THANK YOU FOR ARGUING: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

Flashcards based on Jay Heinrichs's 'Thank You for Arguing,' covering key concepts, rhetorical devices, logical fallacies, and strategies for effective persuasion derived from classical rhetoric masters.

Rhetoric

The art of influence, friendship, and eloquence, of ready wit and irrefutable logic; how to speak and write persuasively, produce something to say on every occasion, and make people like them when they spoke. It teaches us to argue without anger.

Syncrisis

A useful figure that reframes an argument by redefining it, e.g., 'Not manipulation—instruction.'

Commonplace (in rhetoric)

A shared attitude, belief, or value; a building block of persuasion. It's a viewpoint your audience holds in common and serves as the starting point of your argument.

Antithesis

A shotgun marriage of contrasting thoughts or an opposing idea; also, a figure that weighs one argument against the other.

Dirimens Copulatio

A rhetorical tactic meaning 'a joining that interrupts,' used to amplify points by layering them, similar to the 'But wait, there's more' pitch.

Consensus (argument's grand prize)

More than just an agreement or compromise, it represents an audience’s commonsense thinking and a shared faith in a chosen decision or action you want.

Cicero's Three Goals for Persuasion

(1) Stimulate your audience’s emotions, (2) Change its opinion, (3) Get it to act. These are listed in order of increasing difficulty.

Three Core Issues (Aristotle)

Blame (past tense, forensic rhetoric, justice), Values (present tense, demonstrative rhetoric, praise/condemnation), Choice (future tense, deliberative rhetoric, advantageous).

Forensic Rhetoric

Argument that determines guilt or innocence, focusing on the past and issues of justice.

Demonstrative Rhetoric

Persuasion that deals with values, praise, and condemnation, separating good from bad; typically in the present tense.

Deliberative Rhetoric

Argument about choices, focused on the future and what is 'advantageous' or expedient. Aristotle's preferred tense for decision-making.

Orphan Annie's Law

A successful argument about the future, like any prediction, cannot stick to facts because facts do not exist in the future; it must be based on conjecture or choices.

Prolepsis

An anticipatory concession; agreeing in advance to what the other person is likely to say.

Logos

Argument by logic; its techniques use what the audience itself is thinking.

Ethos

Argument by character; employs the persuader’s personality, reputation, and ability to look trustworthy.

Pathos

Argument by emotion; appeals to the audience's feelings to make them want to act.

Hypophora

A figure of speech that asks a rhetorical question and then immediately answers it, allowing one to anticipate skepticism.

Sympathy (rhetorical)

Sharing your listeners’ mood or showing concern for their emotions. It acts as a baseline, letting them see your own emotions change as you make your point.

Decorum (rhetorical)

The art of fitting in; appearing agreeable by matching the audience’s expectations for a leader’s tone, appearance, and manners.

Aporia

Doubt or ignorance, feigned or real, used as a rhetorical device to make the audience unconsciously start reasoning for you.

Three Traits of Persuasive Leadership (Aristotle)

(1) Virtue (audience believes you share their values), (2) Practical wisdom (you appear to know the right thing to do), (3) Disinterest (audience's interest seems your sole concern).

Litotes

A figure of speech that understates a point ironically, often by denying its opposite; makes for a more sophisticated kind of speech.

Tactical Flaw

Revealing a weakness that wins sympathy or shows the sacrifice you have made for the audience.

Dubitatio

A rhetorical technique where a speaker feigns helplessness or doubt about their ability to speak well, often to convey sincerity and lower expectations.

Reluctant Conclusion

Acting as though you felt compelled to reach your conclusion, despite your own desires, to hype your objectivity.

Virtue (rhetorical)

The appearance of living up to your audience’s values; a temporary, rhetorical condition that adapts to the audience's expectations, not the persuader's permanent traits.

Phronesis (Practical Wisdom)

The common sense that can get things done; an instinct for making the right decision on every occasion. The audience considers you sensible and knowledgeable for the problem.

Sussing Ability

The knack of determining what the issue is really about and what the audience truly needs, even if not explicitly stated.

Extremist Detector (Virtue Yardstick)

A way to detect a lack of virtue: an extremist will describe a moderate choice as extreme. A virtuous choice lies in the middle (the mean) of the audience's values.

Storytelling (Pathos)

The best way to change an audience's mood is to tell a vivid and detailed narrative that makes it seem like a real experience, creating a vicarious experience and expectation.

Belittlement Charge

Showing your opponent dissing your audience's desires. A belittled audience is an angry one, making it an effective way to stimulate anger.

Patriotism (rhetorical)

Rousing your audience's group feelings by showing a rival group's success or by attaching a choice or action to the audience's sense of group identity for future-tense action.

Unannounced Emotion

A pathos tactic that involves not advertising a mood in advance but invoking it, as tipping off the audience will cause them to resist the emotion.

Passive Voice

A rhetorical device used to calm emotions by pretending that things happened on their own, removing the actors and making the action seem like an 'act of God'.

Backfire (Pathos)

A tactic that inspires sympathy and calms an individual's emotion in advance by overplaying it yourself, often through a mea culpa routine.

Urban Humor

A type of humor that depends on an educated audience, relying on wordplay rather than explicit jokes.

Banter

A form of attack and defense consisting of clever insults and snappy comebacks, often using concession to throw the opponent’s argument back at them.

