Analysis Of Thank You For Arguing By Jay Heinrichs

If learning how to successfully convey your point in a disagreement is a subject of interest, Jay Heinrichs wrote this for you. The author of Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach us About The Art of Persuasion, Jay Heinrichs, is a speaker and persuasion context strategist, as well as an author. He has had his book published in 12 languages, used in more than 3,000 college courses and is one of the top 10 books assigned at Harvard, all according to his business website. This book covers specific tools and skills required for an adequate argument using his personal experiences and examples and thorough explanations.

As a millennial using the 5 canons of rhetorical has aided me in generating more compelling presentations. We are brought up in the era of technology. Using emails, creating power points, and even texting has helped us strive in being rhetorical by nature. As a radiologic technologist, I use mostly oral communication with my patients. Sometimes I have to be extremely persuasive to achieve the best optimal image and with that I have to go thru the 5 stages of rhetorical;

The first chapter introduced the reader to the art of rhetoric. He describes how rhetoric works through real life examples. He demonstrates ways that rhetoric persuades us like, argument from strength, and seduction. He tells the reader that the sole purpose of arguing is to persuade the audience. He showed that the chief purpose of arguing is to also achieve consensus, a shared faith in a choice.

Jay Heinrich wrote this book to enlighten the reader on the forgotten art of rhetoric. In reading this book, one will better their arguing skills and their manipulation of their audience. By introducing readers to rhetoric they can better their ability to use logic, persuasion, and emotion while developing an argument. This will ultimately better their communication skills in their personal lives, workplaces, and in day to day events.

Rhetoric is a significant part of our everyday lives. Whether it's convincing our friends to go to a concert on the weekend, to go to a certain place for lunch, or even convincing yourself to do something that you should but don't want to do. Rhetoric is all around us today. Billboard ads, television commercials, newspaper ads, political speeches, even news stories all try, to some degree, to sway our opinion or convince us to take some sort of action. If you take a step back to look and think about it, rhetoric, in all actuality, shapes our lives. Every day we have an array of options of things to do or things to buy. So every day, our opinion or actions are being influenced, however minutely, by rhetoric.

Rhetoric gives you an avenue to tell a story from your perspective in a way that connects with the intended audience without having to be one hundred percent substantiated. This writing style is evident in almost everything we read from billboards to Internet ads and even political speeches.

“Thank You For Arguing” is a novel written by Jay Heinrichs . In chapter 1, he repeatedly refers the word “Rhetoric” and how it is the motivation of the affect, the bond, and the power it has on persuasion. In this chapter the author lays out the basics of his personal life at home. Jay explains how he quit his job to be a stay at home writer. He made a deal with his Wife, Dorothy, that he would do the cooking and take care of their 17 year old son George. This is because Dorothy returned to her full time job. As the chapter goes one we learn from Heinrichs that arguing is very similar to the matrix and its manipulative ways. We also are provided with the history of persuasion, many well known people and even the Bible used the art of persuasion.

A journalist and publishing executive of 25 years, Jay Heinrichs, pursued rhetoric, dissecting it from his everyday life and turned it into Thank You for Arguing. Heinrichs has taken rhetoric to a much more understandable, and relatable level than seen before. Originally published in 2007, Heinrichs has since continuously updated the book, keeping it relevant. Heinrichs book takes us through how to become persuasive, how to make people listen to you, and should definitely be continued to be used.

The use of rhetoric is prevalent in today’s society; especially in news articles and political statements. Rhetoric is useful to convince the audience of a particular fact, or convince others to see from a different perspective.

The art of rhetoric has been present since the beginning of time. The birth of rhetoric is usually attributed to the Greeks as they presented us with ideas and theories about discourse. Famous philosophers such as Plato, the Sophists, and Aristotle presented us with theories that continue to be studied throughout. Most importantly the reason why we still study rhetoric is because rhetoric is everywhere. Our everyday lives are filled with the intensity of rhetoric and what it can do. Thus, rhetoric is the art of words that has the ability to influence, persuade, and create communication and intimacy in societal connections.

After reading the first couple of pages of the RWS 100 Course Reader and They Say/ I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, I have gathered that rhetoric is a form of writing, thinking, or expressing ones ideas in a way that not only gets your point across, but allows your audience to develop their own ideas. Rhetoric is more like regular everyday conversation as you don't develop your ideas unless it is prompted by someone else; you are simply agreeing , disagreeing , or indifferent with what someone has just said. Rhetoric is different from what we learned in high school, in which we simply developed our own ideas. Rhetoric is used to develop your own ideas, but is sparked by the ideas of someone else. I am excited to learn more

Have you ever written an essay, composed a letter or read a book? What do you need to do these things well? Rhetoric. It is the fundamental building blocks of good education, in determining the decisions we make and how it further deepens one’s knowledge. It can inspire people to be generous, or provoke people to hate and fear. It can change the world by deepening the purpose of good or bad. It can turn a speaker into a hero or enemy. It can turn a listener into an alley or an opponent. Communication involves the beautiful art of interactions and understandings between the souls of our society. Little do we realise, rhetoric is ceaselessly moulding our human experience through the means of persuasion and transformation. Good morning to my fellow Year 12 Good Samaritan advanced students, it is clear that despite contextual differences of texts, the amalgamation of rhetoric, textual integrity, purpose and form establishes a resonating message to audiences. Therefore, composers employ ‘great rhetoric’ and cohesiveness in their speeches which have the capability to persuade and transform society’s views, attitudes and beliefs. This is undoubtedly clear in Paul Keating’s, ‘Redfern Speech’ and Anwar Sadat’s, ‘Speech to the Israeli Knesset’, which both exhibit the power of words in refining our perspectives and ideas. They both achieve value beyond the time and place in which they were first delivered.

Rhetoric is “the speaking or writing that’s intended to persuade”. Rhetoric is also a word that uses language to persuade effectively. For example, if you are going to a job interview, you are going to sit up straight and dress well and speak eloquently to increase the possibility of obtaining the desired job. People encounter rhetoric in their daily basis. One can encounter rhetoric things such as first impressions, how one perceives another person based on their clothing, on if they wear makeup, if they look clean, in books, in articles such as in magazines, how people sound when they talk, how their sent is, and their aesthetic. This are just some examples how we encounter rhetoric things on a daily basis.

My overall point is that to be a good, confident writer and thinker you need rhetoric to guide you along. Both writing and thinking go hand in hand together and you need them both in order to get though today’s world. We are writing and being forced to make educated choices and back them up every day in our lives. Without the concept of rhetoric, we would be lost in such a huge

Jay Heinrichs, author of Thank You for Arguing, is a wonderful storyteller, but lacks in actually educating. Focusing on his personal experiences rather than actual tips, Heinrichs makes excellent use of his paid-by-the-word salary. Students don’t want to know this, they did not waste $16.00 on a book about a middle aged white man’s home life. Seeing as how this analysis is required to have me, the author, pick a “best chapter”, I would have to pick the one in which he finally gives sage advice: how to correctly apologize. But, the cons vastly outweigh the pros: Jay Heinrichs’ book Thank You for Arguing should be discontinued for school usage because of its inability to impart anything useful to students.