(dynamic music)
- You all are going to take
my class for the next hour,
so there's gonna be some work to do,
and there's gonna be some
quizzes, or one quiz.
Sorry, that's why you have your note card,
and we're gonna take you,
or I'm gonna take you,
all the way through an
hour's worth of how you could
argue like an ancient Greek.
So tonight's Ancient Greek is Aristotle,
and for those of you who
don't know Aristotle,
he was around back in 384 to 322 BC,
he was a student of Plato,
he was Alexander the Great's teacher,
and he's considered the
practical philosopher.
So he liked to philosophize
about things like economics,
and politics, and ethics, and rhetoric,
which is gonna be our topic tonight.
So how many people have
had the term rhetoric
and think it's a bad thing, right?
(audience laughs)
So rhetoric is a noun,
and it does have some
negative connotations,
but it has some positive ones, too.
So in the red, the negative
connotations of rhetoric
is that it's language
designed to have a persuasive
or impressive effect on its
audience, but often regarded
as lacking in sincerity
or meaningful content,
like big words, no substance,
or it's deceptive and
dishonest communication.
So that's the bad stuff.
The good stuff is that it's
the art of using your language
effectively in order to
persuade other people.
It's effective, persuasive
speaking or writing, okay?
So we're gonna be effective tonight.
When Aristotle was
around, the term rhetoric
actually is what we
refer to as his treatise
on how to use language to persuade.
Some people actually believe
that it's really just
a collection of the
notes his students took
when he was their teacher.
But when Aristotle was a student of Plato,
in the earlier days, Plato
was not a fan of rhetoric.
So Plato was the guy in the
red, the negative connotations.
He thought rhetoric was seen
as appealing to emotions,
it didn't have enough facts,
it was lacking legitimate
content, it was not a good thing.
He also thought the form of
persuasion was considered
immoral and dangerous and manipulative,
so that's the lesson that
Aristotle got from his professor.
As time went on and
Aristotle was into this more,
he really felt, when he was a teacher,
that rhetoric was an art,
and it was really meant
as one person speaking to many,
instead of a one-on-one conversation,
and he really felt that there
was room for emotional appeals
when you were trying to
persuade other people.
As a speaker and writer, we
should use the tools that
we have available, so that
we can work with our audience
and persuade them.
So tonight we're gonna
talk about three things.
What are these tools that
Aristotle thought we all had?
Do you guys have a preferred tool?
And then how can you use those tools
to persuade an audience?
Okay?
So in Aristotle's rhetorical
toolbox, he believed
that speakers and writers
have three different appeals
that they have at their disposal
when they're trying to
persuade their audiences,
and these are words we're gonna
go over more in detail tonight.
But logos is your logical reasoning,
ethos is the character and
credibility of the speaker
or the writer or the witness,
and pathos is when you're appealing
to an audience's emotions.
Aristotle's philosophy,
with those three tools,
was that you needed to use
them to be more effective
when you were speaking.
We need to understand what
our argument intelligence is,
much like we can understand
what our emotional intelligence is.
So what are your preferred
rhetorical tools,
and what are the preferred
rhetorical tools of others?
Much like you're trying to
figure out your own emotions
and recognizing other people's emotions.
So tonight, we're gonna take a pop quiz.
So what I'd like you to do,
does everybody have an
index card and a pen?
Okay, take out your
index card, and just put
number one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight.
I'm gonna show you a
series of eight questions.
I don't want you to think
terribly hard on them.
I want you to go with your gut reaction.
They're different scenarios,
eight different situations
where somebody might be
trying to persuade you
to do something.
Which one, A, B, or C, is
the most persuasive for you?
So just record next to your
numbers, an A, a B, or a C.
So here's your first one, we got puppies.
You've got a friend trying
to persuade you to change
the brand of food you feed to
your dog to Good Dog dog food.
What's the most persuasive
argument to you?
The brand that you are
currently using has been
recalled twice in the last five years.
Your friend's vet recommended it
and feeds it to her own dog.
Or this picture from an ad
that your friend showed you.
A, B, or C, if you're
gonna switch your dog food.
Number two, I know there's a
couple people in the audience
that recognize this.
You are the parent of
a high school student
that has to be on the bus to
school at 6:45 every morning
to get to school by 7:15,
and you would really love it
if high school would start later.
What argument are you
most likely to include
in an email to the Superintendent?
One, 90% of high schools
in the entire country
start at 7:45 or later.
The American Academy of
Pediatrics recommends
teens start school no later than 8:30.
A student in your community
was a victim of a hit and run
last school year when they were walking
to the morning bus stop in the dark.
