Rhetoric In Thank You For Arguing, By Jay Heinrichs

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The study of rhetoric today is dying. Thank You for Arguing wants to change that. By introducing rhetoric as a useful everyday tool Thank You for Arguing hopes to revive the mass knowledge and use of rhetoric in everyday conversations. Thank You for Arguing is an excellent book and by giving excellent examples combined with emotion and tools to use logic in an argument it excels in introducing such a vague concept as rhetoric and should have continued use in schools. Thank You for Arguing, written by Jay Heinrichs in February of 2007, brings rhetoric into another light that appeals to the common person that continues to hold a place on Harvard’s top 10 reading list because of its value.
Jay Heinrichs, the author of Thank You for Arguing, happens to be one of the best consultants for persuasive argument in the world serving clients ranging from NASA to the Wharton School of Business. In this book, he begins by demonstrating how key persuasion is to our lives. Making basic decisions such as “which one should I pick” required even the most basic amount of persuasion and argument proving that we use it every day. He then begins to show the anatomy of a basic argument to give a guideline to use for the rest of the book. From there he teaches offensive persuasion and how to convince other people of your argument. In this, he includes numerous examples from his favorite historical and fictional characters such as Aristotle and Homer Simpson to illustrate from where they came from and how often they are used today without us even realizing it. One of the examples is his analysis of one of Obama’s speeches. In this, he shows how the former president follows Cicero's outline where he says “You’d think Obama went to rhetoric school. He follows Cicero to a T” (320). He then moves on to defending your argument and turning the argument back on to your opponent. During this, he gives examples from the 2016 election to demonstrate how to spot logical fallacies to knock down their arguments. In conclusion, he restates the importance of rhetoric in today's society and his hopes for it to be more integrated into formal education. The Spot Fallacies chapter contained some of the most important material in the book. This chapter teaches about the common fallacies and how to recognize them. It defines the seven main fallacies by giving examples and demonstrating to how to spot them.
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This is why this book’s use in high schools today should be continued. Before reading this book, many students would have had no idea what rhetoric even was. By teaching students about rhetoric and logical arguments, it supports less volatile discussions and puts more emphasis on making decisions based on concrete evidence and not logical fallacies. The other reason its use should be continued is because of its contributions to showing history in a new way. By citing many examples from historical rhetoric legends such as Aristotle and Cicero it shows us how studying people from the past is necessary. By showing that people 3 thousand years ago have a better comprehension on logic than people today it shows that mankind hasn’t changed much since what is considered ancient era. Its use as a teaching tool cannot be dismissed because of the presence of some inappropriate content. Instead, the book should be edited for a high school appropriate

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