A Pampered Poodle

Capote's Lexicon

Since I started reading In Cold Blood I haven't been able to ignore that my vocabulary skills are way beneath an author's such a Truman Capote's. There are many books, especially the type I've read as a kid, in which few words that I don't know appear and when they do, they play an unimportant role in the sentence so you can just read over them or get their meaning from the context. It's worked so far for me to look up occasionally a word in my laptop's or kindle's dictionary for the sake of curiosity, but for this book I've had to actually learn the meaning of words I didn't know for me to get some sort of understanding of Capote's work. As I'm still reading the beginning of the book, a lot of what Capote writes is characterization or description of the characters and the setting, building up the scene for the awaited homicide to happen. Unlike a news report or journalistic writing, the book, composed by feature articles, shows the events in a juicer way. Nancy isn't just a straight-A student or a cat-loving loser, she's a girl who values her gold watch under her cat and her going-steady ring. She helps her acquaintances learn baking or organize school activities. Then there's Kenyon, who more than just a woodworker liked to go spend time alone in the basement. Capote's way of writing (his syntax, tone and register) makes the scenes he shows deeper in meaning and simply more vivid. So far in the book as much has happened to write a paragraph for a typical journalistic report on the crime, but the author goes beyond the simple facts that would make the subjects stereotypes and depicts them as real people the reader wants to understand. A diverse diction and specific words that portray the situation make In Cold Blood a more critical way of showing what happened in Holocomb, Kansas.

By reading random sentences throughout the book, I realized that the writing style and understanding it is essential for apprehension of the book. For example, this sentence would have no meaning for me had I not looked up the definition of many words: "An itinerant buffalo hunter, Mr. C. J. (Buffalo) Jones, had much to do with its subsequent expansion from a collection of huts and hitching posts into an opulent ranching center with razzle-dazzle saloons, an opera house, and the plushiest hotel anywhere between Kansas City and Denver" (pg. 32). If reading it quickly, I would have gotten that the town grew and became sort of a sophisticated place with an opera. While I wouldn't have been wrong, I would've missed out on a lot of the essence of the sentence. The town grew from a Midwest settlement that started out from travelers who lived in huts and traded what they hunted. It became an extravagant southern village, I assume that with a New Orleans style, and now, it's a place where two criminals pass by and barely notice it. Olathe is not the subject of the book but Capote's description of it shows how communicative writing gets to the reader. Other "simpler" sentences are as well expressive because of Capote's techniques. Capote writes, "Herb was hard-headed, a slow man to make a deal; Johnson had worked over a year to clinch this sale" (pg. 47). As he juxtaposes the characters, Capote describes the situation, rather than just saying, "Johnson had worked hard to make this deal with Mr. Clutter." As most books do, In Cold Blood begins with describing the setting and the characters that will matter in the rest of the book, and the way Capote does it gives a deeper understanding of what is happening. Aspects like word choice or syntax give what would seem like simple sentences an implied meaning.


These are the words I had to look up in the last fifteen pages I read (between pages 30 to 45 approximately):

Opulent: luxurious, lavish.


Hitching: traveling by hitchhiking or moving from one place to another.


Plushiest: like a plush, soft to the touch.


Razzle-dazzle: dazzling excitement, extravagant or showy display.



Haranguing: agressive and lengthy speech.


Spittoons: metal pot.


Conscientious: wishing to do what is right, diligent.


Tenant: someone who rented from a landlord.


Bashful: shy, reserved.


Jolt: push or shake abruptly.


Rankle: to annoy or cause resentment.


Hosiery: stockings, socks.


Quandary: a state of perplexity, of being confused in a difficult situation.


Chintz: multicolored fabric.


Decrepit: an elderly and weak or worn out.


Dourness: relentless, gloomy in appearance.


Hefty: large, heavy and powerful.


Lanky: thin and tall.


Reticent: revealing one's thoughts and feelings.


Keen: enthusiastic or eager to do something.


Disheveled: appearing dirty and disordered.


Foal: a young animal.


Astride: with a leg on each side of.


Prim: formal and respectable, proper.


Loiter: to wait around, linger.


Clinch: to settle or confirm something, like a contract.

Alternating Stories

As I read In Cold Blood I could relate Truman Capote's way of telling the story to Vargas Llosa's way of writing La Fiesta del Chivo (The Feast of the Goat). Capote begins his book with a description of the town and characterizing a couple of characters whose lives, I assume, will become related to each other. After introducing Mr Clutter, the author shifts to an in medias res, a I learned in Spanish class, scene in a restaurant, where Perry is waiting for Dick, two characters that as the chapter continues you learn that they are some type of adventurers, even though Dick is cautious. In Mr Clutter's chapter, he finds a group of pheasant hunters, so once I read that Dick and Perry had a hunting shotgun in their car, I predicted that the stories will interweave into the story of the murder in Holocomb. As Perry sits in the café waiting for Dick, the narrator begins describing the situation as he or she deepens into Perry's life in a subtle way to characterize him. Then the author switches back to the Clutter family but describes Nancy instead of her father. Then back to Perry, now with Dick, and then back to Nancy. It seems like Capote will alternate stories between several characters as he builds up the scene of the empty and isolated town that will be hit with the death of six people, perhaps Mr and Mrs Clutter and their four children).

The Feast of the Goat begins with Urania's return to Dominican Republic after having left for several decades. The narrator hints that some sort of traumatic experience shocked her and made her hate her family and her country, and just like Capote, introduces a mystery that the reader will discover throughout the book. Vargas Llosa has three alternating narrations, one from Urania's point of view, one that shifts between the killers of Trujillo and another one for the dictator himself. As he characterizes each of the supposedly real characters, the reader begins to discover what had happened to Urania and the specific events that led to the assassination and her rape. Although The Feast of the Goat and In Cold Blood have very different tones and environments, the structure the authors use is similar. The first has an intrigued tone while the second has a detached one. Both authors are trying to explain a series of events and what they meant in a larger scale. Vargas Llosa explains the nature of dictatorship, machismo and corruption as he shows why Latin America works that way politically. Capote, as we've talked about in class, will show how small places like Holocomb are being affected by  the growth of towns and the difficulty of being isolated nowadays. From what I've read so far, using alternating narrations helps give a better insight into what is happening and deal with different themes. Authors use it to get to what they're trying to say in an implicit way.

