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. 

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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.