Useful Figure
The paraprosdokian (“the planet Vulcan”) attaches a surprise ending to a thought. The composer Harold Arlen used it when he said, “To commit suicide in Buffalo would be redundant.”
SHAW: Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?
DUKAKIS: No, I don’t, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life.
Why, no, Mr. Shaw, thank you for asking…What planet was that guy on?
The planet Vulcan, obviously. Dukakis already had a reputation as the Mr. Spock of politics, and his cool, reasonable response only confirmed that he was all logos all the time. Up to that point, Dukakis led in the polls. Pure logic may have cost him the election.
So what should he have said? Should he have pointed out Shaw’s blatant fallacy? After all, the question was a reductio ad absurdum, because it is extremely unlikely that Kitty Dukakis would ever suffer such a crime. But merely pointing out the fallacy, or responding like an automaton as Dukakis did, fails to persuade. Being in the right may make you feel noble, but being persuasive gets the rhetorical job done.
TRY THIS IN AN ARGUMENT
When someone takes offense at what you said, try this neat little concession: “I’m sorry. How would you have put it?” Instead of getting defensive, you put your own words in her mouth.
Dukakis would have done a much better rhetorical job by getting strategically angry.
RHETORICAL DUKAKIS: Mr. Shaw, I find that question offensive. That’s just the kind of sleaze that’s ruining politics today. You shouldn’t bring my wife into this, and I think you owe me an apology.
Shaw probably would have apologized. You might call Rhetorical Dukakis’s tactic a red herring, but it need not be one. Once he gained the higher moral ground, he could define the issue to his own advantage.
RHETORICAL DUKAKIS: Now, let’s talk about the death penalty without getting personal about it. The death penalty isn’t supposed to be about personal revenge—it’s supposed to reduce crime. And you know that executing criminals has failed to reduce crime.
This approach would have made him look strong, passionate, and reasonable all at once—an ethos trifecta.
In the 2012 election, you could see almost every politician, from Newt Gingrich to Barack Obama, expressing outrage at the moderator. In the 2016 election, Donald Trump sent out flurries of moderator-outrage tweets. It became almost a ritual. And so Mr. Spock once again fell to the straw man.
You can see that logical fallacies are hardly forbidden in rhetoric. On the other hand, even the art of persuasion has its limits. Anything that constitutes arguing the inarguable counts as a rhetorical foul. Let’s look at a few.
Foul: Wrong Tense
GOOD POLITICIAN: We need to figure a way to deal with the skyrocketing cost of elderly care so future generations can continue to take care of our seniors.
BAD POLITICIAN: You’re attacking our senior citizens, and that’s just wrong!
TRY THIS IN A PUBLIC MEETING
The answer to the bad politician’s “That’s just wrong!” could be “Thanks for the moral lesson. But since when is it immoral to save taxpayers’ money while helping our seniors?” It’s another form of concession: grant the moral issue and restate your proposal in highly moral terms. Then it helps to restore the debate to the future tense: “Now can we stop being holy for a minute and talk about fixing the problem?”
Unless the bad politician gets right back to the future, the argument is dead on arrival. If he actually does switch to the future tense, then he redeems himself rhetorically.
REDEEMED POLITICIAN: We shouldn’t talk about seniors in isolation. Everybody should bear the burden of government expenses. So I propose a broader discussion of the federal deficit.
It’s okay to use sermonizing, demonstrative rhetoric in a deliberative argument to get the audience on your side, but then you should instantly switch to the future tense. This isn’t just because Aristotle said so. It is simply more difficult to use the present tense to make a choice about the future. If your opponent insists on sticking to the present or past, call the foul.
YOU: Let’s get beyond all the blaming and sermonizing. These folks want to know how we’re going to deal with the issue.
Avoiding the future can really mess up your home life. For instance, whenever my wife wants to remind me of how clueless I am as a husband, she brings up the Evening Class Incident. Many years ago, Dorothy Sr. casually mentioned over dinner that her twin sister, Jane, was learning ballroom dancing; Jane’s husband had signed them up for classes. Taking the hint, I arranged for Dorothy and me to take an evening class, too. In computer programming. It was a great course, and we both got an A in it, but she remembers it as a less than positive experience.
DOROTHY SR.: I’ve never forgiven you for that. How romantic!
ME: You never said anything about romance. I heard “evening class,” so I signed us up for a class.
DOROTHY SR.: In computer programming.
ME: I took the wrong hint. I apologized back then, and I remain sorry. So—want to learn ballroom dancing?
DOROTHY SR.: You just don’t get it, do you?
Persuasion Alert
I’m writing in the past tense about my wife’s failure to use the future tense. That puts me on shaky ground, both rhetorically and maritally. But we had this dialogue a while ago.
