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.