Alright, now we're in our
home owners association.
(audience laughs)
You live in a community
that does not have an HOA,
but your neighbors are trying
to gather enough signatures
on a petition to start one.
What argument would most likely get you
to sign the petition?
Seven out of eight residents
living in an HOA community
rated the experience as positive
according to a recent survey.
They cited things like
increased property values,
enhanced beautification, and convenience.
The Community Associations
Institute states that
communities governed by
HOAs around the globe
are generally safer, cleaner,
and house more responsible
citizens than communities without an HOA.
Or, your neighbor shows you
a picture of the backyard
of the person and explains why an HOA
can help stop this type
of property depreciation.
Number four.
Your neighbor heard that
smart meters are dangerous
to her health and wants to convince you
to opt out of having one.
What argument is most persuasive to you?
A, since installing smart
meters, residents have reported
a 25% decrease in the number
of birds and bees in the area.
They've also noticed a
number of spontaneous fires
starting near the meters.
(audience laughs)
B, the World Health
Organization classified
wireless radiation, like
that as a 2B carcinogen,
based on studies linking
electro-magnetic field radiation
to brain tumors.
Or, your neighbor heard
of a lady in the community
who began suffering from
insomnia and headaches,
and leg cramps, and respiratory problems,
and nose bleeds after the
smart meter was installed.
Number five.
Your county has a law
banning liquor stores
within 100 feet of a swimming pool.
A local business owner
has proposed to open
a wine and beer store within 75 feet of
your community swim club, but
needs you to grant a waiver.
Which argument is most persuasive?
10 years ago, a neighboring
county lifted the
liquor-store-near-a-pool
ban, and since that time,
there have been 0 pool drownings
due to alcohol consumption.
Or B, the National Beer
Wholesalers Association
and the Wine and Spirits
Wholesalers of America
have recently lobbied Congress
to remove unnecessary restrictions.
Their studies have found no link between
liquor store location and hours
and DUI or alcohol-related
death and injury.
Or, when the swim club holds
the Friday adults-only barbecues,
they often run out of beer.
(audience laughs)
It would be very convenient
to have the wine & beer store
a few feet away if you're hosting a party,
so you can dash over there
to get more if necessary,
instead of over-buying in the first place.
Believe it or not, this is a real story,
happened in our community. (laughs)
(audience laughs)
And we have our liquor store. (laughs)
Number six, Jonathan
Green is going to run for
County Council as an independent,
and he wants your vote.
Which of these might
persuade you to vote for him?
Statistics show that having an independent
on a County Council
increases the productivity
of all council members by 15%
and there are currently no
independents on your council.
B, Jonathan has a bachelor's
degree from Cornell
and a law degree from Harvard.
Or C, he's a married
father of two children
who leads his son's scouts troop
and coaches his daughter's soccer team.
He and his wife live in your community,
and friends of yours say
they host an annual barbecue
for the neighborhood and they're very warm
and hospitable to everybody.
Two more.
Number seven.
Caralini College has
been trying to entice you
to apply to their graduate school.
You had never heard of them before,
but you do some research.
Which of the following
most likely persuades you
to go ahead and apply?
Nine out of 10 members
of the class of 2017
graduated in May with full-time job offers
paying above the national average.
B, Caralini College placed first
in the U.S. News & World
Report College Rankings
for up and coming graduate programs.
Or it's the campus
photo in their brochure.
This is a fake college. (laughs)
Alright, ready, last one.
Very recent.
You work for the U.S.
Department of Puppy Training.
You are an animal care specialist.
You have been furloughed,
you're working without pay.
A coworker asks you to
call in sick tomorrow
with the rest of the group.
Strikes are considered
illegal for federal employees.
What might persuade you
to go on strike with them,
or call in sick, rather.
90% of federal employees
who did the same thing
during prior furloughs did not
recieve disciplinary action.
The American Federation of Puppy Trainers,
your national union, has
assured your colleagues
that calling in sick
together on the same day
is not an illegal strike.
Or, the coworker has really
been struggling to pay for food,
rent, and childcare during the furlough,
and he's convinced it's
gonna take all of you
to call in sick and leave the
puppies without caretakers
to get the attention of your lawmakers.
He's pleading with you to help.
Alright, everybody have eight answers?
Okay.
Time to score.
If you would count up how
many As you have, how many Bs,
and how many Cs, and I will
tell you what that means.
And then go ahead, and
if you have a letter
that has more than the rest,
circle what that one is.
Alright, if you had more
As than the other two,
you are a logos person,
so write down logos.
