Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated)

by Jay Heinrichs

  Argument Tool

  EMOTIONAL VOLUME CONTROL: Don’t visibly exaggerate your emotions. Let your audience do that for you.

  The conservative talk show host in The Simpsons commits a rhetorical error when he forgets his pathetic volume control at a town meeting:

  B. T. BARLOW: Mr. Mayor, I have a question for you….what if YOU came home one night to find your family tied up and gagged, with SOCKS in their mouths? They’re screaming. You’re trying to get in but there’s too much BLOOD on the knob!!!!!

  MAYOR QUIMBY: What is your question about?

  B. T. BARLOW: It’s about the budget, sir.

  TRY THIS WITH A BAD EMPLOYEE

  If you’re angry at an underling—say, you caught him badmouthing you to higher-ups—call him into your office and keep your heat inside. Speak more softly than usual, don’t gesture with your hands, and let your eyes betray your cold fury. The overall effect can terrify the most blasé employee.

  You might prefer to follow a skilled rhetorician like Daniel Webster. We remember him as a blowhard, but his contemporaries considered him the most persuasive person in the country. He prosecuted a case in Massachusetts where a well-known ship captain—a Captain White, no less—had been murdered in his sleep. It was the O. J. Simpson case of its day. The suspect was a farm boy with no prior record, and people wondered how such a nice young man could commit something so heinous. Webster stood before the jury and, looking as though he could barely contain his outrage, narrated the murder in ordinary, everyday terms, making the crime sound like a farm chore to this twisted soul and anticipating In Cold Blood by more than a century. The jury hanged the boy.

  Argument Tool

  THE PATHETIC ENDING: Emotion works best at the end.

  Holding your emotions in check also means taking your time to use them. Pathos tends to work poorly in the beginning of an argument, when you need to make the audience understand what you want and trust your character; that’s the bailiwick of logos and ethos. Let emotion build gradually. Aristotle said that you can turn it up loudest in a speech before a large crowd; logos and ethos are your main strengths in a one-on-one argument, he said. But even when you harangue a political convention, your emotions will work best in gradually increasing doses.

  When you speak before a small group—say, the Supreme Court—pathos can work, but only if you use it subtly. Some years after the Captain White affair, Webster argued a case before the Supremes on behalf of Dartmouth College, his alma mater. The state of New Hampshire was trying to take it over and turn it into a university. At the end of two days of rational argument, Webster came to his peroration—an apt time for pathos. Fighting tears, he turned to Chief Justice John Marshall. “It is, sir, as I have said, a small college.” His voice cracked a little. “And yet, there are those who love her.” A witness at the hearing said Justice Marshall’s own eyes misted over. It was the most pathetic thing. Webster won the case, and Dartmouth—an Ivy League university with engineering, business, and medical schools—remains Dartmouth College.

  Persuasion Alert

  We live in a much more ironic time. I’m compelled to use an ironic comment to distance myself from Webster’s pathetic appeal, lest you think the “small college” shtick makes me cry, too. That works only on the more zealous Dartmouth alums.

  How does this work in real life? Suppose the reason for my daughter’s bank fit was a sudden yen for ice cream. Instead of prostrating herself, she could have begun quietly:

  DOROTHY JR.: Daddy, can I have an ice-cream cone?

  ME: May I have an ice-cream cone.

  DOROTHY JR.: May I have an ice-cream cone?

  ME: No.

  TRY THIS IN A PRESENTATION

  While rhetoricians encourage you to start quietly and turn up the volume gradually, a veteran adman told me he did the opposite, lowering his voice more and more so that people would have to lean in to hear what he was saying. Then he ended with an emotional crescendo. The soft voice made the peroration that much more dramatic, he said.

  Even at that age she knew me well enough to expect that answer. So, if she was well prepared, she’d be ready with her peroration—a silent peroration. She could simply have looked up at me and let the tears well up, which is not a tough feat for a kid denied a cone. Both Aristotle and Cicero listed compassion as a useful emotion, and it works for a besotted father at least as well as for a Supreme Court justice. If tears failed her, she could have resorted to humor, giving me the long-lashed open stare that my kids called “Bambi eyes.” It cracked me up every time. The odds in favor of ice cream would have soared.

  Now grown up, Dorothy Jr. tells me that losing my temper never worked on her.

  DOROTHY JR.: When you got really mad, you sort of got funny.

  ME: What do you mean, funny?

  DOROTHY JR.: You did this, you know, Yosemite Sam thing.

  ME: Well, if you just treated your father with a little—

  DOROTHY JR. (laughing): Yeah, like that! It was when you talked quietly and let your eyes get all scary—that was frightening.

  ME (making scary eyes): Like this?

  DOROTHY JR.: No, Dad. That’s just pathetic.

  I believe she meant “pathetic” in the modern, unrhetorical sense.

