Introduction to Rhetoric
INTRODUCTION TO RHETORIC
Everything’s an Argument says the title of our text. That’s a questionable claim, a debatable thesis, an arguable assertion.
It turns out the authors of our text don’t really think everything – from a cloud in the sky to a pebble in your shoe – is an argument. They define argument as “any text that expresses a point of view” (Page 4). And they define text by examples: Text includes writing, as you’d expect, but also bumper stickers, clothes, and cartoons.
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Here’s another claim:
Argument isn’t just about winning.
As the authors point out, we have an adversarial system of justice, political contests, debate, advertisers vying for market share – many arenas where argument is about winning. On the other hand:
A friend of mine took his wife to Chile a while back, mainly to visit her family. He was walking along the beach one day and came upon some folks playing volleyball. They hailed him over, so he joined the game, batting the ball back and forth, working up a sweat. “What’s the score?” he asked after a while. They looked at him puzzled. “Who’s winning?” he asked. They looked at one another, still puzzled. Finally one man spoke up: “We are winning. We are having fun.” Different cultural contexts, as our textbook says.
Maybe gender-based contexts, too. “Men are from Mars,” asserts the title of a 1990s best-seller, “Women are from Venus” – the planet of War and the planet of Love. Men and women relate differently, my daughter tells me. Men are competitive, always trying to one-up each other. Women, on the other, hand are more cooperative and incorporative. So we have invitational argument: Come on in and sit a spell; let’s chat. Bring your knitting project.
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Why study rhetoric?
The study of rhetoric has been around for a long time, about 2,500 years says Wikipedia. The word comes from the Greek rhetor, meaning “orator.” Athenian citizens wanted their freeborn sons to be effective speakers in the senate, where laws were made and applied – their combination congress and court system.
According to our textbook authors, Andrea Lunsford, John Ruszkiewicz, and Keith Walters, not only will studying rhetoric help you to convince and persuade better – as you’d expect – but it will also help you focus and sharpen your expository prose (to explain) and your research (to explore). Conducting an imaginary debate with yourself can help you to make decisions. The study of rhetoric can even inspire you to reflect, meditate, and pray. All right! Let’s dig right in!
When I thought about the first 38 pages of text from your point of view, I was reminded of a scene early on in the 1993 Movie Jurassic Park, based on the Michael Crichton thriller. A wealthy entrepreneur has bought an island and, thanks to the miracles of genetic research, cloned and grown dinosaurs from DNA, and populated the island with them. He’s invited a team of three brilliant scientists to check out his soon-to-be-opened theme park. Things go well at first; the scientists are thrilled. When they come upon a sick triceratops, two of the scientists (played by Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum) find a pile of its dung and dig right in, up to their elbows.
For you, watching Andrea, John, and Keith dig into the wonderful world of persuasive discourse may have been like watching that scene: “Well, I’m glad they are having fun. Better them than me. What ails the triceratops? Who cares?”
The study of rhetoric has long been a basic building block of a liberal education (“liberal” from liber – freeborn). And the educators’ hope today, as in ancient Athens, is that learning the art of persuasion will make you a more capable and competent citizen of our democratic nation.
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Occasions for Argument
1. Arguments about the Past – Forensic Discourse
These may delve into the history of a matter, says our text (What happened?), may consider motivation and causation (Why did this happen?), may consider precedents (How was this handled in the past?).
2. Arguments about the Future – Deliberative Discourse
These may consider present trends and extrapolate from them, says our text, to make educated guesses about what will happen in the future.
John the Baptist told the people who gathered around him on the banks of the Jordan that God was about to judge them. “What then must we do?” they asked. At the moment, both houses of the US Congress are attempting to decide what must be done to stop the half million or so immigrants who cross the Rio Grande each year and enter the country illegally, and how to deal justly with the millions of illegal immigrants who are here already. What then must we do?
3. Arguments about the Present – Epideictic (Ceremonial) Discourse
A classic of epideictic oratory is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It begins with a consideration of the past as a means of understanding the present:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
The main focus is on the present occasion:
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
And the oration closes with an exhortation to go forth into the future heartened and inspired by the present occasion, determined to win the war:
It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
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Kinds of Argument
I was puzzled by our textbook authors’ presentation of stasis theory, especially since their last category – Proposal Arguments: What action should be taken? – brings us right back to deliberative discourse – What then must we do? Here is a more traditional presentation, using the authors’ example from the elementary school playground:
Question of Fact: Did Jack kiss Jill against her will? Yes, Jill complained that he did and there were witnesses who said he did.
Question of Definition: Is this a case of sexual harrassment, “defined as imposition of unwanted or unsolicited sexual attention on a person”? Strictly speaking, yes. But…
Question of Quality (Evaluation): Jack and Jill are both six years old. Jack was simply expressing childlike affection, and Jill still wants to play with him. “People don’t generally think of six-year-olds as being sexually culpable.” So the school’s sexual harrassment policy doesn’t really apply here.
Question of Jurisdiction: Is this a matter for the school board to consider? Clearly not.
Here’s a more serious example of a jusrisdictional matter, from the spring of 2005. When the issue of removing Terri Schaivo’s feeding tube had been through the Florida court system, her parents appealed to congress and President Bush to make it a federal issue. Was this a matter for the federal government to consider? They decided it was, reasoning that citizen Schaivo (characterized by her doctors as in a Persistent Vegitative State) was about to be deprived of her fundamental civil right to life. After a special resolution was passed by congress and signed into law, the case was submitted to the Supreme Court. Was this a matter for the Supreme Court to consider? The court said clearly not, and Terri was allowed to die – along with the half a brain she had left.
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Facts:
A Claim is an arguable assertion. A Fact is a verifiable assertion.
