Thank You for Arguing Reading Logs Essay

In Thank You for Arguing, written by Jay Heinrichs had introduces to the reader about the rhetoric concepts and strategies that give us to understand more about offense and defense in an argument. He is not just to explain the concepts to the readers for how to build up a stronger argument but to make the readers to know what purposes that argument puts in our lives. Although rhetoric tools is hard to fits in our everyday life, Heinrichs still would help us to gain more ability on utilizing the knowledges of the rhetoric concepts, and convinces us to influence on our behavior that act in the argument.

The language of rhetoric is the art to persuade an audience. Writers and speakers often use rhetoric appeals. Rhetoric uses four different approaches to capture its audience’s attention: pathos, logos, ethos and kairos. Pathos based its appeal on provoking strong emotion from an audience. Ethos builds its appeal based on good moral character of the writer or speaker and relies on good sense and good will to influence its audience. Logos persuades its audience through the use of deductive and inductive reasoning. The kairos approach requires a combination of creating and recognizing the right time and right place for making the argument in the first place. All of these appeals are important tools, and can be used together or apart to persuade an audience.

Author Jay Henrichs proves that persuasion is a great key in arguing and uses an example of him and his son in an argument to show how both came out triumphant through his persuasion. Hendrichs describes this persuasion as “manipulation” or “instruction,” all which are both included in rhetoric. Rhetoric is the “art of argument” (4) and should be used in every argument to benefit each side. Most ancients also used the tool of rhetoric to persuade, in fact it was used to create the first democracies. Henrichs once went a whole day without persuasion and he found that it was very hard to go through his normal functions. In this chapter, the author also states that seduction is an effective tool in winning an argument.

As supported by Jay Heinrichs in his book, Thank you For Arguing, rhetoric needs to make a comeback in importance in high school education, as it is a vital skill that could be used in everyday life beyond high school. Rhetoric is an important skill due to the fact that its use could become a constant in our lives. A vast array of rhetorical skills can help a student obtain and keep a job once they land in the working world. A keen eye and ear for rhetoric can be an invaluable tool in obtaining one’s goals in life.

The art of writing is at times concrete and precise, while at other times it is abstract and perplexing. Regardless of the mood or style a piece of writing creates, the majority of speakers want to appeal to their audience. This desire to please is usually associated with three rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos. These terms are important tools for persuasion created by Aristotle; he stated that if we believe a speaker is honorable and good, we are more inclined to listen and take what he or she is arguing more seriously. Using different appeals to hook an audience is clever, and to successfully persuade an audience is a skill that some spend their lives perfecting, especially when their argument will be critiqued and exposed to the general public.

Modes of persuasion are rhetorical appeals used in writing to persuade an audience (Worthington 58). The rhetoric appeals are divided into three categories; ethos, pathos and logos. Writers and speakers alike must have the ability to use the three appeals within a text to persuade a particular audience. Ethos refers to the author’s or writer’s credibility. The writer or the author has to establish his or her credibility for the audience to consider his or her views. Pathos is appealing through the audience’s emotions. As an author or speaker, it is important to create a certain sense of curiosity and imagination in the audience’s minds in order to have them identify with the speech’s or text sentiments. Logos is the most important of the three

For this discussion assignment, I will be briefly summarizing and analyzing Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca from The New Rhetoric, as well as the Realm of Rhetoric and The New Rhetoric; A Theory of Practical Reasoning. Through the readings, Perelman developed a kind of “new rhetoric” which was essentially a dense theory of argumentation, audience analysis, and values. He rejected the notion that deduction in persuasion is the key holder that can lead to truth, and advocated for a logic that takes into account categories and people’s understanding of phrases. Philosophy, Perelman argues, is a form of rhetoric (he attempts to connect philosophy and rhetoric again), a system of argument that tries to win the adherence of the “universal

Even if I don’t like to admit it rhetoric has always been somewhat of a haze for me because I knew what it was but I didn’t really find a way to actually explain and use it in my writing. I would like to think that the reason for this is the fact that I have been using rhetoric subconsciously but thanks to the book Thank You for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs I realized just how important rhetoric is in our everyday life. Thank You for Arguing not only pointed out things that were second nature to me it cleared up things that I had no idea how to incorporate it into my writing. Such as the use of the tenses in an argument and the purposes of ethos, pathos, and logos.

Webster’s dictionary contains a very simple definition for rhetoric, describing it as merely a usage of words in order “to influence or persuade” (Thank Your For Arguing, page xiii). Heinrichs refuses to limit the word to such a basic description. He expands upon the definition, “It teaches us to argue without anger...it offers a chance to tap into a source of social power I never knew existed.” (Thank You For Arguing, page xiii). Heinrichs sees rhetoric as more than a gardening tool, he sees it as the gateway towards being able to build a garden.

When they are being persuaded by someone or need to persuade someone else, they may “...be able to avoid mistakes and many of the logical fallacies that are common,” (Benefits of Rhetorical Analysis Techniques). Learning rhetoric in schools can help students see fallacies and discover truth in a sea of lies and partial truths. In Jay Heinrichs’ book, Thank You for Arguing, he explains that forgetting about rhetoric is a mistake. Rhetoric is the power of persuasion, and can benefit students throughout their life. Advertisements and presidential debates use rhetoric to persuade people to buy their product or vote for them. In school, rhetoric teaches students to find the persuasive techniques that candidates and advertisements use to persuade them to purchase a product or vote for a candidate. Rhetoric teaches students to make decisions based off of their knowledge, values, and their opponent’s credibility. Understanding rhetoric can help students spot weaknesses in arguments and formulate their own stronger arguments to make their arguments appeal to the target audience (Benefits of Rhetorical Analysis Techniques). Rhetoric helps them evaluate their strengths

Rhetoric taught in schools, aids children to make proper choices to their advantage intellectually. Rhetoric is in everyday life. Every move made comes with a choice of doing or not doing. The choice of doing or not doing is a form of argument within oneself. This form of argument is crucial for flow in life. Heinrichs talks about his experiment on argument with self. (Heinrichs) His experiment illustrated that one can not make choices without argument and pursasiveness. Students should be taught rhetoric in order to make proper choices.

More than just debate, rhetoric is influencing an audience to think or feel a certain way in order to motivate them to action. Shockingly, many do not appreciate the value of learning such a relevant skill. Studying rhetoric may benefit the ability of a student to recognize fallacious logic, and create sound arguments based on more than just logic and evidence. While devoting time to such an “impractical” skill may seem frivolous, studying rhetoric can benefit students greatly.

The first chapter introduced the reader to the art of rhetoric. He describes how rhetoric works through real life examples. He demonstrates ways that rhetoric persuades us like, argument from strength, and seduction. He tells the reader that the sole purpose of arguing is to persuade the audience. He showed that the chief purpose of arguing is to also achieve consensus, a shared faith in a choice.

The book is divided into five sections, each one being subdivided into different strategies on how to use rhetoric to your advantage, in any given situation.

Rhetoric is a significant part of our everyday lives. Whether it's convincing our friends to go to a concert on the weekend, to go to a certain place for lunch, or even convincing yourself to do something that you should but don't want to do. Rhetoric is all around us today. Billboard ads, television commercials, newspaper ads, political speeches, even news stories all try, to some degree, to sway our opinion or convince us to take some sort of action. If you take a step back to look and think about it, rhetoric, in all actuality, shapes our lives. Every day we have an array of options of things to do or things to buy. So every day, our opinion or actions are being influenced, however minutely, by rhetoric.