For thousands of years, the study of rhetoric was a fundamental part of a man s education. Though it ceased to be commonly taught in the 19th century, my guest today argues that it's an art well worth reviving in the modern day. His name is Jay Heinrichs, and he's an expert in language and persuasion and the author of Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion.
00:06:14.880Now, I think this is the art of leadership.
00:06:18.400So really anybody who wants to be a leader should study it.
00:06:21.000But also anybody who doesn't want to be manipulated ought to study it well as well, because rhetoric essentially being the art of persuasion, it's a dark art.
00:06:31.000It can also be a tremendous art of manipulation.
00:06:35.440So studying it gives sort of inoculates you against that.
00:06:39.580So the art of rhetoric, something that's been taught for thousands of years around the world, and you argue is so important for leadership.
00:06:45.400But then it stopped being formally taught around the early 1800s.
00:06:49.240Now, one place where rhetoric continued to be studied all along were the historically Black colleges.
00:06:57.360So after the Civil War, these colleges sprung up to teach Black people.
00:07:01.680And among those colleges were Morehouse University and the Crozer Theological Seminary, among others.
00:07:08.180The reason I mentioned them was that one guy studied rhetoric at both those places, and that was Martin Luther King, which I think, you know, it's one example of the value of learning rhetoric.
00:07:19.320Well, at the beginning of the book, you talk about there's a difference between arguing and, like, rhetoric is the art of arguing well, but also fighting.
00:07:28.000What do you think most people do today?
00:07:30.560And, like, what's the difference between arguing and fighting?
00:07:34.640When I first told people I was writing a book on how to argue, they all thought I was having a really late midlife crisis.
00:07:43.440You know, who wants to learn about argument?
00:07:46.500And, you know, one of the first things I had to do, and this is why I did it at the beginning of the book, was to talk about the distinction.
00:07:51.720So, in an argument, your job is to win over somebody, to make them feel as if they somehow won at the end, won something, while you convince them of what you want them to believe or do.
00:08:06.140Fighting, on the other hand, is about simply winning, either scoring points or dominating another person.
00:08:12.640So, an argument, what you hope for at the end is a consensus, you know, where both of you agree on something.
00:08:18.220It doesn't always happen, so sometimes it's better just to, you know, your goal might be to walk away with a good relationship.
00:08:24.060But, generally, if you want to persuade someone, you want them to feel glad that they were persuaded.
00:08:29.220Fighting, on the other hand, is just a way to prove that you've dominated someone else.
00:08:33.480So, fighting usually ends up with at least one person feeling lousy.
00:08:38.980And, you know, argument makes you feel good.
00:08:41.560And, in the end, if it goes well, fighting, the purpose of it is to make the other person feel terrible.
00:08:48.240So, it seems like a lot of the internet discussion on Twitter or Facebook, it's a lot of fighting and not too much arguing.
00:09:56.200I think that one of the main purposes of a rhetorical education in the past was for people to learn what rhetoric was for.
00:10:04.440You know, that it's not just purely an art of manipulation, although it's that too.
00:10:10.900It's also this notion that the only way for people to make decisions in common is to persuade each other.
00:10:19.360The only alternative to that is violence or, you know, people saying violent things, you know, threatening each other.
00:10:27.180I mean, the one way we've allowed civilization to really flourish throughout the world is this idea that people can get together and make decisions in common.
00:10:37.680And the only way to do that is through rhetoric.
00:10:48.420I want to have an argument where the goal is to persuade another person and you feel everyone kind of walks away feeling better about it.
00:10:54.520What do you do if you want to do that, but the person you're engaging with just wants to fight?
00:11:00.160Is that even possible to have a persuasive rhetorical argument with that person?
00:11:05.620Well, one of the most important things about rhetoric is to really know who your audience actually is.
00:11:12.500So, it's a little tough to talk about this during COVID, but eventually when all of us can get together again, one of the most important things to do is to look at who your audience really is.
00:11:22.320You know, is it the person you're talking to or is it the people around you?
00:11:27.740So, I speak several times a week in video chats with high school classes that study my book.
00:11:34.900And one of the first things I tell them is, be the grown-up in the room.
00:11:39.860You're going to win so many points that way.
00:11:41.820And a lot of people are going to be convinced, all except the person who just wants to fight.
