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 20-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Advanced Offense”
Part 4, Chapter 20 Summary: “Get Instant Cleverness: Monty Python’s Treasury of Wit”
This chapter details figures. Heinrichs notes that “figures help you become more adept at wordplay; they make clichés seem clever, and can lend rhythm and spice to a conversation” (230). More importantly, they help with persuasion. There are three categories of figures: figures of speech, figures of thought, and tropes. Heinrichs devotes Chapter 20 to the first two figures; Chapter 21 covers tropes.
Figures of speech intentionally deviate from a word or phrase’s common definition through wordplay, sound, substitution, and repetition. An idiom, which combines words to form a single meaning, is one of the most common figures of speech. Examples of idioms include: “break bread,” “Greek to me,” “foggiest notion,” “I’m in a pickle,” and “a grain of salt.” Idioms can help one learn more about their conversation partner. For example, if an individual “suggests you ‘break bread’ together” (233), they are likely Christian as this expression is common in Christianity. A persuader can also transform an idiom by switching words around. Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde famously coined, “Work is the curse of the drinking classes” (236)—a play on “drink is the curse of the working classes.”
Figures of thought form connections with either an individual’s logos (logic) or pathos (emotion). Rhetorical questions and self-answering questions, including those commonly used in protests such as “What do we want? Justice!” (233), are two examples. This category of figure is especially helpful when in a serious argument. The most common example of this figure is dialysis, which “succinctly weighs two arguments side by side” (239). A famous example is when President George W. Bush said, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists” (238). Dialysis allows persuaders to redefine issues using their own terms.
This chapter ends with Heinrichs breaking rules by “using a figure of speech to make up new words” (243). This figure is verbing, a novel change in the usage of a word. Persuaders can do this by changing a noun to an adjective, a noun to a verb, or a verb to a noun. Verbing freshens up language and can grab an audience’s attention.
Part 4, Chapter 21 Summary: “Change Reality: Bag Full of Eyeballs”
To Heinrichs, tropes “summon the power of belief, expectation, and identity in your audience” (260). Tropes change the meaning of a word by making it stand for something else. Heinrichs covers four tropes—the first being metonymy. Metonymy uses a characteristic, action, sign, container, or material and makes it represent something greater than reality. Heinrichs considers metonymies “the most black-magicky of all tropes” (252), the reason being that they distort reality. Individuals can coin metonymies, but this takes practice. Clothing, smells, containers, materials, and instruments all offer metonymic possibilities.
The second trope is synecdoche—which takes a piece, part, or individual and makes it represent the whole, or vice versa. For example: “The blue whale is endangered” and “America went to the moon.” One blue whale is meant to represent the few that remain, and “America” stands for a small group of astronauts from the US. Heinrichs groups metonymy and synecdoche together and calls them “belonging tropes” because they form something greater out of “something that belongs to a thing or individual or group” (255).
The third trope is hyperbole, an exaggerated claim or statement that is not meant to be taken literally. An example is “it is raining cats and dogs;” these animals are meant to illustrate how heavily it is raining. Like the previous two tropes, hyperbole distorts reality. It also lends itself to humor.
The fourth and final trope is profanity or curse words. Curse words were once literal curses, which is why Heinrichs considers them a trope. To him, profanity “brings the power we fear the most down on the people or things we hate” (259). A curse word only works if it has an effect on people. For example, “bloody” once referred to a crucified Jesus’s blood. Ancient Christians would have been horrified by this word as it takes Jesus’s name in vain. However, most people have since forgotten the original meaning of the word, so it has lost its weight.
Part 4, Chapters 20-21 Analysis
Chapters 20-21 introduce more advanced strategies that individuals can employ to win arguments. Heinrichs advocates for the importance of learning an audience’s language, stating that it is only within this language game that a persuader can prove their identity is a good match. For example, Heinrichs recommends listening for idioms. Idioms often shed light on where a person’s from and their beliefs. By using specific idioms, a persuader can appear to share their audience’s identity; this tactic can increase their receptivity to persuasion.
Rhetoric can also increase tribalism—the word “barbarian” being a good example. “Barbarian” is derived from the ancient Greek word for “foreigner” and the Sanskrit word for “stammering.” Long ago, people associated foreign speech with the sound “bar bar bar bar…” (252). This sound came to represent its speakers—which is a metonymy. The word (in this case, “barbarian”) separates one group (the dominant group) from another (the less dominant group). Profanity also highlights tribal divisions within a society. In the US, most modern profanity has to do with old nicknames for marginalized groups—and thus, embody racial division.
Heinrichs reiterates that persuasion is not about what a persuader wants, but what an audience wants. Words and gestures carry weight depending on their audience. A particularly poignant example is Colin Kaepernick (a former 49ers quarterback) taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. To some, this action represented a stand against racial injustice; others saw it “as a curse on the American flag” (260). Rhetoric can both unite and divide people. For persuaders to be persuasive, they need to know how their actions and beliefs will land with their audience. If their tactics fail to arouse action, they either need to change what they are doing or find a new audience.
