July 20, 2020

Read the introduction of the forthcoming paper From fact-checking to rhetoric-checking.

March 16, 2017

Dutch philosopher Jean Wagemans pleaded for what he coined ’rhetoric-checking’ in a lecture for the interdisciplinary student society Kairos. According to Wagemans, fact-checking is very useful, but it only produces information about the truth of statements and not about their relevance. Moreover, fact-checking does not apply to propositions of value nor to propositions of policy, both of which play an important role in politics and the public debate. After having explained a method for rhetoric-checking, Wagemans performed a rhetoric-check of statements taken from campaign ads and speech fragments of Joe the Plumber and Donald Trump.