Vocabulary:

• Honed: made sharper, more efficient.
• Ludicrous: very foolish, ridiculous.
• Reticent: not revealing one's feelings, reserved. 
• Brooding: very unhappy.
• Gewgaw: a showing things that is useless.
• Uppity: arrogant.
• Ominous: threatening, giving the impression that something bad is happening. 
• Impish: inclined to do something bad, mischievous. 
• Pragmatic: dealing with things practically.
• Ineffable: too great or too extreme to be expressed in words.
• Cinch: easy task or part of a saddle. 
• Elocution: pronunciation, articulation. 
• Lattice: grid of fibers. 
• Despondency: low spirits, hopelessness. 
• Sprucing: neat in appearance. 

Cold and Detached

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood begins with a detached and gloomy description of the isolated town of Holocomb, Kansas. He describes it as a town "out there" and "simply an aimless congregation of buildings divided in the center" (pg. 3.), as he makes the reader suspicious of what could happen in the cold novel. While you read the first few pages, describing the town, the town appears as lonely or unsociable but calm and unperturbed. Capote briefly juxtaposes the remote and peaceful town he shows with the sudden announcement of the murder of six people. As I read the first fifteen pages or so, I could see that the author is building up suspense for what is going to happen, a homicide, as the reader familiarizes with the town and the characters.

Once the calm and empty illustration of the town is disrupted, Capote shifts right away to the characterization of Herbert Clutter, a respected member of the community of Holocomb. The author continues to use a detached tone but with a foreboding aspect. As a reader, you expect that the murder will happen any moment. I got suspicious about him when Capote describes his anger and thought that the armed hunters would lead somehow to the killing, because the cold and suspensive tone. While the tone is like that for the most part, the author occasionally uses quotations where he shows Holocomb's "prairie twang" or their colloquial language. The Clutter parents see one of their daughters as a "real Southern belle" (pg. 8) and Nancy, that daughter, wanted to go to a special event that all her friends were going to. The author's specific description with a personal touch contrasts from the distant introduction of the town. Capote makes it seem first like just a typical environment where life is dull, but as he starts to get into the Clutter family, the reader gets the feeling that they're good, normal people, perhaps, like you (the reader) are. The way the author gets increasingly into detail with the characters can suggest it will follow the structure of many crime novels or TV episodes, or that these follow Capote's structure, as he gets into the homicide. I remember that Agatha Christie's And The There Were None started with a detached mood, a kept a cold tone all through the book, and used a similar structure as Capote. She began with a character, describing him or her in general, and then she got into specifics of their life, culminating in their disappearance. Looking at the next couple of pages of In Cold Blood, I can see that Capote will alternate stories between characters, just like Christie.
So far, reading this book feels like reading a murder novel but with a deeper literary aspect to it. I've just read the first fifteen pages so honestly I haven't been able to analyze it very deeply, so that's a question I want to keep in mind in my future reading: Where is Capote going with the crime stories?

Vocabulary

·      Haphazard: lacking organization

·      Dire: extremely serious or urgent, dangerous

·      Gaunt: skinny, looking exhausted

·      Rawhide: leather

·      Postmistress: woman in charge of a post office

·      Meager: lacking quantity or quality, thin

·      Chancy: subject to unpredictable changes

·      Scuttling: hurrying

·      Impinge: have a negative effect, intrude

·      Keening: making a wailing sound in grief

·      Seldom: rarely

·      Hued: colored (hue: shade of a color)

"I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys" -George Orwell

In George Orwell's essay, "Shooting an Elephant," he uses a metaphor to show his views on British imperialism. The autobiographical account literally shows how he killed an elephant because he felt that he had to, but beyond the facts he is explaining the nature of imperialism and being persuasive about it. If you read his essay at first you might think that it's just a story about his visit to Burma, but if you look deeper, you'll see that he uses rhetoric and fallacies to construct a point about the political and social situation of that time.

Orwell begins his essay with a bad example fallacy. He uses hyperbole and makes observations on Asia based on the few descriptions he gives or his personal thoughts. While there could be a lot of people in where he was, they surely didn't represent Burma as a whole or the nature of the British Empire. The author uses hasty generalizations when describing some of them, both literally and in the rhetorical sense. He doesn't do it because he hates a specific group of people based on a few he met, but because he's trying to show the reader his environment. Some yellow-faced Asian most likely did insult him, but he felt like the whole race was against him, a British police officer. Same with the Buddhist priests--the way he describes them, in a hasty generalization or based on merely his personal observation, shows that the British viewed an overly simplified situation. Because of his mental fallacy, or perceiving things in a way that lacked a connection between the evidence and conclusion, Orwell felt that he was a puppet of the empire and like "every Englishman in the East," he had to suffer in silence. He says, "Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty." His fallacies are certainly not to amaze the reader with the huge number of Asians or overly simplified descriptions, but rather to show how imperialism affected people's mind and perception. Through his essay, George Orwell describes the way imperialism affects the logical way of thinking.

After having described the way he lived in Burma, Orwell continues to tell about the event, killing an elephant, that allowed him to understand the essence of imperialism. He continues to make generalization about his surroundings as he describes how he felt pressured by the natives to shoot an elephant that had gone crazy. While he uses a few literal fallacies, Orwell's essay has a disconnect between the proof and the conclusion in the situation. He walked by a field with a gun, because he felt it was appropriate and he perceived that the Burmese wanted him to kill the animal, so he did. He was the authority, and was armed, so he could've done anything he wanted, but the effects of "tyranny" made unable to oppose to pressure. The proof in the situation would be that there was a crazy elephant and a lot of natives around, and the conclusion that you had to kill it, but the connection between them is flawed, he didn't have to kill it because of the pressure. Orwell writes, "I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle." It's a fallacy beyond just the writing. He shows that imperialism and despotism got into people's minds and made them act illogically. The division between the colonizers and the colonized made people act in the way the stereotype said they should, sort of like a false dilemma.

