Name: How to have a really good argument | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2022-07-29T09:09:13.000Z
Duration: 6 min 19 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Gerund

but fantastic ways of clarifying thought.

That could be arguing with your partner, arguing with a friend,

arguing in the law court, arguing in parliament.

But for me, at least, all these types of arguments

show where the truth is going wrong, helps you to think more clearly,

and in my case, helps me to change my mind.

It needs a very clear beginning, middle and end.

Thirdly, the content of it, the words, the phrases,

the metaphors, the jokes, the things that give it life.

And the way in which that's carried out, not just in the words,

but in your voice and in the way that you move your body.

When I'm making a speech or I'm about to go into a formal public argument,

I firstly work out very clearly what the structure is.

What are the two points or five points that I'm trying to land?

Then I think very carefully about memorising the first line

and the last line, so that I can finish on a strong point.

And sometimes it just flows. Sometimes it's magical.

that something you thought was going to be magical

has become all kind of tortured and contorted and too complicated.

Arguments go wrong in many, many different ways.

One of the main ways in which we go wrong

is that we just lose control of our words

Emotion is very, very dangerous in an argument.

and it can make us sort of shut down and no longer listen to the words.

But at the same time, emotion done properly

is really the only way to win an argument,

because nobody's just going to listen to words.

when I was running against the other candidates

And I suddenly found, about halfway through the debate,

that I had the right type of comparison to use.

I suddenly remembered that I'd been trying to put three bin bags

"You're never going to get these three huge bags of rubbish in."

And I was tempted, like Michael and like Dom to say "Believe in the bin",

"Believe in Britain" right? It's nonsense!

They're not going to get a different deal out of Europe,

I produced it and I won the audience round and I won the debate.

when I was running to be leader of the Conservative Party,

this was my big chance to prove that I could be prime minister.

And I thought I had the most killer argument.

And I was just going to say to Boris Johnson,

how are you going to get Brexit done by the 31st of October?

And I kept asking the question and nobody would answer.

And I got more and more wound up with myself.

And my whole body language kind of cramped up.

I took off my tie, very bizarrely, in the middle of this debate,

I had managed to lose my entire vision for Britain.

Tonight you were a bit lacklustre, weren't you?

I didn't find that format really worked for me,

and I'm going to have to learn how I flourish

in the strange format of alternative reality.

One of the great changes in the history of argument is, of course,

the arrival of television, because suddenly it's possible for people

to view politicians in particular in action.

And the great moment where this really came into prominence

was the TV debate between Kennedy and Nixon

about who was going to be president, and famously, Nixon won on radio.

His arguments were much more serious, much more thoughtful.

and that's what really won him the presidency.

and then somebody comes back and then you come back at them.

which wasn't available to us until Twitter was around.

One of the things that's very difficult about argument

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How to have a really good argument | BBC Ideas

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