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46. Thank You for Arguing Chapter 4
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4. Soften Them Up

CHARACTER, LOGIC, EMOTION

The strangely triumphant art of agreeability

Audi partem alteram.

Hear the other side. —Saint Augustine

At the age of seven, my son, George, insisted on wearing shorts to school in the middle of winter. We live in icy New Hampshire, where playground snow has all the fluffy goodness of ground glass. My wife launched the argument in the classic family manner: “You talk to him,” she said.

So I talked to him. Being a student of rhetoric, I employed Aristotle’s three most powerful tools of persuasion:

In this chapter, you will see how each of these tools works, and you’ll gain some techniques—the persuasive use of decorum, argument jujitsu, tactical sympathy—that will put you well on the way to becoming an argument adept. The first thing I used on George was argument by character: I gave him my stern father act.

But he just looked at me with tears in his eyes. Next, I tried reasoning with him, using an argument by logic.

So I resorted to manipulating his emotions. Following Cicero, who claimed that humor was one of the most persuasive of all rhetorical passions, I hiked up my pant legs and pranced around.

Superior vocabulary and all, I seemed to be losing my case. Besides, George was making his first genuine attempt to argue instead of cry. So I decided to let him win this one.

Me: All right. You can wear shorts in school if your mother and I can clear it with the authorities. But you have to put your snow pants on when you go outside. Deal?

George: Deal.

He happily fetched his snow pants, and I called the school. A few weeks later the principal declared George’s birthday Shorts Day; she even showed up in cutoffs herself. It was mid-February. Was that a good idea? For the sake of argument, and agreement, I believe it was.

Aristotle’s Big Three

I used my best arguments by character, logic, and emotion. So, how did George still manage to beat me? By using the same tools. I did it on purpose, and he did it instinctively. Aristotle called them logos, ethos, and pathos; and so will I, because their meanings are richer than the English versions. Together they form the three basic tools of rhetoric.

Logos is argument by logic. If arguments were children, logos would be the brainy one, the big sister who gets top grades in high school. It doesn’t just follow the logical rules; instead, its techniques use what the audience itself is thinking.

Ethos, or argument by character, employs the persuader’s personality, reputation, and ability to look trustworthy. (While logos sweats over its GPA, ethos gets elected class president.) In rhetoric, a sterling reputation is more than just good; it’s persuasive. I taught my children that lying isn’t just wrong, it’s unpersuasive. An audience is more likely to believe a trustworthy persuader, and to accept his argument. “A person’s life persuades better than his word,” said one of Aristotle’s contemporaries. This remains true today. Rhetoric shows how to shine a flattering light on your life.

Then you have pathos, or argument by emotion, the sibling the others disrespect but who gets away with everything. Logicians and language snobs hate pathos, but Aristotle himself was the man who invented by emotion. Pathos forms the root of the word “sympathy”; a logic recognized its usefulness. You can persuade someone logically, but as we saw in the last chapter, a successful persuader must learn how to read the audience’s getting him out of his chair to act on it takes some emotions. thing more combustible.

Logos, ethos, and pathos appeal to the brain, gut, and heart of your audience. While our brain tries to sort the facts, our gut tells us whether we can trust the other person, and our heart makes us want to do something about it. They form the essence of effective persuasion. George instinctively put mine in check:

His logos also canceled mine out, even if his medical terminology didn’t:

Finally, I found his pathos irresistible. When he was little, the kid would actually stick his lower lip out when he tried not to cry. Cicero loved this technique—not the lip part, but the appearance of struggling for self-control. It serves actually to amplify the mood in the room. Cicero also said a genuine emotion persuades more than a faked one, and George’s tears certainly were genuine. Trying not to cry just made his eyes well up more.

I wish I could say my pathos was as effective, but George failed to think it funny when I hiked my pants up. He just agreed that I looked stupid. I had been studying rhetoric pretty intensively at that point, and to be thrown to the mat by a seven-year-old was humiliating. So was facing my wife afterward.

George picked that moment to walk into the room with his shorts on.

