You would think that the endangered newspaper op-ed essay would be more rational, but it’s not. Type on a page does indeed emphasize logos. But the op-ed is less rational than it looks. More important than the logic behind the message is the author behind it: a political solon, a celebrity journalist, the newspaper’s own editor, or one of the powers that be. The modern op-ed page is a real departure from newspapers of old. Madison and Hamilton published the essays that later became The Federalist as op-ed pieces in New York newspapers. But in those days, essayists were anonymous. Modern newspaper opinionists have big names that give them ready-made ethos, so they don’t have to cultivate it through their writing.
Speaking of Hamilton, the Broadway show of the same name demonstrates rhetoric’s multimedia appeals as well as anything in current culture. Music is all about pathos. The story? Ethos. (“How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a / Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten / Spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor / Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?”) And then there are the rap lyrics: superb logos. The rap format allowed writer Lin-Manuel Miranda to pack more than 20,000 words into the musical. Compare that with Oklahoma!, which has just 4,300 words. The rapid-fire language even turns a debate over the sovereign debt—a topic that normally only an economist would pant over—into a highlight of the show. The perfect mix of ethos, pathos, and logos.
All the other media follow the same ethos-pathos-logos pattern, depending on which senses you use to receive them. Letter writing? Rational. Gift giving? Very emotional, provided that the gift is tangible, not a check. Gifts carry a great deal of ethos as well, cementing relationships and showing off the means of the gift givers. In other words, giving makes a terrific gesture. Smoke signals? Voice: rational. Perfume? What do you think?
When it comes to traditional media, we can’t forget typography. Using Times Roman for your memos shows you to be a don’t-rock-the-boat kind of person; this is a standard, readable font made for computer screens. Sanserif fonts like Arial and Helvetica are great for big headlines; if you use them for long texts you reveal that you’re not much of a reader. More bookish fonts like Century Schoolbook show you like to read older books. Futura is for people who use the Web a lot.
All of these fonts are designed for specific purposes, so it’s good to find out what those purposes are if you want to avoid being, uh, typecast for the wrong reasons.
Using the wrong font can be bad decorum. A great example: In 2012, CERN, the European nuclear research organization, made its biggest announcement ever: It had detected the long-sought Higgs boson particle. CERN announced this very big deal, this great discovery, in Comic Sans—a goofy type that Microsoft had created for word balloons in online cartoons. It was as if the director had sucked a helium balloon before the press conference. One scientist tweeted: “Every time you use Comic Sans on a PowerPoint, God kills the Schrödinger’s cat.” (Physics joke. If you don’t get it, you’re just not nerdy enough.)
Type does wonders for civilization, as Herr Gutenberg discovered to his delight. But we have seen that it doesn’t do so hot in the pathos department. Enter the emoji. It arose from the need to convey emotions in emails and instant messages. Users originally showed emotional facial expressions by typing characters; e.g., :-) for a smiley face. Early adaptors called them emoticons. Then in 1997, the Japanese found a way to put pictures on mobile phones, and the technology quickly spread to mobile operating systems around the world. Emoji means “picture character”; the word got kept in English probably because it sounds like “emotion.” If a rhetorician had invented the thing, one would hope she would have called it a patheticon. While emoticons can be useful to avoid confusion over the emotions you want to convey—especially if you’re being ironic—overuse of them can seem a bit Comic Sans-y. Emoticons are cartoons, which do not belong in more formal communication. So, fine to use them in texts—sparingly. Beware of using vegetables before you understand their evolving meanings. (Some people have dirty minds.) In general, avoid using them in emails, especially when you’re addressing a boss or administrator or applying for a job. Personally, as a Boomer who grew up emoticonless, I would rather just take more time composing my messages. But I have a thing for the unicorn emoji. I use it all the time in my texts. I have no idea what it means.
The senses and their persuasive appeals explain why you can give a perfectly rational speech just by standing up and talking. But when you want to persuade a group of people, as you will see in Chapter 25, you need to use more than your voice.
The Tools
When you seize the moment, make sure you use the right medium for your argument—one with the proper emphasis on ethos, pathos, or logos, with perfect timing for the moment.
To judge a medium for its rhetorical traits, ask yourself which physical senses it uses.
Sight is mostly pathos and ethos.
Sound is the most logical sense.
Smell, taste, and touch are almost purely emotional.
ADVANCED AGREEMENT
25. Give a Persuasive Talk
THE OLDEST INVENTION
Cicero’s five canons of persuasion
The highest bribes of society are at the feet of the successful orator. All other fames must hush before his. He is the true potentate. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Now that you have the basics of offense and defense, we’re ready to bring out the big guns, Cicero’s five canons of persuasion: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. While he devised them for formal orations, they also work beautifully in less formal settings such as presentations to a boss or a book club. We’ll pull together a talk of our own, with the help of the five canons. Then, in Chapter 26, we’ll see a pair of very unlike masters—Barack Obama and Donald Trump—at work.