00:11:47.660So, you may have some jerk who's venting or saying stupid things or having a dumb opinion.
00:11:54.140And if you treat the other person kind of respectfully, don't lose your temper, use some humor if that's possible, and don't lose your cool in general, then you're going to be admired by the people who are listening in.
00:13:00.360And I think we have to sort of go with that, you know, to understand that these people really did know what they're talking about.
00:13:06.340Now, when I was studying rhetoric, I branched out into there's lots of really good modern rhetoric,
00:13:12.720which is more about people's sense of shared identity, which the Greeks weren't quite so much into.
00:13:18.760But also, I studied neuroscience, linguistics, sociology, and there's a lot of really good research, behavioral economics,
00:13:26.740that confirm a lot of what the ancient Greeks and Romans were talking about with rhetoric.
00:13:33.280So, you mentioned you've got to think about your audience when you're thinking about rhetoric.
00:13:36.980And you make the case, and I think Aristotle makes the case, too, that there are three main goals a speaker can possibly have for his audience.
00:14:24.460That's the easiest thing to change in somebody.
00:14:27.300Harder is to change someone's mind, you know, on a particular issue.
00:14:31.220You know, even if it's a family kind of thing.
00:14:33.660Do, you know, do we go to the mountains or the beach two summers from now when we all have vaccination?
00:14:38.700The third and hardest thing is to actually get someone to act or to stop acting.
00:14:45.420So, you see all these concerts that are held to get young people to vote, you know, rock the vote, that kind of thing.
00:14:54.300But time after time, people will show up for the t-shirts or the concerts or whatever online now and then not vote.
00:15:01.880So, you know, you could change their mind about wanting to vote or to vote for a particular person, but getting them actually to show up at the polls, that's hardest of all.
00:15:12.480And so, that takes a different set of tools and they're a lot harder to do.
00:15:16.800Now, often what happens is you start with a mood, you change the person's mind, and then you, you know, try to get them to do something or stop doing something.
00:15:25.460I would add a fourth goal, which is relationship.
00:15:28.940A lot of times we make the mistake, especially when someone's confronting us and we get that fight-or-flight instinct to think we need to fight back, you know, simply to fight.
00:15:40.280And, you know, or on the other hand, you may be upset or have a really strong opinion.
00:15:45.580More often than not, maybe you ought to think about whether to walk away having someone like you or, you know, to get along with somebody.
00:15:53.400Think first about whether you can get along with the other person, and that may be your best goal of all.
00:16:00.500So, three possible goals for an audience.
00:16:02.340You're going to either change their mood, change their mind, get them to take action, or just simply get along with them, which could help with all three of those other goals as well.
00:16:11.660And then Aristotle said that in any argument, there are three main possible issues that could be going on.
00:16:17.420And I think this is one of the most useful things I got out of the book was this idea of the three types of issues because oftentimes what I've discovered in the conversations or arguments or debates I've gotten with people is that we are both – all of us are arguing different issues, but we don't know it.
00:16:34.560So, what he did, what Aristotle did, and I think this is really brilliant, is he organized those issues around tenses, past, present, and future tense.
00:16:46.000And so, the rhetoric of the past tense, when we use the past tense, what happened in the past, he called forensic rhetoric because it has to do with forensics about, you know, crime and punishment.
00:16:59.380Who done it and how should we punish them?
00:17:01.300Then the present tense, he called demonstrative rhetoric.
00:17:05.900It's often called sermonic rhetoric because it's the language of sermons.
00:17:10.140It has to do with what's good and what's bad and who's good and who's bad.
00:18:33.720The point is, how are we going to keep this from happening again?
00:18:37.120Now, I was kind of pleased about that, actually, because for years I had told him the best way to get out of trouble is to switch the tense to the future.
00:18:47.900You know, who used up all the toothpaste?
00:18:49.600How are we going to solve this problem?
00:18:52.040Now, I was so pleased that he'd actually been listening to me over all those years.
00:19:22.320Now, what if I had used the present tense, what Aristotle called demonstrative rhetoric?
00:19:27.360Then I would have said something like, George, a good son wouldn't use up all the toothpaste.
00:19:32.380And you can imagine how fast I would have gotten a tube of toothpaste.
00:19:37.240You know, he would have been very defensive.
