Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated)

by Jay Heinrichs

  ME: Not at all. Dorothy Jr., can you tell the man the origins of that word?

  DOROTHY JR.: It was originally a farming word. It meant “plowing.”

  Useful Figure

  LITOTES: The understatement figure. Did you spot it in “not exactly thrilled”?

  The poor guy stared agape at my daughter and her father. Dorothy Jr. had by then acquired a fairly extensive etymological knowledge of profanity. Figuring that my children were the best of all possible guinea pigs (to use a metaphor), I wanted to see whether an analytical approach to “bad” words would take some of the magic away and make the kids less likely to use them in vain. (Their mother, not entirely thrilled with this particular experiment, warned them not to use these words at school.) Honestly, I’m not sure whether the experiment worked in its original intent. Neither child grew up talking bluer than the average for their generation. But they aren’t exactly profanity-free, either. On the other hand, I like to think that both Dorothy and George have a more clinical attitude toward four-letter words than most people. And not to brag or anything, but they sure know a lot about curse words.

  “Curse words.” While all tropes work magic, profane words literally are magic words. And here’s where it gets weird. The original curse words were…curses. Back in the days of good old-time religion like bull worship and Zoroastrianism, a curse was a kind of request: Dear freaky beast-human god who looks like really bad taxidermy and dwells in my favorite tree, please give the girl who rejected me a lifetime of bad hair days. This kind of curse exists, more or less, in modern religions. Praying that your football team wins necessarily means that you pray also for another team to lose. Whether you mean to or not, you follow the ages-old practice of bringing a curse down on the visiting team.

  As long as there have been religions, though, gods and the priests and prophets who speak for them have imposed various rules and restrictions on curses. Take the Ten Commandments. The Second Commandment (or the Third, depending on your sect) states, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” And yet even the mildest form of profanity does just that. Gosh is a weaselly way of saying “God,” just as Jeezum Crow! is for “Jesus Christ.” Bloody refers to Jesus’ blood on the cross. Zounds is an old English corruption of “God’s wounds.” That’s powerful language; magic words, drained of their magic only because we have forgotten their etymology. Moses would understandably be appalled to hear these words, both because the terms take the Lord his God’s name in vain and because they lost their original meaning.

  On the other hand, Moses’ tablets did not say anything about taking body parts, digestive functions, or farm terminology in vain. Yet these terms count among the most offensive language we use today. Back before the Romans invaded Britain, the island’s most polite inhabitants used a term for vagina that today we consider so nasty I can’t use it in this book (it has four letters and begins with “c”). To call a woman by this name constitutes just about the worst synecdoche you can pin on her.

  This is what makes profanity another trope. It brings the powers we fear the most down on the people or things we hate. The curse transforms its victim in our minds. Back when everyone feared God, the worst curses took God’s name in vain. These days we seem to fear sex more than God, so turning a woman into a body part acts as a more powerful, and offensive, curse. It throws dirt on the victim, because we see sex as dirty. Throughout the ages, a lot of black magic worked with “foul” and “unclean” things like forbidden foods, menstruation, and creatures born with birth defects—along with just plain disgusting things, such as the bats and bugs in Harry Potter and witches’ pots throughout time.

  But these days our greatest fears may lie in our society’s tribal divisions. Our very worst modern profanity has to do with old nicknames for groups of people. Take the n-word. It comes from the Latin negro, meaning “black.” Why is the n-word so terribly offensive today? Not so long ago, it was not quite so offensive. Huckleberry Finn uses it. The great writer Joseph Conrad used it in the title of a novel published in 1897. And of course you hear it all the time in rap music—a fact that mystifies many white people. Why is it fine for African American artists to use the word and evil for the rest of us?

  Here’s a rhetorical answer: When white people use the n-word, it’s a trope. When black rap artists use it, it’s not a trope. Remember, a trope turns our minds, twisting reality. It’s only a trope when it employs some sort of magic. So a word is a curse only if the curse works—if the magic has some effect. A white person using the n-word infuses that word with the fear of racial division (not to mention a whole lot of bad history).

  That’s why people who talk of “political correctness” can sound pretty clueless to a rhetorician. None of us is entirely free from the power of magic words or gestures. Conservatives were shocked when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the playing of the national anthem to protest racial injustice. Many Americans viewed his act as a curse on the American flag, and they called for Kaepernick to be suspended or even fired. In other words, refusing to stand counted as offensive language. Profane. I would guess that many of these shocked citizens weren’t quite so shocked when Donald Trump talked about grabbing women by their…well, at least he didn’t use the c-word. Burning the flag, on the other hand? Trump tweeted that this was enough of an offense—a curse, if you will—to strip the offender of his citizenship.

  We’re getting to the very heart of rhetoric here. Words work magic in different ways with different audiences. If you speak the same to everyone, the magic will not work the same. You’re like poor Neville Longbottom, the Hogwarts student who melts cauldrons and falls off runaway brooms. Profanity, like Longbottom, shows where the magic works, and where it fails.

