Ways We Lie

Stephanie Ericsson shows in her essay the different ways people lie to get what they want or make themselves look better. She articulates this focus with personal experience and examples. Through these examples and experiences she makes the fabrication a part of our life and culture, and make this essential by calling it harmless or innocent. To make her purpose more vivid and convincing she breaks the single act into different types by using logos.

Introduction:

by giving an anecdote of a personal experience she establishes not only credibility to discuss this topic but a comforting approach to the audience. In the first the three paragraphs she proposes the common idea of a harmless lie, and demonstrates the human nature to push the vice as far as possible from our minds and think of ourselves "as an honest person." ("We lie. We all do. We exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people's feelings, we conveniently forget, we keep secrets, we justify lying to the big-guy institutions.

In the fourth paragraph she exemplify how lying is vital in the social network of humans. Without lying it is considered as "paralyzing." She also, illustrates the consequences of telling the truth. If telling the truth has such severe damages like, losing one's job, losing $60, or losing a friend, Ericsson proposes that there "must be some merit to lying."

The last sentence of her introduction is her thesis sentence that introduces the paradox of the definition of lying and exemplifies this through her grouping or different categories of lies.