  Other Passion Plays

  Humor ranks above all the other emotions in persuasiveness, in part because it works the best at improving your ethos. A sense of humor not only calms people down, it makes you appear to stand above petty squabbles. The problem with humor, though, is that it is perfectly awful at motivating anyone into any sort of action. When people laugh, they rarely want to do anything else. Humor can change their emotions and their minds, but the persuasion stops there.

  Aristotle, who was as close to a psychologist as an ancient Greek could get, said that some emotions—such as sorrow, shame, and humility—can prevent action altogether. These feelings make people introspective. They draw a bath, listen to Billie Holiday, and feel sorry for themselves.

  Persuasion Alert

  We talked about fear earlier, but Aristotle called its use a fallacy—argument by the stick—even if the speaker isn’t the one doing the threatening. Fear compels people to act, and compulsion precludes a choice. No argument there, only naked instinct.

  Other emotions—such as joy, love, esteem, and compassion—work better, Aristotle said. Some people tend to revel in them, while others start fund drives. Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy showed the power of compassion, but a disaster carries more force than an argument. When you want action to come out of argument, your most useful emotions arouse people’s tribal instincts—exploiting their insecurities about where they stand in a group and how much they belong to it. I mentioned in an earlier chapter that you want the audience to identify with you and, through you, the action you promote. This is why Aristotle listed anger, patriotism, and emulation among emotions that can get an audience out of its seats and make it do what you want.

  A person who desires something is especially susceptible to anger. Frustrate her ability to assuage that desire, Aristotle said, and you have an angry person. (Try withholding ice cream from a feisty daughter.) Young people have more desires than old people, so they rouse to anger more easily. Ditto the poor and the sick.

  Argument Tool

  THE BELITTLEMENT CHARGE: Show your opponent dissing your audience’s desires.

  TRY THIS IN A PROTEST

  If you want to stir up the masses, don’t just promote your cause or attack its opponents; portray the enemy as belittling your cause. “Congress thinks we’re softheaded on global warming. Our glaciers are melting! Coral reefs are dying! And what does the president do? He calls for more research! He’s just laughing at us!”

  The easiest way to stimulate anger, Aristotle went on, is to belittle that desire. Keep in mind that he lived
in a culture that resembles the modern street gang—macho, violent, and sensitive to any slight. Disrespect an ancient Greek or an ancient Greek’s woman, and you should be prepared to hop the next trireme. But for the purposes of persuasion, the kind of anger that comes from belittlement is especially useful. If you want a hospital patient to sue a doctor, convince the patient that the doc neglected to take her problem seriously. Most personal lawsuits arise out of this sense of belittlement. It’s an identification thing: people who feel themselves being cast out by the elite will go to great lengths to restore their status. (Later on, you’ll see how belittlement leads people to demand an apology—and why you often shouldn’t give one.)

  A few weeks after writing this, I am scheduled to testify before the New Hampshire legislature on broadband Internet access in rural areas. I like to tell people that my dial-up connection here is so slow, a stamped envelope gets delivered faster than email. (That literally happened once.) The problem is the phone company, which holds a monopoly in this state. Its lobbyists oppose any plan that would create competition; on the other hand, the company does nothing to bring broadband to my area. Which of these two statements has the best chance of getting a law that forces the company to provide statewide broadband?

  ME: The company shows it couldn’t care less about rural customers like me.

  ME: The company has mocked this legislature for years, saying, “Sure, we’ll provide broadband, leave it to us,” and then forgetting you the moment it leaves this hearing room.

  TRY THIS WITH RECRUITING

  To show you how well Aristotle knew his stuff, look at the technique that managers use to pry a star employee away from a rival company: “You’re doing all this, and you’re still making that crummy salary?” Or: “If you’d been working for us, you’d have had your own parking space ages ago.” The manager gets the recruit angry by making him believe his company belittles him.

  Actually, both might work, and I might use them. But which argument will make the representatives angriest at the phone company? I vote for number two; as Aristotle would say, the state reps will feel personally belittled.

  On the other hand, I may play down the pathos in my testimony. Anger gets the fastest action, which is a reason why most political advertising tries to make you mad. The problem is, while angry people are quick on the trigger, they tend not to think far ahead; hence the crime of passion. So anger isn’t the best emotion for deliberative argument, where we make decisions about the future. The Greeks reserved it for courtroom rhetoric, when they wanted someone to hang.

  Argument Tool

  PATRIOTISM: Rouse your audience’s group feelings by showing a rival group’s success, or by disrespecting its territory or symbols.

  Patriotism does a much better job of looking into the future. This rhetorical group loyalty doesn’t have to be all about country. You can be patriotic for a high school, a British soccer team, or—rarely these days—a company. Do not confuse it with idealism, belief in an idea. That’s the realm of logos, not pathos. Soldiers have died for democracy and freedom, indeed, but their patriotism burns for a country, not an idea—the Stars and Bars, not the Constitution. An effective argument against flag burning is bound to be emotional, because it’s all about zeal for country. An argument to allow flag burning must use logos more than pathos, because it emphasizes ideals more than patriotism.