The Disastrous Effects

We often think of Winston Churchill as the British hero that saved Europe from the Nazis and was a great ally to America, but most people don't know about his imperialist side. In Churchill's speech "Our Duty in India," he uses fallacies to build up the belief that Britain couldn't allow India to become independent and that the Conservative Party should unite for that cause.
Churchill begins his speech by building an idea with a wrong ending fallacy. He wants to make his audience feel attacked by the Socialist Party and blame someone for the situation, so he states that as the plans of the Conservative Party are being stopped, the Socialists will take advantage of them to keep them out of the issue of India. Churchill is using the slippery slope fallacy as he shows one possible solution as if it was what was actually happening. As he antagonizes the Socialists, Churchill proceeds to explain his ideas about India.
According to Churchill, everyone would agree that allowing India to become independent would be self-destructive and absurd for everyone, so they shouldn't do it. Apart from being a hasty generalization, his proof doesn't lead to the conclusion, so it's also a wrong ending fallacy. Churchill then continues to explain how everything would go wrong if British imperialism ended.
Churchill says, "The princes, the Europenas, the Moslems, the Depressed classes, the Anglo-Indians--none of them know what to do nor where to turn in the face of their apparent desertion by Great Britain. Can you wander that they try in desperation to make what terms are possible with the triumphant Brahmin oligarchy?" He uses the straw man fallacy to make people believe that one of the many paths India could follow once independent would be destructive and horrible for everyone. He also wrongly assumes that no one in India would know how govern the colonies. Not even Gandhi, who, if you read his latest declarations, cannot stop fighting, would be able to govern India. That statement tries to make people skeptical about what would happen if India became independent using a hasty generalization, as Churchill only uses a very general example to condemn the Indian leader. Churchill goes back to victimizing the Conservative Party, suffering under the attack of the Socialists. He uses post hoc ergo propter hoc by assuming that as the Party is suffering because of the Socialists, it must be the fault of something that preceded it.

The beginning of Winston Churchill's speech used different types of fallacies but as he further explains his ideas, he bases most of what he says in a slippery slope fallacy. Churchill wants to keep the British Empire ruling the world and according to him, if it wasn't like that, places like India would have chaos. He attacks the idea of a federal system saying that it would collapse in India because every region or religion would try to seize power. He also says that the untouchables would suffer because of the authoritarian and evil-minded (in a reductio ad absurdum way) Brahmin rule. The problem is that those things would not happen but could happen. In his slippery slope fallacy that puts together all elements of his speech, Churchill choses the worst case scenario for India's independence, that could happen, and makes it seem like the only possible outcome. He literally says that all services in India would collapse in the case of British withdrawal. Although it's true that defense could collapse, hygiene deteriorate and many things get messy, it is not as simple as "independence equals disaster."

Set to make Indian independence look like a huge disaster and wrong decision, Winton Churchill uses rhetorics and a lot of fallacies to convince his audience that they needed to support British imperialism. Churchill oversimplifies the situation and makes assumptions that disconnect his proofs from his conclusions. Although his speech could sound like strong and convincing for some people, if you look closely to what he says you will notice that his imperialist argument is not logical.

Oh God

In 1931, BBC invited Gandhi to Kingsley Hall for the sole purpose of recording his point of view. Although the recorders wanted him to speak about politics, Gandhi refused and decided to give a speech on God and what he believed about him. He chose to donate all royalties to an association in India. It can certainly be a touching speech, where Gandhi explains that a universal force rules us benevolently, but if you look closely at what he says, he's building up an idea without real proof to support it. Gandhi admits both that there is no reason in his argument and that he doesn't fully believe in God. He constructed his speech all on fallacies to build a spiritual argument that has no proof. I'm not sure whether he wanted to earn royalties, popularity or recognition, but his ideas are fallacious and his conclusion artificial.

Gandhi begins his speech with a contradictory statement. It's not part of Heinrichs' fallacies, but there's a conflict between what he says, and he uses a proof that doesn't support the conclusion. He says, "There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything, I feel it though I do not see it." The conclusion is that there is a power, but what he puts as a proof disproves it. If he can't see it, it's surely not pervading everything, not his eyes at least. After talking about the mysterious power, and saying that it can be reasoned to an extent, which he contradicts later, Gandhi switches his topic to God. In a false comparison, Gandhi assumes that the force and God are the same. Once he has stated that God's rules are everywhere, he goes on to observe why we don't see them.

He mentions that some poor villagers in India didn't know who ruled their town but said that God ruled it. If God's rules are everywhere, and they know God rules them, then they did know who "rules" their town. That pathos-oriented anecdote about the villagers has a disconnect between the proof and conclusion. Gandhi says that, just as supposedly they didn't know who ruled them, he didn't know who rules him, although he said it is God. He admits to feel the orderliness of the universe and the existence of a universal law, falsely comparing himself to the ignorant villagers. Then, in a hasty generalization, he affirms that "it" cannot be a blind law because blind laws never work. A typical hasty generalization offers too few examples that prove the conclusion, he offers none. Gandhi mentions that Sir J. C. Bose proved that even matter is life, distracting the audience from anything that's relevant to what he just said. He uses a red herring also to be pathetic, as he's mentioning an important Bengali. Gandhi ends that paragraph saying that since he doesn't know much about the law-giver, he cannot deny his law, which is clearly an ignorance as proof fallacy.

