We argue, therefore, we are

Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Eminem and Homer Simpson can teach us about the art of persuasionJay HeinrichsAllen Lane, Penguin India. 2008 Price: £ 6.99 Pg: 316 

Prasenjit Chowdhury Kolkata

If Thucydides and Aristotle elevated deliberative rhetoric to make it the basis of political community, Cicero celebrated eloquence because it contributes to the “benefit of mankind”. He claimed that eloquence led human beings out of a “brutish” life into a civilised existence as citizens (De Oratore). Cicero's emphasis on persuasion suggests that the chief purpose of oratory is to arouse passion. The time-tested power of rhetoric, or the art of persuasion, the history of which dates way back to three millennia, is back again, now in the hands of American author and wit Jay Heinrichs, who lays out a jujitsu manual of verbal attack and defence in the book under review. Mind you, if Amartya Sen's  The Argumentative Indian was a dialogic tome on India's long argumentative tradition, Heinrichs' is an in-your-face handbook on the art of holding forth your side of story.

Condemned to live a life under constant persuasion by posters, Coca-Cola labels, politicians' press releases, cartoons and pop songs we are actually and unwarily, in this post-modern zeitgeist, held captive by rhetoric — the art and science of persuasion. And it is instructive to learn as much as how Eminem won the contest in Eight Mile, as about the timing secret of Stalin. So aptly we get the picture of a carrot at the cover of the book, a-dangling as bait from a hook, which is brandished to tempt and persuade us. We persuade our boss for a promotion and our sons persuade us to go dating with their girlfriends and our spouses persuade us acquisitively, advertisements and the salespeople persuade us to buy their products, consumer society goads us to spend and so on. 

“Seduction”, Heinrich begins, “underlies the most insidious, and enjoyable forms of argument”. He argues that the Food Network uses techniques identical to that of porn industry — overmiked sound, very little plot, good-looking characters, along with lavish close-ups of firm flesh and flowing juices.

The whole purpose of the book is to pack a punch in the way you argue and make your case winnable. The learned teachings of Aristotle and Cicero on the art of rhetoric are eminently valid, says Heinrichs, and drawing heavily upon them, he shows that this art permeates even modern culture, sourcing his arguments from a diverse range of its representatives such as Homer Simpson, Eminem, National Lampoon's Animal House, Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson et al. The book is, in fact, a deconstruction of rhetorical devices: from Desiderius Erasmus to George Foreman, Wayne from Wayne's World to PG Wodehouse and a counterbalancing act — classical principles against modern references from contemporary history, citing illustrative passages on JFK's chiasmus, Abraham Lincoln's dubitatio and even Homer Simpson's hypophora. For argument to be effective but not necessarily embattling, Heinrichs wants us to follow the rules of ethos (character), logos (logic) and pathos (emotion). With luck, one can rhetoricise his way into the heart of the girl of his dreams.

But the book is dashingly funny and simple. It takes some rhetorical panache to even remotely link MTV to Aristotle in order to drive home the point that daily combats of work, love and life can be won if we know how to win an argument. “Our tribal mind-set has destroyed,” Heinrichs says at about the end of the book, “what little faith we had in deliberative debate.” “Incivility smolders all around us, on our drive to work, in the supermarket, in the ways employers fire employees, on radio, television and Capitol Hill.” So much so that we delegate disagreement to professionals, handing off our arguments to lawyers, party hacks, radio hosts, HR departments and bosses. We express our differences “sociopathically,” through anger and diatribe, extremism and dogmatism. 

