In my frequent Skype-ins with classes who read this book, I often see wannabe political uncles among students, most of them male. The giveaway question often imitates clickbait social posts: “How can I use rhetoric to blow away my wrong-headed classmate?” My usual answer is, “You can’t.” That’s not what rhetoric does. Rhetoric is about swaying, not blowing away. It’s about using your audience’s beliefs and expectations, their needs and desires, not using explosives on them. And while blowing someone away merely metaphorically isn’t technically a fallacy, all it does is increase the tribalism on both sides. Rhetoric at its worst.
Argument Tool
AGGRESSIVE INTEREST: Respond to a political bully by feigning sympathetic curiosity while continually asking for definitions, details, and sources.
Which inevitably leads to a follow-up question from another classmate: “What do I say to the person who keeps coming at me with his opinion?” In other words, the unconscious member of Future Political Uncles of America. The fact is, it can be hard to think of an answer when someone is screaming at you with an opinion you may find obnoxious. This is a milder, patriotic form of bullying. It disrupts social occasions and wields obnoxious power, like a heckler. Unfortunately, you can’t throw the guy out. He may be married to your mother’s favorite sister. But there’s a better way to respond to a political bully. I call it aggressive interest.
Suppose Uncle Bertie says, “Nobody should have a smoke detector. The government uses smoke detectors to spy on people.”
Everybody turns to Bertie, their cheeks bulging with turkey and Cousin Jamie’s amazing stuffing.
Uncle Bertie nods. “Get a dog. It’ll wake you up just as good as an alarm. And a dog won’t spy for the government.”
YOU: Dogs don’t spy? And smoke detectors do?
See what you’re doing there? You’re simply summarizing Bertie. Make sure you have a fascinated look on your face. (And that you didn’t talk with your mouth full.) While everyone else at the table suddenly shows deep interest in the garlic mashed potatoes, you’re showing deep interest in Uncle Bertie’s fascinating opinion. Your next question should force him to define his terms.
YOU: Tell me about those spy detectors, Uncle Bertie. What do you mean by “spying”?
BERTIE: You don’t know what spying is? Looking at you when you’re not noticing. When you’re naked. When you’re saying something you don’t want the government to hear.
Keep looking deeply interested.
BERTIE [ACTING AS IF YOU ASKED HIM, “LIKE HEARING WHAT?”]: Like, I don’t know, things. Like how we know they faked the Moon landing. And how we know those smoke detectors are spying on us!
Now, ask for details.
How do the detectors work? Is there a camera? And a microphone? Where?
BERTIE: They’re hidden. Secret. Like on your phone. Well, you can see the camera on your phone, but maybe not all the cameras on your phone. And maybe not all smoke detectors have those things. Just the ones the government wants for certain people. People they want to spy on.
YOU: Like who? [Avoiding saying, “Like people who believe their smoke detectors are spying on them?” No need to be snarky.]
BERTIE: Like, I don’t know. You should look that stuff up.
By now your other relatives will all be off in the kitchen fighting to help make coffee. It’s time for the third part of aggressive interest: Ask for sources.
YOU: Can you recommend good sources, Uncle Bertie? And which smoke detector companies should we avoid? Are there some good ones? And fire departments tell us we all need them. Are they in on this conspiracy?
What good will this endless dialogue do? Well, for one thing you’ll have the satisfaction of out-annoying a political uncle. Besides, there’s some evidence in neuroscience that the details of an argument tend to cause the arguer to moderate his opinion. Unconsidered stances tend to be more extreme.
Aggressive interest works for bullies of all political stripes: people on the left who keep talking about the war against the middle class, libertarians who insist that taxes take away our freedoms, even Trekkies who swear that the original series represents the only true and realistic Star Trek. Don’t push back. Keep asking questions. Insist on drilling down to definitions (“Define Star Trek”), details, and sources. And see if you can outlast your bullying opponent. If you can—if he walks away exasperated—then, despite all I’ve written about previously…you win.
Love Like a Philosopher
The tools of aggressive interest and ironic love don’t come from me. I stole them from Socrates. He went around Athens with a big smile and a deep curiosity and turned citizens’ minds upside down with his relentless friendly questions. Mostly those questions came down to definitions. Socrates was all about discovering the essential meaning of words, figuring that the truth often hides itself in meanings. Hence the term “Socratic questioning.” It’s an educational exercise built around variations on a single question: What does it mean?
Why would I bring up Socrates in a chapter about bullying? Because so much bullying has to do with following assumptions instead of meanings.
All Republicans are racists.
All Democrats want to take away our guns.
All Muslims secretly (or openly) support terrorism; it says so in the Koran.
All lacrosse players are obnoxious.
Gays have an agenda.
Transgender people just want to spy in bathrooms.
The oil industry is pure evil.