00:19:39.340And that's often the problem when we use the wrong topic, speak in the wrong tense when we have a confrontation or an argument with somebody.
00:19:48.840I think that's useful because a lot of even just like interpersonal arguments you have with a spouse, like your kids, we tend to get hung up on the blame, the past tense, or the present tense.
00:19:59.800And you're always wondering, like, why can't we just move forward?
00:20:02.980And, I mean, to me, the idea that Aristotle would say, well, move things to the future, and you might start making some headway.
00:20:16.540So, if you find yourself in an argument that's not going anywhere, like, pay attention to how people are speaking or using the past tense and the present tense.
00:20:24.600Because if they are, that's probably why you guys are stuck in blaming and talking about values, and you might not make any headway there.
00:20:31.460So, I mean, like a pivot, like, what do you do?
00:20:33.600I mean, so you give an example of what a pivot would look like there.
00:20:35.660But what do you do when someone doesn't want a pivot?
00:20:43.920We want to figure out what's wrong, who did what.
00:20:46.840Can you make any progress with that, or do you have to use some other rhetorical tools to keep moving forward?
00:20:53.080Yeah, there's this great study that was done over years by this guy named John Gottman at the University of Wisconsin.
00:21:01.080He ran something that became known as the Love Lab because they brought in all these married couples, and they videotaped how they argued with one another.
00:21:14.460And what was really interesting – and they did this, as I say, over years, and then these poor grad students had to view these tapes and sort of log them of how these people talked.
00:21:24.400And then they tracked the couples, by the way, over time.
00:21:26.600So the couples who ended up getting divorced and the couples that stayed together actually argued the same amount of time.
00:21:34.780They disagreed and spoke about it the same amount of time and with the same frequency.
00:21:39.520The difference was the couples that got divorced used their arguments as a way to prove the other person was a jerk.
00:21:47.980They spoke in terms of demonstrative rhetoric.
00:21:50.380So this just proves you're not a good husband or you're not a good wife because you left the toilet seat up or whatever.
00:21:56.760Whereas the other couples would say, you know, this is a problem with the toilet seat up.
00:22:18.840So you can say, you know, if you're the one who's being blamed in the past tense and or being called a name of, you know, to show how what an idiot you are or, you know, how lame you are.
00:22:31.660The best thing to do is to say, yeah, you know, you can call me this, but that's not going to solve our problem here.
00:22:39.900I mean, basically, all you have to do is say, that's not going to solve our problem.
00:22:43.620Let's talk about how we're going to do that.
00:22:45.300Now, often what happens, though, is that you have to go back to what your goal is and say to yourself, you know, is this person so angry she won't listen to me?
00:22:55.520You know, should I be changing the mood a little bit?
00:22:58.780And to do that, you have to really acknowledge that the other person feels bad.
00:23:03.140And so what men are bad at is apologies, and that may have to come before anything else.
00:23:17.460But Aristotle would say, well, sometimes you've got to make a concession to achieve that higher goal of moving forward and causing a change.
00:23:25.020Well, a lot has to do with whether you actually are at fault, right?
00:23:28.780So, you know, suppose you did do something thoughtless.
00:23:33.280One of the things to do is not just say you're sorry.
00:23:37.280When you say it, by the way, look as sincere as you can.
00:23:39.680But what you should also do is to say, you know what?
00:24:44.920So another thing Aristotle said that I think is still relevant today, still works, is that there are basically three primary, we can call them tools of rhetoric.
00:25:15.180Pathos has to do with mood, what mood the audience is in and what tools you can use to change that and to use it to your advantage.
00:25:22.680And then there's logos, which has to do – it's often translated as logic, but it's a little bit more than that.
00:25:29.420Now, each one of these tools all has to do with the audience itself.
00:25:34.300So logos, logic, really isn't about facts necessarily.
00:25:39.360Research shows consistently that if you throw facts at people, they're likely to just get more entrenched in their own opinion.
00:25:46.200So pure logic and reciting facts don't work all that well.
00:25:52.980Instead, look at the beliefs and expectations of the audience, not what the facts are, but what does your audience believe, and think about how to use that.
00:26:01.980Pathos has to do, as I say, with the audience's mood.
00:26:04.180But ethos has to do with not who you are so much as what your audience thinks you are, and you might be able to change that as well.
