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Amplifying and Diminishing

Finally a good method of refuting the claim of importance made for an opposing proposition is by amplifying and diminishing. In plain terms this depends upon contrast in which you reduce the value of the opposing idea and emphasize the value of your own.

An excellent use for this is as a rapid summary at the end of your speech, where it will leave in the hearer's mind an impression of the comparative value of the two views he has heard discussed, with an inevitable sense of the unquestioned worth of one above the other. Burke sums up his extended refutations of Lord North's plan for dealing with America in these telling contrasts.

Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain and simple; the other full of perplexed and intricate mazes. This is mild; that harsh. This found by experience effectual for its purposes; the other is a new project. This is universal; the other calculated for certain colonies only. This is immediate in its conciliatory operation; the other remote, contingent, full of hazard. Mine is what becomes the dignity of a ruling people—gratuitous, unconditional—and not held out as a matter of bargain and sale.

Edmund Burke: Conciliation with America, 1775

 

 

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