Analysis Of Thank You For Arguing Essay

The book Thank You for Arguing, what Aristotle Lincoln and Homer Simpson can teach us about the art of persuasion, written by Jay Heinrichs, is a book that takes a look at the use of rhetoric in everyday life. Heinrichs is an incredibly smart man, and his views on the world are very inspiring. In this book, he gives us an incredible look into how to argue efficiently and effectively. Heinrich divides his book into five sections while using ethos as his main strategy, I connected to chapter 5 the most, and provides great insight to how using rhetoric is helpful in everyday discussions. The book is separated into five parts, the first part being Offense where Heinrichs shows the basics of arguing and logos, pathos, and ethos. The second part is Defense where he lists a number of logical fallacies such as false comparisons, tautology, ignorance as proof, and many more. He the continues to tell how one should find a way to expose the fallacy in the argument while also moving it forward. In part …show more content…
Heinrichs displays this by telling a story from the film 8 Mile. This is a movie about how Marshal Mathers (Eminem) started off on his way to where he is now. In the scene, Eminem is in a rap battle with a man who is very popular to all of the other people in the audience. This is mainly because the man shares something in common with everybody else in that room that Eminem does not - he is black. During the battle however, Eminem destroys his decorum by telling the crowd how he went to private school and has a nice full family life. This quickly turns the audience against him and Eminem is pronounced the winner. I connected to this way of teaching this persuasive device because it used something that I have prior knowledge about, I can connect to, and that I