Identifying "hidden" viewpoints | Reading | Khan Academy

- [David] Hello readers.

You ever see one of those videos

where you think you're looking at a shoe

and someone takes a knife to it

and it's actually cake?

That's what this video
is about, identifying

when an author tries to
pass off one kind of text

as another, cleverly
hiding their point of view,

this shoe is actually cake,

this informational text is
actually an argumentative one.

This is a rather underhanded
sort of rhetoric,

and when I say rhetoric,

I mean the art of persuasive
speech or writing.

Rhetoric includes a wide
range of tactics, right?

From figurative language to appeals

to the reader's emotions

or logic,

using heart-wrenching
imagery, invoking statistics.

These are tools in the rhetorical toolkit

and sometimes writers can use those tools

to hide their viewpoint.

Here, let me give you an example, which

for the record does
not represent the views

of either Khan Academy or me,

and is provided for
training purposes only,

here we go.

The facts on American poverty.

According to the US census,

the poverty rate in
the year 2022 was 11.5%

or 37.9 million people,

but 89% of American households
have air conditioners,

according to the US Energy
Information Administration

and fully 99.4% have at least
one electric refrigerator.

Both of these technologies
were luxuries a century ago.

The American standard of living is high,

even the percentage of households living

in conditions deemed food insecure

by the USDA was a mere 12.8% in 2022.

In 2002, 20 years prior, the
USDA claimed that only 11.1%

of American households were food insecure.

It may be the case that impoverished

is a term that does not accurately
describe these Americans.

Whoof, okay, so that
excerpt is trying to argue

by snowing us under
with context less facts

that poverty doesn't really exist

at the rate we think it does.

I'm gonna go through

and pick out some rhetorical techniques

that will tell us that this
is an argumentative essay

and not just an unbiased
informational one.

Here we go.

So the thing the author
of this passage wants

to do is create doubt.

Look at how they're doing that.

We've got these quotation marks

in the title around poverty,

which is what they used

to call scare quotes.

Scare quotes are meant
to cast doubt on an idea.

So already this shows that
the author wants you to think

that poverty isn't real, right,

so-called poverty.

The passage also includes other words

that are chosen to downplay poverty.

The words mere

and only a mere 12.8%

of the population in 2022 is 12.8%

of 333.3 million people,

so like 42.6 million people,

that doesn't sound mere to me,

that's a ton of people.

So the author is trying
to minimize something

that many people agree
is horrible, millions

of people going hungry.

The passage uses a rhetorical appeal

to the sense of logos, of reason,

it's trying to satisfy
the desire for facts

and figures using all these stats.

Presenting this data gives the passage

a feeling of accuracy and truthfulness,

but do those numbers tell the full story?

Sure, people might have refrigerators,

but can they afford food to put in them?

Here, the text gives the
reader a reason to say,

"We can all agree that
poverty is terrible,

but what if there aren't as
many poor people as we fear?"

And operating from that
basis allows you to say,

"Well, maybe we're wasting
money on anti-poverty programs."

It is true that Americans have appliances,

but is it accurate to say that simply

because 89% of US households
have an air conditioner

that those households
don't experience poverty?

Is one thing a good measure of the other?

I think the author of the
piece expects the reader

to make the correlation
that if you have AC

and a fridge, you can't
really be considered poor.

But is that a common
way of measuring poverty

or is someone's family income perhaps

a more accurate way to measure that?

Notice that income or
money is never mentioned.

Why is that?

It claims to be a fact sheet

that's really presenting
an opinion on poverty.

Once you know to look for this trick,

you'll start seeing it everywhere,

writers using rhetoric to
present their biased arguments

as unbiased fact.

So next time you're reading
an article, ask yourself,

what are the techniques
that the authors use

to try to convince their audience?

What facts are the authors including

and what facts are they not including?

Are they truly providing
objective, unbiased information,

or are they disguising their biases

and opinions using rhetoric?

Keep a sharp eye out readers,

watch out for cake disguised as shoes.

You can learn anything, David out.