You have your personal goal (what you want out of the argument) and your audience goals (mood, mind, action). Now, before you begin arguing, ask yourself one more question: What’s the issue? According to Aristotle, all issues boil down to just three (the Greeks were crazy about that number):
Argument Tool
THE THREE CORE ISSUES: Blame, values, choice.
Blame
Values
Choice
You can slot any kind of issue involving persuasion into one of these categories.
Who moved my cheese? This, of course, is a blame issue. Whodunit?
Should abortion be legal? Values. What’s morally right or wrong about letting a woman choose whether or not to end the budding life inside her own body? (My choice of words implies the values each side holds—a woman’s right to her own body, and the sanctity of life.)
Should we build a plant in Detroit? Choice: to build or not to build, Detroit or not Detroit.
Should Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have split up? Values—not moral ones, necessarily, but what you and your interlocutor value. Were they just too hot to separate?
Did O.J. do it? Blame.
Shall we dance? Choice: to dance or not to dance.
Persuasion Alert
What’s missing from my list? How about capital-T Truth? Can’t you argue about truth and falsity? You can, but that wouldn’t be persuasion. Absolute Truth demands a different kind of argument, one the philosophers called “dialectic.” It seeks to discover things, not talk people into them.
Why should you care which question slots into which core issue? It matters because you will never meet your goals if you argue around the wrong core issue. Watch a couple in their living room, reading books and listening to music:
SHE: Can you turn that down a little?
HE: You’re the one who set the volume last.
SHE: Oh, really? Then who was it blasting “Free Bird” all over the place this afternoon?
HE: So that’s what this is about. You hate my music.
What does she want out of this argument? Quiet. It’s a choice issue. She wants him to choose to turn the music down. But instead of choices, the argument turns to blame, then values.
Blame: You’re the one who set the volume last.
Values: So that’s what this is about. You hate my music.
It’s hard to make a positive choice about turning the volume knob when you argue about a past noise violation and the existential qualities of “Free Bird.”
The examples I gave of the core issues—blame, values, and choice—show a certain pattern. The blame questions deal with the past. The values questions are in the present tense. And the choice questions have to do with the future.
Blame = Past Values = Present Choice = Future
If you find an argument spinning out of control, try switching the tense. To pin blame on the cheese thief, use the past tense. To get someone to believe that abortion is a terrible sin, use the present tense. The future, though, is the best tense for getting peace and quiet in the living room.
Aristotle, who devised a form of rhetoric for each of the tenses, liked the future best of all.
The rhetoric of the past, he said, deals with issues of justice. This is the judicial argument of the courtroom. Aristotle called it “forensic” rhetoric, because it covers forensics. Our music-challenged couple uses the past tense for blaming each other.
HE: You’re the one who set the volume last.
SHE: Then who was it blasting “Free Bird”?
TRY THIS AT WORK
Most office backstabbing uses the past or present tense (“He’s the one who screwed up that bid”; “She’s a total jerk”). If you find yourself a victim, refocus the issue on future choices: “How is blaming me going to help us get the next contract?” “Whether you think I’m a jerk or not, let’s figure out a way for you and me to get along.”
If you want to try someone on charges of volume abuse (not to mention bad taste), you’re in the right tense. Forensic argument helps us determine whodunit, not who’s-doing-it or who-will-do-it. Watch Law & Order or CSI and you’ll notice that most of the dialogue is in the past tense. It works great for lawyers and cops, but a loving couple should be wary of the tense. The purpose of forensic rhetoric is to determine guilt and mete out punishment; couples who get in the habit of punishing each other suffer the same fate as the doomed marriages in Dr. Gottman’s Love Lab.
Persuasion Alert
If this seems to hint at an agenda, you’re right. As you saw during the last presidential election, Democrats and Republicans love the present tense. “The Republicans are corrupt!” “The Democrats are corrupt!” It’s a great way to stir up the base, and a lousy way to conduct a democracy. More on this in Chapter 4.
How about the present tense? Is that any better? It can be. The rhetoric of the present handles praise and condemnation, separating the good from the bad, distinguishing groups from other groups and individuals from each other. Aristotle reserved the present for describing people who meet a community’s ideals or fail to live up to them. It is the communal language of commencement addresses, funeral orations, and sermons. It celebrates heroes or condemns a common enemy. It gives people a sort of tribal identity. (We’re great, terrorists are cowards.) When a leader has trouble confronting the future, you hear similar tribal talk.
Aristotle’s term for this kind of language is demonstrative rhetoric, because ancient orators used it to demonstrate their fanciest techniques. Our argumentative couple uses it to divide each other.
HE: So that’s what this is about. You hate my music.