  But all the tropes—metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, profanity, and irony—bring some magic. In later chapters we’ll see how irony can help you talk in a secret code. Having your own tribal language is a form of magic all its own.

  The Tools

  The word “magic” comes from the Greek magike, which the Greeks picked up from the magi, mysterious priests in ancient Persia, Chaldea, and Babylon. Some linguistic scholars believe the word got its start in the Indo-European magh, meaning “power” or “ability.” Back in the day, simply saying a magic word could make magic happen, for better or worse. Mentioning a certain demon meant summoning it; just say its name and the demon ends up leering at you in your bedroom. To this day, words summon the power of belief, expectation, and identity in your audience. Use them carefully so the magic doesn’t blow up on you.

  Metonymy, the first “belonging trope.” It takes a characteristic, container, action, sign, material, or quality and makes it stand for the whole deal.

  Synecdoche, the second belonging trope. This one takes a piece or part or member and makes it stand for the whole or the group. Or vice versa.

  Hyperbole. If the hyperbole could talk, it would tell you it’s the most amazing and awesomest trope of them all. What makes it a trope? Like the belonging tropes, it has the superhero ability to shrink and expand anything you want.

  Profanity, the cursing trope, brings the Voldemorts and social divisions and angry gods down on the people and things we hate—even the hammer that just attacked our thumb.

  22. Recover from a Screw-Up

  APPLE’S FALL

  Using tools that help more than an apology

  Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections.

  —VILFREDO PARETO

  Now that you have seen how to change reality, it’s time to recover from it. You have learned a variety of skills to stay on top of typical disputes. But what do you do if you’re actually to blame? I mean, what if you’re being accused of something you or your employer really did? That’s what we cover in this chap
ter: how to screw up. Or, rather, how to clean up after a screw-up.

  Persuasion Alert

  Why am I putting a chapter on screw-up recovery in the “Advanced Offense” section? I’m making a rhetorical point of the best-defense-is-a-good-offense variety. The ideal recovery doesn’t just restore your reputation; these tools should make it shine brighter than ever. It’s the opposite of getting defensive.

  You’ll see when you should apologize and especially when you shouldn’t. We’ll introduce a whole new tool that puts your audience at ease. And, most important, you’ll learn ways to recover your ethos—and maybe even come out looking better than ever. Let’s see that as your mission here: to recover so well that you’re actually glad about the screw-up. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every time you heard that your boss or company committed some boneheaded mistake, you said to yourself, “Hot dog! Time to work my magic”? Or imagine doing something particularly stupid yourself—to, say, your significant other. “This,” you can think, “is just an opportunity for us to get closer.”

  Okay, it’s a tall order. But at the very least, I’m hoping to show you how the tools of rhetoric can help you recover gracefully.

  You can trust me on this. I happen to be an expert on screwing up, having done it a great many times throughout my career and personal life. The epitaph on my gravestone will probably be misspelled.

  How to Steal a Volcano

  I once put Mount St. Helens in the wrong state. In my defense, it practically sits in Oregon, right over the border in Washington. But governors tend to take their borders seriously.

  Persuasion Alert

  I use the correction figure here (“not a planet, a nation”), repeating my (imaginary) opponent’s term and substituting another one. The best correction makes you look more virtuous than your opponent by using a term that the audience values more.

  The mountain had just been starting to smoke when the conservation magazine I worked for ran my little piece about it. It wasn’t much of a story, but the piece happened to be one of the first things I’d gotten published as a junior editor right out of college. I learned about my mistake after an envelope from the state of Washington appeared in my in-box. (Note to young readers: an “in-box” once was an actual box.) Inside was a signed letter by Governor Dixy Lee Ray, requesting her volcano back.

  Oh, geez. Here I was, just starting my journalism career, and I’d already moved an entire volcano by accident. I had to make a choice, and make it fast: rewrite my résumé, or come up with a plan. I chose option two. So I sat at my desk for five minutes thinking. Then I picked up the letter and took it into the boss’s office. After telling him I’d screwed up big-time, I handed him the letter.

  “I have a plan,” I said. “What if I bought a volcano and brought it to the governor?”

  “You want to take her a volcano?”

  “Well, not a real one. A bronze one, or plaster of Paris. That way we could be giving her her volcano back. Good publicity for her, and for us.”

  “A screw-up like this doesn’t earn you a trip to the West Coast,” my boss replied. “But go ahead and mail it.”

  So that’s what I did. I found a little plastic volcano and mailed it with a nice note thanking the governor for letting us borrow it. Some days later, I received a photograph signed by the governor. It showed her smilingly holding up the volcano along with a copy of the offending magazine. We published the picture with our correction in the next issue. My boss was so happy with the result that when the volcano exploded some months later he sent me out to do a cover story.

