Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

This chapter explores how to define an argument’s core issue, so it falls within agreeable terms for the persuader. The first strategy is framing. Persuaders can use framing to move both topic and opponent to more favorable ground. By challenging an argument’s original frame, “the ground gets yanked right out from under the attacker” (120). This strategy helps reset disputes.

There are several ways to reframe an argument. The first is to find commonplace words that carry emotional weight with an audience. By using these words, the audience will view the persuader more favorably than their opponent. Next, persuaders need to define the core issue in the broadest terms, so that it appeals to “the maximum number of people with the widest ideological and institutional diversity” (123). Finally, persuaders should use the future tense. Commonplaces deal with values; values often occupy the present. For an audience to make a decision, an argument (and its solution) needs to plausibly exist, in their minds, in the future.

Heinrichs emphasizes that “reframing an issue doesn’t always require changing the terms” (125). Redefinition, which is when a persuader accepts their opponent’s terms while changing their meaning, is a similar technique to concession. Persuaders can even go one step further and accept their “opponent’s terms and its connotation; then defend it as a positive thing” (126). In order for this to work, however, an opponent’s definitions have to work in the persuader’s favor from the start.

Tools such as redefinition fall under a rhetorical strategy known as stance. There are four parts of stance: fact, definition, quality, and relevance. Stance is known as a fallback strategy because persuaders must use the four parts in descending order. Heinrichs explains:

If facts work in your favor, use them. If they don’t (or you don’t know them), then…   

Redefine the terms instead. If that won’t work, accept your opponent’s facts and terms but…

Argue that your opponent’s argument is less important than it seems. And if even that isn’t to your advantage.

Claim the discussion is irrelevant (131).

Relevance is the last part because it carries the most risk (i.e., proving an issue’s irrelevance is extremely difficult).

Arguments are most frustrating when agents lack necessary information. Logos “comes to the rescue” (136), allowing agents to skip the facts when they have to.

There are two basic tools of logos—the first being deductive logic. This tool “starts with a premise—a fact or commonplace—and applies it to a specific case to reach a conclusion” (139). The second logos tool is inductive logic, which uses specific matters to prove a premise or conclusion. Arguments that employ inductive logic use examples as proof rather than commonplace. Heinrichs recommends using fact, comparison, and story as examples. These are especially useful should an audience’s commonplace be foreign or unknown to the persuader. The strongest argument combines deduction and induction (premise and examples).

In order to capture and hold an audience’s attention, a persuader needs to understand their needs and desires. “The Hook” (147) is the most persuasive tool with which a persuader can sell their choice; the hook is what the audience needs or desires. After determining what their audience wants, the persuader needs to structure their argument around achieving this want via their own choice. Heinrichs cautions against generalizing the desires and needs of a whole group. This is especially important when dealing with a smaller audience.

Persuaders can also use expressed love, which “happens to be the single best decorum tool for when you don’t know the audience” (158). Expressed love is a means of expressing appreciation (genuine or otherwise). Heinrichs encourages readers to say to themselves, “I love these people” (158), before walking into a room. One’s body will exude this love (i.e., leaning toward the audience) and make the audience especially agreeable.