Tone Is Part of Your Argument
“Just give me the facts. Spare me your emotional arguments. I get enough of that on social media.” We hear expressions like these all the time. They’ve been widely popularized in Ben Shapiro’s viral phrase, “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” which has since spawned a book. Though the ostensible aim seems to be to elevate substance over style, it simply ends up perpetuating one particular kind of style. We might use words like rational, tough, and uncompromising to describe this particular sensibility, but the larger point is that a sentence like “facts don’t care about your feelings” is a thoroughly stylized construction, rather than an impartial description of reality.
Rita Felski’s book, The Limits of Critique, challenges the assumption that style plays no part in the substance of an argument. Far from being a neutral feature, the tone and style of an argument constitute an indispensable part of its persuasive force. Tone can also conceal assumptions. To take one example, Felski explores the tone of radical suspicion that animates many modern critics: “Why is it that critics are so quick off the mark to interrogate, unmask, expose, subvert, unravel, demystify, destabilize, take issue, and take umbrage?” The unstated assumption here is that we can’t take the author at her word, or that the “text” is radically “unstable” and “misleading,” and that it’s part of the critic’s vocation to avoid that gravest of modern sins—namely, gullibility. (It’s worth noting in passing that this assumption also has a powerful hand in the current proliferation of conspiracy theories.)
As Felski points out, a tone of clinical detachment is also a stylistic device. In many cases, this tone is more powerful than the aforementioned suspicious mode because it’s more subtle. To be sure, there are proper occasions for this kind of language. Scientific textbooks, instruction manuals, formal documentation, peer-reviewed journals—these are just a few examples of language that appears to be scrupulously un-stylized. Folks aren’t generally moved to tears by a “Terms and Conditions” statement, for instance. But make no mistake: style is doing its job here. A legal document filled with emotional language may be a bit more personable and lighthearted, but it sure wouldn’t inspire much confidence. Part of what this shows us is that the language of clinical detachment is often deployed to communicate some form of assurance that’s closely connected with professional authority. Even though medical diagnoses, legal documents, and financial statements frequently contradict our wishes, we still find them to be intensely reliable and trustworthy, and a major part of that reliability consists in the tone. Shrewd thinkers recognize that the language of clinical precision has a tone that does some extremely heavy lifting in our public debates.
Just because a given practice “works” (i.e., gains you the rhetorical upper hand) however, doesn’t make it logical. If we import a tone of clinical detachment into personal discussions, we have a tonal mismatch that undermines our argument, whether our interlocutor recognizes it or not. Because controversial topics such as the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public schools, gender dysphoria, and vaccine mandates often take us into territory filled with more heat than light, folks in educated circles increasingly opt for a detached approach, one that claims to prioritize facts above everything else. As understandable as this maneuver is, however, it amounts to little more than a disingenuous rhetorical ploy once we recognize that thinking and feeling are not strictly separable. Facts may not care about your feelings, but we can’t respond responsibly to any facts until we first care about them. If you want to think well, you also have to feel well. Sorry, Mr. Spock.
Far be it from me to argue against a more measured approach to heated topics, but it must be said that an impersonal tone in a personal dialogue is more than ungenerous; it’s logically incoherent. What’s the concealed assumption here? Namely, that a tone of clinical detachment somehow elevates you above the fray of human vulnerabilities so that you can enjoy an objective point of view. Sound argumentation is one thing, transcending your human limitations is quite another. In this case, a stylistic device is being used as a substitute for honest argumentation. I’m not arguing that we discount facts and evidence. I am arguing that we admit we care about them.