Apparently no king ruled Mysore (where he talked to the poor villagers) from this palace

Gandhi continues to talk about his denial of the certainly existent power, as he jumps into a series of consecutive fallacies. "Since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is," says Gandhi in a fallacy of ignorance. Then he assures that He can be either malevolent or benevolent, and that he's certainly the last. It is a false dilemma because, as far as we know, God could be kind of good or both good and bad. He says that God is benevolent because he persists in the middle of life and death, truth and untruth and light and darkness. Therefore, says Gandhi, God is life, truth, light, live and the supreme Good. He achieves that conclusion by a wrong ending fallacy. Gandhi states a lot things as if they were facts or truths about life. He says that, "God to be God must rule the heart and transform it," and that he must express himself in definite realizations beyond our five senses. These facts he states use the wrong ending fallacy, again, because there is no connection between the proof and the conclusion. It is partly a tautology as well because for God to be God he must do what people often think of as God. 

Gandhi ends his speech by saying that since prophets have felt God in realizations beyond their senses, God exists. He bases his argument in saying that what we feel beyond our senses is infallible, which uses no proof for his conclusion. Then he uses a bad example, as he says that as prophets have felt God, he is real. What a few prophets think is not the truth about the world or representative about what everyone thinks. It is also a tautology as prophets, by definition people who proclaim the will of God, obviously "feel" God. Gandhi concludes his speech saying that, "Faith transcends reason." Just like reason can't explain God, his logic couldn't either. The whole speech is based on contradictions and presumed facts. There is clearly a disconnection between the evidence and conclusions of his arguments, making his explanation of God completely fallacious. 

How We Actually Use Rhetorics

My dad saw me reading Thank You for Arguing this weekend and he asked me what it was about. I told him that it was about rhetorics and that I was reading it for my AP Lang class. When he heard rhetorics, he told me that it's something he uses a lot for his job. I did know rhetorics was important and that we all used in everyday life, but I actually hadn't pictured that in my mind. So far I've only noticed my use of persuasion in MUN or school elections, but as my dad told me about his job, it made more sense for me that rhetoric is actually very useful. My dad told me about different things he does to form arguments. He told me that when he's trying to persuade someone into doing something new, he likes to mention comparable events int eh past as it gets to people's minds right away. It can relate it directly to Heinrich's "The 'That Depends' Filter" and the "Comparable Experience." The author explains them for the reader to know how to find them and get the persuader's flaws, but if you do these successfully they can help a lot. As people don't know what will happen in the future, the only way to understand what to do is to look at the past. If you find the right experience it can be a very good way for someone to start liking an idea. My dad gave me an example in which he compared Colombia to another country. He told me that it can help for some of his arguments if the crowd likes international things, but that if it's a patriotic audience, you should never use such comparisons. I found chapters sixteen and seventeen of  Thank You for Arguing very interesting and relatable to daily life.

The Green Celebration

After introducing the reader to the seven fallacies he identifies, Heinrichs starts to explain what problems in logic actually mean and the problems that can happen in rhetoric as a whole. Fallacies can be bad for persuasion as their proofs don't connect with their conclusions, but if you achieve your goal of persuasion, perhaps because no one noticed the fallacies, can be good. The author points out that in rhetoric there is no right or wrong, or good or bad, there are choices, some better than others. Heinrichs says that you can have flaws in your arguments but that you can never argue the inarguable. He identifies seven out-of-bound areas of persuasion: using the wrong tense, being inflexible, humiliation, innuendo, threats, nasty language and utter stupidity. Arguments don't have to be perfect as most of the time people simply will not notice. Two years ago, during the Colombian presidential campaigns, many people had become fanatics of Antanas Mockus, but I believe that stepping into the out-of-bounds area in one of the most important speeches he made, deterred his image a lot.

I had liked Mockus so far, even though I didn't have a really strong opinion about the elections, since his arguments showed that he was serious and wise. How I perceived it was that he was not a typical politician as he did things for ideas and not power and he would be a president who made intelligent decisions. In May 30th, 2012 his defeat/victory(?) speech made me think that he was nuts and all his movement just crazy and fanatic. First, Mockus gave his whole speech in present and past tense. Unless he was blaming or talking about values, he should have used the future tense as, I assume, he wanted to talk about what should be done. The whole mood of his speech or ceremony was inconsistent with the situation. As the Al Jazeera reporter says on the video (below) that there was disappointment, all I could see and hear was people excited and proud. They could have chosen a side, either victory or defeat, to make something out of it, but his speech was just ambiguous. Mockus talked about the new nationality that his movement had started and that he did not think the ending justifies the means. His ideas were well-thought and could have been very persuasive had he phrased them some other way. Instead of talking about what should be done or what he would do to win the elections, Mockus talked about random unpersuasive things.

The second mistake he made was making an absurd celebration. Jaime Bayly made a video (below) commenting on Mockus' autogoles or self defeats, and he focused a lot on this speech. I remember watching the speech on TV and thinking that the whole green scene along his beard made it look like a St. Patricks celebration, but the I realized I was wrong as I heard them yelling, "Tu vida es sagrada."It was actually a hippie religious sect. He stepped into the "utter stupidity" out-of-bounds zone as he joined his followers in shouting phrases like "Si se puede," "Si se pudo"(really, what?), "Que no todo vale,""Su conciencia vale mas que un tamal," and many others. In rhetorics there is usually no right or wrong, especially in politics where it's good if it gets you votes, but when you break the few rules of rhetorics, it is catastrophic.

The Al Jazeera report on the elections shows the results neutrally, while you hear Mockus' celebration. 

Jaime Bayly mocks Mockus' speech in this video (it's in Spanish but you can put English subtitles).

Is it a thing?

Rhetorics can abstract techniques of persuasion that you hint or encounter through communication, but it can also be the dull formal logic Greeks used to run their civilization. Chapter thirteen of Thank You for Arguing started boring and unexciting, as the author introduced what he accurately describes as a "torturous device," syllogisms, but as he deepened the explanation of the rhetorical device, I started finding it more interesting and relatable to actual life. No one actually uses rhetorics in daily life to prove that Socrates is mortal, we're all well aware that he's dead, but that kind of simple deductions and inductions are used a lot for persuading people.

