How To Win Your Audience?

By now possibly, anyone who has read at least these three chapters in Thank You For Arguing by Jay Heinrichs, could easily in various ways, win and argument. In chapter 7 Heinrichs explains three ways to get an audience to trust you: show off your experience, bend the rules, and seem to take the middle course. In chapter 8, we learned that selflessness and likability means disinterested good will. Also that one must seem objective, or self- sacrificing, appear it to be that the only way you reached your conclusion was because of its “ overwhelming rightness” (Pg. 78). That the choice you decided, will help the audience, and is one you will suffer from. And finally, when speaking show doubt, this way you will appear to be more believable. This was all ethos, but in chapter 9 the author introduced pathos, which he explained was what a person feels, or better yet, suffers. We learned that with anger, patriotism and emulation, it’s easy to get an audience interested.

These are all terms and tricks one can easily apply to ones daily life in any kind of argument. For instance if a boy where arguing about going out on a Friday night to a big party, with his mother, and he applied some of the concepts we learned in this pervious chapters the argument favoring the boy, could go something like this:

BOY: there’s this party tomorrow night, but I don’t have much interest in going, just that Jerry, (boy’s bbf) want’s to go really badly, but he doesn’t want to go alone. I don’t know what to do, although I guess I don’t mind either way.

MOM: well it could be fun, though you have gone out way too many times this month, probably it’s best if you stay home.

BOY: I guess I could, I would have to call Jerry though, you know, and tell him we are not going. He will be furious at me.

MOM: I guess you will have to, get to it then.

BOY (gloomy face): uh, mom, well, could I, just probably, if it where okay with you and dad, if I went just to accompany Jerry, he has been really sad this past days and I feel bad dumping him like that.

Remember when you wanted to go to that guys concert this past month, but couldn’t because you didn’t want to go alone, well this is a similar case, and I don’t want Jerry being all depressed about it because  of me.

            Probably the boy didn’t get to go to the party, o probably he did. But in either case he did apply several of the concepts, and they did certainly help his situation. He started by using reluctant conclusion, where his actual purpose wasn’t going to the party, but was to accompany his friend, and mixed it with the “seem to take the middle course” stating he didn’t mind either way. He later used personal sacrifice, viewing as if he is going to suffer by making his friend sad. And he ended his argument by speaking softly and stirring emotion towards the mother by connecting his case with a past story his mother experienced.

Making it clear that by applying either one or many of this concepts anyone can get an audience to believe him or her and to go along with what is said.

"Survival of The Decorous"

Decorum is the art of fitting in. This is what celebrities try to achieve: to persuade an audience into liking them. It may be by the way they dress, to the way they speak or act. Probably without even realizing it, and just going along with it, unintentionally, everyone falls in love with these celebrities. We are the audience to their act, where their sole purpose is do what we expect them to do, and with their choices, and persuasive decorum, we become what are called, their fans.

One perfect example of a celebrity that fits into this decorum, even though it may be cliché, is Justin Bieber. He started out as a little kid who did as he wanted and sang his love songs. But when he realized his fame and the power he had over an audience, he changed his image completely into something he thought was what the audience wanted. He worked for a ‘perfect body’, started dressing with baggy supposedly ‘cool’ clothes, got all tattooed, because I guess that what’s fashionable now a days, and on top of that, began wearing way to much ‘bling’, and doing drugs, that for some also seems trendy. Probably he did as so because he was aiming to a different more young-adult, kind of audience. Lets not forget that decorum is all about acting as expected to behave.

So when Justin Bieber changed his image completely as I said earlier he used decorum to attract a different kind of audience, and simultaneously pushing the other audience, which was mainly young girls searching for love, away. He did get a lot of haters, but also got new fans. As the text states: “Decorum can make the difference between persuading an audience and getting thrown out by it" (Pg. 48).

The Art of Arguing

Jay Heinrichs, in his book: Thank You For Arguing introduces to us the art of productive argument, the art of rhetoric. He does so by presenting to us various examples, and in a way that surely secures our interest towards the subject. By reading simply the first chapter I already started reflecting back on times I have been part of an argument, either to get people to do something I want, or to try to prove a point in something I truly agree on. Miserably, now that I think back on those times, I have failed to win any argument completely, much less, cleverly.

In the second chapter when he talks about offense, we already start acquiring more detailed knowledge about rhetorical argument, and as we too did in the first chapter, he provides clear examples and tips for a triumphant argument.

Something that stood out to me the most was when he explained the difference between an argument and a fight: “…an argument, done skillfully, gets people to want to do what you want. You fight o win; you argue to achieve agreement” (Pg. 17).

Here I started thinking about a time I was debating with my mom whether I should drive to school in the mornings or not. At first my supporting argument was that my brother had been able to drive to school last year, but this didn’t help at all since last year he was a senior, while I’m just a junior right know. I also tried convincing them that I had improved my driving a lot and was perfectly able to drive to school with no problem at all. But their answered remained being no. At this point I was so mad we weren’t arguing anymore, instead we were fighting. And I, being the kid and having a weaker argument to my parents’, I obviously ended up losing.

If I had known more about the art of argument I would have known, first of all to please my parents by saying something like: “I know I’m young and shouldn’t be driving so much. Much less, alone so early in the morning, but…” I could then have convinced them of how me driving to school would not only improve my driving, but also would prevent any bus problems, and give us more time to sleep. Finally I could have motivated them that me driving my brothers and myself to school is a great, if not the finest idea. This way by setting my goals and applying what I have read and learned in these past chapters, I would have probably been closer to my parents letting me drive to school.

Evaluating My Life?

Why Desire Death?

We must all think we could imagine how it is for someone after surpassing a tragedy such as the Holocaust, but do we really? Have we the right to even think we can imagine how something that horrific must feel like, and how immensely it would change our live. In my opinion, no, I couldn’t say I can imagine it, much less could I assimilate with how such a atrocious past affects my present and would change my future.

The Novel Day by Ellie Wiesel, in a much different way from any other biography, memoir, or story of the Holocaust, explains every singe effect it can have on a person better than any other narration that I have ever read. This being told in a way, which is not meant to be expressed directly, rather it is told in a story. Such story based on real facts of a person’s life after having been present and a victim of the Holocaust, showing us the effects it all had on his future.

What is most clearly represented from the very first, to the last chapter of the memoir is death. Death in every way possible. The character manages to connect death to everything, from the guilt question: “Why of everyone who died, was I who survived?” To the power of attraction and darkness of the sea, making one think of death. But what he emphasizes the subject of death the most, is when dialoging with his doctor. He speaks of desiring not to live, but rather to be dead. Meanwhile the doctor speaks of the fight between him and the patient (in this case being the main character), versus death. But in this case the patient was in the enemies side, in the side of death fighting against life: “I had to wage the fight alone, all alone. Worse. You where on the other side, against me, on the side of the enemy” (Pg. 60).

Even though the whole memoir shows very well that life after the war was never going to be even the slightest as it was before. And how all his thoughts, feelings, actions, and future ‘goals’ were centered basically on death. Showing clearly how his life now is, there is still no way to even imagine how that must be like. In the contrary, after reading this memoir trying to even envision such things seems harder and more confusing. Considering how this man’s thoughts become so deep and for him so real, while for someone who has not lived what he has, such as people like us, wouldn’t understand it the way he perceives it.

Ellie Wiesel (Pg.68): “What it comes down to is that man lives while dying, that he represents death to the living, and that’s where tragedy begins.”