The Rhetorician Issue #15 From Confrontation to Collaboration: Making Discussions Productive with the Strategic Concession Technique Dear Readers, We've all encountered people with whom productive discussions seem nearly impossible. They tend to take every counterpoint as a personal attack, becoming so defensive that they practically close themselves off to any new input. The curious thing is that they often don't see themselves this way at all - in their minds, they're simply being thorough...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #14 Rhetorical Analysis: Thomas Shelby Dear readers, Today I'm here with a rhetorical analysis of one of the better speeches in pop culture in recent times - Thomas Shelby's speech in parliament in the beginning of Season 5. Peaky Blinders' writing has been first rate since the show's inception, and there's a lot that we, the rhetoricians, have to learn from it. In this analysis you will be able to see (and hopefully recognize) some of the concepts we've talked about...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #13 Rhetoric: The Big Picture https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f8/ea/ac/f8eaacf2d93ea0ff51de234cea46b7d2.jpg Dear Reader, Picture, if you will, a persuasive argument as a magnificent gothic cathedral. Rhetoric, then, is the art of constructing that cathedral. Like any beautiful building, rhetoric has three essential layers: The Building Blocks Just like a building requires building blocks: stone, wood, steel to hold it all together... a persuasive argument too has its building...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #12 GIFT: Metaphor Repository Dear Reader, Metaphors are among the most effective tools in The Rhetorician's arsenal. A well placed metaphor is like a nuke that ends the argument cleanly and instantly, destroying any scope of counter-arguments. Case in point - "A house divided against itself cannot stand" by Abraham Lincoln. A century and a half later, this metaphor is still as popular as ever. Can there be a more effective argument for a nation to be united? In your...
2 months ago • 1 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #11 They’re Not Idiots for Not Agreeing With You Same World, Different Models. Src - ChatGPT. TLDR - Just because someone sounds irrational to you doesn’t mean they’re stupid or evil. It just means their mental model of the world is different from yours. We all build simplified versions of reality based on what we’ve seen, heard, and lived—and then we act rationally inside those models. So persuasion isn’t about hitting people with better logic—it’s about entering their...
3 months ago • 3 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #10 Freedom of Choice (Really?) Readers, That job you took?That feature you used?That policy you agreed with? Chances are, you didn’t choose it. You were nudged—cleverly, quietly—into consenting. Not by force, not by argument. But by design. This is manufactured consent, and it runs everything from politics to product. The most dangerous thing about it? You don’t notice it. And worse—when done well, you think it was your idea. Let’s get sharper. Manufactured consent is...
3 months ago • 1 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #9 How to Arrange Your Ideas for Maximum Persuasion You'll get the Judo reference, read on. Hey Reader, A good idea poorly delivered is no better than a bad one.We have all experienced the frustration of knowing we were right — yet failing to convince others.The fault often lies not in the idea itself, but in its arrangement. Understanding how to present a case is not optional; it is the difference between influence and irrelevance. While there is no universal formula,...
3 months ago • 1 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #8 How to Speak Such That People Want to Listen - Part 1 Miniseries - How to speak such that people want to listen Or how to write such that people want to read Hello Reader, As I might have mentioned in my earlier emails, a speech/writing has two aspects - a) How good is the content, and b) How well it is delivered. This email will tackle the latter part. Cause no matter how good your content, nobody would care to listen if your delivery sucks. Think Sheldon from The...
5 months ago • 4 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #6 Rowing upstream... Hang on, it'll make sense. Have you noticed that some ideas are easily sold to people, despite them being lacking in substance... but some other ideas which hold much more merit still get a lot of resistance? No? Think about you trying to convince your parents that you want to marry someone you love rather than a stranger you met a week ago. Get it now? Well, there's a good reason for that. The Three Types of Ideas You remember the concept of ethos,...
6 months ago • 2 min read