As I read the chapter, especially the part about premises, I thought about the unsuccessful campaigns adults do to prevent teenagers from drinking. They have very good intentions, the most reasonable conclusions and beliefs, as well as great examples to prove their points, but they lack a premise or a commonplace that they can share with teenagers. It starts very simple, if you put anti-alcohol campaigns in a syllogism, it would probably go like this:

Drinking is bad for everyone. 

You want to take care of yourself.

Therefore, you shouldn't drink.

It sounds reasonable but the commonplace it uses often doesn't work with teenagers. As part of deductive logic, it uses a supposed fact to reach a rational solution. Nevertheless, this supposed fact does not get into many teens' minds. They might not be sure they want the best for themselves and if they do, they have a very blurry idea of getting that. Most of these campaigns go ahead and use enthymemes, and skip obvious commonplaces. The resulting syllogism is also very simple but it still doesn't work:

Drinking is bad for everyone.

Therefore, you shouldn't drink.

Probably the age difference between teens and those that campaign against alcohol makes it difficult to form a premise the works for many ages. Perhaps more pathos, getting to teenagers' feelings so that they decide to stop drinking, might work better because logos without logic doesn't work a lot. Even though syllogism were as boring as the author of the book indicated, if you actually analyze rhetorics with that structure you can see that a simple lack of consensus in a premise can make persuasion unsuccessful. 

__________

Vocabulary:

• Syllogism: Form of reasoning used to reach a conclusion. As part of formal logic it's a very technical way to move someone to a thought. 
• Enthymeme: Basically a syllogism that doesn't include obvious things like that Socrates is a man. It uses commonplaces, or things in people's minds, to build conclusions upon them. 
• Deductive logic: Rhetorics that use commonplaces or premises to reach a conclusion, usually about beliefs or values. 
• Examples: Proof from cases of real life. It is used in deductive logic to lead to a conclusion. 
• Premise: Part of deductive logic, something that people know or believe. 
• Inductive logic: (Opposite of deductive logic). It uses examples and specific points to move towards a general idea or belief. Uses circumstances to form ideas. 
• Paradigm: means a typical or perfect example of something. A"set of linguistic items that form mutually exclusive choices in particular syntactic roles" in my computer's dictionary. It's basically what you use for examples in deductive logic. 

Rhetorics All Over

Commonplace
Perhaps the simplest, most successful and most seen commonplace in Colombians' lives is the constant use of the word "peace." There has not been peace in Colombia pretty much since it has humans living on it and some televised negotiations in Cuba or Norway won't do anything about it. They might be very successful in ending a war between the government and a specific terrorist or guerrilla organization, but peace is irrelevant. Heinrichs describes commonplaces as terms people can use to get ideas into others' minds. They make you relate an argument to a basic idea you're familiar with, even though they don't have anything correlation. The proceso de paz or peace process is just a commonplace-wording for dissolving a group if it even happens. The government and FARC are negotiation to see if they stop shooting each other and if FARC transforms into some political body. Unfortunately, neither of them has the superpower of creating peace. They do, however, have the power to get into people's minds. Colombia is all optimistic about the upcoming peace. It helps the government's image, people's confidence and the idea that Colombia is doing so great. Having mentioned "optimistic," political figures use this commonplace to show everyone that something good is happening, although they might not know what that thing is. The media and politicians use this commonplace to convince people that things are better. If an average Colombian read that FARC and the government were going to meet to discuss the possibility of further negotiation to see if by some chance they agree in a solution out of this conflict, the news wouldn't be as popular. I personally am optimistic about the dialogues with FARC and think that using the word "peace" might help get into people's brains for good.

If you search for the word "peace" at this page, you get thirty-nine matches.

Term Changing

Apple went pretty much straight forward with this one. The company was visionary and saw that computers were becoming a popular thing (this ad was released in 1998). To grow big, they needed to appeal to the consuming crowds, not the geeky computer programmers. So they went ahead and said it in the ad. Apple wanted to change their image from being just another complex machine to the trendy and simple tool everyone wants (including me). Heinrichs' shows term changing as, "Don't accept the terms your opponent uses. Insert your own." Apple does that almost exactly. They wanted to create a new reputation so they literally inserted a new one. 

Redefinition

I owe redefinition my life. While I wasn't brutally bullied in middle school, I did have rivalries with a lot of people and didn't integrate quite well with my grade. I certainly wasn't popular, and even though I was sort of a loser, people envied my academic success. A lot of kids responded to their jealousy and immatureness using a commonplace. "Why are you such a nerd?" they would say. Oh no! They're calling me "nerd," a huge insult with a terrible connotation. They'd expect most people to respond to the commonplace insult like that, and even though I did for a while, my brain was functional enough to realize I could redefine that term when being part of dumb preteen face-offs. "I'm a nerd because my parents raised me this way and because I can be one. You're futureless idiot with no skill at all. You're not a nerd because you can't be one," became my last resource argument for middle school survival. Heinrichs defines redefinition as using what your opponents call you in your favor. In this case I could have gone with definition jujitsu and accepted the bad connotation for nerd, but I attempted to make a new one. Looking back it was pointless to insult some people that way, but for my rhetorical purposes of that time, crushing their arguments and self-esteem, I was very successful. I've learned that accepting others critiques about you (or insults) is just a step to get to know yourself and destroy them better.