If you had more Bs than the other two,
you are an ethos person,
and if you had more Cs than the other two,
you are a pathos person.
Alright?
How many logos people
do we have in the room?
Lots. (laughs)
How many ethos people
do we have in the room?
Okay.
And how many pathos people
do we have in the room?
Like, three? (laughs)
You're special, we'll tell you why.
Alright, so those of you
who are the mostly A people,
you like to see facts
and figures that support
the speaker or writer's point.
You like data, you love
charts, graphs, reports,
and solid reasoning.
Does that sound like the A folks?
- [Audience Member] Yes.
- Yes.
Alright.
These are the ads you
like, back in the day.
(audience laughs)
33% more beef than government
standard, Hormel Chili,
America's favorite, two to one.
All you A people, you fell for
this, you buy Hormel Chili.
(audience laughs)
You also joined Verizon.
(audience laughs)
- [Audience Member] Yes, actually!
- Yes.
(audience laughs)
Did you see that math when you...
Or not. (laughs)
Our B people, our ethos people,
you are impressed by the
expertise or the credibility
of the speaker, writer, or witness,
and titles and credentials matter to you.
You like that stuff that's on the resume.
Does that sound like you?
Some of the B people?
Mmm-hmm.
(audience laughs)
You're an ethos person,
and you were gonna go smoke
back in the day, you bought Camels,
because doctors smoke Camels.
(audience laughs)
Okay?
And you use Colgate,
'cause it's the number one
brand recommended by dentists.
(laughs)
So those are my ethos folks.
Pathos, there's like
three of you in the room.
You love stories and anecdotes
that tug at your heart,
or things that fire you
up or make you laugh,
and you really wanna know something
that affects real people.
You wanna hear the stories about things
that have affected real people.
You wanna feel like you belong.
You would drink Coca-Cola back in the day,
because you could join
the Get-together Club
if you were a Coca-Cola drinker,
and this ad for BMW about
not drinking and driving
really spoke to you.
So how do we use all of this stuff in 2019
to persuade our audiences?
The first thing we need to do,
is we gotta know our genre.
So Aristotle felt like
there were three genres
of rhetoric back in the day.
The epideictic genre where
you're thinking about ceremonies
like graduation speeches or eulogies.
The forensic genre where
if you're in a courtroom,
you're trying to prove guilt or innocence.
Or perhaps you're in
the principle's office.
And the deliberative
genre, this would be like
a county council testimony,
like where you're going to
support or oppose something.
Modern-day genres look more like this.
This is where we're
out, trying to persuade
and argue these days.
We have our posts on Facebook and Twitter.
We are having an argument with
our spouse, our neighbors,
friends, co-workers.
We're writing letters to the editor,
or marching, or we're
testifying and advocating
at different kinds of meetings.
The other thing we need
to do is know the rules,
so whatever the genre is,
we've gotta figure out
what the rules are if
we're gonna be effective.
What's 140 to 280?
What's that rule?
Anybody know?
- [Audience Member] Characters in a tweet.
- Characters in a tweet.
So if you're gonna post
something to persuade
people on Twitter, you
gotta get it down, right?
It used to be 140 characters,
now they're giving us 280.
Three or five, anybody know what that is?
Minutes.
Where would we go and only
have three or five minutes?
(audience members give varying responses)
- County council.
School board.
Three minutes if you are
in an individual, right?
And five minutes if you're the only one
speaking for your group.
So you gotta get your speech
down to three or five minutes.
200.
- [Audience Member] Words.
- Words.
- [Audience Member] Letter to the editor.
- Letter to the editor.
Different papers have different
word count requirements.
200 is the Washington Post's limit.
You have to have your letter
to the editor under 200 words.
The Baltimore Sun didn't actually say,
they just have a big block
where you can copy and paste
your letter and, I guess
if they run out of space,
they chop it up for you.
And then 650 to 700.
Also word.
- [Audience Member] Op-eds.
- Op-eds.
Yep, so you get a little more space
if you're going to write an
opinion piece for a newspaper.
That is the Baltimore Sun's word count
if you're gonna write a full
op-ed, almost like a column.
There's also some other rules.
What other rules might
we have with our Facebook
and our Twitter, besides the...
Facebook doesn't have a word count.
What might a good rule for Facebook?
- [Audience Member] How
about the elevator pitch?
- Yeah.
- [Audience Member] I don't
know how long that is, but...
- That's true, however long
it is to get up the elevator
or down the elevator.
How many people have put
something on Facebook
or in email that they regretted?
(several audience members laugh)
Pause before sending,
or pause before posting.
And if you're dealing with
a fight with your spouse,
what might a good rule be?
