The Correct Definition of "Pig"

            When I found myself stranded in San Francisco with my sister (not so much stranded as horribly deprived of enough money to eat like heiressess), we resorted to eating in the resident fast food restaurants that currently infest the United States. And we ate. A lot. We were walking down the street when the following conversation took place:

            Her: We ate like pigs.

            Me: Correction. I ate like a pig.

            Her: Correction. You are a pig.

            Lovely, isn’t she? Of course, if I had known of such argumentative genius techniques as exposed by Heinrichs, I would have answered, “ Yep. That explains why my bank account has more than a thousand dollars while you have weekly negative reports.” Term changing is key in arguments. The former would be Definition Jujutsu, using my sister’s term to favor me and using it to attack. Another term changing technique that I usually use is Redefinition. I engage in the occasional banter with a certain friend of mine, and sometimes, when he gets fed up with me (which is most common, I’ll admit) he ends by telling me some bland sort of insult like, “ You’re so weird”. I always respond by saying, “If by ‘weird’ you mean unique and utterly irreplaceable, then yes, dear friend, I am, indeed, weird,” or something of the like. I don’t actually always respond such a long phrase verbatim. I’m not that weird. Ha. Ha. Weird? Get it? The point is, I accepted my opponent’s terms while changing his negative connotation of the word “weird” and turning it into something positive. An example of this would be this Big Bang Theory clip in which Penny introduces herself as a Sagittarius and Sheldon promptly takes away any positive meaning of “carefree” and “selfless” people and turns the definition into something entirely different to what Penny aimed for.

            Another definition tool falls under the strategy of stance, “the position you take at the beginning of an argument.” If the facts don’t work and you’re caught red-handed, you have to try to change the terms, as seen above, to the point where they favor you. If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to come up with something that makes the argument less important than it seems, and later, claim the discussion is irrelevant: facts, definition, quality, and relevance. Those are key.