110 pages • 3 hours read
Jay HeinrichsThank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaPart 4, Chapters 22-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Advanced Offense”
Part 4, Chapter 22 Summary: “Apple’s Fall: Using tools that help more than an apology”
The tools of rhetoric not only help persuaders change reality but recover from mistakes and make their ethos shine. There are five steps that can help do this—the first being to set new goals for oneself after a mistake.
The second step is to “be first with the news,” also known as kairos (251). A persuader can control the narrative around their mistake should they be the first to shares it with an audience.
The third step is to acknowledge one’s mistake and then “switch immediately to the future” (251). When a persuader focuses on what they can do to fix their mistake, they avoid being stuck in the past with their audience’s blame.
The fourth step is to avoid belittling or lashing out at others. If a persuader lashes out at their audience, they will likely retaliate and demand an apology. Many try to deliver apologies in ways that avoid belittling themselves, like stating “I’m really sorry that you feel that way” (266-67). These apologies only serve to make the audience feel belittled.
The fifth and final step is to focus on standards over apologies.
Part 4, Chapter 23 Summary: “Seize the Occasion: Stalin’s Timing Secret”
This chapter delves into kairos or rhetoric timing—moments when an audience is most persuadable. Bad timing causes many arguments to fail. When an audience experiences uncertain moods or beliefs, this signals that their minds are open to persuading.
To Heinrichs, “true geniuses at kairos [...] can turn their ethos liabilities into assets” (282). For example, Heinrichs once saw President Bill Clinton speak to a group of New Hampshire Democrats at the White House. The president spoke fondly of New Hampshire’s primary in 1992—which he lost. However, he used this experience to increase his ethos and began winning primaries, referring to himself as the “Comeback Kid” (283). Clinton’s initial decision didn’t go his way, but he waited for a more persuasive moment and reaped the benefits.
Part 4, Chapter 24 Summary: “Use the Right Medium: The Jumbotron Blunder”
While seizing the moment is critical, persuaders also need to use the right medium for a given argument. To Heinrichs, “the medium can make or break a persuasive moment” (285). There are three factors to consider when choosing a medium: timing, whether an argument is an ethos, pathos, or logos appeal, and gestures that will help the appeal.
Each persuasion tool (ethos, pathos, and logos) corresponds to a physical sense. Sound is the most logical sense. Smell, taste, and touch trigger strong emotional reactions; sight is primarily associated with pathos and ethos. If persuaders want their kairos to work, they need to know the rhetorical qualities of various media.
Part 4, Chapters 22-24 Analysis
Chapters 22-24 provide even more advanced strategies for persuasion. Heinrichs strongly believes apologies are unnecessary and ultimately decrease a persuader’s ethos in an audience’s eyes. An important element of phronesis or practical wisdom is adaptability. Adapting to an audience does not require apologizing. Disinterest (appearing unbiased) also works alongside practical wisdom: The persuader needs to show that they care and can fix the issue at hand. When one fails to live up to one’s own standards, it is only natural to feel dissatisfied. Heinrichs encourages readers to briefly acknowledge this feeling “and then get right to work living up to those values again” (266). By employing ethos principles, the persuader’s reputation will shine even brighter than before.
Timing and medium are also key to seizing the moment (kairos). For example, email as a medium is terrible for expressing emotion because it conveys logos and some ethos; the persuader’s face and voice are unknown. As a result, an audience would have a difficult time identifying and connecting with the persuader’s emotions. Emotions are tied to specific moments. Emails lack rhetoric timing as they are both instantaneous and permanent: “a message stays angry, sitting there like a bomb in your audience’s in-box, long after you have calmed down” (288). As for length, different emails convey different gestures. Long emails embody logos as they often justify choices; shorter emails embody ethos as they often entail touching base.
The aforementioned strategies demonstrate the manipulative beauty of rhetoric. It can help political candidates predict their own reception; it can also help parents more easily negotiate with their children. Rhetoric seeks solutions to real issues. To do so, persuaders need to seize persuadable moments.