(audience members give varying responses)
What do they tell us?
What?
(audience laughs)
(audience members give more responses)
- [Audience Member]
Walk into another room.
- Walk into another room.
Don't go to bed angry,
you've heard that one before.
Okay.
Step three is to know your audience.
How many people would've known
what the person next to you's
preferred tool was tonight,
before you took your quiz?
One. (laughs)
(audience laughs)
Most of us don't know, right?
So we really can't prepare
the best tool for an audience,
typically, if we don't
know them very well,
because we don't know
if they prefer the data
and the statistics kinda
stuff, or if they wanna hear
all the impressive credentials,
or if they want a really good story.
We don't really know, but we
can research some other things
depending on the audience
that we're going before.
What happens if you were
gonna go to the school board
or the county council?
Can you research those people?
- [Audience Member] Yeah.
- Yeah, so they usually
have bios on their website,
and you can look up their background,
and what political party
they're a part of, perhaps,
where they went to school,
anything they've posted.
So if you know you're
going before a particular
group of people and you
have access to Google
and what you can find out about them,
go ahead and check 'em out
and figure out what might
impress them or appeal to them.
You can know a little
bit about your audience,
but not necessarily that tool.
And then step four is avoiding your own
argument intelligence blind spots.
So when I was on the school board we serve
as the administrative
hearing judges for employees
and students who have appeals.
So if somebody was terminated
or they got suspended,
they had to come before the
board to try to argue their case
and get their job, or
their suspension revoked.
And we had nine people on our school board
in Anne Arundel county, where I live,
and we had to have five
people vote in your favor
to overturn your suspension
or your termination.
The people would come
to us and speak to us,
your preferred tool is
typically what you use.
So if you're my three
storytellers in the room,
if you're gonna come and tell stories
about, you know, how tragic it was
when this happened to you, and your child
and what's gonna happen
if they don't get their
suspension revoked,
and you've got this big, elaborate story,
and we are part of your
body that's going to decide
and rule on you, what's gonna happen?
'Cause there's just three of
you and there's tons of us
that love logos and ethos, right?
Are we gonna overturn your
suspension or your termination?
Probably not, if you're only
using the argument appeal
that matters to you.
So we wanna avoid our own blind spots.
Another thing that people
tend to assume before
a deliberative body or somebody
that you're arguing to,
even one on one, is
that women like stories.
So, often we would have folks
come in and tell us stories,
because we were a predominantly
female school board,
and it didn't really work on us,
because when we took the quiz,
we had a lot of logos people on our board.
We had some ethos people,
and we had a couple
people that were pathos,
and you could tell, 'cause
they had the Kleenex
by their microphone.
(audience laughs)
Somebody would come and
they would have to cry.
But if somebody just came and talked to us
and just tried to
persuade us with stories,
it just really didn't work.
It wasn't effective for the body.
So the assumption that women
are attracted to pathos
and stories isn't necessarily true.
Did we have any men who
were pathos people in here?
Yeah?
So.
So now I wanna talk a
little bit about strategy.
So if you are going to
actually go and try to argue
in front of somebody, whether
it's your boss, your spouse,
or a real body like a school
board or a county council,
the power of three is really important.
The first power of three
is that you need to use
your logos, your ethos, and
your pathos in your testimony
or in your writing, or your speech.
So if you are attracted to logos and data,
then you wanna make sure that you find
some ethos and pathos to tuck in there.
Now, what happens if you
only have three minutes?
That's a lot to fit in in three minutes.
So what's another strategy we could use,
also the power of three?
Bring two friends, okay?
(audience laughs)
So you got three minutes,
now you've got nine.
So you have three minutes,
you can do your data,
your logos, you can have
a friend that's into ethos
that can come and talk about that,
and bring in all the expert witnesses.
You refer to them, 'cause
you can't bring 'em along,
but you would quote them or
mention them in your speech,
and then you could have
somebody close with a story.
So that's how you can
work the power of three.
So either ethos, pathos,
logos in your own, you know,
letter to the editor, op-ed,
or conversation in the elevator
or with your boss,
or going to a body like a county council,
school board, bring two friends.
The other thing you wanna
do is use your best logos,
your very best logos.
How many people just go to
Google to find their information?
And what happens?
You have your first page of
hits, right, and you pick those.
You also go to different news sources.
We have favorite news sources,
preferred news sources.
How many people have
seen this chart before?
Okay.
So this is a media bias chart.
A couple of different
groups have put it out.
You start over on the left side,
you have far left are
your liberal news sources,
far right are your typical
conservative news sources.
