Anton Soeharyo - The Official blog of Anton

I am going to start a series of my fascination with the English language

by rambling about some random English language word, sentence, parables, idioms, expression, proverbs, or anything to do with the English language

Background:

I am not a Language expert, nor am I a native speaker of the English language, but my “love affair” with the language having been using, and studying about it, or studying with it for the past decades or so has motivates me to start this “column” about it.

Today’s fascination:

I found this word/idiom while reading an article “somewhere”

Red Herring

this idiom is used to describe a purposeful attempt to divert attention from the supposedly main purpose of the argument.

example of use of the idiom “Red Herring” can be found usually in newspaper articles describing a politician debate.

Actual Red Herring in action:

“I believe that the penalty given (in a soccer game) was a controversial one, but we would like to point out that the opponent’s team supporters and member of the team has been playing unfairly against us.”

Anton’s Non-native point of view explanation:

the above example is a clear Red Herring, where the arguer introduce a second irrelevant point (the other teams are a cheat, the other teams are not playing fairly) in an attempt to divert the attention of the “audience” and making it sound “relevant” and valid.

Read more about Red Herring:

Wikipedia

comments and suggestion, especially corrections are most welcomed!