Michael A. Gilbert

How to Win an Argument is designed to provide you with the tools you need to improve your rhetorical and critical skills. Since we constantly argue at work, home, and even in casual conversation, improving that ability is extremely important. This book will enable you to choose your arguments carefully and prevent you from being misled by fallacies and empty rhetoric. It will increase your insight and perception of the positions presented to you, decrease your gullibility, and replace it with a healthy skepticism. The practical information in this guide will sharpen your ears and your mind, making it more likely that the right response will occur to you at the right moment, rather than hours later. The third edition contains a new chapter on emotion and additional examples for each chapter. Using this book will aid you in communicating effectively, avoiding conflict, and understanding the myriad arguments you are faced with every day.

Coalescent Argumentation is based on the concept that arguments can function from agreement, rather than disagreement. To prove this idea, Gilbert first discusses how several components--emotional, visceral (physical) and kisceral (intuitive) are utilized in an argumentative setting by people everyday. These components, also characterized as "modes," are vital to argumentative communication because they affect both the argument and the resulting outcome. In addition to the components/modes, this book also stresses the goals in argumentation as a means for understanding one's own and one's opposer's positions. Gilbert argues that by viewing positions as complex human events involving a variety of communicative modes, we are better able to find commonalities across positions, and, therefore, move from conflict to resolution. By focusing on agreement and shared goals in all modes, arguers can coalesce diverse positions and more easily distinguish between minor or unrelated differences and core disagreements. This permits much greater latitude for locating shared beliefs, values, and attitudes that will lead to conflict resolution.

Coalescent Argumentation is based on the concept that arguments can function from agreement, rather than disagreement. To prove this idea, Gilbert first discusses how several components--emotional, visceral (physical) and kisceral (intuitive) are utilized in an argumentative setting by people everyday. These components, also characterized as "modes," are vital to argumentative communication because they affect both the argument and the resulting outcome. In addition to the components/modes, this book also stresses the goals in argumentation as a means for understanding one's own and one's opposer's positions. Gilbert argues that by viewing positions as complex human events involving a variety of communicative modes, we are better able to find commonalities across positions, and, therefore, move from conflict to resolution. By focusing on agreement and shared goals in all modes, arguers can coalesce diverse positions and more easily distinguish between minor or unrelated differences and core disagreements. This permits much greater latitude for locating shared beliefs, values, and attitudes that will lead to conflict resolution.

A practical, easy-to-read and often amusing guide that describes how to hone your argument skills. Features contemporary examples of debates on current topics with sidebar notes demonstrating weak and strong techniques. Provides tools to identify and avoid the most common verbal traps. Contains strategies for effectively making your points during a disagreement--whether it's a formal debate or a shouting match.

A practical, easy-to-read and often amusing guide that describes how to hone your argument skills. Features contemporary examples of debates on current topics with sidebar notes demonstrating weak and strong techniques. Provides tools to identify and avoid the most common verbal traps. Contains strategies for effectively making your points during a disagreement--whether it's a formal debate or a shouting match.