Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated)
Page 47
Bottle
Inebriant
Microbrew
Libation
LIPTON TEA BAG GAME
To see how pathos works in the absence of logic, pretend you’re performing an avant-garde play. Give each actor a monopoly on an emotion (anger, joy, sarcasm, patriotism, and the like). Take turns reading the quotes off tea bags—or anything else that has quotes. Act as if these random quotes are actually the script for a play. Try to go five minutes without collapsing in laughter. Meanwhile, watch the effect on any onlookers. Then practice in front of the mirror like an actor. Your ability to modulate your tone around emotions—a key aspect of actio, the acting part of rhetoric—will match the training of ancient rhetoricians.
TABOO
Ban certain words, such as “like” or “so,” and speak for three minutes on a persuasive topic. Now start over, banning the word or two you found yourself using the most. This exercise helps make your brain more nimble, avoiding bad habits. In short, it makes you more eloquent—a key quality in live persuasion.
YES, BUT
A round-robin conversational game. First person makes an assertion. The next person says, “Yes, but…,” and so on. Instead of literally saying “Yes, but…,” try to appear to agree with the previous person while going on to argue the opposite.
DICE GAME
Sell an object to a particular audience. Roll a pair of dice to pick an object and an audience. Customize your pitch to suit your audience’s values, needs, and identity.
Example: Roll a 2 and a 5, and you have to sell a ball of yarn to your boss. Lots of luck!
Object
Audience
1. Safety pin
1. Security guard with a family
2. Ball of yarn
2. Young kids
3. 100 toothpicks
3. An angsty teenager
4. A glue stick
4. An elderly priest
5. A ream of paper
5. Your boss
6. A baby goat
6. A tourist visiting America for the first time
ARGUMENT VOLLEYBALL
Bump, set, and spike an argument with a partner or, even better, teams of several people. Each side must bump (repeat the other side’s position), set (refute it), and spike (support the refutation). Go back and forth until one side “drops the ball”—fails to keep the argument going smoothly—and loses the point. Example:
Side 1: People should avoid doing yoga. It causes too many injuries.
Side 2: You tell me that people should avoid yoga because being fat, lazy, and inflexible is preferable to the slight risk of injury. I think yoga should be encouraged, not discouraged. Every kind of exercise contains that risk. But the risk of being unhealthy is 100 percent when you don’t exercise. And yoga, when done right, is one of the less risky forms of exercise.
Side 3: You defend yoga by lumping it in with every other kind of exercise. Yoga should be encouraged because exercise is less risky than not exercising. But you fail to cite any statistics. And when you look at the injury rate for yoga, it’s alarming. Exercise is fine. But yoga isn’t good exercise.
ANSWERS TO THE MULTIPLE CHOICE QUIZ
For explanations, and to argue about the answers, go to ArgueLab.com. If you take the quiz online, explanations will pop up with the answers.
1 (c) 2 (e) 3 (g) 4 (b) 5 (b) 6 (b)
7 Blame-Past, Values-Present, Choice-Future
8 Past-Forensic, Present-Demonstrative, Future-Deliberative
9 (b) 10 (c) 11 (b) 12 (b) 13 (a) 14 (c) 15 (b)
16 (a, b, c, d) 17 (b) 18 (c)
19 Enthymemes: (a, c, f, g, i). Examples: (b, d, e, h)
20 (1-b, 2-c, 3-f, 4-e, 5-g, 6-i, 7-h, 8-a, 9-j, 10-d)
21 (c) 22 (c) 23 (a) 24 (b) 25 (a) 26 (c) 27 (d) 28 (b) 29 (c) 30 (e) 31 (d) 32 (b) 33 (b)
34 a-logos, b-pathos, c-ethos, d-pathos, e-pathos
35 (c) 36 (c) 37 (b)
ANSWERS TO THE MULTIPLE-CHOICE RIPOSTES
1 (d) 2 (c) 3 (b) 4 (c) 5 (c) 6 (c) 7 (c) 8 (c) 9 (e) 10 (c)
APPENDIX II
The Tools
I put rhetoric’s techniques and concepts into categories that you will find most useful in day-to-day argument. That way you don’t have to memorize dozens of terms and tools; just remember to
Set your goals and the argument’s tense
Think of whether you want to emphasize character, logic, or emotion
Make sure the time and the medium are ripe for persuasion
When you draft a speech or presentation, keep Cicero’s outline handy:
Introduction
Narration
Division
Proof
Refutation
Conclusion
If you have not yet read the rest of the book, much of this may not make sense. If you have read it and the terms still give you trouble, refer to the glossary that follows. And if I still don’t make sense after that, or if you want to delve deeper into the art, read some of the works listed in Appendix V.
Goals
PERSONAL GOAL: What you want from your audience.
Audience Goals
MOOD: This is the easiest thing to change.