With growing academic attention on linguistics, that began with Marshall McLuhan's Cambridge University doctoral dissertation in 1943 on the verbal arts that was eventually published as the book The Mechanical Bride: The Folklore of Industrial Man (Vanguard Press, 1951), the engaged interest in the study of rhetoric has been co-terminus with the rise of advertising and of mass media such as photography, telegraphy, radio and film. The above book is a compilation of exhibits of ads and other materials from popular culture with short essays about them by McLuhan, who was incidentally the foremost (and the wittiest) critic of modern mass communications. The essays involve rhetorical analyses of the ways in which the material in an item aims to persuade, and commentary on the persuasive strategies in each item. Heinrichs' book is funnier and simpler which, as a brilliant applicational rulebook, has immense value for laymen as it vows to bring back Aristotle, Socrates, Cicero, Quintilian, Churchill, Burke, King, Madison, Lincoln and Hamilton from the dead.

Remember that from the 1960s onwards, the emphasis began to shift precipitously from literature to language. Critics called it a new linguistic turn through the rise of semiotics as well as structural linguistics, that brought to the fore a new interest in figures of speech as signs, the metaphor in particular (in the works of Roman Jakobson, Michel Charles, Gérard Genette) while famed structuralist Roland Barthes, a classicist by training, perceived how some basic elements of rhetoric could be of use in the study of narratives, fashion and ideology. Avant-garde circles, dominated by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida, shed new lights on rhetoric and aspects of language.

Lest you feel intimidated by the corpus, let's take a look how Heinrichs carries forward his thesis brick by brick. Heinrichs deconstructs a number of famous conversations to prick holes into their argumentative kernel. Heinrichs, for instance, offers a rhetorical analysis of Bush Jr's 'identity coding' in speeches that provides a revealing explanation of how Bush Jr, despite the bad faith, manages to win elections. Thomas Jefferson's ability to capitalise on his audiences' common values before the Declaration of Independence was constructed, how Democrats should have highlighted the fallacies of the Patriot Act by responding with the Courage Act — rather than their equivalent Peace Act — are exemplary issues considered for rhetorical analysis. Josef Stalin, he says, was the Eminem of kairos (even though the “mass-murdering dictator” that he was) — rhetorical timing, an ability to seize the perfect moment — despite being a coarse, ill-dressed peasant, who would sit mute in an august assembly until the very end of meetings to prevail over finally. The illogic of continuing with the Iraq war in the famous Bushism (“If you pull out now, our soldiers would have died in vain”) comes up for sharp analysis, as the logical answer is “if the war effort fails, then many more soldiers would have died in vain.”

As dialogues are eminently important in areas of diplomatic brinkmanship, domestic disputes, elaborate courtships, legal hearings, the craft of salesmanship, advertisement, and management, this book desists from theory to give practical demonstrations like how to change the mood and mind of your audience or their willingness to act. First he asks to open our eyes before we embark on a rhetorical offence. We must set our goals, control the tense, soften our audience up, get them to like us, make them listen, show leadership, win their trust, control their mood, turn the volume down (that is modulate the pitch of our argument), gain the high ground, persuade on our terms, control the argument. And how can we defend ourselves? We have to spot fallacies, call a foul, must know whom to trust, find the sweet spot. And Heinrichs never forgets to garnish each strand with suitable examples.

Since present day orators aren't only the demagogues but with a distinct clientele to snuggle up to, it is worthwhile to master the art of advanced offence like speaking the audience's language, making them identify with your choice, getting instant cleverness, seizing the occasion, using the right medium. And as part of advanced agreement we must remember Cicero's five canons of persuasion - invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. At the end, the book has illustrative appendices, a glossary with neatly defined technical terms, a short but useful bibliography and a meticulously arranged index.

Language has the power of a sledgehammer. Plato's Gorgias exposed the dangers and deceptiveness of rhetoric, but Aristotle's Rhetoric engaged with those dangers  in order to improve people's abilities to make wise decisions about matters that affect their interests. When  Polonius  asks Hamlet as to what he was reading, Hamlet betrays an expression  of  contempt  with  a simple enunciation: “Words, words, words.”  Heinrichs' book is refreshingly  uncluttered  by  newfangled  theories of linguistics, and despite its fun-filled casualness and  apparent  levity,  recovers  the  pith  of  the classical  rhetoric  to restore the sanctity of words to its rightful place.