Definition Jujitsu

I don't think "Colombia es pasión" or the new toucan Colombia logo (in the marketing way) have been very successful to deal with the horrible reputation the country has basically everywhere, but the catch phrase you often see in Colombian airports (shown below) has indeed helped. While uninformative advertisings like saying that Colombia is passion or using a well-designed colorful bird for the brand don't mean anything to a tourist arriving here or some random European being targeted by the Colombian country brand, the image below shows a marketing strategy with rhetorical tools behind it. The motto acknowledges what people outside Colombia think, that it's dangerous and many people get kidnapped, so it accepts it and turns it into a positive thing. Through this definition jujitsu, people see that their term of Colombia, a dangerous place, is actually different. Its kind of amusing so it catches people's attention, but since it uses rhetorics, the ad achieves much more than abstract mottos about passion or biodiversity.

Definition Judo

As the presidential elections are closer, my grandmother gets passionate about her hatred for socialism. After living in the US for most of her life, she has become very interested in American politics and even excited to vote against Obama. I went to visit her today because she is leaving to Florida for a couple of weeks, to visit friends and family, but mostly to submit her Republican ballot in the good old fashioned way. My father tried to convince her that Obama was not that bad, and that things like health and welfare needed to be improved to prevent the US from decaying. After having heard the phrases (commonplaces) public good, universal health and social improvement, my grandmother attacked back with civil liberties, communist (which can have a horrible connotation for many crowds), terrorism and public debt. While she does point out things that she thinks Romney will do to help the country, during this discussion she just used commonplaces that contrasted to my dad's and made Obama sound like an awful tax collector. Like I see when my grandmother talks about the elections, politics has a lot of definition judo, where each party takes the other's terms and contrasts them.

Local Rhetoric

As I read “Win Their Trust,” a chapter about ethos in Thank You for Arguing, I constantly kept remembering one of those dull MUN debates where all I could think about was how unpersuasive everyone was. Local rhetorics are not famous. Colombians have pretty much failed to have consensus in anything (really), and it can be reflected in most Colombians’ persuasion techniques. Some people have reasonable logos and are quite good at getting at your emotions through pathos, but when winning your trust or building up their ethos, they fail. While I do see great rhetoricians in MUN, all of which believe they’re going to be presidents, many MUNers don’t do what Heinrichs says in chapter eight of his book. 

The first strategy to get people to trust you Heinrichs talks about is to sound as if you were decided on something because the evidence is simply too good. This is one of the most seen rhetorical tools in MUN, as people just say that their country is right because it’s just that way. While they could insist that statistics show that biofuel are terrible for world hunger or that Iran must have nuclear weapons, many people use this strategy as if it was my country is right because it is. I’ve heard, “Legalizing prostitution is bad,” “The US is right about the Middle East,” “GMOs have helped so much that we have to use them!” among many other arguments that could be strengthened a lot. Many MUN delegates try to sound as if they were simply right because it makes sense, which could work if they developed their ideas, but they end just insisting that their country’s side is the only one. 

Chapter eight of Thank You for Arguing also says that acting like you didn’t care much about something helps you persuade others to support it. In the last MUN conference I went, as president of the committee I got a lot of personal complaints from students part of a debate society. More than expecting them not to care about their seating assignments, I expected them to sound reasonable. I decided to separate two people from sitting together because they wouldn’t stop talking. One of them came to me and made a huge deal about it. By making it notable that she cared so much about sitting next to that boy, I decided that they couldn’t be together or they wouldn’t shut up. Telling me that, “Why are you like that? [Ay! ¿por qué eres así?]” or, “I refuse to sit there,” only made her less persuasive. Had she told me she was willing to change seats but that she wanted to discuss something with him at sometime, I would’ve considered not giving her a warning. 

The last strategy for getting people to trust you, according to Heinrichs, is dubitatio. By showing doubt in your rhetorical skill, you build up your ethos and people like you. Many  people in MUN find it more amusing to just act confident and yell at everyone rather than acting as a compromiser. People jump ahead to their arguments assuming that confidence and strength get people to fall for your ideas. The radical Iran delegate often has no supporters by the time delegates must write working papers. Thinking that being extremist will get them an award often excludes them for an activity essential for that. 

MUN is a school activity where people arrive with no rhetorical skill whatsoever and hopefully might learn some by the time they graduate. I shouldn't expect any MUN delegate to be a great rhetorician or to even care about being one, but MUN does show that rhetorics is not Colombia’s strength. People in politics are often obsessed with being correct and try to act so confident that they scare voters away. Candidates that are attacked by the media often win because they’re not intimidating. MUN is not a microcosmos of Colombia but it is a good place to see why Colombian nature, with “such a great country” has not allowed progress. While Colombians don’t try rhetorical tools as acting not to care a lot, conflicts will exist. This blog entry might even be seen as a confident complaint, typical of Colombians. 

The Magnificent Leadership Academy

For people to build up their ethos it is essential to show practical wisdom. Jay Heinrichs explains the importance of leadership and revealing it when being persuasive. One may use other tools like pathos or logos, but without leadership, rhetorics don’ work. Just as the world is once again giving importance to rhetorics or persuasion, leadership education is now part of the world’s most recognized institutions. I can best relate this to my school’s leadership program, designed to make the leaders of Colombia’s future. 

Colombia is one of those places, mostly around the equator, in need of true, tough and efficient leaders. Our geographical disadvantages are a fact, on we must deal with. Colegio Nueva Granada is well aware of this. For this third world garbage to get better, we need leaders, and a leadership programs is just the solution. As shown in Thank You for Arguing, leadership is made up of three elements: showing off your experiences, bending the rules and appearing to take the middle course. The leadership program at the school took it seriously and so the Colombian society awaits the leaders. 

