Author: Jay Heinrichs

1. Author: Jay Heinrichs What is rhetoric? Using language choices effectively to fit a given situation.

2. Describe a recent argument you had. Did you achieve your goal? If so, how?

3. Argument vs. Fight • You succeed in an argument when you persuade your audience. • You win a fight by dominating your enemy. • In other words: You fight to win. You argue to achieve agreement.

4. What is the goal of an argument? To score points or to get your way?

5. Concession: Conceding a point in order to get what you want. • One way to get people to agree with you is to agree with them—tactically, that is. Agreeing up front does not mean giving up the argument. Use your opponent’s own moves to throw her off balance. Teen: “You never let me have any fun.” Parent: “I suppose I don’t.”

6. Another type of concession: PROLEPSIS-agreeing in advance to what the other person is likely to say.

7. The goal: ask yourself what you want at the end of an argument. Change your audience’s mind? Get it to do something or stop doing it? If it works, then you’ve won the argument

8. Cicero’s Three Audience Goals • Stimulate your audience’s emotions (emotional appeal, or pathos). MOOD. • Change its opinion. MIND. • Get it to act. DESIRE TO ACT. This is the most difficult step. How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

9. Call to action is the most challenging part. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

10. You have your personal goal. You have your audience goal. Now: What’s the issue? According to Aristotle, all issues are, in essence, just 3: Blame Values Choice

11. Which is which? • Who moved my cheese? • Should abortion be legal? • Should we build a new gymnasium? • Should Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris have split up?

12. Blame: Past Values: Present Choice: Future

13. According to Aristotle… • Forensic Rhetoric (Blame) is focused on determining guilt. (past tense) • Demonstrative Rhetoric (Values) is focused on praise or condemnation. It celebrates heroes or defines a common enemy. (present tense) • Deliberative Rhetoric (Choices) is focused on the future and promises a payoff. (future tense)

14. Marge: Homer, I don’t want you driving around in a car you built yourself. Homer: You can sit there complaining, or you can knit me some seat belts.

15. Values (demonstrative) or Choices (deliberative)? • Beach or mountains this summer? • Is there a God? • Is homosexuality immoral? • Is capitalism bad?

16. To Argue Deliberately… • You need to convince your audience that the choice you offer is the most advantageous—to the audience, not you. • So you need to know what the audience thinks and values, the views it holds in common. This is called a commonplace. Different audiences have different commonplaces. • To shift people’s point of view, start from their position, not yours. Then move to future tense.

17. Ned Flanders: You ugly, hate-filled man. Moe: Hey, I may be ugly, and I may be hate-filled, but… uh… what was the last thing you said?

18. Aristotle’s 3 Powerful Tools of Persuasion, or the Basic Tools of Rhetoric ETHOS: Argument by character LOGOS: Argument by logic PATHOS: Argument by emotion

19. Gut, brain, heart.

20. Ethos, or the ability to fit in with a group’s expectations. • Ethos, in Greek, originally meant habitat, or the environment people or animals live in. Therefore, an ethical person fits her audiences rules and values the same way a penguin fits the peculiar habitat of an iceberg. • Decorum, in Latin, meant “fit,” as in “suitable.” So rhetorical decorum is the art of fitting in. • Eminem in 8-mile. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylkOAtifuJ0

21. According to Aristotle…3 Essential Qualities of a Persuasive Ethos: Cause, Craft, Caring • Virtue, or cause. The audience believes you share their values. This can be faked. • Practical wisdom, or craft. You appear to know the right thing to do. • Disinterest. NOT lack of interest, but impartiality; free of bias, caring only about the audience’s interests, not your own. Find the commonplaces. Example: politicians who distance themselves from “the Beltway.”

22. Pathos: What emotions stir action? • sorrow, shame, humility? • joy, love, esteem, compassion? • anger, patriotism, emulation?

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24. Logos: Persuade on Your Terms • One of the best ways to define terms is to redefine them. Don’t automatically accept the meaning your opponent attaches to a word. Redefine it in your favor. Mr. Burns: “Oh, meltdown. It’s one of those annoying buzzwords. We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus.”

25. Issues and Two-Sided Descriptions Abortion: A baby’s right to live, or a woman’s right to her own body. Gun Control: Our increasingly violent society, or a citizen’s right to protect herself. Borrowing the car: A privilege, or a matter of fairness (older sister got to borrow it last week).

26. Remember the commonplace? • Rhetorical commonplace: a short-form expression of common sense or public opinion. It can range from a political belief (all people are created equal) to a practical matter (it’s cheaper to buy in bulk). • Commonplaces represent beliefs or rules of thumb, NOT facts. • People identify with their groups through their commonplaces. • Use a commonplace as the starting point of rhetorical logic.