Persuasion Alert
Call this technique “modest name-dropping.” I refer to a respectable source so you’re aware of my knowledge, then coyly ask who I am to question the authority. The best bragging wears a cloak of modesty.
Cicero put his canons in a particular order—invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery—for good reason. This is the order you yourself should use to make a speech. First, invent what you intend to say. Then decide what order you want to say it in, determine how you’ll style it to suit your particular audience, and put it all down in your brain or on your computer. Finally, get up and wow your audience.
I would be the last person to contradict Cicero, so we will start with inventing our speech. Let’s say I want to propose a noise ordinance for my town that would consign leaf blowers and their heedless, gas-wasting, polluting owners to the innermost circle of hell, where they belong.
Okay. I feel better now.
Suppose the town has called a special meeting, and the board of selectmen has given me fifteen minutes to state my case. Then an opponent of the noise ordinance will get equal time. After that, the audience can ask us questions or state their own opinions. Finally, the town will hold a voice vote on whether to put the ordinance on the agenda for town meeting in the spring.
Invention
Instead of just sitting down and writing the speech, I walk outside, scuffle my feet through the dead leaves, and figure out what everybody wants, starting with me. That’s the first part of invention: what do I want? Is my goal to change the audience’s mood, its mind, or its willingness to do something?
Well, what I really want is for citizens to rise up and destroy every leaf blower, but what I want for my speech is to change the audience’s mind—to convince my fellow townsfolk that we need a new noise ordinance. What kind of rhetoric do I need for that: past (law and order), present (values), or future (choices)? We’re talking about the future here—about making a choice—so the rhetoric is deliberative. I’ll bring in values, but only those the audience already has, and I won’t blame anybody for
the noise.
Having decided what I want from the audience, next I nail down the issue itself. Cicero tells me to ask whether it is simple or complex. If complex, I should break the question down into smaller issues. But in this case the issue is really very simple. The town either wants a noise ordinance or it doesn’t.
Cicero says I should be prepared to argue both sides of the case, starting with my opponent’s pitch. This means spending some time imagining what he will say. I’m guessing he will talk about values a lot—the rights and freedoms that a noise ordinance will trample upon. This little debate in my head helps determine the crux of the argument, the point to be decided. What is this argument really about? Why did I propose the ordinance in the first place? Is it about noise, or about leaf blowers? I think it’s about noise in general—the leaf blowers are just the last straw, adding to motorcycles, guns, teenagers squealing their tires, and all the other acoustic tortures of life in modern America.
But as I watch a private plane buzz overhead, I think maybe it’s about whether we mean to hole ourselves up inside our homes, with our windows closed and our kids hooked up to their Xbox consoles. Do we intend to be a bunch of family-sized bunkers, or a real community?
Nah, the point about isolation is too vague. It’s about noise.
Meanings
Most of rhetorical invention really isn’t invention at all. The Latin inventio means “discovery” as well as invention in the modern sense. Your job in this stage of the speech is to discover, or invent, the “available means of persuasion,” as Aristotle put it.
Having decided on the goal and the issue, now I need to think about the audience’s values. The previous year, we ratified a town mission statement. (Even towns have to have a mission now; apparently it’s not enough to state that the purpose of Orange, New Hampshire, is to exist.) Our mission statement includes “the quiet, rural nature of our town” among our values. On the other hand, one of the commonplaces you hear the most in these parts is “A person has a right to do what he wants with his property.” The motto on our state license plate, “Live Free or Die,” sums up the general attitude.
Therefore, when I come up with my central argument packet (Aristotle’s enthymeme), I should talk about rights instead of quiet; I already know that my opponent will focus on rights, and it would be nice to take the rhetorical wind out of his sails. So my argument packet will go something like, “We need to cut back on noise because it’s ruining our chance to enjoy our own property.” So much for deductive logic. Then I’ll talk about how the deer seem to be shyer than they used to be, and how Mrs. Ferson down the road can’t nap in her hammock in summer the way she used to. Next I can cover cause and effect, describing what our town will be like if we let the volume of noise build—a whole community of deaf-mutes, or a bunch of homebodies in an area people used to live in for its outdoor recreation. So much for townsfolk enjoying their property, unless their machines are louder than their neighbors’ machines. I could seal the point by asking for a show of hands: how many people think that a crescendo of noise from leaf blowers and other loud equipment will keep them from enjoying their property?
Arrangement
Having invented my basic argument, I now need to arrange it. Rhetoricians came up with many variations on the organization of a speech, but the basics have remained the same for thousands of years. Essentially it comes down to this rule of thumb: Ethos first. Then logos. Then pathos.