Ubaté: The valley of ethos

Living right between the uncivilized Central American countries and the vast Amazon jungle, Colombians are prone to receive wilderness survival books from people like my aunt. These guides, written by adventurous American expats, intend to be the solution for getting along in lousy South America, yet the words are not merely enough. CNG’s leadership program believes you must learn by doing. The leaders of our school are sent once a year to Ubaté, Cundinamarca camping as they experience the type of things crucial to Colombian lifestyle. As Heinrichs says, showing off experiences is one of the keys to leadership. Young CNGers get to go drive three hours from Bogota to camp in a complex that, guess what, only has four showers per sex. Once the students are accustomed to such harsh living, as they should to prepare for the future, they get to deepen their leadership abilities through life-challenging activities. Beginners face a blinded obstacle course while expert leaders are dared to drink fresh cow milk. The Ubaté retreat exemplifies the exceptional formation leadership students get. Thirty years from now, as I’ll hear my classmates on political debates on TV or follow their instructions as their employee, I’ll think, “Having climbed a mountain, walked on mud and milking a cow made these street-smarts the people to follow.”

Monday

Experience in a bottle

Having gone through such difficult tasks of simulated Colombian life, leadership students are sassy enough to make their own decisions. The movers and shakers of CNG student life know what to do, and they even bend the rules if necessary. When instructed to help in activities such as the seventy fifth anniversary of the school, the leaders have a savvy nature that allows them to do what’s right. That day they were great at painting little kids’ faces. As true leaders, they were able to bend the rules for better. Some even dared to draw things other than an elephant on the children’s cheeks. Leadership skills extend past school boundaries. Some of these students are even part of unsupported student organizations, like the Fashion Show Committee. The activity, shunned by the school authorities, shows the ability leaders have to make decisions. Many of them, as Heinrichs says, demonstrate their leadership skills by going beyond the rules (they make the parties bigger, come up with super crazy themes that no one expected and make it clear that the school will not limit them, you name it).  Perhaps the best example of leadership students’ ability to bend rules is the first aid training. Another activity planned for them to have experience in what you need to survive Colombia, the training forces the leaders to take quick decisions. When simulating the exam that checks whether someone is seriously injured, some students went beyond the instructions and used their Grey’s Anatomy skills to diagnose the fake patients. “This is an easy one, he’s suffering form an idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis. It’s no accident, just like O’Malley and Karev’s case,” some would dare to say.

The final element of leadership, according to Jay Heinrichs, is appearing to take the middle course. Often seen as the good student-bad student strategy, this leadership characteristic is certainly present in leadership students. When asking teachers to sign their prearranged forms of absence, in order to go to their rural getaway, the leaders have it sort out. You can observe as the first student asking permission claims they shouldn’t have to study for the test on Tuesdays while camping. The second student to ask for the signature comes with a balanced, middle-course solution, “We’ll do the test on after school.” Gosh, they’re creative. 

After carefully analyzing CNG’s leadership program and how it fulfills the basics of leadership in rhetoric, it is no mystery why Colombia is moving forward. This program captivates the really need in Colombian society. The nuns and monks were wrong to teach us philosophy, we must experience what Colombian life is. Surely mountain life survival skills are part of the leadership package, but what makes a leader a true one is his or her certificate. Experience is useful for yourself, but for it to be persuasive and build up one’s ethos, one needs a badge. So far i’ve explained how CNG’s leadership program builds character and therefore leadership, but what really makes the difference is the industrial system in which students get certificated as the leaders. They will get into good colleges, get recruited by great companies and, someday, use their lactose tolerance to lead the world of tomorrow. 

Companies Are All Better

Heinrichs in Thank You for Arguing focuses the chapters about ethos in politics, probably the subject where the most persuasion is needed, but almost every aspect of modern life has rhetorics involved. Although business runs partly on the committed demand of consumers, a huge part of selling is made by persuading consumers into buying products. After politics, marketing is probably the subject with the most rhetoric involved. 

Politicians have people willing to listen at what they say and get many hours, especially if they have the self-confidence of Chavez or Castro, to give their speeches. Businesses, however, don't have people desperate to hear what they want to say. Aristotle called humans political animals, showing that naturally we want to get involved in politics. Sadly for business, we're not quite consuming animals, so they need to get people to buy their things. Through rhetorics in marketing, businesses make people into shopaholics and consuming animals.

Businesses use all, logos, pathos and ethos, but what they tend to focus on the most is their ethos or reputation. As the market keeps becoming more competitive, companies must make themselves somehow different and attractive to consumers, so they go for marketing their brands and presenting themselves as better than the others. Companies take advantage of the superficial human mind and make consumers believe that their brands are the best. By their use of rhetorics, businesses are able to make their character more important than their products, and consequently, sell more. 

In Thank You for Arguing the author tackles the issue of lacking an attentive audience in the chapter "Make Them Listen." Heinrichs describes what one should do to get, well, people to listen. The rhetorical tools he covers on the chapter are bragging, getting others to brag for you, revealing a tactical flaw, and changing your position. Marketing follows those steps almost word by word. 

The image above shows and advertisement from BMW in which they basically brag. They use logos in way, as they state as facts the prizes that Audi and BMW won, in order to show the company's reputation. BMW is bragging themselves as they say they were the winners of the World Car of 2006, but since they use someone else's authority, they are also getting someone else to brag for them. They obviously think they're great, but since they got awarded something by who you think might be an unbiased jury, you believe they're great. The company also reveals a tactical flaw in a way. They give some credit to Audi as they BMW didn't win the South Africa prize, but they only do so to further brag. 

Like BMW does, Samsung also focuses on building a reputation through rhetorical tools. The advertisement below compares the iPhone 5 with the Samsung Galaxy SIII, and uses logos and pathos for the final purpose of ethos. Companies do want to use logos and pathos, but since these are instantaneous rhetorical tools, they rather develop a reputation that will last for long. This ad shows Samsung bragging about their great new phone as they hint a tactical flaw. Many consumers are aware of the recent lawsuit Apple won against Samsung, so through the Galaxy's advertisement, Samsung hints that they're "mistake," or coping the iPhone, was actually for good and now it's simply better for consumers. The advertisement doesn't show it but Samsung has also switched side because they basically copied Apple. While they tried to have creative and original phones at first, they gradually started copying what actually sold. Unluckily for them, Apple noticed. 