Beneath the bold claim on the cover of our text – “Everything’s an Argument” – comes the announcement, “with readings.” One assumes the publisher is not lying; still, it’s a simple matter to look in the table of contents and find that readings make up pretty much the latter half of the book. “With readings” is a verifiable assertion, a fact. Once a fact has been verified, there’s no arguing with it. About it, maybe.
We tend to assume facts are true. “Is that a fact?” we ask, meaning, “Is that true?” “Do you know that for a fact?” means, “Have you verified that? Do you know it’s true?” Consider the following debate:
Jill: “Fewer women drivers are involved in automobile accidents than men drivers.”
Jack: “Maybe so, but there are more men drivers on the road.”
Jack and Jill are arguing about facts, assertions that can be verified.
“Facts and figures” we say, because we tend to think of facts as involving statistics – numbers and percentages. Suppose Jack and Jill’s exchange goes like this:
Jill: “Women are safer drivers than men. Of all automobile accidents in 2004, women drivers were involved in only 40% of them; men drivers accounted for the remaining 60%.
Jack: “Maybe so, but of all drivers on the road, only 34% are women. And 10% of the men who did have accidents were attempting to avoid women drivers talking on cell phones or putting on their make-up. So percentage-wise, men are safer drivers.”
Maybe Jack and Jill are making up those statistics; I suspect they are. But their assertions as to facts and figures can be verified.
Note that they are assuming the same definition of “safe driver” as “one who is not involved in an automobile accident.”
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Definitions:
There are all sorts of definitions. “Ice cream,” we say to a child, setting a bowl of the same in front of him (or her) – a demonstrative definition. At the other extreme, Winston Churchill once characterized Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” – a metaphorical definition. In formal debate those taking the affirmative side of a proposition are allowed to define its key terms – for instance, “high crimes and misdemeanors” in proposing that a president be impeached – a stipulative definition. But the most familiar form of definition is the Aristotelian definition, which places the thing to be defined in a category (genus) and then separates it from other things in the category (difference).
An argument is any text (genus) that expresses a point of view (difference).
A triangle is a polygon (genus) bounded by three straight lines (difference).
Good old Wikipedia offers two modern definitions of rhetoric. The first is broad:
“Rhetoric is the art or practice of persusion through any symbolic system, but especially language.” The second is even broader: “Rhetoric can be described as the persuasive or ‘suasory’ function of all human action, including symbolic action like language use.” By the second definition, a woman’s tears have rhetorical force.
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Evaluations:
“De gustibus non disputandem est,” goes the old saying: “There’s no disputing matters of taste.”
Still, we engage in evaluation as an everyday matter of course. We size up the people we meet, the books we read, the movies we see, the music we hear. We decide which network news report we like, which new acquaintances to cultivate in hopes of making friends, which teachers to recommend to the friends we already have. Our criterion – the yardstick we measure by – is simply “I know what I like.”
When we begin to objectify our criteria, to define what makes a good movie, for instance, or a good person, then we discover how challenging a task that is.
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Proposals:
In deliberative discourse you are called upon to be a doctor of society. First, you identify the ailing society’s complaint – identify the problem. Then you diagnose the complaint – analyze the problem and find its most likely cause. Finally you prescribe a solution.
In her 1999 essay “Stripped of More than My Clothes,” Daria MonDesire tells of being strip-searched by US Customs in San Juan – an embarrassing, degrading, humiliating experience that reminded her of being raped. Their justification? She might be carrying drugs. Her research revealed a problem: Of nearly 60,000 US Customs body searches, only 4% revealed drugs or other contraband. Of nearly 3000 strip-searches, only 1 in 4 was productive. Moreover, as regards cause, there was evidence of racial profiling, resulting in a class-action lawsuit. Ms. MonDesire was not the only black woman who complained; so did four dozen others. Although Customs agents are now taking classes in cultural diversity and sensitivity – which may guarantee Customs detainees equal protection under the law – Ms. MonDesire suggests that the fundamental nature of the problem is that Customs is submitting large numbers of law-abiding citizens to unreasonable search and seizure without presumption of innocence or right to counsel. Her proposed solution? “Strip-search everyone who travels out of the country,” including Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, and all nine Supreme Court justices. “And then let the chips fall where they may.”
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Three Rhetorical Appeals:
Aristotle’s Rhetoric, composed about 350 BC, identifies three fundamental persuasive appeals:
Logos – appeals to Reason: arguments based on facts and reason. Think “Logic.”
Pathos – appeals to Emotion: arguments from the heart. Think “Sympathy.”
Ethos – the appeal of the speaker’s perceived Character: arguments based on character. Think “Ethics.”
For Example:
“Reason is the keystone of deliberative discourse. Participants give reasons and expect that those reasons (and not differences in power or social standing, for example) will shape the outcome of their collective decision. In the ideal deliberation ‘no force except that of the better argument is exercised.’”
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projects/deliberation/theory/
Consideration of the above quote as to the Three Rhetorical Appeals:
*Logos: The appeal to Reason. Although the above passage consists almost entirely of assertions, it sounds reasonable. For instance, we easily agree that we expect people’s reasoning, rather than their power or prestige, to be the main factor in deciding a matter. For another instance, the qualifying adjective, “ideal,” admits that there are other appeals in deliberative discourse, though reason ought to determine the outcome.
*Pathos: The appeal to Emotion. Our better instincts are being appealed to, our sense of fairness, our desire for a level playing field.
*Ethos: The appeal of Character. The speaker sounds like “a man of good sense and good will” (Aristotle). You can hear scholarly authority in the choice of words, in the way all three sentences are constructed and paced, in the style and “voice” of the passage. And clearly the speaker cares about reason-based decisions and fairness, which we recognize as good community values.
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