Jay Heinrichs 'Thank You For Arguing'

A Teenager’s Guide to Rhetoric With stories from his own life and examples from some known and unknown rhetoricians like Aristotle and Homer Simpson, Jay Heinrichs persuades the readers into expanding their rhetoric and language skills in his book Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion. Heinrichs is an experienced author who began as a writer and editor of the National Wildlife Magazine. Thank You For Arguing is an introduction to the world of rhetoric, the art of persuasion and is commonly used by college introductory English classes. The book should continue to be used because it teaches students rhetoric, persuasion skills, and covers how character, logic, and emotion can persuade an audience. In his book, Thank You For Arguing, Heinrichs uses his rhetorical skills and a lot of his personal life stories to teach students the basics of rhetoric and ultimately how to use these skills on their own audiences. He begins by teaching students about ethos, logos and pathos, also known as character, logic and emotion. These three ideas are very important to rhetoric and are used in winning the audience over and making them open to persuasion. Heinrichs likes to use stories from his life to teach students a specific skill. For example, Heinrichs tells a story about an argument he had with …show more content…
Soften them up, covers the topic of ethos, logos and pathos, and how they are used to persuade an audience; the backbone of all arguments. Heinrichs teaches these three points of rhetoric using short, hypothetical examples that give an idea of what ethos, logos and pathos really mean. He then goes on to explain in detail how these points are important to rhetoric and when they work best or not at all. This is an important chapter because it covers the most important points of rhetoric; the backbone of every argument. Without these three elements of rhetoric, there is no argument and in that no