HOW TO ARGUE AND WIN EVERY TIME by SPENCE GERRY

Author:SPENCE, GERRY [SPENCE, GERRY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BEST BET DIGITAL
Published: 2015-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

AND SO : To open the Other to your argument, tell the truth. Be yourself. That's enough.

10

How to Deliver the Winning Argument

RELEASING THE SOUND AND THE FURY

The instrument we call "voice": We speak with an instrument we call "the voice." If we were not so equipped, we might communicate with violins or tubas or drums. All such instruments, including the voice, are intended as mechanisms with which to make music. We forget that. If we were able to amplify the sounds of earthworms, as they burrow their way through the soil, their groaning sounds would simulate those of many people who burrow their way through the drudgery of life. The sounds of their voices always betray their sodden march in the bogs of boredom.

The voice plays the music of the soul. Listen to the sounds people make when they speak—only the sounds. Listen to the sounds made by your wife, by your children. Listen to the sounds made by the boss, by your colleagues, your husband. Listen to the sound of television announcers, to the preachers, to actors. Listen, not to the words, but to the sounds , and you will discover something of the person who is playing the instrument.

The voice reveals who we are and how we are more than the words we choose. We can, of course, easily confirm this truth. Begin with the words, "I am the happiest person in the world." You can read these words from this page like a computer reading words—flat, slowly, spaces between each word, each word sounding like the word before. Go ahead. Read the words that way. The words do not convince. If such words represent happiness, I can do without it.

Now deliver these same words—don't read them—as if your fondest dream has just come true. Listen.

Now say the same words as if you were held captive by terrorists. You are tied in a chair and your tormentors are sticking bamboo slivers up your fingernails as they make you repeat the words into a tape recorder. How do the words sound now? Do you not agree? Words do not carry the meaning as much as the sounds.

I am always in awe of my brothers and sisters of the bar who can, by simply opening their mouths, transform a courtroom into a sepulcher. Their arguments are dead. They themselves are so unalive that they cannot hear the dreadful scraping sound their instruments are making. Sometimes I feel like offering them a cold bottle of formaldehyde to liven them up. Porcupines that indolently mumble a few indistinguishable grunts to each other at the apogee of their sexual climax emit a more moving music than many lawyers at the height of their argument.

One judge I know closes his eyes, as if asleep, while he listens, even to a lively argument. I am convinced he does so to confuse the lawyers. Since his eyes are closed and he occasionally grunts or coughs, lawyers assume he is awake all the time, which permits him

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