Heinrichs in Thank You for Arguing so far has explained rhetorics in a political or personal scenario, but persuasion influences many other aspects of life like business. Economics has developed a lot from just supply and demand. Once relatively unbiased consumers are now obsessed with consuming specific brands and products. Marketing uses rhetorics to get to people's minds and, for the most, establish a company's reputation to create a demand. Especially in places like the US, rhetorics has made the economy become all about consuming. 

Show Business

On the thirds presidential debate last monday Barack Obama and Mitt Romney got the world to think they debated about US foreign policy. After only talking about national security and focusing only on the Middle East, the candidates made voters analyze who will lead the country better in the international community. For the world, or Americans at least, it was a debate about the policies each of them would establish if they were elected, but for them it was merely an act. They talked with their advisors and defined strategies to stage an argument that will get those undecided voters to like them. To give them credit, though, they manipulated people by rhetoric, not tamales.
All issues regarding the elections are either relating t decisions of the past, conflicts of the present or choices of the future, so the Obama and Romney, as skilled rhetoricians, used the corresponding verb tenses to argue about a topic.

Both candidates are dying to blame the other in any way they can. If they dream of something at night, it's probably not that they win but that the other loses. Throughout the debate they were constantly blaming each other and telling the audience what the other candidate did wrong in the past, also mentioning occasionally the good things they've each has done. Obama went out of the topic of the debate just to exploit one of Romney's defects. Obama said, "First of all, Governor Romney talks about small businesses, but Governor, when you were in Massachusetts, small businesses' development ranked about 48, I think, out of 50 states." By having the verbs in past tense, uses forensic rhetoric to blame Romney for something. Whose fault is it that small businesses are doing badly? Romney did something wrong. Obama avoids actually responding to questions by simply blaming Romney for something. Later in the debate, Obama said, " When you were asked about reduced class sizes, you said class sizes don't make a difference." As he was discussing the economic problems and the need for improving education, Obama blames Romney for saying something bad. What Romney said could have been out of context and even if it wasn't, it doesn't mean that it's Romney's fault that the US has problems. However, the audience just hears "Romney, education, bad."

Another decisive topic of the campaign is the values of the candidates. People want to know what they do in the present, how they think and how they behave, so the candidates respond by using present tense rhetorics. Obama choses to use present tense, even though he might be talking about the past, to attack his opponent's values. He said, "The policies that you're promoting actually don't help small businesses. And the way you define small businesses include folks at the very top." While referring to Romney's governorship, which ended in 2007, Obama talks in present tense to attack Romney's way of thinking and ethics. The audience might think that Romney is still doing those things and hurting entrepreneurs, but even though he might in the future, he is not actually doing that now. 
In another point of the debate, Obama said, "But, Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s." Ouch, that hurts. Obama attacks Romney's values by saying that his policies are outdated. This example shows that the present tense is necessary to attack values. 

The presidential campaigns are, after all, about the future. The candidates manipulate voters by shifting to the present and past tense, but what mostly matter is the future tense: what will each do if he wins? Talking about the debate on my Macroeconomics class, I heard someone say that he had liked Romney more because he had a plan and stated his policies. I don't think he actually did, Romney just spoke in future tense as he said abstract ideas that relate to improvement, making the viewers believe that he was talking about an actual plan. Romney said, "I will get America working again and see rising take- home pay again. And I'll do it with five simple steps." He later said that America will become energy independent, more trade, better education, a balanced budget and improvement in small businesses. If you vote for Romney you will get these great things, if you don't you might not, or at least that's how some people get it. Had he said, "We need energy independence, more trade, better education, a balanced budget and improvement in small businesses," it would have not sound like a plan. As Romney used the future tense, the audience might believe he has a plan. 

 As Romney and Obama used verb tenses for persuasion, they also used logos, pathos and ethos to reach consensus with the voter (meaning that the voters agree to vote for one of them). Romney says, "First of all, 30,000 people being killed by their government is a humanitarian disaster. Secondly, Syria's an opportunity for us because Syria plays an important role in the Middle East, particularly right now. Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea. It's the route for them to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatens, of course, our ally Israel." As he describes the situation of Syria and Iran, Romney turns opinions and speculations into facts, or logos. He makes things sound like arguments that support his opinion towards the Middle East. Nobody actually knows how many people have died so far in Syria, Iran has other allies, Iran has coasts in two seas, and they don't need Syria to help Hezbollah if they do. With his confidence to make these things sound like facts, Romney gets people to support him.

Pathos is necessary for politicians to get any support from voters. Obama clearly uses pathos to get people to like him when he talks about 911. He says, "You know, after we killed bin Laden, I was at Ground Zero for a memorial and talked to a -- a -- a young woman who was 4 years old when 9/11 happened. And the last conversation she had with her father was him calling from the twin towers, saying, Peyton (sp), I love you, and I will always watch over you. And for the next decade she was haunted by that conversation. And she said to me, you know, by finally getting bin Laden, that brought some closure to me. And when we do things like that, when we bring those who have harmed us to justice, that sends a message to the world, and it tells Peyton (sp) that we did not forget her father." It is a tragic story as part of the event that traumatized many Americans, but it's also a manipulative tool of his persuasion. People get emotional with 911 and Obama knows that. 

As he made people sentimental about 911, Obama also built up his ethos and made the audience see him like a leader or a hero. Referring to the same thing he says, " And -- and I make that point because that's the kind of clarity of leadership -- and those decisions are not always popular." By revealing a tactical flaw, people see him as trustworthy, and having mentioned it, as a leader. 

The third presidential debate, as any other political scenario, was the perfect place to see rhetorics in action. Both candidates have good ideas as well as bad ideas, but what I've like the most about them is the lecture on persuasion they're teaching me. Four years ago I surely didn't try to analyze candidates' strategies because I thought they were speaking from their hearts. This year, however, I've been able to see how their performances get them votes. 

Now see how they can be everything people like (aggressive, confident, nice, charismatic...):