Meanings
Aristotle’s Greek word for demonstrative rhetoric is epideictic, but the only people who use that unpronounceable term are academic rhetoricians. They’re just being demonstrative.
TRY THIS IN A PITCH
If you’re competing against a superior company or candidate (or suitor of any kind), use the future tense against your opponent. “You’ve heard a lot of bragging about past accomplishments and how great my opponent is, but let’s talk about the future: What do you want done?”
You might say that the man bears sole blame for switching tenses from past to present. But let’s not get all forensic on each other, okay? The man may be right, after all; perhaps the argument has to do with the guy’s thing for Lynyrd Skynyrd and not the volume knob. In any case, their dialogue has suddenly turned tribal: I like my music, you hate it. If the man happened to be a politician he would find it hard to resist adding, “And that’s just wrong!” We use the present tense to talk about values: That is wrong. This is right. Detesting “Free Bird” is morally wrong.
If you want to make a joint decision, you need to focus on the future. This is the tense that Aristotle saved for his favorite rhetoric. He called it “deliberative,” because it argues about choices and helps us decide how to meet our mutual goals. Deliberative argument’s chief topic is “the advantageous,” according to Aristotle. This is the most pragmatic kind of rhetoric. It skips right and wrong, good and bad, in favor of expedience.
Present-tense (demonstrative) rhetoric tends to finish with people bonding or separating.
Past-tense (forensic) rhetoric threatens punishment.
Future-tense (deliberative) argument promises a payoff. You can see why Aristotle dedicated the rhetoric of decision-making to the future.
Our poor couple remains stranded in the present tense, so let’s rewind their dialogue and make them speak deliberatively—in the future tense, that is.
SHE: Can you turn that down a little?
HE: Sure, I’d be happy to.
Wait. Shouldn’t he say, “I’ll be happy to”? “I will,” not “I would”? Well, sure, you�
�re probably right. He could. But by using the conditional mood—“would” instead of “will”—he leaves himself an opening.
HE: But is the music too loud, or do you want me to play something else?
SHE: Well, now that you mention it, I’d prefer something a little less hair-bandy.
Ouch! He plays nice, and she insults the entire classic rock genre. That makes him feel justified in retaliating, but he does it moderately.
HE: Something more elevatorish, you mean? That doesn’t really turn me on. Want to watch a movie?
By turning the argument back to choices, the man keeps it from getting too personal—and possibly keeps her off balance, making her a bit more vulnerable to persuasion.
Persuasion Alert
I presumably didn’t dash this book off in one draft, so what excuse do I have for straying off topic? Cicero used digressions to change the tone and rhythm of an argument, and so do I. By describing a persuasive trick in the middle of my description of tenses, I hope to show how these tools work on all sorts of occasions.
SHE: What do you have in mind?
HE: We haven’t seen that Avengers movie in ages.
SHE: Avengers? I hate that movie.
As he well knows. This is a little off topic, but I can’t resist giving you another rhetorical trick: propose an extreme choice first. It will make the one you want sound more reasonable. I used the technique myself in getting my wife to agree to name our son after my uncle George. I proposed lots of alternatives—my personal favorite was Herman Melville Heinrichs—until she finally said, “You know, ‘George’ doesn’t really sound that bad.” I kissed her and told her how much I loved her, and notched another argument on my belt.
Back to our couple.
HE: Well, then, how about Titanic?
He knows she would prefer a different movie—she gets seasick easily—but it doesn’t sound that bad after the first choice.
SHE: Okay.
Titanic it is. Which happens to be the movie he wanted in the first place. The distinctions between the three forms of rhetoric can determine the success of a democracy, a business, or a family. Remember the argument I had with my son, George?
TRY THIS WHEN ARGUING TURNS TO FIGHTING
Consider “What should we do about it?” and “How can we keep it from happening again?” as rhetorical versions of WD-40 lubricant. The past and present can help you make a point, but any argument involving a decision eventually has to turn to the future.
ME: Who used all the toothpaste?
GEORGE: That’s not the question, is it, Dad? The question is, how are we going to keep it from happening again?
Sarcasm aside, the kid deserves credit for switching the rhetoric from past to future—from forensic to deliberative. He put the argument in decision-making mode. What choice will give us the best advantage for stocking an endless supply of toothpaste?
Annie’s Pretty Sure Bet
Hold on. The future sounds lovely, but isn’t civil discourse supposed to be about sticking to the facts? The future has no facts, right? Doesn’t it simply speculate?
Correct. Facts do not exist in the future. We can know that the sun came up yesterday and that it shines now, but we can only predict that the sun will come up tomorrow. When Little Orphan Annie sings that godawful “Tomorrow” song, she doesn’t make a fact-based argument, she bets. Like a proper Aristotelian, Annie even admits the case: “Bet your bottom dollar / That tomorrow / There’ll be sun!”
