The Toolbox of Arguing

The tool of character-based agreeability, decorum, was my favorite throughout the reading. When I first read about decorum and the different personalities and language people use to persuade different types of people, I immediately thought of all the people I would have a hard time relating to and the people who would have a hard time relating to me, no matter the words coming out of my mouth. I challenged the idea and thought, "How is it possible for each individual to know how to act in order to persuade?" I continued reading, only to find Heinrich answered my own thought: "Decorum is the art of the appropriate, and an ethos that fails to fit your actual personality is usually indecorus. People pick up on it." That made me realize that even though I won't have the super power to win over every audience, if I choose my audiences wisely and can act how they expect me to act, I have the opportunity to be very persuasive. Knowing that my audience won't be naive about a facade and knowing a lot about my audience can be very helpful tools in successfuling using decorum.

The chapter titled "Make Them Listen" gave tactics that seemed even sneakier, and hard! Heinrich mentions using virtue, practical wisdom, and selflessness/disinterest as the backbones for persuasive ethos, and gave techniques into how to gain a repuation that inlcudes all those qualities. One must be very strategic when using bragging, having someone else brag for you, revealing a tactical flaw, and switching sides, as demonstrated by the examples. The first thing that came to mind when bragging was suggested to show how great you, I laughed. I don't recall ever finding a bragger to be all that great, really just annoying. But the example where God uses retorical questions and isn't bluntly praising himself to Job shows that bragging can be done without being obnoxious, and it doesn't look easy! Having someone else brag for you seems like it may be more subtle and more effective --just make sure it's genuine and doesn't look like a setup. The one technique in boosting your repuatation that seems the most difficult to me is switching sides. I think the reason I don't like looking at it is an equal option is because I'm stubborn and don't want to admit I will lose.