Fulkerson, Richard

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University of WindsorScholarship at UWindsorOSSA Conference Archive OSSA 3May 15th, 9:00 AM - May 17th, 5:00 PMCommentary on GroarkeRichard FulkersonFollow this and additional works at: http://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ossaarchivePart of the Philosophy CommonsThis Commentary is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Scholarship at UWindsor. It hasbeen accepted for inclusion in OSSA Conference Archive by an authorized conference organizer of Scholarship at UWindsor. For more information,please contact scholarship@uwindsor.ca.Fulkerson, Richard, "Commentary on Groarke" (1999). OSSA Conference Archive. 86.http://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ossaarchive/OSSA3/papersandcommentaries/86Author:  Richard Fulkerson  In Response To: Leo Groarke's Seduction as deduction: against thepersuade/convince dichotomy (c) 2000 Richard FulkersonProfessor Groarke’s major claim is that informal logic’s distinction betweenpersuading and convincing, or alternately between persuasion and argument,is misconceived: misconceived because it cannot be applied with suitableprecision and is useless as an analytical or evaluative tool. In his words it is"simplistic and untenable," and its application "counterproductive" (4). To showthat the distinction is common, Groarke cites Gilbert, as well as Johnson andBlair’s textbook account of advertising as using psychological persuasionrather than "rational" persuasion (e.g., convincing argument).To show the inadequacy of the distinction, Groarke proposes twocounterexamples, the non-verbal persuasive techniques of Jamie, a young studon the prowl on Saturday night, as well as the similarly non-verbal argument ofan armed robber who holds Jamie captive. Both Jamie’s careful sartorialpreparation for an evening of conquest and the robber’s emphatic gesturingwith his firearm, Groarke shows, can be fairly easily translated into standardargument patterns, one an illustration of the "argumentum ad baculum", theother a species of argument that I would describe as a generalization fromsigns.With the major outlines of Groarke’s case, and with his conclusion, I essentiallyagree. In fact, as a writing teacher and rhetorician who dabbles in logic, I don’tfind the argument controversial. In my field, the distinction Groarke critiquesisn’t held, although the two terms ("convincing" and "persuading") aresometimes used to represent a quite different dichotomy, one I find equallyproblematic. In order to verify that my perception of my own field was not anaberration, I examined several of our major, recent textbooks designed for first-year writing courses on argument. Three of the five books indeed used theterms "persuade" and "convince" in tandem. But for them, the distinction is that"convincing" means getting an auditor to agree with one’s viewpoint, whereas"persuading" means getting that auditor not only to agree but to take someaction based on the agreement. Thus persuasion is the greater goal andachievement. Crusius and Channell, for example, in "The Aims of Argument",present sequential chapters entitled "Making Your Case: Arguing to Convince,"and "Appealing to the Whole Person: Arguing to Persuade." The distinctionhas some similarities to the one made by Blair and Johnson, in that "arguing toconvince" is essentially based on rational movement from premises toconclusions, whereas "arguing to persuade" must involve "more than" rationalargument.While convincing primarily requires that we control case-making,persuasion asks us to make conscious decisions about three otherappeals as well. One, we must gain our readers’ confidence andrespect through the deliberate projection of our good character.Two, we must touch our readers’ emotions. And, three, we mustfocus on language itself as a means of affecting people’s thoughtsand behavior. The writer who aims to persuade integrates theseother forms of appeal with a well-made case. (Crusius andChannell 114)Similarly Nancy Wood, in "Perspectives on Argument", notes in passing that"A common distinction between argument and persuasion is that argumentresults in agreement or conviction and persuasion results in action or changedbehavior" (379).In our newest argument textbook, Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz "acknowledge"what they take to bea common academic distinction between argument andpersuasion. In this view, the point of argument is to discover someversion of the truth, using evidence and reasons. Argument of thissort leads audiences toward conviction, an agreement that aclaim is true or reasonable, or that a course of action is desirable.The aim of persuasion is to change a point of view, or to moveothers from conviction to action. . . . writers or speakers argue tofind some truth; they persuade when they think they already know it.But they go on to remark that "this distinction between argument andpersuasion can be hard to sustain". (5)Frankly, I don’t find the field’s sometime distinction between convincing"someone to "believe" X" and persuading someone "to "act" on a belief" anymore useful than Groarke does the more-or-less analogous distinction in non-formal logic.1In fact, the two most commonly used texts in courses in written argument do notinclude any similar distinction. A sentence from Annette Rottenberg’s widelyused "Elements of Argument" is revealing in its mixing of the two terms: "Evenwhen our audience is unknown, we write to "persuade" the "unconvinced", toacquaint them with good reasons for changing their minds" (4, emphasissupplied) (see also Ramage and Bean).To me the most useful way of dealing with the essence of the dichotomy thatProf. Groarke is concerned with is first to avoid the attempt to pair anddistinguish the terms "convincing" and "persuading." Let us simply acceptthose terms as synonyms.Yet, I find the pairing of "argument" with "persuasion" to be moderately usefulfor analytic purposes, as long as they are not conceived as dichotomous but asrepresenting the relation of a set to a subset. I see "persuasion" as an umbrellaterm for all attempts to influence an auditor’s beliefs, and "argument" as amajor subset. To put it