Good people say these things. None of them are true. When people try to improve the world by bullying their enemies, the only practical response is to get them to challenge their own assumptions. Don’t strike back. Undermine their opinions by getting them to think about how they define their terms. What is terrorism? What is a Muslim? What’s an agenda? Is the oil industry all about oil, or does it do other things?
To ask these questions effectively, you need to make your opponent believe you’re being openhearted and respectful. Keep in mind that the most hateful opinions are held by good people. Ask your questions as a friend. Love—even feigned rhetorical love—conquers all. At the very least, you’ll make people’s comfortable assumptions a little less comfortable, opening a small crack in their vast, beautiful, Mexican-funded wall of opinion. At best, your agreeable stances help achieve the nirvana of argument, agreeability.
But there’s more. Once you get into the habit of Socratic questioning, you just may begin to question your own definitions. And as Socrates himself taught, the wisest man is the least sure of himself.
The Tools
Bullies are the stress test of rhetoric. They challenge your ethos, try to take over your audience, throw evil opinions at you, and interrupt a nice family meal. Your main strategy should be not to strike back but to co-opt the bully’s opinion. Or, if the bully is un-co-optable, the onlookers. This is true whether the bully is live or online.
Audience targeting. When you’re under attack, search out your persuadable audience. Aim your response at that audience, even if you’re speaking to the bully.
Ironic love. This kind of irony works best when your audience can see through it. It’s really hard for a bully to respond to a loving, slightly pitying smile.
Virtue pose. Show yourself to be the better person. Do this by showing little negative emotion. Invite a conversation and seem slightly disappointed in the bully when he refuses. Of course you probably are the better person. In which case, no need to pose. Just show that you are.
Aggressive interest. The best tool to use against a political bully. Look intensely curious and ask respectfully for definitions, details, and sources. A smiling request for information constitutes a high form of flattery, as Socrates himself proved.
ADVANCED OFF
ENSE
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MONTY PYTHON’S TREASURY OF WIT
Figures of speech and other prepackaged cunning
I say they are as stars to give light, as cordials to comfort, as harmony to delight, as pitiful spectacles to move sorrowful passions, and as orient colours to beautify reason.
—HENRY PEACHAM
Meanings
L’esprit de l’escalier and Stehrwitt mean “the spirit of the staircase” and “stair wit,” inspiration that comes after one leaves another’s apartment.
Know that feeling when you can’t think of a clever retort until it is too late? The French and Germans, those connoisseurs of humiliation, each have a name for it: l’esprit de l’escalier and Stehrwitt.
Shameless Plug
I wrote a whole book about figures and tropes, called Word Hero.
Rhetoric invented figures of speech as a cure for these second thoughts; they arm you with systematic thinking and prefab wit so you never find yourself at a loss again. Figures help you become more adept at wordplay; they make clichés seem clever, and can lend rhythm and spice to a conversation.
Persuasion Alert
You may recognize a fallacy of ignorance in “Modern science hasn’t disproved the theory”; because it hasn’t been disproved, the fallacy goes, it must be true. But I’m saying we don’t know either way, so I’ll cut myself some slack here.
Up until modern times, rhetoricians believed that figures had a psychotropic effect on the brain, imprinting images and emotions that made people more susceptible to persuasion. For all we know, they actually do; modern science hasn’t disproved the theory. At the very least, figures add sophistication. They can attract lovers (at least those who find a clever person sexy). Best of all, they form the coolest vehicle to persuasion, speeding the audience to your argument goals and blowing their hair back.
So let’s pimp your rhetorical ride.
Those Scheming Greeks
The Greeks called them “schemes,” a better word than “figures,” because they serve as persuasive tricks and rules of thumb. While Shakespeare had to memorize more than two hundred of them in grammar school, the basic ones aren’t hard to learn. Besides, you already use plenty of figures—analogy (“My love is like a cherry”), oxymoron (“military intelligence”), the rhetorical question (do I have to explain this one?), and hyperbole (the most amazingly great figure of all).
Meanings
The Greek word for figures was schemata. Some rhetoricians use “schemes” to denote “figures of thought,” but the Greeks did not make the distinction.
We spout figures all the time without knowing it. For instance:
YOU: Oh, you shouldn’t have.
Useful Figure
COYNESS: The oh-you-shouldn’t-have figure. Formal name: accismus.
If you really mean it—that if they give you one more ugly, ill-fitting sweater, you’ll have to kill them—then you have not used a figure. But if the gift is a new Apple Watch and you can barely keep from running off and playing with it, then your oh-you-shouldn’t-have constitutes a figure called coyness. Cheapskates who let others pick up the tab tend to use the coyness figure.
CHEAPSKATE: No, let me…Really? Are you sure?
Useful Figure
DIALOGUE: Formal name: dialogismus. Use it to add realism to storytelling.
Teenagers are especially fond of the figure called dialogue, which repeats a conversation for rhetorical effect. A beautiful example appears in the first Austin Powers movie, when Dr. Evil asks his son how he’s doing.
