Improving your Logic and Explanation
In principle, properly developing arguments makes you more persuasive by adding more facts and explanations. But in reality, developing arguments also improves your style by making you sound more serious and thorough. This stylistic effect – ‘sounding deeper and more thorough’ normally requires actual content, but this article will show how this same effect can be reproduced by the right phrasing.
How to make the explanation sound more logical and persuasive
Previously we learned that every argument has to have a logical explanation and factual evidence. We are ‘programmed’ to accept words that show logic, and using them correctly and often will cause our speech to sound as if it has more logic than it actually does.
The essence of an explanation is the causal link – showing reasons why our statement is true. Therefore words that show such causal link give the audience the impression that there are reasons supporting your case, and the more such words you use, the stronger that impression will become.
For example saying ‘clean your room because it is dirty’ is more persuasive, even to a 10 years old, than saying just ‘clean your room’. Now note: there is no obvious reason why the first statement is more persuasive. After all it does not contain any new information and the reason it gives is nothing more than a repeat of the request. The only cause of the increased persuasion is that the first statement includes the appearance of a reason.
| Interestingly, using these right words frequently for an extended period of time will not only make you look deeper and more thorough but will actually cause you to become deeper and more thorough. The reason is simple, if you remember use the phrase “and the reason for that is” after every claim, you will find that it gets easier to find a reason for every claim. Over time finding such reasons and examples will become habit, and you will simply be thinking about the underlying reasons for things – which is what deeper people do. | Full Linkage | Partial Linkage |
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How to sound more factual
Just like with the explanation part of the argument, so do facts and examples introduced into the argument make it sound more grounded and thus ‘real’.
| In fact, most people understand examples more readily than explanations, and find them more convincing (though the explanation will impress them more, even if they don’t understand it). This difference is so significant that whenever I give a lecture or listen to one I notice how the people in the audience raise their heads everytime the speaker says “for example”. | Evidence |
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