatter any shield, and that is the most indestructible shield which is capable of enduring any stroke.

I think he is the invincible man in the world, and nothing is powerful enough to defeat him. But, of course, he has certain drawbacks that might cause him lose.

Anyone who wants to learn to drive must have a license, but if you want to get a license, you ought to pass the driving test.

5. Ad Misericordiam---The fallacy of irrelevant conclusion is

committed when the conclusion changes the point that is at issue in the premises

“He was late to the class today.” “Because he was scolded by his mother yesterday.”

Maybe he isn’t qualified enough for this job, but think about his relationships, his uncle is the mayor, and his father is the chairman of the company which has steady business relations with us.

“ Have you had lunch?” “ I got up late this morning, and unfortunately I fell down from my bike when riding to school.”

6. False Analogy

Since we have moon cakes in the Moon Festival, why don’t we have spring cakes in the Spring Festival?

Before the founding of the People’s Republic, eating rotten vegetables and bran was so common to the people. So I don’t think it is unbearable to eat the remains of the meal.

7. Hypothesis Contrary to Fact

If the gunpowder hadn’t been invented, there wouldn’t have been so many wars in the world.

How could you have passed the exam what if I hadn’t told you the answer in advance?

8. Poisoning the Well

--- “speaking against the man” rather than to the issue in which the premises may only make a personal attack on a person who holds some thesis, instead of offering grounds showing why what he says is false.

Don’t listen to any word from him, for he is most shameful cheating around the world.

The defendant killed the victim cruelly, I suggest Lord sentence him guilty.

Exercises

1) People all over the world are peace-loving.         (Dicto Simpliciter)2) His parents love him. His Miss Right loves him, too. So, everybody he knows loves him.                       

(Hasty Generalization)3)Don’t eat eggs before an exam. I am flunked every time when I take an exam after eating an egg.                       

  (Post Hoc.)4)He decided to give up all his decisions.         (Contradictory Premises)

5)When the interviewer asks the job-hunter to make a brief self-introduction, he replies that he has to find a job to afford his old parents and young children who are now suffering from hunger.          

(Ad Misericordiam)6) We can take books and food in the train, then shouldn’t we take a bomb with us in the train? 

(False Analogy)7)If Chinese people had not overthrown the Kuomingtang Regime, we would not live a happy life today.   

(Hypothesis Contrary to Fact)

8)When the new teacher asked Peter to answer the question, Tom rose to his feet and said: “Peter is a dunce, he knows nothing about what you are talking about.”   

(Poisoning the Well)9) All students in this university can speak English well.   (Dicto Simpliciter)I will not go to the library any more, because every time I go there, it rains.   

(Post Hoc.)  

Do exercise on the Textbook pp 85-86

About the Author: Max Shulman

A writer in the early 40s as one of America’s best-known humorists. Lots of his novels were adapted to the screen.

Best remembered for creating the popular character Dobie Gillis, a typical American teen who frequently suffered from romantic angst (worry). The character appeared on a popular television sitcom (situation comedy) during the 50s and was in a feature film in 1953.

Explain the Metaphor

What implication does the following metaphor contain? ‘Love is a collaborative work of art’ a) Love is workb) Love requires cooperationc) Love requires compromised) Love requires shared responsibilitye) Love requires communicationf) Love demands sacrificeg) Love is an aesthetic experienceh) Love involves creativityi) Love cannot be achieved by formula.j) Love requires how you see the world.k) Love may be transient or permanent.l) Love needs fundingm) Love is unique in each instance

What implication does the title contain? Love is fallacy. 1. There is a deceptive or delusive quality about love.

        2. Love is an error, a deception that does not fellow the principle of love

General understanding of the text

-- plot -- theme -- characters -- point of view -- tone/ atmosphere -- climax -- writing style

The Plot of the Story The narrator of the story, Dobie Gilles, a freshman in a law school struggled against two antagonists: Petey Burch, his roommate whose girl friend he planned to steal; and Polly Espy, the girl he intended to marry after suitable re-education. In order to make Polly a suitable wife for himself, Dobie gave her a series of lessons on logical fallacies on a few nights’ dating. Yet what he had done backfired on him when Polly refuted all his arguments as logical fallacies before finally rejecting him, just because Burch owned a raccoon coat that all fashionable people on campus were wearing. In fact it was Dobie himself who gave Burch the raccoon coat for the privilege of dating the girl.