00:26:12.200So now, Aristotle invented logic, and yet he said – and he just sounded so sad when he wrote this – that logic is not the most persuasive of those three tools.
00:26:24.460He said that ethos is – whether someone likes and trusts you is much more important in determining whether they'll follow you.
00:26:33.660So if you are someone your audience thinks is one of the tribe, maybe a slightly improved version of it, like a leader, then they're much more likely to be persuaded by you than any kind of logic you're going to use on them.
00:26:46.740Well, let's talk about ethos in particular in detail here.
00:26:49.660So Aristotle thought in order to have ethos, your character, you had to develop rhetorical virtue.
00:26:55.060And again, Aristotle wrote a whole book about virtue ethics, the Nicomachean ethics, and it sounds like he took that idea and integrated it into his idea of rhetoric.
00:27:05.340But it sounds like he has an idea of like – it's almost like rhetorical virtue.
00:27:09.220So for Aristotle, what does rhetorical virtue look like, and how do you develop it?
00:27:13.660Yeah, you know, there are three basic – he devised – the Greeks were crazy about rules of three.
00:27:20.140So there are three tools of ethos, and probably the most powerful of them all is virtue.
00:27:26.820Now, it's very different from what he described in the Nicomachean ethics.
00:27:33.400Rhetorical ethos, as you hinted, really has more to do with the audience's values and whether the audience thinks you uphold those values.
00:27:42.880So he used this sentence that took me years to try to understand, and I think I'm kind of getting it.
00:27:50.900He said that virtue is a matter of character.
00:27:55.380Okay, it's your expressed character, what the audience thinks of you.
00:28:01.080So it's how your character influences the choices you make, lying in a mean.
00:28:08.460And I think what he meant by that is the choices your audience sees you make, not just for the moment but throughout your life, should fall between something that's completely reckless and something that's too cautious.
00:28:22.580And at the same time, should also fall like right smack in the middle of the values of your audience, right there in the dead center.
00:28:32.280Now, that's the most important kind of expression of character.
00:28:36.640Now, the other two tools are worth mentioning, which is whether the audience thinks you know what you're doing.
00:28:43.640Like, can you – if you come up with a solution, a choice, does the audience believe that you know what you're talking about, that you can solve this problem?
00:28:53.680And then the third is whether the audience thinks that you have their best interest at heart.
00:28:59.200So are you disinterested, which means that you don't represent any special interests, including your own.
00:29:05.640I break this down into labels of cause, craft, and caring.
00:29:12.900So cause is virtue, whether you uphold these values of your audience.
00:29:17.840Craft has to do with whether you know your stuff.
00:29:21.460And caring is whether you have the audience's interest at heart, even to the point of maybe sacrificing yourself for the greater good.
00:29:28.800Those are the tools of character that Aristotle defined.
00:29:32.360Well, it sounds like, okay, let's make this – do some practical application here.
00:29:36.680If you are in your business or an office, you can develop these things, these three things over time, right?
00:29:42.240You can show your competence to your coworkers, to your boss.
00:29:45.400You can show that you're disinterested, that you put the company before your own interest.
00:29:49.440You can show to your coworkers and your boss that you have the virtue or the values of the organization.
00:29:56.420And then so whenever you do – you need to be persuasive.
00:30:04.580What do you do if like you're just plopped in front of an audience and they know hardly anything about you and yet you need to develop that ethos on the fly?
00:30:13.480Did Aristotle have any insights on that?
00:30:21.680So one of the things the Romans came up with is this idea of decorum.
00:30:25.180We think a decorum is like manners, but it really comes from the Latin word meaning fitness, as in fitting in, as in like your ability to fit into your environment, including an office.
00:30:37.100And so the clothing you wear is an expression of your character or what people see your character as being.
00:30:44.740I was a manager for some years and was constantly being visited.
00:30:51.240And by the way, I managed creatives who dress in all kinds of ways.
00:30:57.160And I was often visited by human resources to tell me that some employer or another was dressing inappropriately.
00:31:04.880Well, for the team the person was working with, that person may have been entirely appropriate.
00:31:09.580It just didn't look good to the corporate types.
00:31:12.280So decorum changes according to who your audience is.
00:31:15.840And that's probably the easiest thing.