27. Logos in Rhetoric • Deductive logic: starts with a fact, or a commonplace, and applies it to a specific case to reach a conclusion. Aristotle’s term: enthymeme. The classic example: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. Term: syllogism. • Inductive logic: Argument by example. It takes specific cases and uses them to prove a point or conclusion. Example: Sherlock Holmes

28. Deduction starts with the general and works to the specific. Induction starts with the specific and works to the general: the examples prove the premise. The premise is the proof. The choice you want the audience to make is the conclusion.

29. Rhetorical deduction goes like this: premise, therefore conclusion. You believe this, so you should do that.

30. In rhetoric, induction is argument by example. It uses the circumstances to form a belief.

31. Does the proof hold up? Am I given the right number of choices? Does the proof lead to the conclusion? Logical Fallacies, or bad logic. Analyze an argument and ask 3 questions:

32. Appeal to Popularity “All the other kids get to do it, so I should too.” (premise doesn’t prove the conclusion)

33. The Fallacy of Antecedent It never happened before, so it never will. “My dog doesn’t bite.”

34. Misinterpreting the Evidence The examples don’t support the conclusion. “Seeing all those crimes on TV makes me want to lock up my kids and never let them out.”

35. Hasty Generalization The argument offers too few examples to prove the point. “That intern from Yale was great. Let’s get another Yalie.”

36. Fallacy of Ignorance What we cannot prove, cannot exist. Or if we can’t disprove it, then it must exist. “There’s nothing wrong with you. The lab tests came back negative.”

37. Tautology (‘begging the question’) The same thing gets repeated in different words. “You can trust our candidate because he’s an honest man.”

38. False Dilemma You're given two choices when you actually have many choices. “You Can Help this Child, or You Can Turn the Page.” (advertisement) “America: Love it or leave it.” “If you can’t stand behind our troops, then go stand in front of them.” “

39. Complex Cause Only one cause gets the blame (or credit) for something that has many causes. “If you’re so smart, how come you ain’t rich?”

40. Red Herring: switching issues in mid-argument to throw the audience off. “But that is not the real issue Americans care about.”

41. Straw Man Ignores opponent’s argument and sets up a rhetorical straw man—an easier argument to attack. “Some activists will only see another opportunity to push government as parent, but parents make the best decisions about what TV is appropriate for their family to watch.” (switching topics from TV content to government interference)

42. Slippery Slope If we allow this reasonable thing, it’ll inevitably lead to an extreme version of it. “Allow a few students to pray after class, and one day gospel ministers will be running our public schools.”

43. False Analogy I can do this thing well, so I can do that unrelated thing well. “I’m a successful businesswoman. Elect me as the Republican candidate and I’ll run our country.” successfully.”

44. The Chanticleer (post hoc ergo propter hoc) After this, therefore because of this. The reason (“This followed that”) doesn’t lead to the conclusion (“Therefore, this caused that.) “Our college newsletter is a big success. After we started publishing it, alumni giving went up.”

45. Logical Fallacies: Review • 15 Logical Fallacies in 3 minutes • Straw Man

46. in other words: don’t block the argument by using anything that keeps it from reaching a satisfying conclusion. Don’t get stuck in the present tense when you’re supposed to make a choice. And don’t talk only of right and wrong when it’s about the best choice. Formal logic has many rules. Rhetoric’s deliberative argument just has one basic rule: Never argue the inarguable.

47. Schemes and Tropes

48. Figures (Schemes): Figures of Speech, Thought, and Tropes Schemes and tropes add sophistication to your argument. Figures of speech change ordinary language though wordplay, repetition, sound, and repetition. Figures of thought are logical or emotional tactics, using ethos or logos on the fly. Tropes swap one image or concept for another.

49. 3 Common Figures of Speech • Anaphora: repeated first words. “Now’s the time to act. Now’s the time to show what we can do. Now is the time to right the wrongs.” • Idiom: combines words to make a single meaning. “It’s all Greek to me.” “Take it with a grain of salt.” “Get all your ducks in a row.” • Polysyndeton: makes a figure out of a run-on sentence by linking clauses with a repeated conjunction. “Imagine hearing this on TV while you make dinner and the dog barks and the kids argue and you wonder whether it’s time to get an oil change.” Why use them in an argument?

50. Common Figures of Thought • self answering question-“What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” • antithesis-weighs one argument next to the other. “The success of our economy has depended not just on the size of our GDP, but on the reach of our prosperity…” • litotes-ironic understatement; makes a point by denying its opposite. “Well, I’m not here for my health.” Opposite of hyperbole.