Useful Figure
SPEAK-AROUND: Uses a description as a name. Formal name: periphrasis. The Latin-derived name, circumlocution, is more common among laypeople than among rhetoricians. “Periphrasis” is more insiderish.
SCOTT EVIL: Well, my friend Sweet Jay took me to that video arcade in town, right, and they don’t speak English there, so Jay got into a fight and he’s all, “Hey, quit hasslin’ me cuz I don’t speak French” or whatever! And then the guy said something in Paris talk, and I’m like, “Just back off!” And they’re all, “Get out!” And we’re like, “Make me!” It was cool.
When John Mortimer’s fictional Rumpole of the Bailey refers to his wife as “She Who Must Be Obeyed,” and Hogwarts faculty refer to “He Who Must Not Be Named,” they use a speak-around, which substitutes a description for the proper name. Prince Charles used it deftly when he referred to the leaders of China as “appalling old waxworks.” And a sexist who wants to sound like a Rat Packer uses a speak-around when he refers to women as “broads.”
Allow me a parenthesis here (which, by the way, is a figure in its own right). A rhetorician who reads this may squirm at my use of “dialogue” and “speak-around” for dialogismus and periphrasis. But when the Greeks invented coyness, they called it coyness, not some name they couldn’t pronounce. The Greek terms stuck, unfortunately. By the 1600s, rhetoric was sinking under their weight, to the point where the writer Samuel Butler complained:
All the rhetorician’s rules
Teach but the naming of his tools.
I’ll name the tools—in English and in Foreign. But you will find no final exam at the end of the book. (Well, there’s a multiple-choice quiz, but you don’t have to take it unless a teacher makes you.) Instead, this chapter covers some of the principles behind figures so you won’t have to memorize a thing. Just use the tactics that sound best to you.
And God Said, Figuratively…
Figures come in three varieties: figures of speech, figures of thought, and tropes.
Figures of speech change ordinary language through repetition, substitution, sound, and wordplay. They mess around with words—skipping them, swapping them, and making them sound different.
TRY THIS IN A PRESENTATION
And have you noticed how political figures often begin their sentences with “And”? Many use it as a substitute for “Um” or “You know” while they think of what to say. “And” gives continuity and flow to oral speech. Use it too much, though, and you sound like a manic prophet.
In the King James Bible, every verse in the first book of Genesis after “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” starts with “And.”
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
This technique constitutes the repeated first words figure. Monty Python and the Holy Grail uses repeated first words in its own scripture, the Holy Book of Armaments.
Useful Figure
REPEATED FIRST WORDS: Formal name: anaphora.
TRY THIS IN A SPEECH
The anaphora works best in an emotional address before a crowd. “Now’s the time to act. Now’s the time to show what we can do. Now is the time to take what’s wrong and set it right!”
BROTHER: And St. Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, “Oh, Lord, bless this thy hand grenade that with it thou mayest blow thy enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.” And the Lord did grin, and people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats, and large…
MAYNARD: Skip a bit, Brother.
BROTHER: And the Lord spake, saying, “First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin…”
Another figure of speech makes one noun serve a cluster of verbs. Hockey announcers use this figure, multiple yoking, when they do play-by-play.
Useful Figure
MULTIPLE YOKING: The play-by-play figure. Formal name: diazeugma.
ANNOUNCER: Labombier takes the pu
ck, gets it past two defenders, shoots…misses…shoots again…goal!
TRY THIS IN A ONE-ON-ONE ARGUMENT
Multiple yoking lets you speak fast in a logical argument to overwhelm your opponent and bowl over your audience. “You failed to answer the question, used a whole string of fallacies, seem to have made up what few facts you used, and didn’t even bother to speak grammatically.”
Useful Figure
IDIOM: Combines words to make a single meaning.
One of the most common figures of speech, the idiom, combines words in an inseparable way that has a meaning of its own. “The whole ball of wax” is an idiom, for example. An idiom may be Greek to you (to coin another idiom). Joe Average may not have the foggiest notion of what a person is getting at, but take it all with a grain of salt and Bob’s your uncle. Catch my drift? Listen carefully for idioms in conversation; they make terrific code words and dog whistles. “Greek to me” comes from Shakespeare, and college graduates use it more than other people. If you hear someone say, “I’m in a pickle,” chances are she comes from the Midwest, where that idiom still gets served. When someone else suggests you “break bread” together sometime, the odds increase that he’s a Christian. And if someone warns against “changing horses in midstream,” the commonplace idiom that helped get George W. Bush reelected in 2004, you probably are not dealing with a risk taker. A good salesperson will listen for idioms and speak them back to you. If you say you want a car that “won’t break the bank,” for instance, you will probably hear the salesperson echo the idiom. Don’t leave a good technique to the hawkers; try it yourself when you want to persuade somebody. It’s one of the easiest figures to use in daily life.
Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated) Page 27