00:31:17.300Now, the tone you use, the words you use, in some cases, you know, you can use four-letter words in a particular office setting.
00:31:26.940In other places, that's probably not such a good idea.
00:31:29.120So one of the most important things to do before you enter into any new situation, even if it's just to give a talk in front of an audience or, you know, harder, take a new job, is to understand who your audience is.
00:31:42.920Do a little bit of homework before you do that.
00:31:46.380So decorum is sort of like instant ethos.
00:31:49.960Well, it sounds like we see politicians do this.
00:31:52.500You know, when we had state fairs about this time, you know, they would go to Iowa or something and be like, oh, my grandpa's from Iowa, you know.
00:32:01.500And they would try to make that connection.
00:32:03.820And they were basically doing ethos on the fly with their audience.
00:32:08.020In fact, you know, one of the problems that Hillary Clinton had when she was running in the last presidential election was that – I don't know whether she did this consciously or not.
00:32:17.580I bet she didn't, but when she was speaking in front of a southern audience, she would change her accent.
00:32:23.360And the problem with that is if it was just the audience, that might have been fine.
00:32:28.200But, you know, she was a presidential candidate, so her audience was like the nation who would hear her change her accent and think she was being kind of phony doing that.
00:32:40.120One of the things that older people, one of the sins they commit is to try to fit in too much with like a younger audience or one – if they're speaking to people of a different ethnicity or race, trying to imitate that speech can be a huge problem.
00:32:56.920It's much better to sort of use a decorum that represents the other people's values, not so much just their behavior.
00:33:25.220And he didn't, you know, he didn't try to pander so much, but they just – they saw his behavior, sort of his attitude.
00:33:32.940And they're like, hey, he's one of us, even though, you know, he might really wasn't one of them.
00:33:38.040Oh, that – you could not – I'm going to use that example.
00:33:40.860You could not have come up with a better example of decorum because, you know, for one thing, half those ranchers, Teddy could have kicked their butt.
00:33:49.240You know, he was famous for leading people on these hikes where he would just exhaust everybody.
00:33:56.320And he could stay up night after night.
00:34:07.180So he didn't – he could wear his, you know, pince-nez eyeglasses and speak funny.
00:34:13.220But that didn't matter to the people because he shared their values.
00:34:16.580That was more important than his behavior.
00:34:18.980So ethos, character, you want to connect with the audience.
00:34:22.080And that's something you might have – you can do on the fly by looking at the Romans, looking at your – you know, how you're presenting yourself with your clothing, the way you talk, mannerism, things like that.
00:34:31.640But then it seems like – I mean, the big takeaway from I got from that is, like, really to develop that ethos, it's – the most effective ethos is, like, that long game ethos where you do all these things that Aristotle talks about so that you can be persuasive when you need to be persuasive.
00:34:47.480Yeah, it's easier for us modern Americans than it was back to – for the ancient Greeks and Romans because they believed your ethos came from your ancestors.
00:34:56.580So if you had lame ancestors, you were screwed.
00:35:00.960But, you know, for us, it really is almost a lifetime thing or at least a career-long thing.
00:35:07.720I mean, if you look at modern politics, it's really interesting that, you know, any presidential candidate right now, you're looking at their whole history being laid out in front of everybody, and that's their ethos.
00:35:19.180In an office, you know, the average person stays in a job, what, two years?
00:35:23.940That's your time for developing your ethos.
00:35:26.260Now, by the way, another way to register your ethos is through a resume, which these days is more and more automated, of course, because you've got these scanning machines reading it and interpreting it.
00:35:58.500Are you passionate about something that's related to the job?
00:36:01.920And then thirdly, are you willing to do what it takes?
00:36:05.480Like, you're not someone whose first question is going to be, what's the salary and what are the benefits and how long is vacation?
00:36:11.820So, again, that's, you know, cause, caring, and craft.
00:36:17.000If you can make sure your resume reflects that, that's your ethos on paper.
00:36:22.340And I was going to say, you also got to think about how you present yourself online.
00:36:26.740Because, you know, as you said, it used to be like you didn't have, you know, you don't have to worry about what you did when you were a teenager.
00:36:32.160Now you do, because people, when you're 20, 30, if you posted something on Facebook or Instagram when you were a kid that was stupid, that might come back and haunt your ethos.
