How to Win Arguments. Robert Allen
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Written Arguments
Almost all arguments can be carried on in writing but generally we reserve this method for our more formal disagreements. The reasons are obvious: anything you put in writing and send to someone enters the public domain and cannot be recalled. This has a number of implications, not least of which is that you can be held legally responsible for your words. Call a man a lying bastard to his face and you risk a split lip; write it down and you risk heavy damages for libel. However, in spite of the risks involved this method has considerable advantages that make it widely popular. The very fact that you and your opponent must measure your words and imagine them being read by a wider audience will inevitably raise the quality of debate. You will think twice about quoting evidence that can be retained and checked by an unknown number of third parties. You will also, if you are prudent, remember that your words, if spoken hastily and unwisely, may return to haunt you. Anyone who remembers President Bush urging people to ‘read my lips’ while he promised no new taxes will also remember his immense discomfiture when he later broke that promise.
Written arguments have the other advantage of allowing you time for reflection and research before you reply to your opponent’s latest onslaught. An argument conducted in writing will favour the conscientious researcher who pays attention to getting the details right but will penalize the person who relies on a ready wit to skate over the cracks in his reasoning.
Yet another reason for people favouring written arguments is that by putting your opponent at arm’s length you remove his power to use some of the more aggressive techniques of argument. The written word forms a screen between you and the opponent that protects you from people who try to get their own way purely by force of personality. In fact, you may observe something interesting that often happens once people commit their arguments to writing. It is quite common to find rather ineffectual people who would not normally say boo to a goose transformed into lions once they are able to express themselves in writing. This can be a good thing if it enables people to get the fair hearing of which they would otherwise have been deprived. On the other hand there is the less pleasant phenomenon of the ‘poisoned pen’ in which people who seem quite affable suddenly reveal a talent for vituperation as soon as they are let loose with a pen and a sheet of paper.
The issue of emotion in written arguments is also interesting. People are on the whole less inclined to let themselves go when putting their thoughts down on paper. Many people resort to the old trick of writing two responses to their opponent. The first is the one where they really lash out and call him all the names they can think of. Then, having got that off their chest, they tear the first letter up and set about writing the calm, dignified response they are actually going to send. If you do not do this already it is a tactic well worth adopting.
In a written argument you have a chance, largely denied to you in face-to-face situations, to adopt a persona that may be quite at variance with your real character. Whereas in real life you might get easily flustered, stammer, go red in the face and forget the important details of your case (and we all do some of these things from time to time), once you enter the realm of written argument you can be as calm, suave and poised as you please – you have time to get it right. You may also choose to show the draft of your letter to a trusted friend or a paid advisor (such as your lawyer or accountant) and get the benefit of that advice before you send the final version. The great luxury of written arguments is that you can draft and redraft each document as many times as you wish until you get it exactly the way you want it.
Although written arguments have great advantages they also have dangers that you should bear in mind before embarking upon one. You should make quite sure that you are operating in a field where you know all the rules. You should not, for example, unless you have legal training, try to conduct a legal argument in writing. You may think that what you have said is straightforward and unambiguous but, in a legal context, words can take on meanings that they do not have in everyday speech. Also you will discover that lawyers are very practised at picking to pieces any argument presented to them. The only person likely to be able to stop them doing that is another lawyer. The rule here is to recognize your limitations and never let the joy of battle tempt you into playing out of your league.
If you are going to argue in writing you must be very strict with yourself and make sure you do not indulge in irrelevance and high-sounding waffle. Things you might just get away with when you speak can look awfully stupid when written down. Try to cut out words you do not need. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short and to the point. Make sure that your argument flows naturally and logically from your initial outline of the facts, through your proof, to what you hope is an inescapable conclusion.
Family Arguments
Kevin, a designer who used to do work for me, was in business with his younger brother. Things went pretty well for them for some years. They had a studio on the ground floor of their elderly mother’s house and the whole family got on very well. Then the brother, Robert, got married to a French woman called Thérèse. Suddenly all hell was let loose. The new wife did not get on with the elder brother. The mother was drawn into the quarrel. The brothers stopped speaking. The rows became so frequent and so furious that the studio had to be partitioned to keep the warring factions apart. Finally they even had to have separate entrances to the house constructed. At the height of the mayhem a meeting was called with all the family members and their accountants and solicitors present. Things quickly got out of hand. Kevin, a rather easygoing soul most of the time, started to say something about trying to settle the whole mess reasonably when Thérèse bellowed at the top of her voice: ‘What’s reason got to do with it? A family is not a democracy!’ It is a quotation worth remembering. It will remind you that family arguments are in a league of insanity all of their own.
An argument within the family is rarely concerned with the apparent subject matter. Most arguments start over something so banal as to be hardly worth considering, like whose turn it is to wash up, or whether someone remembered to lock the front door last night. If such an argument were to start outside the family it would probably be resolved quickly and possibly even amicably. However, families are different. When a little group of people lives together year in year out, often in a fairly confined space, frustrations are bound to build up. And because we are supposed to love our parents, partners and children no matter how badly they behave towards us, we often feel we have to suppress our resentment. No wonder explosions occur so often. When you see a family argument in full swing, that old statistic about people being most likely to get murdered by a member of their own family makes perfect sense. As the zoologist Desmond Morris observed, the interesting thing about people is not that they are so prone to violence but that for most of the time they manage to avoid it so well. It is worth mentioning that these remarks apply not just to traditional families but to other sorts of households, such as groups of students.
Furthermore, the very closeness of family relationships makes for high levels of emotion. Because our family members do love us we feel that we can exhibit to them a side of our personality that we have to keep hidden from the world at large. Sulky teenagers become even more morose with their parents, while frustrated husbands pick on their harassed wives and vice versa.
Family arguments are also in a class of their own in that they have almost nothing to do with reason, concern for the truth or even, in many cases, true self-interest. All these things are quite alien to the way people in families behave. Their main concern will be with methods of manipulation (see page 94). They will use every trick in the book to cajole, blackmail or bamboozle their loved ones into behaving in the way they want. This process of manipulation will be the main purpose of the argument. The ostensible object will on most occasions be peripheral to the real aims of the arguers. In other words it doesn’t matter in the slightest that you washed the car; what matters is that I made you wash it.
Manipulation has a bad name because it involves emotional dishonesty. People believe that it is not possible to have a good relationship with someone if you are not honest with them. However, families have their own internal structure and the practice of manipulation helps to maintain that structure. Many couples maintain a sort of emotional Punch and Judy relationship in which verbal assaults, followed by reconciliations, help