Chapter 6:
Summery
In the last chapter we read how to get them to like you and now we have to figure out how to make them listen to you not just hear. It’s interesting to think that you can be a terrific person but you still won’t get people to follow you. People want someone they can trust and if they don’t trust you they will not listen. And sometimes people trust the wrong people even when it is clear to see they are no good they still trust them. Your preferred audience is someone who will be receptive and attentive and overall they need to trust you. With trust you could convince people to follow you almost blind. The audience needs to believe you have their best interest at heart even if you don’t (especially if you don’t). Aristotle has three basic qualities of persuasion of ethos: Virtue, or cause, practical wisdom, or craft, and disinterest. Now he’s not saying don’t care but be impartial don’t have a bias only care about the audiences well being rather than your own. With virtue/cause you must make the audience believe you share their values. With practical wisdom/craft you must make them believe you know the right thing to do. One thing you must remember and always keep in mind is your audience's values changes from audience to audience. When you are talking to children you must dial down your vocabulary and try to keep their attention every 10 seconds but when you are talking to an adult you can elevate your language a bit and you don't have to chase their attention like you would with a child. One thing this chapter drove home was that the point of rhetoric isn’t to make you into a better person or a worse one but to make you a more effective auger. He also comes back to the last chapter with decorum but not the decorum having to do with your clothing or your manners but with making the audience believe their beliefs are your beliefs. He talks about this how to deal with a bigot and how you will never talk a bigot directly out of their prejudices but you can dissuade him from acting on it by talking in specifics in who would be affected and describe their values that they have in common. You must make that other person or idea they have more human because the more they can connect the less they can hate them. In the concentration camps the prisoners did not have name tags they were giving numbers one for inventory purposes but on another bigger plain so that people could not connect with them. It’s hard to emotionally connect to a number in front of you or one on a piece of paper. One thing you must do is brag about yourself. Now if you can do it without even opening your mouth that is the dream. The goal is for you to be able to have a humble brag without you even having to say anything. One thing that can help you is if everyone turn of you what you can do is turn it on them by using a tactical flaw. What this means is you will point out the flaw but turn it on its head. An example would be “I’m so sorry I was late I was helping an old lady across the street”.What you have done here is admit your mistake but followed up with how good of a human being you are making everyone accept your lateness.
Reflection:
I connected really well with the references made in this chapter with Cyrano de Bergerac and Eddie Haskell. The Eddie Haskell theory is the sneaky theory where you change your position almost to suit whatever you want. It’s like if I wanted to get a new dress I could say “You know I saw this new dress and I don't know what do you think about it mom. What do you think?” Very rarely do I honestly ask that question most of the time what I really am saying is “I like this dress would you mind if I bought this?”. Women do this more often than I see men, I rarely see men do this. People should just say what they mean they Eddie Haskell it they say what they really mean by hiding it in other words. Cyrano de Bergerac is an amazing play and C-man has some great insight and wisdom. His wisdom is not just funny and relevant in the play but relevant to rhetoric, more so than I ever would have thought. Jay also talks about talking to his teenage children and me being a teenager I could relate to the child and to him. I also find it interesting how he talks about how you can be a great person and people will still not trust you and how people trust horrible people all the time. Like in The Princess Diaries 2 when Nick’s uncle tells everyone that Mia is not fit to run the country and his nephew is people believe him even though he is the worst person ever.
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