00:36:45.360You know, one of the things that I tell, especially young people who are on social media all the time, think of your audience.
00:36:53.380It's bigger than you know, and it also lasts forever.
00:36:57.800So you have to think, you're thinking about two or three people when you post that hilarious picture of you at a party.
00:37:05.400But now think, this could be seen by tens of thousands, millions potentially people, and it could be seen by millions of people 30 years from now.
00:37:18.180You know, think in terms of your audience expanding into eternity, and then think about whether it's a good idea to post that picture.
00:37:26.360One of the people, and we're prime for this, we evolved in very small groups of humans.
00:37:32.560I mean, the largest groups of humans generally, these bands that existed for the first 30,000 years after humans had really fully developed and were speaking sophisticated languages, the biggest bands we were with was 30 people.
00:37:48.460And to this day, most people really see their entire group as no more than 30 people.
00:37:56.160And the problem is, social media doesn't work that way.
00:37:59.020So you're thinking, you know, you're posting for 30 people.
00:38:01.600You're not, your audience is much larger and much more accidental.
00:38:06.780All right, so we've talked about ethos.
00:38:08.160It's your character, and that can be something that, a tool you use to persuade people.
00:39:19.960When they say something, pause before you answer, because it sounds like you're taking their words very seriously.
00:39:28.140If you can get them to smile, that's really important.
00:39:31.220So this really great researcher, Daniel Kahneman, who wrote what's now a best-selling book, Thinking Fast and Slow, defined two sort of systems in the brain.
00:39:42.240The Homer Simpson system one is where you are easily persuadable.
00:39:56.020That's the system you were in when you took a math test back in the day, when you're sort of frowning, your face is screwed up, and you're thinking really hard.
00:40:04.340Now, we've evolved to use as little energy in our brains as possible because it's amazing how much, when we're thinking hard, how much glycogen we use up.
00:40:14.840That's why you can be literally tired after doing a really difficult project that involves a lot of thinking.
00:40:21.100What you want is that Homer Simpson state in your audience.
00:41:14.300And I think the thing with pathos, I think some people feel squidgy about it because it's dealing with emotions.
00:41:19.180And there's all these tactics that we can, you know, use to manipulate emotions.
00:41:23.380So how can you use pathos without seeming like you're either, you know, emotionally manipulative or like a demagogue, right?
00:41:31.200You're calling it, you're using anger, you're using the sense of belonging, patriotism, you know, othering to persuade people to action and manipulate them.
00:41:40.980Well, the best rhetoric disguises itself.
00:41:58.380That's the most important thing here in terms of expressing any kind of mood.
00:42:02.500Now, a very effective mood to get somebody to stop doing something is fear.
00:42:07.960Now, the problem with using fear, which is, you know, to talk about what the future is going to look like if you make this decision or continue on this path, is that it actually tends to freeze people up.
00:42:20.760So if you want to change someone's mind, the last thing you do is put them in a fearful state because they won't make up their mind about anything.
00:42:27.640They'll just run away or they'll fight, you know, fight or flight.
00:42:30.440Now, in general, the best way to conduct a deliberative argument about what choices to make for the future is to try to bring the mood down, like turn down the volume.
00:42:42.840And you can do that through your own voice control, through, you know, nodding your head and acknowledging what the other person is saying by appearing to be non-confrontational.
00:42:53.600I call this a tool called agreeability, which is the ability to look like you're not actually arguing when you really are.
00:43:01.440And one way to do that is to nod with the other person and then just gradually kind of reframe what they're talking about, you know, agree sort of, and then change the terms of the debate a little bit.
00:43:12.840You take the mood out and that may be your best tool.
00:43:17.500So taking mood out is a way to use pathos to actually be more persuasive.
00:43:21.480So let's talk about the last one, logos, which is translated to logic.
00:43:24.680But you make this point that for Aristotle and the Romans, rhetorical logic is different from what we typically think of as logic as, you know, facts or like if this, then, you know, be.
00:45:43.100Let's go to the lake instead or to the beach or whatever.
00:45:46.980So logos has to do with your proof and your claim, with your proof having to do with what the audience believes or what it expects will happen.
00:45:57.340I mean, and also you talk about how when people think about logic, they often – you want to go to fallacies, like logical fallacies, and, like, you know, point out, hey, this right here, this is a straw man argument or whatever.
