Critique of the 1776 Commission Report/Guide for Contributors/Style Guide

History Content Analysis
Classification Labels
 * Error
 * Omission
 * Exaggeration
 * Understatement
 * Misstatement
 * Faulty Analysis

Memory Content Analysis
Classification Labels
 * Error
 * Omission
 * Exaggeration
 * Understatement
 * Misstatement
 * Faulty Analysis

Rhetoric Analysis
The goal of rhetorical analysis is primarily to classify and label the rhetoric in the original text, and not to identify or correct errors, omissions, or flaws in the author's rhetoric. The only exception to this is labeling Flaws in Reasoning or Logic (see below).

Rhetorical classification has the following structure:


 * 1) Rhetorical Goal & Pattern
 * 2) Rhetorical Strategy
 * 3) Reasoning and Informal Logic
 * 4) Forms
 * 5) Statements about Evidence
 * 6) Flaws in Reasoning and Logic
 * 7) Statements about Truth and Knowledge (Epistemology)

Any given paragraph or section in the original text will have two or three types of labels: 1) a Rhetorical Goal or Pattern, 2) a Rhetorical Strategy, and (optional) 3) Reasoning and Informal Logic -- if that paragraph or section has a goal of being persuasive through reasoning or argument.


 * Note: Any paragraph where this doesn't apply should not have any Rhetoric Analysis. Hypothetical example: "The authors on this project really enjoyed the process of writing and editing this report." This statement would outside the scope of the this book, and therefore should not have any Rhetoric labels or tags.

To this end, a fairly elaborate system of classifications and labels are provided below. Contributors can use Templates for each, as shown in the "What you type" column.

When you enter your analysis of Rhetoric for each paragraph in the original, use the non-verbose template in the "Summary" while the verbose template should be used in your explanatory paragraph(s).

[TODO: Add example ]

Statements About Truth and Knowledge (Epistemology)
Epistemology is a very big topic in philosophy and we aren't doing full analysis in this book. For purposes of rhetoric analysis, we are only concerned with labeling the original text when it includes explicit and specific statements about truth and knowledge. Examples: "Everybody knows...", "Nobody will ever know...", "People who have lived and worked on farms will know...", "It is a universal truth that...", "As humans, we must believe [i.e. have faith that]...", "As revealed to us by our Creator...", and so on.

For our purposes, "truth" includes two definitions/categories: "justifiable true belief" (factual or realist truth) and also "beliefs one is willing to act on, in the court of one's highest interests" (pragmatist truth). This includes "sincere truths" and excludes so-called "truths" that are ironic, satiric, for-the-sake-of-argument, deceitful, or aimed to defeat or undermine the process of argumentation or debate itself. These latter statements have an underlying truth that is at odds with their face value or meaning. The implication of these two definitions of "truth" is that we assume the authors of the original text are trying &mdash; in good faith &mdash; to convince the reader to take meaningful action in the world, and not merely to entertain, stimulate imagination, provoke controversy, for literary or aesthetic effect, or to subvert debate or action.

Viewpoints Analysis
When you enter your analysis of Viewpoints for each paragraph in the original, use the non-verbose template in the "Summary" while the verbose template should be used in your explanatory paragraph(s).

[TODO: Add example ]

Authorship Analysis
When you enter your analysis of Authorship for each paragraph in the original, use the non-verbose template in the "Summary" while the verbose template should be used in your explanatory paragraph(s).

[TODO: Add example ]