  Football quarterback Colin Kaepernick attempted a pathetic argument when he refused to stand during the playing of the national anthem. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said. You can argue (and many people do) over whether his protest was effective. From the standpoint of pure rhetorical pathos, though, it didn’t work. He was expressing anger while triggering the emotion of patriotism in his audience.

  Few colonists supported the founders’ democratic notions when the Revolution started, which is understandable from a rhetorical perspective. Not until the British began stomping over the countryside did Americans’ patriotism rouse them to join the cause of independence. In the same light, the Patriot Act had little to do with defending American ideals; it’s about defending America. This is patriotism—pathos, not logos.

  TRY THIS WITH ANY INSTITUTION

  When managers talk about “pride,” they really mean patriotism, an essentially competitive emotion. If you want that win-one-for-the-Gipper attitude, focus on a single rival: “Their church raised twenty percent more for disaster relief than our church, and they don’t even kneel during Communion!”

  On a somewhat less profound level, Dartmouth College showed its patriotism when it built its own expensive ski area. The impetus was provided by Middlebury College, a school in next-door Vermont that had opened a “snow bowl.” Middlebury was smaller than Dartmouth and, unlike Dartmouth, did not belong to the Ivy League; of course Dartmouth had to build a ski area. It was an act of patriotism—not so much a rational decision as an emotional one.

  You can use patriotism to your own advantage: show how a rival is besting your own group. The old suburban phenomenon of keeping up with the Joneses is a matter of patriotism; they have a statusmobile, and we’re at least as good as they are. Patriotism has its personal side, as a form of competitive jealousy.

  PARENT: I hear that Mary got into Harvard early decision.

  KID: Yeah.

  PARENT: You don’t like her much, do you?

  KID: She thinks too much of herself.

  PARENT: Smart kid, though. Works hard.

  KID: Not as smart as me.

  PARENT: Mmm, maybe not. Hard worker, though.

  While the emotion Aristotle called patriotism seems a lot like the “USA! USA!” kind we’re familiar with, modern neuroscience has given the emotion an additional angle. Call it—I don’t know, how about Friends-ship? In the nineties sitcom Friends, now made immortal through streaming, the main characters sit in a coffee shop on couches and chairs. Their couches and chairs. Though there’s no RESERVED sign on any of them, anyone who attempts to sit in the gang’s seating gets kicked out. Ross shooing some innocent couch squatter looks a lot like an alpha cat kicking a dog out of its bed.

  But wait: How is this patriotism? It’s not, exactly. But patriotism for a nation and territoriality come from the same larger emotion. So does the Mama Bear emotion in mothers defending their children. Ditto with the feeling of a young couple in the middle of their wedding. All of these phenomena trigger a chemical called oxytocin. It’s a hormone that helps new mothers release milk. It also helps them bond with their babies. And, get this: Oxytocin levels go off the charts among young couples saying “I do” in front of an altar. The levels are high among guests seated in the front rows of a wedding, and get progressively lower until you get to the bored, reluctant distant relatives in the back—the ones just waiting for the reception to begin.

  Oxytocin received a lot of media attention some years ago when researchers hypothesized that an aerosol release of the drug in a crowd could make people feel all close and loving. Pundits predicted evil politicians spraying crowds during speeches to win elections. TV commentators started calling it the “love drug.”

  But then scientists pointed out a not-so-lovey characteristic of the hormone. They found that when a stranger walked into the hospital room of a mother nursing her baby, the mother’s oxytocin levels went through the roof. Mama Love turned into Mama Bear. The love drug is a bonding drug, and it’s also a protective drug and a tribal drug.

  Which is what Aristotle’s patriotism is all about: love for your own kind, get off our couch for strangers. If you want to use patriotism to get people to vote for you, you don’t have to find a secret supply of oxytocin. Trigger it by showing your love for your audience. Talk about what you all have in common. Praise the winning sports team. Then, if you’re willing, describe an enemy. An outsider. Anti-im
migration rallies are full of both love and resentment, which cause people to seethe with oxytocin.

  If that doesn’t sum up rhetoric itself, I don’t know what does. Rhetoric isn’t good or bad. Neither is rhetorical patriotism. Both are good and bad. The trick is to use them wisely.

  The broad definition of patriotism—Friends-ship—also helps explain the biggest decision political candidates have to make. It’s between persuasion and turnout. The persuasion candidate tries to convert undecided voters, and maybe even coax a few voters who went for the other party in the last election. The turnout strategy aims to rile up the “core,” meaning those who already support the candidate. In a low-turnout election, when only a small percentage of voters show up to the polls, the turnout strategy tends to win. Voters who don’t like you simply decide not to vote. Which is where oxytocin-fueled patriotism kicks in: Make people feel part of the tribe, make them feel threatened by the other side, and get them in the hey-you-get-off-my-couch mode, and you capture the election.

  The persuasion candidate uses all the tools of rhetoric, the whole logos-ethos-pathos bag. The turnout candidate uses a bit of ethos and a big dose of patriotism. The pathetic kind, that is.