  So what does my misplacing a volcano have to do with persuasion? Just about everything. It illustrates many of the principles we’ve been talking about in this book. Let me count the ways.

  Set your goals. Our usual first instinct in a screw-up is to get defensive and engage in earnest butt-covering. We want to dredge up an excuse, examples of screw-ups by coworkers, or—worst of all—a scapegoat. We can do better. That’s because you’re not trying to win on points. You’re winning something much bigger. In my case my goal was a little job security. I ended up with my career getting advanced. And a happy governor. And an even happier boss.

  Be first with the news. In a bit, you’ll learn about kairos, the rhetorical art of timing. In this case, kairos means trying to be first with the news. I was lucky that the governor wrote to me instead of to the editor in chief. That way I got to go in, deliver the bad news in my own terms, and then rapidly…

  Switch to the future. That’s why you need a plan before you present the news. I screwed up, but here’s what we can do about it. The future, remember, bears the rhetoric of choices, while the past is where we deal with blame. That’s why my toothpaste-hogging son said, “How are we going to keep this from happening again?” That’s switching to the future. And who’s better at making a better future? You! Which leads us into ways to…

  Enhance your ethos. Ultimately, that’s what screw-ups are all about. They hurt your ethos. Your job, rhetorically speaking, is not just to recover your reputation but to enhance it. To come out with a better, shinier, more trustworthy, and more likable image than you had before you screwed up. Remember that an ethos consists of craft, caring, and cause: phronesis (practical wisdom), eunoia (disinterest), and arete (virtue). Nothing better illustrates these three basic tools of image making than your response to a screw-up.

  To polish your phronesis, show you know how to fix things. An important element of practical wisdom is adaptability—the skill of knowing what to do under varying circumstances. I once did a presentation on a viral video about a mass-murdering African warlord. I had created a first-rate PowerPoint file, breaking up the video into short bites and interspersing the scenes with little rhetorical lessons. When I arrived at the auditorium I discovered that I hadn’t embedded the videos in such a way that they would run on a different computer. I found myself lecturing about a video I couldn’t show. So, making the best of my own screw-up, I asked for a show of hands: “How many of you have seen the video more than once?” Half a dozen people raised their hands. “Okay,” I said, “I need you to act out the various parts of the video.” And I assigned scenes to each one. They performed like champs, everyone laughed, and the lecture went on. While the audience didn’t end up impressed with my technical skills, the applause seemed to say they liked my adaptability. I gave the lecture a couple more times with the video portion working properly, and the response wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic. Phronesis at its best. No apology necessary.

  You’d think, on the other hand, that eunoia, or disinterest, would call for an apology. Disinterest shows you really care, right? But disinterest can’t work in isolation from phronesis. You need to show that you care, but also that you can fix the problem. So the disinterested way to respond to a screw-up is to show how much you care by fixing the problem. Southwest Airlines, one of my clients, once suffered a computer glitch that booked multiple tickets for each customer who responded to a cheap-flight promotion. The airline sent an email to every victim saying, “We’ve put all hands on deck” to fix the problem. That’s the disinterested part. We’ve dropped everything to get this right. That’s what you need to do: show you’re willing to do whatever it takes. Again, no apology necessary.

  Which doesn’t mean hiding your feelings. If you feel rotten, go ahead and show it. But try not to convey those feelings in the form of an apology. Far better to talk about your own high expectations.

  YOU: Nothing makes me feel worse than failing to live up to my standards. So I’m going to do everything possible…

  And, by the way, that takes care of the third ethos trait, virtue—standing for a cause or for larger values. While people may interpret “high standards” differently, everyone believes in standards. You show your essential goodness by living up to your values. When you fail to do that, you feel rotten—briefly—and then get
right to work living up to those values again. No apology necessary.

  That repetitive phrase may have annoyed you. Sorry.

  I mean, I work hard to write fresh prose and will do my best to keep things fresh in the future.

  But while we’re here in the present…

  Know that anger comes from belittlement. A screw-up can make people angry when they feel you didn’t care enough to do things properly. They feel even angrier when you respond badly. And how’s the worst way to respond? By sounding as if the harm you did was no big deal. Or laughable; in other words, if you make your audience feel belittled. A belittled audience will lash back at you, mostly to try to shrink you down to size or make themselves bigger. If your audience happens to be your spouse, this is very bad.

  Meanings

  The word “apology” comes from the Greek, meaning “a speech in defense.” The first apologies were given by Greeks defending themselves in court. No self-debasement there. On the other hand, no shift to the future, either. Trials are all about forensic rhetoric—which, as you have seen, deals with the past.

  How does a victim try to shrink an opponent? By demanding an apology. That means admitting guilt, reminding everyone of your crime, and abasing yourself—shrinking before their very eyes. Ever see a little kid apologize? He seems to get physically smaller, hunching his shoulders and bending his knees. His body physically illustrates how we all feel when we apologize. We feel smaller.