No, I didn’t get it. I couldn’t, because she made it impossible. She would see any romantic attempt at this point as unromantic. Besides, we were in inarguable territory. I tried to change the conversation to the future tense (“Want to learn ballroom?”) and she wrenched it right back to the sermonizing present (“You just don’t get it”).
That same accusation became a feminist slogan during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, when the judge’s allegedly sexist past threatened his nomination to the Supreme Court. Feminists were outraged that the men on the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Thomas’s accuser, Anita Hill, as if she were a hostile witness. “They just don’t get it” became a rallying cry, giving many women a feeling of solidarity. It was great demonstrative, present-tense rhetoric, but it failed to solve anything. Only a future-tense, deliberative slogan might have done that: “How will we make them get it?” That makes an inferior bumper sticker, admittedly, but it might have inspired women to work on one jerk at a time. Meanwhile, my wife’s “You just don’t get it” got us nowhere. How to respond? I could call the foul.
RHETORICAL ME (LOOKING HURT): You’ve proven you married an insensitive fool. What are you going to do about it?
Whoa, that’s extreme. But I mean it to be. By exaggerating her emotion, I use the same pathetic device she often uses on me. It works, too.
DOROTHY SR.: Oh, you’re not all that insensitive. I love being married to you.
ME: Fool. I said “insensitive fool.”
DOROTHY SR.: Mmm-hmm.
I’ll declare victory here, even if she did have to get in another dig. I probably deserve it. But we still can’t dance.
TRY THIS WITH A STUBBORN OPPONENT
When someone says, “There’s a right way and a wrong way,” and then tells you your way is wrong, bring up examples of when your opponent’s way has failed, and say, “If that’s the right way, I think I’ll go with wrong.” Call it the “If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right” defense.
Foul: The “Right Way”
This foul is closely related to avoiding the future, because it sticks to values—covering Right and Wrong, Who’s In and Who’s Out—instead of the main topic of deliberative argument, the Advantageous.
Dorothy Sr. will not want me to mention this, but one of our longest-running arguments has to do wit
h canned peaches on Christmas Eve. For years, she insisted on serving not just peaches, not some other kind of canned fruit, but canned peaches with our Christmas Eve dinner.
ME: None of us particularly likes canned peaches. You don’t like canned peaches.
DOROTHY SR.: It’s what we always had on Christmas Eve.
ME: It’s what you had when you were a kid. We had franks and beans, and you don’t see me clamoring for weenies during the holidays.
DOROTHY SR.: It’s tradition, and that’s all there is to it.
ME: Why can’t we start a new tradition? Like fresh pears, or single-malt scotch?
DOROTHY JR. (getting into the spirit): Or M&M’s!
DOROTHY SR.: If it’s new it isn’t a tradition.
ME: We’re celebrating the birth of Jesus! A Christian tradition that began with…a new baby.
DOROTHY SR.: Can’t we just enjoy Christmas the right way, without arguing about it?
The “right way” precludes a choice; without choice you have no argument, and therefore it’s a rhetorical foul. When your opponent commits one, you have several options. You can call the foul.
ME: The “right way” would be a dish that makes everyone happy. Why don’t we start a new tradition—one that our children can use to torture their spouses someday?
Or you can bring the argument to an abrupt close—take the ball away, if you will.
ME: If we can’t have a discussion that gets us somewhere, there’s no use in talking to you.
Or you can decide that marital relations have precedence over getting your way all the time. This is the option I took: I shut up and ate my peaches. Which, to my surprise, proved to be persuasive. Dorothy was so pleased she had won that, the following Christmas Eve, she served peach pie. It became the new tradition.
Foul: Five Good Reasons
If you stick to the present tense when you’re supposed to make a choice, or if you talk only of Right and Wrong when the argument should be about what’s the best choice, you commit a foul. Don’t take me for a hypocrite here. Sticking to the present tense and to values is not wrong. It just makes deliberative argument impossible. You can’t achieve a consensus; you can only form a tribe and punish the wrongdoers.
Another way to foul up deliberation is to argue for the sake of humiliating an opponent. This, too, is demonstrative, present-tense, I’m-one-of-the-tribe-and-you’re-not rhetoric. Here’s a good example of humiliation—from The Simpsons, of course.
TRY THIS WITH A SOPHIST
When someone tries to derail an argument with an insult, your response depends on who the audience is. If the two of you are alone, say something like, “This isn’t recess. I’m out of here,” and walk away. You’re not about to persuade the jerk. But if there are bystanders, ridicule the insult. “So Bob’s answer to the problem of noise in this town is that I’m a jerk. Was that helpful to you all?” You turn sophistry into genuine banter.
LENNY: So then I said to the cop, “No, you’re driving under the influence…of being a jerk.”
And another, from the same rich source:
CHIEF WIGGUM: Well, let me ask you this: shut up.