00:46:11.220And you argue in rhetoric, you really don't want to – sometimes you use fallacies to be persuasive with logos.
00:46:19.140Yeah, in rhetoric, if it works, that's good rhetoric.
00:46:24.700So – and on the other hand, you know, rule number one in rhetoric is don't be a jerk.
00:46:30.720Like, your ethos should not get out of control.
00:46:33.140And one way to be a jerk is to point out other people's fallacies.
00:46:38.740Now, you can use – some fallacies work absolutely great on audiences who are not very well trained in logic at all.
00:46:48.740And so one of the things about rhetoric is the ethics are really kind of up to you.
00:46:54.000But, like, rhetoric will work for evil as well as it will work for good.
00:46:58.480And this is why – so this idea of logos, rhetorical logic, this is why Socrates wasn't a fan of sophist because he took part in dialectic where his goal with the discussion with somebody was, like, we're going to find out with logic, like, what is true.
00:47:13.440And people who are dealing with rhetoric, they're not so much concerned about – I mean, they are concerned about truth, but, like, their main goal is persuasion.
00:47:21.080Yeah, well, you know, the irony of Plato, who, you know, essentially was Socrates' ghostwriter and maybe inventor for all we know, is that, you know, he wrote a couple of dialogues against rhetoric using every rhetorical trick in the book.
00:47:38.680So, I mean, he was officially against rhetoric, but he was happy to use it.
00:47:45.080So, yeah, these – those are, like, Aristotle and the Romans' big idea of, like, so, you know, think about your audience, their goals, the use of tenses, and to figure out what the issue of an argument is, and these, like, pathos, ethos, logos.
00:47:57.300If you think about those things, that can really help you start talking and making arguments.
00:48:01.560But then also, I think that's really useful from classical rhetoric that's still useful today.
00:48:07.560It was Cicero, and he had this idea of the five canons of rhetoric.
00:48:11.460What is that, and how can that help people be more persuasive?
00:48:14.260Well, you know, it's really good if you're making a presentation or shooting a video or something like that.
00:48:21.700And how much you use it is really – it appeals to some people and not so much to others.
00:48:26.040So, he came up with these canons, invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.
00:48:32.980Thank goodness I could think of all that.
00:48:35.420Invention has to do with – it's interesting.
00:48:38.400Invention, the Latin for invention is inventio, which is where we get the term, obviously.
00:48:42.880But it doesn't just mean making stuff up.
00:48:46.100It also – inventio also means discovery.
00:48:49.000So, one of the things you do before you start any kind of presentation or speech or whatever is to not just come up with your thoughts, but also do your homework.
00:49:00.920So, inventio has to do with discovering the best means of persuasion.
00:49:05.420That's Aristotle's term, but Cicero quoted him.
00:49:07.620So, arrangement then has to do with how your thoughts are going to be arranged, what order you put it in.
00:49:14.740And Cicero came up with a kind of nice outline that works for any kind of speech.
00:49:19.200We can get to that in a minute if you want, but we can move on to the other canons.
00:49:22.740Invention, arrangement style has to do with whether you're using terms that are suitable to the audience.
00:49:32.300But it also has to do with how vivid your expressions are, whether you're getting your audience to pay attention through either the beauty or the strength of your language.
00:49:49.460It has to do with your ability to deliver a speech without looking at your notes.
00:49:54.280And the ancients were big about memorizing things.
00:49:58.740It's one of the things that kids were taught.
00:50:00.780One of the things they did was – some people have heard of the memory palace, which is where you invent this kind of building in your head.
00:50:07.920And you fill it with things that remind you of what you need to know.
00:50:12.100Well, the ancient Romans in particular, starting at like age 12, would create these memory palaces that were more like shopping malls.
00:50:21.920I think they were like all at one level.
00:50:24.220But they would have these rooms that they would fill with symbols they would remember.
00:50:29.300And because these were adolescent boys who were learning this, a lot of those symbols would be pornographic.
00:50:35.660So instead of memorizing a speech, they would think of a route to take through their memory palace, picking up these expressions, quotations, you know, tropes, whatever would work.
00:50:50.260And then what would happen in the middle of a debate, they wouldn't be thrown off course.