MIND: A step up in difficulty from changing the mood.
WILLINGNESS TO ACT: Hardest of all, because it requires an emotional commitment and identification with the action.
ISSUE CONTROL: Mastering argument’s chief topics.
BLAME: Covers the past. Aristotle called this kind of argument forensic. Its chief topics are guilt and innocence.
VALUES: Get argued in the present tense. This is demonstrative or tribal rhetoric. Chief topics: praise and blame.
CHOICE: Deals with the future. This is deliberative argument, the rhetoric of politics. Its chief topic is the advantageous—what’s best for the audience.
Ethos
This is argument by character—using your reputation or someone else’s as the basis for argument. When you give a speech, play up your character—or what you want the audience to think it is. Its three chief aspects are virtue, practical wisdom, and disinterest.
DECORUM: Your ability to fit in with the audience’s expectations of a trustworthy leader.
CODE GROOMING: Using language unique to the audience.
IDENTITY STRATEGY: Getting an audience to identify with an action—to see the choice as one that helps define them as a group.
IRONY: Saying one thing to outsiders with a meaning revealed only to your group.
VIRTUE, OR CAUSE: The appearance of living up to your audience’s values.
BRAGGING: The straightforward, and least effective, way to enhance your virtue.
WITNESS BRAGGING: An endorsement by a third party, the more disinterested the better.
TACTICAL FLAW: A defect or mistake, intentionally revealed, that shows your rhetorical virtue.
SWITCHING SIDES: Appearing to have supported the powers that be all along.
EDDIE HASKELL PLOY: Throwing your support behind the inevitable to show off your virtue (you won’t find the Eddie Haskell ploy as such in rhetorical texts, but the concept appears frequently).
LOGIC-FREE VALUES: Focusing on individual value-words and commonplaces to bring a group together and get it to identify with you.
IDENTITY: Get people to describe themselves. Usually the first thing they mention reveals their best sense of who they are. And most people will do just about anything to live up to that
identity.
PRACTICAL WISDOM, OR CRAFT: Phronesis is the name Aristotle gave this rhetorical street savvy.
Showing off experience
Bending the rules
Appearing to take the middle course
DISINTEREST, OR CARING: Aristotle called this eunoia—an apparent willingness to sacrifice your own interests for the greater good.
RELUCTANT CONCLUSION: Appearing to have reached your conclusion only because of its overwhelming rightness.
PERSONAL SACRIFICE: Claiming that the choice will help your audience more than it will help you.
DUBITATIO: Seeming doubtful of your own rhetorical skill.
LIAR DETECTOR: Techniques for judging a person’s credibility.
NEEDS TEST: Do the persuader’s needs match your needs?
COMPARABLE EXPERIENCE: Has the persuader actually done what he’s talking about?
DODGED QUESTION: Ask who benefits from the choice. If you don’t get a straight answer, don’t trust that person’s disinterest.
“THAT DEPENDS” FILTER: Instead of a one-size-fits-all choice, the persuader offers a solution tailored to you.
“SUSSING” ABILITY: The persuader cuts to the chase of an issue.
EXTREMES: How does the persuader describe the opposing argument? How close is his middle of the road to yours?
EXTREMIST DETECTOR: An extremist will describe a moderate choice as extreme.
VIRTUE YARDSTICK: Does the persuader find the sweet spot between the extremes of your values?
CODE INOCULATION: Be aware of the terms that define the groups you belong to, and watch out when a persuader uses them.
Pathos
Argument by emotion is the seductive part of persuasion. Pathos can cause a mood change, make an audience more receptive to your logic, and give them an emotional commitment to your goal.
SYMPATHY: Registering concern for your audience’s emotions.
OVERSYMPATHIZING: Exaggerated sympathy can make your audience feel ashamed of an emotion you want to change.
BELIEF: Aristotle said this is the key to emotion.
EXPERIENCE: Refer to the audience’s own experience, or plant one in their heads; this is the past tense of belief.
STORYTELLING: A way to give the audience a virtual experience.
EXPECTATION: Make an audience expect something good or bad, and the appropriate emotion will follow.
VOLUME CONTROL: Underplaying an emotion, or gradually increasing it so that the audience can feel it along with you.
SIMPLE SPEECH: Don’t use fancy language when you get emotional.
UNANNOUNCED EMOTION: Avoid tipping off your audience in advance of a mood. They’ll resist it.
PASSIVE VOICE: If you want to direct an audience’s anger away from someone, imply that the action happened on its own: “The chair got broken,” not “Pablo broke the chair.”
BACKFIRE: You can calm an individual’s emotion in advance by overplaying it yourself. This works especially well when you screw up and want to prevent the wrath of an authority.
PERSUASIVE EMOTIONS
ANGER: One of the most effective ways to rouse an audience to action. But it’s a short-lived emotion.
