Alysha's Analysis of "How to Argue Effectively"

Alysha Carroll
Professor Kerry Spencer
Writing 150H
October 3, 2011
The Unspoken Meaning Behind the Words

Discussing a controversial subject can be one of the most frustrating experiences in the world, especially if one is talking to someone who is absolutely convinced he is right. It is even more infuriating to debate with someone who has no logic supporting his opinion; someone who instead relies on empty words and emotional appeals to get his point across. In “How to Argue Effectively,” Dave Barry uses humor, logical fallacies, and irony to illustrate ludicrously poor argument techniques and thereby effectively teach the educated man successful argument strategies.

Dave Barry begins his article with a humorous situation involving an overconfident drunk at a party. He paints a picture of a man who “drinks several large martinis,” and suddenly becomes “a wealth of information.” In this hypothetical situation, the intoxicated debater argues forcefully and upsets furniture, causing people at the party to leave the room. This scene is amusing to the reader because the average person, educated or otherwise, has likely experienced a similar party and can recall times when he has watched the antics of someone who has had too much to drink; a comical side effect of alcohol is that it allows one to speak his mind freely, without any type of mental filter. As the reader remembers similar party experiences, he also recollects how foolish the inebriated acquaintance appeared and recognizes that it is a far more effective arguing technique to master oneself and stay in control of the situation. Dave Barry’s humorous anecdote is an effective teaching tool because it allows his reader to not only draw conclusions from specific examples in the text, but to use inductive logic based off the reader’s own life experiences to solidify his perception of effective arguing.

Another example of humor in Dave Barry’s article is when he describes the tone of voice to use when fabricating evidence. While instructing the reader on making up evidence, Barry also advises him to concoct a false source and ask “Didn’t you read it?” if the source is challenged. To sound properly derisive and belittle your opponent, he tells the reader to use “the same tone of voice you would use to say, ‘You left your soiled underwear in my bathroom.’ ” This blatant reference to bodily functions and underwear makes use of crude humor to shock the reader, especially because a comment this tasteless is not normally found in a published article. Though the humor amuses the reader, its shock factor also reminds the reader how impolite it would be to say such a thing in public. By placing such crude humor in the same section as “Make Things Up,” Barry helps the reader to make the connection between how crass it would be to make such a comment, and how unpolished and uneducated one would appear if he made up evidence for an argument. The negative connotation associated with crude humor associates itself with the technique of fabricating evidence, and leads the reader to avoid this poor argument method.

The next technique Barry uses in his article is the improper application of logic. He describes the technique of using meaningless but weighty-sounding words by advising the reader to say things like “Let me put it this way. In terms of appetizers vis-a-vis Peruvians quo Peruvians, they would like to order them more often, so to speak, but they do not have enough money per se as it were. Q. E. D.” After this overly-complex sentence of meaningless jargon, he says that “Only a fool would challenge that statement.” Barry employs ad hominum, or appeal to the person, to make it seem as though the reader would be foolish not to use such a technique in his next argument. However, the juxtaposition of this logical fallacy and the wordy statement helps the educated reader to see how utterly foolish it would be to build an entire argument using empty words.

A second logical fallacy used is Barry’s endorsement of the red herring technique. This logical fallacy is not an insignificant (albeit humorous) phrase used to enhance the tone of the paper - it is one of the main techniques that Barry recommends as part of the reader’s entire argument strategy. He instructs the reader to bring up Hitler as a last resort, “for when your opponent is obviously right and you are spectacularly wrong.” By mentioning Adolf Hitler, the debater would supposedly throw off his opponent from the argument at hand and veer into completely unrelated subjects. However, because Hitler is so unrelated to the Peruvian economy, it is extremely obvious to the educated audience that this technique would make them appear ignorant and uncultured. The reader recognizes that his use of a red herring would only weaken his stance in an argument, not strengthen it.

Dave Barry’s most powerful tool in this article is the art of irony, which he successfully incorporates in the article with his well-chosen title. Though the reader initially believes he will receive tips to improve his debating techniques from the title “How to Argue Effectively,” he soon realizes the misleading nature of the title. Every single technique Barry advocates in his article is almost guaranteed to cause one to lose an argument, from drinking liquor to using snappy and irrelevant comebacks. Though the initial reading may cause some shock to the audience, an educated reader will appreciate the high level of irony in the divergence between the title and the content of the article. This ironic title will subconsciously cause the educated reader to look for good argument techniques in the midst of Barry’s humor, and he finds such techniques by doing exactly the opposite of what Barry advocates.

On the surface, Dave Barry’s article “How to Argue Effectively,” appears to only to entertain the reader through a description of ways to successfully lose an argument, or at least lose a few friends. However, upon closer inspection, the humorous tone, incorporation of logical fallacies, and high level of irony succeed in showing the educated audience how to argue more persuasively. As the perceptive reader goes through this article, he sees beyond the surface level of the paper and understands that each technique teaches a valuable debating skill if one takes the opposite of what is actually said. In the end, the reader realizes that sometimes the printed words of an article have less meaning than the unspoken words behind the text.