Thank You for Arguing: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

Everybody is familiar with the frustration of thinking up a great comeback but being too late to use it. With the help of rhetoric, however, people can use “prefab wit” and “systematic thinking” to make sure that they always have a good comeback in mind.

In ancient Greece, rhetoricians had to learn about figures, also known as “schemes”—i.e., basic structures and patterns for language. Most people still learn some of these schemes, thousands of years later—analogy, metaphor, oxymoron, the rhetorical question, etc. One figure, or scheme, that many people don’t realize is a figure at all is dialogue, or dialogismus, the technique of repeating a conversation for rhetorical effect. Another is the speak-around, or periphrasis, the technique of substituting a description for a proper name. When Prince Charles called a Chinese politician an “appalling old wax works,” he was using periphrasis.

There are three classes of figures: figures of speech, figures of thought, and tropes. To begin with figures of speech, one of the most common is anaphora, or repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of a longer phrase. The King James Bible makes beautiful use of anaphora (“And God …”). Another common figure of speech is diazeugma, which means applying multiple verbs to the same noun (sports announcers do this all the time: “he shoots … misses ... shoots again!”) The idiom—a group of words combined to make a single meaning—is a common figure of speech (referring to someone in trouble as being “in a pickle” involves speaking idiomatically).

There are also figures of thought—tactics for using logos and pathos. Throughout this book, Heinrichs has discussed many figures of thought—conceding a point, revealing an attractive flaw, etc. Another example would be using a self-answering question (a la the protester who shouts, “What do we want? Freedom!”). Finally, a trope consists of an image or concept that has been swapped for another. Metaphor is a kind of trope, as is irony, because it swaps real meaning and apparent meaning. Synecdoche is a trope in which a single thing represents many things (e.g., “the White House” can refer to the American executive government). Metonymy is a kind of trope in which a characteristic represents the whole (e.g., calling a red-haired person “red”).

One useful rhetorical tactic is to take advantage of an opponent’s idioms. In a humorous novel by P. G. Wodehouse, a character says, “She looks as if she was poured into her bathing suit,” to which the other character replies, ‘Yes, and forgot to say ‘when.’” Oscar Wilde was a master of twisting idioms humorously, for example: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.” While few people can be as witty as Wilde or Wodehouse, one easy way to manipulate an opponent’s idioms is to take them literally. If an opponent says, “Let’s not pour the baby out with the bathwater,” you could say, “Let’s just pull the plug.”

Another time-honored technique for seeming witty is to transform an idiom by switching around the words. Oscar Wilde said, “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” One of the most elegant ways to switch words is chiasmus, which Heinrichs discussed in an earlier chapter. In a debate, one might say, “It’s not a question of whether we’re cheating the government. It’s whether the government is cheating us”—an elegant way to twist an opponent’s arguments.

It might be difficult to improvise chiasmus, but you can still enliven your conversations by adding puns to chiasmus. If you’re throwing a party for a friend, and happen upon a photograph of him swimming in a pool at the age of two, buck naked, you could write a card that asks, “What kind of party suits Bob’s birthday? The kind where he wears his birthday suit.” Heinrichs admits that this isn’t the snappiest pun, or chiasmus, but adds, “Think you can do it better? Okay, but you’d better do it well.”

In rhetoric, one of the most useful figures of thought is dialysis, the weight of two arguments side by side (e.g., when George W. Bush said, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists,” he was using dialysis). Dialysis is useful because it offers a succinct comparison between the options. Another figure of thought is epergesis, the technique of correcting one’s speech for rhetorical effect. One might say to a drunken friend, “I’ve never been so embarrassed as I was last night. Actually, I have been that embarrassed—the last time went to a party together.”

The litotes is another useful figure of thought; it consists of ironic understatement (e.g., when O. J. Simpson was asked why he was making an appearance at a comic book convention, he ironically replied, “I’m not doing this for my health”). Like many figures of thought, litotes can change the mood of conversation; it tends to make the speaker sound reasonable, especially since hyperbole has become very common. Another figure of thought, climax, or anadiplosis, has the opposite effect: by linking many clauses together, with the last part of each clause the first part of the next clause, a shrewd speaker can build excitement (e.g., the proverb, “for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost”).

Now that Heinrichs has talked about legitimate figures and schemes, he’ll talk about breaking the rules. There’s a technique that Heinrichs calls “verbing” or neologizing, which involves making up new words. Over time, words tend to enter the language because they’re used in a certain way, whether grammarians approve or not. “Contact” and “impact” are often used as verbs, even though they were considered nouns for most of the 20th century.

There’s also a name for the technique of stripping a word of all meaning: parelcon (words and phrases like “you know” and “um” are good examples of parelcon). The word “like” has become one of the most common kinds of parelcon. The popularity of “like,” and “you know,” which was more common thirty or forty years ago, says a lot about our society. Just as Heinrichs’ generation was uncertain about its ability to communicate (hence “you know”), the current generation seems reluctant to commit to any definite position (hence “like”).