BELITTLEMENT CHARGE: Show your opponent dissing your audience’s desires. A belittled audience is an angry one, according to Aristotle.
PATRIOTISM: Attaches a choice or action to the audience’s sense of group identity.
EMULATION: Emotional response to a role model. The greater your ethos, the more the audience will imitate you.
HUMOR: A good calming device that can enhance your ethos.
URBANE HUMOR: Plays off a word or part of speech.
WIT: Situational humor.
FACETIOUS HUMOR: Joke telling, a relatively ineffective form of persuasion.
BANTER: Snappy answers—works best in defense.
FIGURES OF SPEECH: You’ll find the individual figures in the glossary. But here are the essential ways that you can create your own figures.
CLICHÉ TWISTING: Using overworked language to your advantage.
LITERAL INTERPRETATION: Reducing a cliché to absurdity by seeming to take it at face value.
SURPRISE ENDING: Starting a cliché as it’s normally said, but ending it differently.
REWORKING: Switching words around in a cliché.
WORD SWAP: Changing normal usage and grammar for effect.
CHIASMUS: Creates a crisscross sentence.
WEIGHING BOTH SIDES: Comparing or contrasting opinions in order to define the issue.
EITHER/OR FIGURE (DIALYSIS): Weighs each side equally.
CONTRASTING FIGURE (ANTITHESIS): Favors one side over another.
MEANING-CHANGE FIGURE (ANTISTASIS): Repeats a word in a way that uses or defines it differently.
EDITING OUT LOUD: Interrupting yourself or your opponent to correct something.
SELF-CORRECTION FIGURE (METANOIA): Lets you amplify an argument while seeming to be fair and accurate.
REDEFINER (CORRECTIO): Repeats the opponent’s language and corrects it.
VOLUME CONTROL: Amplifying or calming speech through figures.
LITOTES: Ironic understatement. Makes you seem cooler than your opponent.
CLIMAX: Uses overlapping words in successive phrases in a rhetorical crescendo.
WORD INVENTION: Figures help you create new words or meanings from old words; they make you look clever.
VERBING (ANTHIMERIA): Turns a noun into a verb or vice versa.
“LIKE” FIGURE (PARELCON): Strips a word of meaning and uses it as a pause or for emphasis.
Logos
Argument by logic. People like to think that all argument should be nothing but logic; however, Aristotle said that when it comes to persuasion, rational speech needs emotion and character as well.
DEDUCTION: Applying a general principle to a particular matter.
ENTHYMEME: A logic sandwich that contains deduction. “We should [choice], because [commonplace].” Aristotle took formal logic’s syllogism, stripped it down, and based it on a commonplace instead of a universal truth.
PROOF SPOTTER: A proof consists of examples or a premise. A premise usually begins with “because,” or implies it.
COMMONPLACE: Any cliché, belief, or value that can serve as your audience’s boiled-down public opinion. It’s the starting point of your argument.
BABBLING: An audience’s repetition of a word or idea; it often reveals a commonplace.
REJECTION: Another good commonplace spotter. An audience will often use a commonplace when it rejects your argument.
COMMONPLACE LABEL: Applying a commonplace to an idea, a proposal, or a piece of legislation as part of a definition strategy.
INDUCTION: Argument by example. It starts with the specific and moves to the general.
FACT, COMPARISON, STORY: The three kinds of examples to use in inductive logic.
CONCESSION: Using your opponent’s own argument to your advantage.
FRAMING: Shaping the bounds of an argument. This is a modern persuasive term; you won’t find it in the classic rhetorics.
FRAMING STRATEGY:
Find the audience’s commonplaces.
Define the issue broadly, appealing to the values of the widest audience.
Deal with the specific problem or choice, using the future tense.
DEFINITION STRATEGY: Controlling the language used in an argument.
TERM CHANGE: Inserting your own language in place of your opponent’s.
REDEFINITION: Accepting your opponent’s terms while changing their connotation.
DEFINITION JUJITSU: Using your opponent�
��s language to attack him.
DEFINITION JUDO: Using terms that contrast with your opponent’s, creating a context that makes him look bad.
LOGICAL FALLACIES: It’s important to detect them, just as you should spot any kind of persuasive tactic used against you. Another reason to understand fallacious logic: you may want to use it yourself.
BAD PROOF: The argument’s commonplace or principle is unacceptable, or the examples are bad.
FALSE COMPARISON: Two things are similar, so they must be the same.
ALL NATURAL FALLACY: Natural ingredients are good for you, so anything called “natural” is healthful. Also called fallacy of association.
APPEAL TO POPULARITY: “Other kids get to do it, so why don’t I?”
HASTY GENERALIZATION: Uses too few examples and interprets them too broadly.
MISINTERPRETING THE EVIDENCE: Takes the exception and claims it proves the rule.
UNIT FALLACY: Does weird math with apples and oranges, often confusing the part for the whole.