Analysis Of Jay Heinrichs 'Thank You For Arguing'

In “Thank You For Arguing” Jay Heinrichs uses his personal life experiences and the experiences of those around him to convey powerful tools of the art of persuasion to the reader. Using a variety of characters from pop culture and media, he shows how argument is a natural occurrence in life and what the reader must know to win over an audience who goes against what they believe. Heinrichs starts every new section by introducing a “Persuasive Tool” to the reader, explaining when to use said tool and what its effect is on an audience. A great example of this is when Heinrich begins explaining Aristotle’s Big Three. He starts his explanation with pure fact by stating the threes are “logos, ethos, and pathos”. He then goes into detail of all three rhetoric ideas starting with logos, simply stating that “if arguments were children, logos would be the brainy one”. This personification of logos introduces the reader to a persuasive path based on logic and reason. But Heinrichs does not stop there, rather he continues simplifying the other two of the three as an introduction to understanding the rhetoric.

Heinrichs begins by telling of seven “logical sins” of which he dedicates seven different sections of the chapter to. For example, the first sin he denotes is the “false comparison” fallacy, which he explains in the few pages after, is comparing two things that seem similar that actually could not be more different using a few examples and showing how they are wrong. His method of pulling apart the different fallacies helps the reader to be able to recognize the error, furthermore the reader is even encouraged to find what is wrong in the examples before he