Enthymeme

A logic sandwich that takes a commonplace (a belief, value, or attitude) and uses it as a first step in convincing the audience; a streamlined syllogism.

Babbling (rhetorical)

When an unpersuadable audience tends to repeat the same rationale over and over, revealing the bedrock of their opinion or a commonplace.

Framing

The modern persuasive term for defining an issue; shaping the bounds of an argument by finding the commonplaces of the persuadable audience and defining the issue in a broad context.

Redefinition (definition strategy)

Not automatically accepting the meaning your opponent attaches to a word, but redefining it in your favor, often by changing its connotation.

Definition Judo

Using terms that contrast with your opponent’s, creating a context that makes them look bad.

Stance (Status Theory)

A fallback strategy in argument: if facts are against you, redefine terms; if that fails, belittle the issue's importance; if that fails, claim irrelevance.

Logical Fallacy

A flaw in reasoning that renders an argument invalid. In rhetoric, they are allowed unless they distract the debate or turn it into a fight.

False Comparison

A logical fallacy that incorrectly lumps examples into the wrong categories, assuming that members of the same family share all the same traits.

Reductio ad Absurdum (fallacy)

Reducing an argument to absurdity. Although a fallacy in formal logic, it can be a great rhetorical tool to discredit an opponent's premise.

Fallacy of Antecedent

A false comparison in time: it never happened before, so it never will. Or it happened once, so it will happen again.

Unit Fallacy

A logical fallacy that mistakes one kind of unit for another, often confusing a piece of the pie with the whole pie, especially with percentages.

Hasty Generalization

A logical fallacy that reaches vast conclusions with scanty data, offering too few examples to prove the point.

Fallacy of Ignorance

A logical fallacy that assumes either that what cannot be proven does not exist, or what cannot be disproved must exist.

Tautology (Begging the Question)

A logical redundancy where the proof and the conclusion are essentially the same thing, often used in politics to mislead.

Many Questions (fallacy)

A false choice fallacy in which two or more issues get squashed into one, so that a conclusion proves another conclusion, similar to 'When did you stop beating your wife?'

False Dilemma

A logical fallacy that offers the audience two choices when, in reality, more choices actually exist.

Complex Cause

A logical fallacy where only one cause gets the blame (or credit) for something that has many causes.

Red Herring (Chewbacca Defense)

A logical fallacy that switches issues in mid-argument to distract the audience and throw them off the scent of the main point.

Straw Man (fallacy)

A version of the Red Herring fallacy where one ignores the opponent’s argument and sets up a weaker, easier argument to attack instead.

Slippery Slope (fallacy)

A logical fallacy that predicts a dire series of events stemming from a single, often reasonable, choice, inevitably leading to an extreme version.

Chanticleer Fallacy (Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc)

A logical fallacy that assumes if one thing followed another, the first thing caused the second one; 'After this, therefore because of this.'

Rhetorical Foul

Mistakes or intentional offenses that stop an argument dead, make it fail to reach a consensus, or argue the inarguable.

Innuendo

An insulting hint or vicious accusation against an opponent by denying it, often to plant negative ideas in the audience's head without directly stating them.

Threat (Argumentum ad Baculum)

Argument by the stick; literally, threatening the audience, which is a rhetorical foul because it denies a choice and thus prevents true argument.

Code Grooming

Using insider language or symbols to get an audience to identify with you and your idea, distinguishing the group from outsiders.

Bushism

Fractured syntax and code words, often used to deliver values-laden messages while seemingly guileless, acting like a filter for emphasis on specific words.

Reverse Words

A technique that involves repeating the terms that express the opposite of your weakness or your opponent's stance, often with an incidental negative.

Irony (rhetorical)

A code-grooming tool that uses hidden language, saying one thing to outsiders and another to insiders, to bond people within a group that 'gets it.'

Cliché Twist

A figure of speech where you concede your opponent’s cliché and then deliberately mess it up, often by taking it literally or adding a surprise ending.

Chiasmus

The crisscross figure; a figure of speech that presents a mirror image of a concept, rebutting an opponent's point by playing it backward or changing the meaning of a word.

Dialysis (figure of thought)

An either/or figure that succinctly weighs two arguments side by side, offering a distinct choice.

Epergesis (Correction Figure)

A figure of speech where you edit yourself aloud, interrupting your sentence to correct something and appearing fair and accurate while amplifying an argument.

Anadiplosis (Climax)

A figure that uses overlapping words in successive phrases to build to a rhetorical crescendo, creating a pyramid-like structure that lends rhythm and ominous pathos.

Verbing (Anthimeria)

A figure of speech that invents new words by turning a noun into a verb or vice versa, often to freshen language or gain attention.

Kairos

The rhetorical art of seizing the perfect instant for persuasion; the ability to spot when an audience is most vulnerable to your point of view and exploit the opportunity.

Medium (rhetorical)

The channel through which a message is conveyed. Its choice is crucial for persuasion, as each medium (e.g., face-to-face, e-mail, skywriting) favors different appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) and timing.

Five Canons of Persuasion (Cicero)

(1) Invention (crafting content), (2) Arrangement (organizing the speech), (3) Style (word choice), (4) Memory (speaking without notes), (5) Delivery (acting out the speech).

Enargeia

The special effects of figures—vivid description that makes an audience believe something is taking place before their very eyes, enhancing rhetorical reality.