Week 1 Assignment

Reading Arguments

1. What two qualities do Orwell’s “five specimens” (para. 2) share? According to Orwell, what is the “most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing” (4)?
2. Where in the essay does Orwell use deductive reasoning?
3. How does Orwell use cause-and-effect argument in his essay? For instance, how does he use it to explain why political speech and writing are bad? What other examples of cause-and-effect argument can you identify?
4. Orwell argues that “political language” consists “largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness” (13). What is a euphemism? What does “question-begging” mean?
5. Where does Orwell make a proposal argument? What does he propose?

Week 1 Assignment Answer

1. In “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift used effective strategies to describe the problems of Ireland. He ridiculed the political system by providing a proposal so immoral and unjust such as selling and eating infants to show the hypocrisy of the rich and his disillusionment of the society and of Ireland’s politics. He propose to reform the society by eating their infants, because the poor cannot sustain and maintain themselves thus it is only proper for them to lessen their population by either eating them or selling them to resolve the issue of poverty.