00:50:55.160They would simply reroute their path through this memory palace.
00:50:59.460And so memory for them was really like a lifelong development.
00:51:03.800Now, one of the ways I talk about memory – sorry, I'm stuck on this, but I just can't help it because it's so much fun.
00:51:09.680I tell people if they're doing a presentation on, you know, go ahead and use PowerPoint or Keynote or whatever.
00:51:16.680Whether you're showing slides or not, create the slides, put notes on them, and then print out the slides with your notes of what you're going to say.
00:51:28.960That's arrangement, you know, slide by slide.
00:51:31.480So print out each one of these things.
00:51:33.320It may be as like separate pages if you're willing to use the paper.
00:51:37.480Then print it out again, only this time without your notes, after you've read it a million times.
00:51:43.160And see if the pictures themselves can trigger what you say.
00:51:47.700And just go through that a bunch of times.
00:51:49.620And what you're doing is you're enforcing different parts of your brain to remember what you want to say.
00:51:54.740And then, you know, if you can, see if you can go and deliver this talk without the slides or the notes.
00:52:01.060And people will love it because it's such a rare commodity these days.
00:52:05.000Last of all is delivery, or in Latin, actio, which means action as well as acting.
00:52:11.200And that is how well you can deliver this talk.
00:52:14.680And that's why I dwelt so long on memory because memory has a lot to do with it.
00:52:19.020I hear young people all the time giving talks, you know, in video or whatever.
00:52:24.200When they're reading something, the kids who get the straight A's will read a mile a minute.
00:52:29.960They associate really good speech with how fast they can go.
00:52:33.620And, you know, for a geezer like me, I can't understand a word of it.
00:52:37.280And it also is just not very authentic sounding when they do it.
00:52:40.460So, one of the ways to deliver to a modern audience, especially if you're using something like a teleprompter, is, you know, slow down and sound sincere at the same time.
00:53:24.720It just doesn't just – I think we have this idea of authenticity that it just – you'll rise to the occasion and it'll just – whatever naturally comes out of you will be – that's what you need to do.
00:53:34.080But, no, actually, the good people who are good at rhetoric, good at speaking, like, they practice over and over again to hone in on how they present themselves.
00:53:46.920So, your book – I mean, what I love about your book, it's so comprehensive.
00:53:50.880We talked about sort of the big picture – I'm hoping people have a big picture idea of what, you know, is involved with rhetoric.
00:53:56.680But in your book, you go into, like, details of little tools you can use to even be more persuasive.
00:54:02.280And one of the more useful – I mean, everything was useful, but one of the things I thought was really useful at the end of the book, you provide sort of, like, games that people can use on a daily basis to fine-tune the rhetorical ability.
00:54:12.500Is there one or two that you think are – that it's a lot of fun but also really useful for someone who wants to start improving the rhetoric game today?
00:54:21.320I'll tell you one that is hugely popular or was back when I could speak in front of live audiences.
00:54:28.080I would call someone with the audience, and you could do this at home.
00:54:33.340It's called the dice game, and I have – I mean, you can make this up yourself or you could simply go to my website, thank you for arguing, and you'll find it there.
00:54:42.000What you do is there are five types of audiences that could be single people, like a priest or a nun could be one, a firefighter could be another, a college professor could be another, and so on.
00:54:59.460And then the other side is the stuff you want to sell them, which would be a ball of twine, say, or a baby goat, or you could make stuff up.
00:55:12.680So in the one column is particular kinds of people, and the other column is the stuff you want to sell them.
00:55:18.760So roll two dice, and the first die is the audience, and the second die is what you want to sell them, whatever their product is.
00:55:28.300People give the most unexpected kinds of presentations with this.
00:55:34.760I will call up people from the audience, and generally it's people who are goaded by their friends who want to embarrass them.
00:55:40.140They get up on stage, and they give the most amazing persuasion, and it's absolutely hilarious.
00:55:47.320A resentful teenager is, I think, one that's listed in Argue Lab, and sometimes you'll get somebody coming up and trying to sell a baby.
00:55:58.300Goat to a resentful teenager, and using the most amazing argument you can imagine.
00:56:03.600It's super fun, but it also really helps people understand what argument and persuasion in particular is all about.
00:56:10.960All right, so you mentioned your website.