Start by winning over the audience. Get them to like you through your shared values, your good sense, and your concern for their interest. Make them identify with you. All the tools of ethos apply here.
Then launch into your argument, stating the facts, making your case, proving your point logically, and smacking down your opponent’s argument.
End by getting the audience all charged up, through patriotism, anger—any of the emotions that lead to action.
If you really want to follow a classical outline, structure your speech like this:
Introduction. The ethos part, which wins you “the interest and the goodwill of the audience,” as Cicero puts it. (He calls this section the exordium.)
Narration, or statement of facts. Tell the history of the matter or list your facts and figures. If you have time, do both. This part should be brief, clear, and plausible. Don’t repeat yourself. State the facts in chronological order, but don’t begin at the beginning of time—just the part that is relevant to the immediate argument. Don’t startle the audience with “believe it or not” facts—this part should be predictable. What they hear should sound usual, expected, and natural.
Division. List the points where you and your opponent agree and where you disagree. This is where you can get into definitions as well. It’s a biological issue. It’s an ethical issue. It’s a rights issue. It’s a practical issue (what benefits our society the most?). It’s a fairness issue.
Proof. Here is where you get into your actual argument, setting out your argument packet (“We should do this because of that”) and your examples.
Refutation. Destroy your opponent’s arguments here.
Conclusion. Restate your best points and, if you want, get a little emotional.
You can do all this pretty easily in fifteen minutes; technically, you can do it in two. The introduction could be something humorous about the height of the microphone, or a quick thanks to the arrangers and the audience for letting you speak. The facts could take a minute or two, and so could the division—the points of agreement and disagreement. The proof would take the longest in a short talk, because you want to bring in all your strengths of examples and premises, as well as causes and effects. The refutation could refute just one point that your opponent made, or is likely to make. And the conclusion could consist of just one sentence.
Applause. Sit down.
In my case, I have a bit of an ethos problem with my fellow townsfolk. In New England, people consider you a newcomer if you weren’t born in their town; they might begin to tolerate you after a couple of decades. I moved to Orange fairly recently, though I had lived in New Hampshire for many years before. So it’s best not to talk much about me. I show up dressed the way most of my audience dresses, with a clean old flannel shirt and work pants, and I take care not to talk too fancy; that takes care of the ethos part. I offer thanks for letting me speak, then launch right into my statement of facts—noise levels steadily rising, according to tests a geeky friend has done around the town.
For the division part, I list the options, including doing nothing. My opponent agrees about the increasing noise level, but we disagree on how much that matters, and whether a noise regulation interferes too much with our individual rights.
Division can actually help your ethos, if you use the reluctant conclusion: when the audience seems against you, pretend that you came to your decision reluctantly. Talk about your deep belief in property rights, but then define those rights in broader terms than your opponent does. The right to enjoy your property may include the right to peace and quiet.
Then comes the proof, where I put together my argument packet.
ME: Most of us live here because Orange is a special place. And what makes it special, as our town plan puts it, is its “quiet, rural character.” Well, it can’t be quiet, and it can’t be rural, if we start importing a lot of new recreational machinery.
My refutation then anticipates what my opponent will say:
ME: Bill will tell you it’s a matter of rights. And I’ll go along with that. It is a matter of rights: my right to enjoy my property—working on my trails, splitting firewood, watching the beavers—versus the rights of a homeowner to do whatever he wants with his land. But when that includes playing with loud toys, then his right screws up my right—while doing harm to the character of this town.
Classic Hits
THOSE RHETORICAL SC
IENTISTS: Articles in modern research journals follow a strict outline that comes straight out of Cicero: theory (exordium), methods (narration), discussion (proof and division), conclusion.
Finally, the conclusion. I restate my strongest points and then describe the town as it would be with a noise ordinance, where people can use their chain saws to cut firewood, enjoy their ATVs and snowmobiles—just within certain time limits. And the rest of the time we can live in the town we love for the reasons we love it—natural beauty, quiet, and all the things that set us apart from people who live in the city or the suburbs. This being the land of the Yankee, I have to take care not to be too emotional. That doesn’t go down big in our town. But there is nothing wrong with exploiting the emotion of pride a little bit, recalling to the audience what makes us special and sets us apart from the folks in the rest of America.
Arrangement tends to get short shrift among rhetoricians, but it’s especially important today. Most of our arguments—even personal ones—take place at disconnected times, in various places, over more than one medium. When do you focus on your character? When on logic or passion? You can see that some of the principles of arrangement work even when you’re not giving a speech. Remember that ethos, logos, and pathos work best in that order. Begin with your strengths—whether your facts or your logic. And put your strongest resources both at the beginning and at the end.
Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated) Page 35