Analysis Of Thank-You-For-Arguing By Jay Heinrichs

“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.

The novel Thank You For Arguing written by Jay Heinrichs teaches us the persuasive tactics behind an effective argument. Heinrichs emphasizes the importance of rhetoric by adapting persuasive tools to modern day situations. A former journalist and now an advocate for rhetoric, Jay Heinrichs has aimed to restore the art of persuasion by teaching it to his audience.

In Thank You for Arguing, written by Jay Heinrichs had introduces to the reader about the rhetoric concepts and strategies that give us to understand more about offense and defense in an argument. He is not just to explain the concepts to the readers for how to build up a stronger argument but to make the readers to know what purposes that argument puts in our lives. Although rhetoric tools is hard to fits in our everyday life, Heinrichs still would help us to gain more ability on utilizing the knowledges of the rhetoric concepts, and convinces us to influence on our behavior that act in the argument.

“I changed my mind because of your argument”, said no one ever. Even when provided damning evidence and masterful techniques of persuasion, people are far too prideful to admit aloud that they were wrong. However, with time and thought, minds can change in the silence of one’s head. Often the only way to even convince people to even change their mind silently is to provide a multifaceted and quality argument. But how can you ensure an argument is of high enough quality that it will likely change minds? You must measure it’s through a multi-step analysis. A rhetorical analysis. A rhetoric analysis is a process by which a piece of writing is measured on “how tactically is applies pathos, ethos, and logos”, and how effectively it panders to

An argument is a two-sided claim that has facts and evidence to back up and justify each side of the argument. The purpose of any argument is to persuade the opponent and the audience to one side or the other. The goal of the speaker or writer is to use persuasive techniques that end with the audience’s vote. These techniques include pathos, logos, and ethos. Each one of these tactics plays an important role in producing a strong case in a debate or argument. Recently, in this composition class, I have put these techniques to use to create a strong argument with two other classmates. Our debate topic was whether or not the death penalty should continue to be legal in the United States. My team served as the proponents of the argument and tried to use each one of these three main persuasive techniques, pathos, logos, and ethos.

There are a variety of rhetorical choices that are very important and effective in helping writers make a strong case in the minds of their audience. In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. S's great speech "I Have a Dream" and Elie Wiesel's speech "Perils of Indifference", both use many rhetorical choices to make their audience feel better and convinced of their message. Rhetorical devices help authors by making their articles or speeches more compelling and persuasive. Speakers and writers use these rhetorical choices in order to define, compare, and present their ideas, as well as to elicit an emotional response from the audience. Although, for many authors, rhetorical choices are a very principle key to making a compelling and persuasive piece of

Aristotle contends that persuasive speech is composed of three elements: ethos, logos, and pathos. In debate, we use these to construct our arguments. The first principle, ethos, can be expressed as a claim. The claim is the core of the argument; everything else goes to support it. I will commence this essay with the following claim:

What constitutes good rhetoric and argument? How do these factors affect writing? And, the aforementioned questions considered, what practices should then be regarded as bad, or the negation of good? Before these prompts can be adequately addressed, a brief survey on the nature of values is necessary, so as to enframe this discussion of good and bad practices in operationalized terms, localized for our usage. In the process, the prompts will be considered in full.

In this chapter, Heinrichs talks about three major tools of rhetoric that could help with persuasion. Many tough arguments can be easily won with one or all of these tools. Logos is used when a person is using his intelligence to win an argument. This can be useful when persuading a child that too much television is bad. Pathos is used when someone is using his/her emotions to persuade someone. It can be helpful when trying to make someone happy by sympathizing with their sadness. Finally there is ethos, a useful tool to someone who are consider popular among the social group(s). Many famous actors convinced many people to donate to those who had their homes destroyed due to an earthquake. They accomplished this because of their reputation. They used ethos to convince many people to do what the actors wanted them to do. With these three tools, many arguments can be

Gerard A. Hauser covers a plethora of details on how to create a well-made persuasive argument in his book, an Introduction to Rhetorical Theory; however, he covered three specific essentials that are necessary for persuasion: the components logos, pathos and ethos; purposive discourse and rhetorical competence; identification. I will argue for each constituent, respectively, to prove that persuasion cannot thrive without the aforementioned essentials.

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.

Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion is a title written by the not-so-famous, (but extremely well-versed) Jay Heinrichs. Although the title is indeed a mouthful, it serves its purpose in drawing the reader in. Also; the extremely long title is a little hint of what Heinrichs entails in his book, an endless supply of information on how to correctly and influentially utilize rhetoric, the art of persuasion.

The next topic the author offered for an argument is, setting your goals of what you want to gain from your audience. The first and most simple step is to change the audiences mood. If you are able to change their mood, you make them more vulnerable to your argument and more willing to listen to you. The second step winning an argument is, changing the audiences mind and opinion. An example of this from the text is, convincing the light bulb that a replacement is the best way to get some light in the room. You want to promote yourself to them instead of coming off with the impression of a rival. The last and most difficult step to winning an argument is, getting to audience to take action. In order to get the audience to do this, you must be on a more emotional and personal level. As quoted from the text, you not only need to use desire to motivate but you need to convince them that taking this action is not a big deal; something they shouldn’t sweat about. Overall, chapter was very descriptive and informing in distinguishing the difference between an argument and a fight, and how to go about winning these

Rhetoric is the art of using language to persuade an audience. Writers and speakers often use rhetoric appeals. Aristotelian Rhetoric appeals are used in arguments to support claims and counter opposing arguments. Rhetoric used four different approaches to capture its audience’s attention: pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos bases its appeal on provoking strong emotion from an audience. Ethos builds its appeal based on good moral character of the writer or speaker and relies on good sense and good will to influence its audience. Logos persuades its audience through the use of deductive and inductive reasoning. The kiaros approach requires a combination of creating and recognizing the right time and right place for making the argument in the

With the use of the short anecdote about the interaction between him and his son discussing about toothpaste, it sets up the rest of the book to provide examples of how he uses his arguing techniques in his daily life to get what he wants. Heinrichs states “by conceding [George’s] point, I persuaded him” (Heinrichs 1). In another example Jay Heinrichs and his daughter Dorothy Jr are discussing possible restaurants for dinner. He wants to go to an upscale Indian restaurant but his daughter prefers her usual place. She’s able to win the argument by using his guilt as her emotional goal. He states that she effectively uses rhetoric to disguise itself and she’s able to convince him to go to a lower price Indian restaurant. (Heinrichs 24). The purpose of this anecdote is to explain effective ways how people can disguise their argument and get what they want. He is persuaded to listen to his daughter and she avoids detection. In chapter 4, Jay Heinrichs recounts an attempt of persuasion to stop his son from wearing shorts in the middle of winter. He tries three tools of persuasion: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos, which all failed to stop his son from going to school with shorts on. The purpose of this anecdote is to reveal that George used the exact same tools as him but he did it instinctively and canceled his father’s attempts all out. (Heinrichs 39). This displays that Jay Heinrichs doing it on purpose does not have the same effect as George