Theme    -- love is  a fallacy. (to be specific, ‘love is an error’, a deception and an emotion that does not follow the principles of logic. Through the story, we can find that in the affluent society, girls do not want brilliant, gifted or educated husbands, but want husbands who are rich and wealthy enough to provide all the things necessary for keeping up with the Joneses – home, clothes, cars, etc.)

Protagonist: Dobie Gilles Antagonists: Petey Burch, Polly Espy Tone: light, humorous, satirical Point of view: first person Climax: Para 147-150 when Polly refused to go steady with Dobbie because she had already promised to go steady with Petey Burch.

Detailed Analysis of the Preface(Para 1-3)

Words and Expressions enterprising: energetic, initiative in a month of Sundays: in a long time unfetter: free from fetter, to set free or keep free from restrictions or bonds.

      unfetter a prisoner      unfetter mind from prejudice    消除偏见 limp: drooping, having lost stiffness, rigidity  柔

软的      His limp body collapsed forward flaccid: lacking firmness and resilience, soft and limp

     flaccid cheeks   松弛的面颊

spongy: soft and porous  * pedantic: characterized by a narrow, often ostentatious concern for book learning and formal rules   迂腐的， 乏味的

     a pedantic attention to details. 学究式地注意细枝末节 trauma: n. a painful emotional experience, or shock, often producing a lasting psychic  effect and sometimes a neurosis

ParaphrasingPara 1:There follows an informal essay that ventures even beyond Lamb’s frontier.

    metaphor, comparing the limitation set by Lamb to a frontier. The informal essay that follows here is freer than the one Charles Lamb wrote.

Charles Lamb (b. Feb. 10, 1775, London, Eng.--d. Dec. 27, 1834, Edmonton, Middlesex), English essayist and critic, best-known for his series of miscellaneous Essays of Elia, but also among the greatest of English letter writers, and a perceptive literary critic.

2.  Could Carlyle do more? Could Ruskin?   rhetorical questions for emphasis. Carlyle could not

write a better essay than this one. Neither could Ruskin.

Carlyle, Thomas (b. Dec. 4, 1795, Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scot.--d. Feb. 5, 1881, London, Eng.), British historian and essayist, whose major works include The French Revolution, 3 vol. (1837), On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), and The History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, 6 vol. (1858--65).

Ruskin, John (b. Feb. 8, 1819, London, Eng.--d. Jan. 20, 1900, Coniston, Lancashire), English writer, critic, and artist who championed the Gothic Revival movement in architecture and had a large influence upon public taste in art in Victorian England.

3. Logic, far from being a dry, pedantic discipline, is a living, breathing thing, full of beauty, passion and trauma

metaphor and hyperbole. Metaphor comparing logic to a living human being. Hyperbole for the exaggeration for the sake of effect. Logic is not at all a dry, learned branch of learning. It is like a living human being, full of beauty, passion and painful emotional shocks

far from: not at all. discipline: a branch of knowledge or learning.

Detailed Analysis of the charactersProtagonist: Dobie

Para 4: Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute – I was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a chemist’s scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And – think of it! – I was only eighteen.

Words and Expressions calculating: shrewd or cunning, esp. in a selfish way perspicacious:, having keen judgment or understanding;

acutely perceptive; clear-sighted acute and astute: having or showing a clever or shrew mind;

cunning; crafty; wily dynamo: generator scalpel: a small, light, straight knife with a very sharp blade,

used by surgeons and in anatomical dissections penetrating: sharp; piercing

ParaphrasingMy brain was like a forceful dynamo, accurate scales and a sharp

scalpel. Simile and hyperbole.

Para 5: it is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect.

Para 20: My brain, that precision instrument, slipped into high gear.

Para 23: …but I was not one to let my heart rule my head.Para 134: I paused for a moment while my massive brain chose

the proper words.

ParaphrasingPara 5: hyperbole for effect. Great mind or intelligence.Para 20: mixed metaphor, comparing at the same time the brain

to a precision instrument and to a machine (like a car) that has gears. My brain began to work at high speed or efficiency. A machine is in high gear when the arrangement of gears provide the greatest speed but little power.

Para 23: metonymy. “heart” stands for “feelings and emotions” and “head” stands for “reason and good sense”. I do not let feelings or emotions to get the upper hand of reason or good sense. I’m guided in my actions by reason and good sense and not by feelings and emotions.