Persuasion Alert
A good persuader anticipates the audience’s objections. Ideally, you want to produce them even before the audience can. The technique makes your listeners more malleable. They begin to assume you’ll take care of all their qualms, and they lapse into a bovine state of persuadability. (Oh, wait. You’re the audience here. Scratch “bovine.”)
Annie concedes that the sunrise has not yet become a fact. Call it Orphan Annie’s Law: the sun only may come up tomorrow. A successful argument, like anything about the future, cannot stick to the facts.
Deliberative argument can use facts, but it must not limit itself to them. While you and I can disagree about the capital of Burkina Faso, we’re not arguing deliberatively; we simply dispute a fact. Neither of us can decide to make it Ouagadougou. We merely look it up. (I just looked it up.)
All we have for the future is conjecture or choices, not facts. When Homer Simpson argues with his wife in the future tense of deliberative argument, facts have nothing to do with it:
MARGE: Homer, I don’t want you driving around in a car you built yourself.
HOMER: You can sit there complaining, or you can knit me some seat belts.
Instead of helping us to find some elusive truth, deliberative argument deliberates, weighing one choice against the other, considering the circumstances.
Choices:
Beach or mountains this summer?
Should your company replace its computers or hire a competent tech staff?
Should a ten-year-old be on Snapchat?
Does it makes sense to go to Mars?
When you argue about values, you use demonstrative rhetoric, not deliberative. If you rely on a cosmic authority—God, or Beyoncé—then the audience has no choice to make.
Eternal truths will answer these:
Is there a God?
Is homosexuality immoral?
Is capitalism bad?
Should all students know the Ten Commandments?
In each case the argument has to rely on morals and metaphysics. And it takes place mostly in the present tense, the language of demonstrative rhetoric. It can be particularly maddening in a marital dispute, because it comes across as preachy. (Demonstrative rhetoric is the rhetoric of preachers, after all.) Besides, it is far more difficult to change someone’s values than to change her mind. After all, eternal truths are supposed to be…eternal.
CALLER: I don’t know much about the Democrats, but Candidate M is a jerk!
What’s Wrong with This Argument?
The host could have turned this into a political argument by asking whether Candidate Y would be a better president than his opponent. Instead, the host went all tribal: she’s not one of us! Tribal talk deals with present questions: Who’s in and who’s out? Political talk deals with the future: What’s to our best advantage?
NEXT CALLER: I’m unbelievably angry at that caller. If she saw what a good Christian Candidate M is, she’d shut her mouth!
HOST: Put her in a burka, baby.
Practical concerns are open to deliberative debate. Because deliberation has to do with choices, everything about it depends—on the circumstances, the time, the people involved, and whatever “public” you mean when you talk about public opinion. Deliberative argument relies on public opinion, not a higher power, to resolve questions.
The audience’s opinion will answer these:
Should the state legislature raise taxes to fund decent schools?
Should you raise your kid’s allowance?
When should your company release its newest product?
If you reply, “That’s just wrong!” to an argument, you use demonstrative, values rhetoric. If you reply, “On the other hand,” then your argument has a chance of making a choice.
FATHER: Our kid could break her neck on those old monkey bars.
MOTHER: On the other hand, she may not. Besides, the coordination she learns might prevent future accidents.
And it might not. Choices are full of these what-if scenarios, and deliberative discourse deals with their probabilities. In The Simpsons—an endless source of rhetorical material—Ned Flanders, a born-again Christian, attacks Moe the bartender with demonstrative, present-tense rhetoric, and Moe makes a
weak attempt at the conjectural language of deliberative rhetoric.
NED FLANDERS: You ugly, hate-filled man.
MOE: Hey, I may be ugly, and I may be hate-filled, but…uh…what was the last thing you said?
Deliberation is the rhetoric of choice, literally. It deals with decisions, and decisions depend on particular circumstances, not eternal truths and cold facts. If life were free of contingencies, then we could live by a few rules written in stone that would apply to all our decisions. Every baby would come with an operating manual, the same guide that worked for her older brother. Every rule of thumb would apply to every situation. The early bird would always catch the worm, everything would be cheaper by the dozen, and the world would come in two colors: black and white. But alas, it doesn’t. Sometimes, under some circumstances (say, jumping out of an airplane for the first time), it’s a very bad idea to look before you leap. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy makes a terrible friend.
Besides, people like choices more than they like being told they don’t measure up. What if I had ignored George’s focus on the future and brought the argument to the present?
ME: A good son wouldn’t use up all the toothpaste. Good sons show consideration.
Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated) Page 4