another way, "All argument is persuasion," but "not allpersuasion involves argument." One could visualize the relationship as a pairof circles, with argument, the smaller, falling inside.In that case, what distinguishes whether a piece of persuasion falls inside thesubset argument? The answer is the traditional one based on discourse form:an argument is any piece of persuasion that includes an articulated claim andreasons for believing it, what Crusius and Channell call "case making" (chap.6), and what Ramage and Bean call "The Core of an Argument: A Claim withReasons" (chap. 4) Needless to say, in first-year writing courses, we wantstudents to write arguments that are persuasive, rather than persuasion withoutargument.What would such a perspective suggest about Groarke’s two representativecases? Basically, I think, the response would be that Groarke’s argumentanalysis is essentially accurate but that it leaves out much of what ishappening. We do not have "just" argument going on; we also have extra-argumentative persuasion. When preparing for his Saturday night on the town,for instance, Jamie probably does present, through his choice of clothing, anargument that he has a great body. But in itself, that won’t achieve hisobjective. He might be flattered at someone’s remarking, "Wow, great buns!"and going on, but he has more in mind. He is, as we say, "looking for action."And to that end, we suspect that he will be concerned not just with his body, butwith how he augments it. He might consider carefully the colors of his clothes,even though the colors probably don’t make a difference as to his "having agreat body." No doubt, he will wear a "tempting" after-shave, and a haircut thathe judges "attractive," perhaps a cool belt and shoes, along with shades.Maybe even a designer jacket, sending a message that he is not only well built,but well-heeled, suave, altogether a man with taste.My point is not to lessen the value of the analysis of the argumentativedimensions of Jamie’s preparation for an evening of amour, but to stress howmuch such an analysis simply ignores in terms of persuasion. (At this point, Iconcede that it will take only a little ingenuity to interpret these other behaviorsas yet further premises in his non-verbal argument for the claim that "youshould sleep with me.")Once Jamie falls into the clutches of the pistol-toting robber, we might do asimilar analysis. We could discuss the robber’s size, his clothing, his voice, hisfacial characteristics, and the weapon itself, as features of the persuasivesituation. If our robber is small and frightened, and gestures with a small-caliber pistol, when Jamie makes his move toward the phone, the argumentwould be identical to that in Groarke’s case, but it might not be so persuasive.Or suppose our small and nervous robber gestures Jamie away from thephone, using his finger in the universal gesture of a play gun. Jamie might findthe same non-verbal argument so unconvincing as to continue with his actions.The robber’s non-verbal argument remains equally valid or strong, but not sopersuasive.Some might ask whether it isn’t possible to take any piece of persuasion andshow, as Groarke has done, that underlying it is a propositional argument, aclaim plus premises. If so, then all persuasion becomes argument mutatismutandis. I have pondered that issue (see my "Teaching Writing asArgument") and concluded that a great many persuasive procedures cannot beappropriately turned into propositional argument, although that doesn’t mean askilled analyst would be unable to explain how the persuasion functions.I’ll mention three examples. (1) Like Jamie, I am conscious of the persuasiveeffect of my appearance, what in my field would be called the rhetoric ofclothes. So I ponder what to wear on the first day of class, what to wear when Igo to the theatre in the city, even what to wear at a conference. But I would saymy clothes selection doesn’t qualify as argument, since I don’t have a particularclaim I want my appearance to send. (2) A good deal of advertising is in factaimed at increasing name or symbol recognition, and as such can operatewithout any argument attached. The Budweiser Frogs on American televisionuntil recently were a good example. They were funny animated characters, whotook part in a humorous developing plot over whether they or a group of lizardswould be chosen as spokescreatures for the brewing company. They repeatthe name Budweiser a lot.2 And (3) I recall seeing an ad for Mercedesautomobiles once that simply took a full page color picture of Marilyn Monroe’sface, and placed a tiny Mercedes logo on her cheek as a beauty mark. AsVance Packard pointed out long ago, there are totally subconscious and non-propositional ways of moving consumers, such as the use of certain shapes,colors, and packaging techniques, which will shape behavior but can’t in thefurthest stretch be made into arguments.Endnotes 1I was surprised to learn that the usage panel of professional writers for the"American Heritage Dictionary" enshrines the distinction in a usage note at"convince." They indicate a semantic distinction reflected in a syntactic one:"According to a traditional rule, one "persuades" someone to act but"convinces" someone of the truth of a statement" (320).2For a discussion of television advertising as non-propositional, see Postman.References Crusius, Timothy, and Carolyn Channell (1998). The Aims of Argument 2nd ed.Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.Fulkerson, Richard (1996). Teaching the Argument in Writing. Urbana, IL:National Council of Teachers of English.Lunsford, Andrea, and John Ruszkiewicz (1999). Everything’s an Argument.Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.Packard, Vance (1980). The Hidden Persuaders revised ed. New York:Pocket Books of Simon and Schuster.Postman, Neil (1986). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in anAge of Show Business. New York: Viking.Rottenberg, Annette (1997). Elements of Argument 5th ed. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s.Wood, Nancy (1998). Perspectives on Argument 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River,NJ: Prentice Hall. 

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