Para 134: hyperbole for effect. Great mind or intelligence.

Para 138: I was not Pygmalion; I was Frankenstein, and my monster had me by the throat. Frantically I fought back the tide of panic surging through me.

Para 151: I reeled back, overcome with the infamy of it.Para 153: Look at me – a brilliant student, a tremendous intellectual, a man 

with an assured future.

ParaphrasingPara 138: Pygmalion and Frankenstein are two allusions.Pygmalion: (Greek mythology) a king of Cyprus, and a sculptor, who fell in l

ove with his own statue of Galatea, later brought to life by the goddess of love, Aphrodite, at his prayer. The king married his statue girl.

Frankenstein: the title character in a novel (1818) by Mary W. Shelley: he is a young medical student who creates a monster that destroys him

He planned to be Pygmalion, to fashion an ideal wife for himself; but he became Frankenstein for Polly ultimately rejected him. His creature (Polly) attacked by seizing and squeezing his throat. Desperately he tried to stop the feeling of panic that was overwhelming him.

Para 151: I staggered back overcome by the great wickedness of Petey’s traitorous act.

Para 153: assured future: a safe and secure future.

Antagonist: PeteyBurchPara 5: Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice

enough young fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable. Worst of all, a faddist. Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason. To be swept up in every craze that comes along, to surrender yourself to idiocy just because everyone else is doing it – this, to me, is the acme of mindlessness.

Paraphrasingellipsis. He is of the same age and has the same background but he is

dumb as an ox.dumb as an ox: simile, as stupid as an ox; very stupid.nothing upstairs: (American slang) empty-headed; a nitwit.impressionable: easily affected by other people.fad: a custom, style, etc. that many people are interested in for a short

time; passing fashion; craze. faddist:: a person who follows fads.craze: something that is currently the fashion.acme: the highest point; point of culminationFads , in my opinion, show a complete lack of reason. It is the greatest

of lack of intelligence for me to follow enthusiastically every current fashion that appears, or to indulge yourself to stupid action just because everyone else is doing it.

Para 50: He was a torn man. First he looked at the coat with the expression of a waif as a bakery window. Then he turned away and set his jaw resolutely. Then he looked back at the coat, with even more longing in his face. Then he turned away, but with not so much resolution this time. Back and forth his head swiveled, desire waxing, resolution waning.

Para 153: Look at Petey – a knot-head, a jitterbug, a guy who’ll never know where his next meal is coming from.

Paraphrasingwaif: a person without home or friends, esp. A homeless childswivel: v.i. turn onwax: v.i. grow gradually larger; increase in strength, intensity,

 volume, etc.wane: v.i. become less intense, strong, bright, etc.knot-head: [slang]. A foolish, stupid personjitterbug: n a dance for couples, esp. in the early 1940’s, invo

lving fast, acrobatic movements to swing music. [fig] an emotionally unstable person.

Para 50: He was agitated and tormented , not knowing what was the right thing to do. The way he looked at the coat was the expression of a hungry homeless child looking longingly at the bread at a bakery window (simile)…. His head turned back and forth. Every time he looked his desire for the coat grew stronger and his resolution not to give away Polly became weaker. (antithesis)

Para 153: He does not know whether he’ll have something to eat for his next     

         meal. He is a man with a very uncertain future.

Antagonist: PollyPara 25: Beautiful she was. She was not yet of pin-up proportions, 

but I felt sure that time would supply the lack. She already had the makings.

Para 26: Gracious she was. By gracious I mean full of graces. She had an erectness of carriage, an ease of bearing, a poise that clearly indicated the best of breeding. At table her manners were exquisite. I had seen her at the Kozy kampus Korner eating the specialty of the house --…---without even getting her fingers moist.

Para 27: Intelligent she was not. In fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But I believed that under my guidance she would smarten up. At any rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all, easier to make a beautiful dumb girl smart than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful.

Words and Expressions

pin-up: (American colloquialism) designating a girl whose sexual attractiveness makes her a subject for the kind of pictures often pinned up on walls.

proportions: lines, shapes of the body.makings: the material or qualities needed for the making or development of something.

  His father saw him the makings of an artist even when he was three.

