Thank You for Arguing, Fourth Edition (Revised and Updated)

16 annotations • Feb 2023 – Sep 2023 • data

Truth springs from argument among friends. —DAVID HUME
Rhetoric is the art of influence, friendship, and eloquence, of ready wit and irrefutable logic. And it harnesses the most powerful of social forces, argument.
The ancient Romans would call the Ironman's brand appeal argumentum a fortiori, "argument from strength." Its logic goes like this: if something works the hard way, it's more likely to work the easy way
The consensus represents an audience's commonsense thinking. In fact, it is a common sense, a shared faith in a choice—the decision or action you want. And this is where emotional persuasion comes in. As St. Augustine knew, faith requires emotion.
A mockingbird sings a pretty little tune that warns rivals off its turf. Without a pause it does the same thing in reverse, rendering a figure of speech called chiasmus. This crisscross figure repeats a phrase with its mirror image: "You can take a boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of a boy."
John F. Kennedy deployed a chiasmus during his inaugural address—"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"—and thousands joined the Peace Corps.

Argument was a problem for them, not a means to a solution. The happy ones argued. The unhappy ones fought.
On the other hand, when George Foreman tries to sell you a grill, he makes an argument: persuasion that tries to change your mood, your mind, or your willingness to do something.
The basic difference between an argument and a fight: an argument, done skillfully, gets people to want to do what you want. You fight to win; you argue to achieve agreement.
Henry Kissinger used a classic persuasive method when he served as Nixon's national security adviser. He would lay out five alternatives for the president to choose from, listing the most extreme choices first and last, and putting the one Kissinger preferred in the middle. Nixon inevitably chose the "correct" option, according to Kissinger.

The examples I gave of the core issues—blame, values, and choice—show a certain pattern. The blame questions deal with the past. The values questions are in the present tense. And the choice questions have to do with the future.
Present-tense (demonstrative) rhetoric tends to finish with people bonding or separating. Past-tense (forensic) rhetoric threatens punishment. Future-tense (deliberative) argument promises a payoff. You can see why Aristotle dedicated the rhetoric of decision-making to the future.
Practical concerns are open to deliberative debate. Because deliberation has to do with choices, everything about it depends—on the circumstances, the time, the people involved, and whatever "public" you mean when you talk about public opinion. Deliberative argument relies on public opinion, not a higher power, to resolve questions.

Logos is argument by logic. If arguments were children, logos would be the brainy one, the big sister who gets top grades in high school. Logos isn't just about following rules of logic; it's a set of techniques that use what the audience is thinking.
Ethos, or argument by character, employs the persuader's personality, reputation, and ability to look trustworthy. (While logos sweats over its GPA, ethos gets elected class president.) In rhetoric, a sterling reputation is more than just good; it's persuasive.
Logos, ethos, and pathos appeal to the brain, gut, and heart of your audience. While our brain tries to sort the facts, our gut tells us whether we can trust the other person, and our heart makes us want to do something about it