So what if his legs looked like rhubarbs when he came home? While I was moderately concerned about the state of his skin, and more apprehensive about living up to Dorothy’s expectations, neither had much to do with my personal goal: to raise persuasive children. If George was willing to put all he had into an argument, I was willing to concede. That time, I like to think, we both won. (Today he expresses his individuality in the opposite way: he wears ties to school. And pants, even.)

Logos, pathos, and ethos usually work together to win an argument, debates with argumentative seven-year-olds excepted. By using your opponent's logic and your audience’s emotion, you can win over your audience with greater ease. You make them happy to let you control the argument.

Logos: Use the Logic in the Room

Later on, we’ll get into rhetoric’s more dramatic logical tactics and show how to bowl your audience over with your eloquence. First, though, let’s master the most powerful logos tool of all, concession. It seems more Jedi knight than Rambo, involving more self-mastery than brute force, but it lies closer to the power center of logos than rhetoric’s more grandiloquent methods. Even the most aggressive maneuvers allow room for the opponent's ideas and the audience’s preconceptions. To persuade people—to make them desire your choice and commit to the action you want—you need all the assets in the room, and one of the best resources comes straight from your opponent’s mouth.

Calvin concedes effectively in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes when his dad tries to teach him to ride a bike:

Clever boy. Perched atop a homicidal bike, he still manages to gain control of the argument. By agreeing that he’s tense, he shifts the issue from nerves to peril, where he has a better argument.

Salespeople love to use concessions to sell you stuff. I once had a boss who came from a sales background. He proved that old habits die hard. The guy never disagreed with me, yet half the time he got me to do the opposite of what I proposed.

My covers never got tested. If a circle in Hell is reserved for this kind of salesman, it’s a pretty darn pleasant one. And despite myself, I never stopped liking the guy. Arguments with him never felt like arguments; I would leave his office in a good mood after losing every point, and he was the one who did all the conceding.

Pathos: Start with the Audience’s Mood

SYMPATHY: Share your listeners’ mood.

Sympathize—align yourself with your listener’s pathos. You don’t have to share the mood; when you face an angry man, it doesn’t help to mirror that anger. Instead, rhetorical sympathy shows its concern, proving, as George H. W. Bush put it, “I care.” So when you face that angry man, look stern and concerned; do not shout, “Whoa, decaf!” When a little girl looks sad, sympathy means looking sad, too; it does not mean chirping, “Cheer up!”

This reaction to the audience’s feelings can serve as a baseline, letting them see your own emotions change as you make your point. Cicero hinted that the great orator transforms himself into an emotional role model, showing the audience how it should feel.

Being a naturally sympathetic type, my wife is especially good at conceding moods. She has a way of playing my emotion back so intensely that I’m embarrassed I felt that way. I once returned home from work angry that my employer had done nothing to recognize an award my magazine had won.

She agreed with me so much that I found myself siding with my lousy employers. I believe her sympathy was genuine, but its effect was the same as if she had applied all her rhetorical skill to make me feel better if a bit sheepish. And then there’s the concession side of ethos, called decorum. This is the most important jujitsu of all, which is why the whole next chapter is devoted to it.

TRY THIS AT WORK. Over-sympathizing makes someone’s mood seem ridiculous without actually ridiculing it. When a staffer complains about his work-space, say, “Let’s take this straight the top.” Watch his mood change from whiny to nervous.

The Tools

“Thus use your frog,” Izaak Walton says in The Compleat Angler. “Put your hook through his mouth, and out at his gills . . . and in so doing use him as though you loved him.” That pretty much sums up this chapter, which teaches you to use your audience as though you loved it. All of these tools require understanding your opponent and sympathizing with your audience.

Argument by logic, emotion, and character are the tools of rhetoric. You’re about to learn specific ways to wield each one. Read on.

ASSIGNMENT:

Create a one-pager! Your goal is to graphically represent the information in this reading by visually illustrating the main ideas. You should be able to teach others about persuasion from the use of this sheet. You will be able to use this sheet on a quiz over persuasive elements.

To earn a 10/10, use your words, symbols, and drawings to:

  1. Summarize the reading.
  2. Define ethos, pathos, and logos.
  3. Provide an example of ethos, pathos, and logos.
  4. Include two direct quotes.
  5. Make two personal connections.
  6. Use color and be creative.