  She has the makings of a fine teacher.carriage: manner of carrying the head and body; physical posture, conduct.

bearing: way of carrying oneself; manner   He has  a bearing of a solider.    他有军人的风度 .

exquisite: very beautiful and lovely, esp., in a delicate and carefully wrought way. 

优美的 ,  高雅的 .   She is a ballet dancer of exquisite skill. 她是一个动作优美的芭

蕾舞演员 .specialty of the house: the special dish which the restaurant o

r cafeteria sells.gravy: n. the juice given off by meat in cooking  肉汁 ,  调味汁 .   

  fish gravy   鱼汁post roast: meat, usually a large cut of beef, cooked in one pie

ce by braising.a dipper of sauerkraut: a small cupful of pickled chopped cab

bagedump: (American colloquialism) stupid, moronic; unintellige

ntveer: change direction; shift; turn or swing around.

Paraphrasing

Para 25: she was not yet as beautiful as a pin-up girl but I felt sure that she would become beautiful enough after some time. She already had the all the physical qualities needed for developing into a very beautiful woman.

Para 26: …she walked with the head and body erect and moved in a natural and dignified manner – all this showed she was well educated and trained in manners and social behavior…

Para 27: In fact, she went in the opposite direction. (euphemism). She was not intelligent, rather, she was very stupid. It is easier…(antithesis)

Words and Expressions & Paraphrasing

Para 61: This girl’s lack of information was terrifying. Now would it be enough merely to supply her with information. First she had to be taught to think. This loomed as a project of no small dimensions, and…But then I got to think about her abundant physical charms and about the way she entered a room and the way she handled a knife and fork.

Para 98: Maybe somewhere in the extinct crater of her mind, a few embers still smoldered. Maybe somehow I could fan them into flame. Admittedly it was not a project fraught with hope, but I decided to give it one more try.

loom: appear or come in sight distinctly.dimension: extent, size or degree; scopeno small dimensions: understatement or litotes, in

which something is expected by a negation of the country.

physical charms: beautiful face and figure.embers: the smoldering remains of a fire ( 余烬 )smolder: v.i. burn and smoke without flame; be consumed by slow combustion

fraught: filled, charged, or loadedPara 61:…to teach her to think appeared to be a rather big task.

Para 98: metaphor, comparing Polly’s mind to the extinct crater to a volcano, and  “embers” to some spark of intelligence. Perhaps there is still some intelligence left in Polly’s empty (or stupid ) mind. Perhaps I could develop the little intelligence still existing in Polly’s mind. One must admit the outcome does not look very hopeful.

Words and Expressions

Para 115: There is a limit to what flesh and blood can bear.Para 123: … kept hammering away without let-up. … I saw

a chink of light. And then the chink got bigger and the sun came pouring in and all was bright.

Para 124: Five grueling nights this took, but it was worth it. I had made a logician out of Polly;… She was a fit wife for me, a proper hostess for my many mansions, a suitable mother for my well-heeled children.

cretin: a person suffering from cretinism; a stupid person.hammer away (at): keep emphasizing or talking aboutlet-up: a slackening or lessening, as of effort; a stop or

pause.chink: a narrow opening; crack; fissure; slit.grueling: extremely tiring; exhaustingwell-heeled: (slang) rich, prosperous

Para 115: synecdoche, material for the thing made. There is a limit to that any human being can bear.

Para 123: Over and over again I gave examples and pointed out mistakes in her thinking. I kept emphasizing all this without stopping. A simile, comparing his teaching to the hard work of digging a tunnel. The comparison is kept up and developed through the rest of the paragraph.

Para 124: This teaching took five extremely trying (exhausting) nights, but it was worth all this trouble. I had made Polly into a logician. Polly was good enough for me.

Writing Style fast pace with a racy dialogue full of American

colloquialism and slangs. He employs a great variety of writing techniques to make his story vivid, dramatic and colorful.

The lexical spectrum is colorful—from the ultra learned terms to the infra clipped vulgar forms to fit in each character.

profuse figurative language and also grammatical inversion for special emphasis. The speed of the narration is maintained by the use of short sentences, elliptical sentences and dashes throughout the story. This mix adds to the realism of the story.

Questions for oral discussion1. Comparing with the narrator’s description

of the three characters in the story, what do you think of each of them?

2. What is your idea about love? Is love a fallacy?

3. What do you think of Polly’s choice?4. Whom does the writer try to satirize? In

what way?5. What have you learned about the young

Americans from this story?