A Textbook Argument: The Success of Thank You for Arguing and Its Pedagogical Implications

Several years ago I made a textbook choice based on what I must admit was a momentary hunch. For an introductory course on argument, I decided to forgo the typical textbook options. I had surveyed classic choices like Ramage, Bean, and Johnson’s Writing Arguments (2009), slim volumes such as For Argument’s Sake (Mayberry 2005), and weighty books like The Well-Crafted Argument (White and Billings 2009). Yet when the bookstore called, I decided to use a tradebook by a nonacademic author: Thank You for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs.

Heinrichs’s book, a bestseller, has been lauded (Klimpton 2008) as an “entertaining . . . romp through the rules of rhetoric” and a user-friendly text (Dlugan 2008) that “coax[es] Aristotle [and] Cicero . . . off of their pedestals and into the . . . boardrooms and classrooms of America.” Since its publication in 2007, Thank You for Arguing (TYFA) has sold more than 100,000 copies domestically and many more internationally.

I observed the success of Heinrichs’s rhetorical instruction when I taught a 200-level course on argument in 2007 and 2009. The students not only read TYFA, they also enjoyed learning its rhetorical lessons. As one student named Ashley admitted, “I look forward to reading assignments from this book,” and another named Jesse added, “Half the time . . . I forget that I am . . . reading for class.”¹ Surprised by my students’ enthusiasm for Heinrichs’s book, I sought confirmation by surveying them, and a large majority in both classes expressed great satisfaction with this book. At the end of the fall term in 2007 and 2009, seventeen of twenty students and fourteen of seventeen students, respectively, “strongly agreed” with the “textbook” choice of TYFA. In comments at the end of these surveys, Jesse continued to express his enthusiasm: “I actually read this $14 book in contrast to the $80 textbook I skim the night before the test.” A third classmate, named Lauren, concurred, “Of all my textbooks this semester, TYFA has been by far the most entertaining. More important . . . it is the text from which I have retained the most information.” The fervor of the students’ enthusiasm made me start to wonder about the nature of Heinrichs’s success.

Then another academic published a satirical review of TYFA that questioned Heinrichs’s accomplishment. In a 2007 review essay, Brian Jackson equates the achievement of TYFA with “selling out.” Jackson asserts that “academic rhetoricians would rather drink hemlock” than consider Heinrichs’s success (441). By the time Jackson—with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek—concludes that “maybe we should all try to be sellouts” (443), it is difficult to determine if his final answer to this ironic hedge (“maybe”) is yes or no. With his reference to “drink[ing] hemlock,” Jackson insinuates that academics, and professors of rhetoric in particular, should be as principled as the hero of Plato’s Apology and refuse to seek such popular success.

In this essay, I want to ask and answer several classic questions about TYFA: What is Heinrichs’s purpose and who is his audience? How does Heinrichs employ the rhetorical appeals and how are they arranged in TYFA? Is Heinrichs’s own rhetoric ethical? What, if anything, can we learn about our own rhetorical instruction from Heinrichs’s success?

Purpose and Audience

Initially, it seems as though Heinrichs, argument textbook authors, and academic rhetoricians like Jackson have the same aim and audience in mind. In his first chapter, Heinrichs states his purpose clearly: he wants to teach “rhetoric, the art of argument” so his readers can use this “powerful social force” at “home, school, work and in [their] communit[ies]” (4–5). Then in his final chapter, Heinrichs expands this purpose and identifies his audience when he restates his goal of “educat[ing] the whole citizenry in rhetoric” (281). In many textbooks, the same purpose is asserted. In For Argument’s Sake, Katherine Mayberry (2005: 3) promises to “introduce you [the student] to some concepts, processes, and tools that...