Week 3 Deegan

In chapter six Heinrichs mentions that the ways to pump up your rhetorical virtue is to brag, get a witness to brag for you, reveal a tactical flaw, and to use disinterest to help you get what you want. By bragging, your audience trusts that you know what you are doing and feel better about following your opinions, whether or not they like you. It is also important to them that you want the same things. If you have different values, it is unlikely that they will go along with what you have to say because your destination of the argument is in two separate places. By getting a witness to brag for you, it builds up your credibility even more by having a third party vouch for your character. When you reveal a tactical flaw, it shows your rhetorical value more by making that mistake.

         Using disinterest to your advantage can really help by not showing the audience whose side you are on. When you don’t express the way you want things to go, your audience will believe you more when you do end up choosing a side. Because you don’t previously have a bias, your interest seems to be more about the audience’s interest instead of your own, which is what the audience really cares about. These virtues are very important when making an argument and will you build a better character for yourself.