Most of the time, humiliation is banter without argument. Humiliation seeks only to gain the upper hand—to win points or just embarrass its victims. You often hear it among thirteen-year-old boys, and it’s probably good practice in wordplay. (It did wonders for me.) But humiliation rarely leads to a decision.
A more insidious kind of humiliation comes in the smiling guise of innuendo. If you object to it, you can look like a fool.
Meanings
Humiliation is a form of ad hominem attack, which formal logic calls a fallacy. But in rhetoric, most ad hominem arguments are in bounds.
BOSS: It’s nice to see you wearing a tie.
ME: I always wear a tie.
[Meaningful smile from the boss; obsequious chuckles from the sycophants in the room.]
Attacking your opponent’s ethos in order to win an argument is an important tactic. It becomes a foul when you insult someone simply to debase him, and not to persuade your audience.
This kind of innuendo is an insulting hint. It puts a vicious backspin on plain, innocent truth, turning a favorable comment into a slam. I actually had a boss who used that innuendo. Saying he was pleased to see me dressed that way implied that I usually didn’t. Which wasn’t true, but he gave me nothing to deny. Talk about inarguable.
I could have responded with a counter-innuendo:
Meanings
Innuendo comes from the Latin for “make a significant nod.”
ME: Well, I’m just happy you’re not wearing women’s underwear this morning.
But I didn’t. It’s usually better just to play along with the boss.
ME: If this is what it takes to get you to notice my ties, I’ll wear this one every day.
BOSS: Don’t bother. [Another smile at the snickering sycophants.]
TRY THIS WITH A SNIDE BOSS
It’s doubtful that you can win points with a boss like mine. Console yourself with the likelihood that his peers in other companies consider him a jerk. On your next job interview, be deliberately tactful with a figure of speech called significatio, a sort of benign innuendo that hints at more than it says. Interviewer: “What do you think of your boss?” You: “He’s very particular about his clothing.”
Innuendo can be particularly harmful in politics. The classic campaign innuendo makes a vicious accusation against an opponent by denying it. Richard Nixon did it when he ran for governor against Pat Brown in 1962. He repeatedly denied that Brown was a communist, which of course raised the previously moot issue of whether Brown actually was a communist. Brown denied it, too, but his denials just repeated Nixon’s innuendo.
The only decent rhetorical response would be to concede Nixon’s argument.
Even my opponent calls me anticommunist. If a guy like Richard Nixon thinks I’m tough on communism, then you should, too.
(As it turns out, Brown didn’t have to answer Nixon. The ex-veep lost the election and gave his famous poor-loser statement, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” Innuendo doesn’t always work, it seems.)
It should be increasingly clear that most rhetorical fouls have to do with speaking in a tense that doesn’t fit, arguing about values or offenses instead of choices, or forcing someone out of an argument through humiliation. It all comes down to a single foul: tribal talk that excludes deliberative argument. But not all argument stoppers are as subtle as the innuendo. One in particular, the threat, takes tribalism to a sword-rattling extreme.
The threat is a no-brainer, literally. The Romans called it argumentum ad baculum, “argument by the stick.” Lucy does it to her little brother, Linus, in Peanuts. “I’ll give you five reasons,” she says, closing each finger into a fist. “Those are good reasons,” Linus replies, reasonably. The problem is, she doesn’t really give him a choice, and arguments are about choices.
Parents spare the rod these days, but they still employ the rhetorical stick. “You’ll take piano lessons and you’ll like them!” The tone determines whether that’s a hopeful prediction or argument by the stick. Usually it’s the latter. And that makes it the worst of all rhetorical fouls. It denies your audience a choice, and without a choice you have no argument.
The obscene gesture or foul language is a milder version of the threat, but it falls under the same rubric of tribalism. Not all obscenity is bad, from a rhetorical standpoint. Kurt Vonnegut had a character suggest an acrobatic copulation with a rolling doughnut—inspired banter, and even decorous under the right circumstance. Drivers in New York City seem to consider flipping the bird a form of salutation. But it hardly counts as deliberative argument. At its worst, it constitute
s a threat. Either way, the only rebuttal is a similar gesture. Consider not rebutting at all.
Classic Hits
THEY DID GIVE A FIG: According to the journalist-scholar Bruce Anderson, while our “bird” is phallic, the ancient Romans’ obscene gesture mimicked a female organ. The mano fico (“fig hand”) consisted of a thumb inserted between the first two fingers. It had the added advantage of forming a fist.
I have to add another foul that doesn’t really fall under tribalism: utter stupidity. As the expression goes, “Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.” When Aristotle said that the better choice is easier to argue, he clearly wasn’t thinking of debate with a moron. The most common stupidity in argument, aside from the gratuitous insult, is the arguer’s failure to recognize his own logical fallacies. Take this classic Monty Python sketch.
Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated) Page 23