In the middle, they try to
stay away from partisan bias.
People have different opinions
in these publications.
Whether or not they're
doing a good job at that,
but they're trying to stay neutral.
So if you want to avoid offending somebody
you're talking to who's more
liberal or more conservative,
stay in the middle, and
stay up towards the top,
where you have more mainstream,
instead of the bottom,
where you have mostly noise.
Fact-reporting sources at the top,
serious quality problems at
the bottom is what it says,
if you can't read it.
(audience laughs)
So pick good sources.
The other thing that you can do
is change the way you're
doing your searches,
and I have a colleague
in the English division
that can do a whole hour lecture on this,
which is fantastic, but
I just wanted to show you
one little trick that you can try
the next time you're on Google.
That smart meter question
that we had for our quiz?
If you wanted to prepare
a smart meter argument,
then you wanna kind of filter out
all the miscellaneous Google stuff,
you can add at the top,
site, S-I-T-E, colon,
and I wanted to know what
maybe educational institutions
had done research on
regarding smart meters,
so I put site:edu, and
you can see my search hits
were all .edu education groups.
You can do the same
thing if you wanna know
what the government has
to say about smart meters.
So you can have smart
meters site: G-O-V, for gov.
If you need non-profits,
typically they're .org,
you add in org.
So there's different ways to do searching
so that you filter out
things that might have bias,
or things that are not quality
sources for your logos.
So that's just a way to filter
out some of your searches.
The other thing we need to
do is bring our best ethos
to the room or to our writing.
What are your relevant qualifications?
Does that matter or is it
important to that group
when you introduce yourself?
Whether it's in your
writing, or in your speaking.
Do you need to tell people why
what you're about to say
is worth listening to?
Do you seem to know what
you're talking about?
Have you done your research?
Have you practiced?
Are you coming across
as trustworthy and real?
Are you being genuine?
Are you coming from a place of wanting
to do good versus evil?
(audience laughs)
And then how are you
packaging your message?
This is where the
English teachers come in,
and the speech teachers.
How do you package your
message when you're speaking?
What kinds of packaging is important?
The grammar, spelling, punctuation,
all of those things matter.
If you're speaking and
you're using a PowerPoint,
hopefully I don't have typos in mine.
See?
You want to make sure that
your speaking and your writing
is effective with grammar,
spelling, punctuation, et cetera.
Also, how do you present yourself?
What do you look like?
What are you wearing?
What does your document look like?
What kind of formatting?
You got funky fonts,
you have weird margins,
you know, professionalize it
for a professional audience,
if that matters,
and change the way you dress
if that matters to your group.
And then for those of us
that struggle with pathos,
most of the room needs
to work on this part.
How do we create those stories
that people wanna listen to?
The first thing you wanna
look at are the three Cs.
Context, you wanna set the scene,
so people understand what
you're talking about,
without a bunch of details,
especially if you only have three minutes.
And then the characters, who's involved?
And the conflict, where's
the difference of opinion
that you're trying to
persuade other people about?
And then you also wanna try
to engage the five senses,
so when you're writing that story
that you're going to share
in person or on paper,
can you help people picture the visual?
Can you help them imagine
what it sounds like,
if the sound is important?
Is taste...
Does taste matter?
Smell.
Touch.
Set the scene but try to use those senses.
So, believe it or not,
it's time to wrap up,
so let me summarize what we talked about,
and then we'll do a little Q&A.
So if you're gonna argue
like an ancient Greek,
this Greek being Aristotle,
then I want you to use
all of those quality
tools at your disposal.
So I want you to use some logos.
I want you to get it from a good source.
I want you to use unbiased
media sources as best you can.
I want you to share your own ethos or,
if you don't really have an ethos,
'cause sometimes we don't, right?
We're not the experts.
Then you can quote someone who does.
And then your pathos, I think
all of us need to work on
our storytelling a little
bit, but we wanna make sure
that you include some stories,
because somebody that you're arguing with
might really need to hear a story.
I also want you to avoid
your argument blind spots.
We're gonna revert to our
favorite rhetorical appeal.
I'm a logos girl, I'm
gonna get you some data,
but I need to remember to
include the ethos and the pathos.
Remember your power of three,
so not only including those three things,
but bringing two friends
with you, having people.
Two other friends can post tweets,
they can post Facebook posts,
they can come to the meetings with you.
They can also send letters to the editor,
so there's way to do
that with your friends
and get in more words.
And then you're gonna put
your best ethos forward
by respecting time limits and word counts,
and you're going to
proofread and practice.
Alright, that is arguing
like an ancient Greek.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
