Persuading People

PERSUADING PEOPLE
Persuading People
An Introduction to Rhetoric
Robert Cockcroft
Lecturer in English, University of Nottingham
Susan M. Cockcroft
Lecturer in English, Derby Tertiary College, Mackworth
M
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To our daughters,
Hester, Jane and Laura
without whom this might have been finished earlier
Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Rhetoric Defined 1

1. Rhetoric: a 'loaded' gun? 1
2. Rhetoric defined 2
3. Rhetoric in history 4
4. Methodology and procedure: 7
(a) Personality and stance (ethos) 8
(b) Emotional· engagement (pathos) 9
(c) Modelling and judging argument (logos) 9
(d) Rhetoric and modem linguistic theory 10
(e) Methodology 14
5. An example: The rhetoric of Catch-22 14
PART ONE: THE SOURCES OF PERSUASION

1 Personality and Stance 17
Preface 19
1. Personality 20
2. Stance: 21
(a) The persuader and the self 23
(b) The persuader as humourist 23
(c) Persuader and topic 24
(d) Persuader and audience 25
3. Personality and stance in practice: 27
(a) Functional persuasion 27
(b) Literary persuasion 33
2 Emotional Engagement 40
Preface: making emotion work 40
1. Emotion: universal and contingent 40
2. Emotion and prejudice 43
3. The orientation of emotion 43
4. Actualisation: 45
(a) Graphic vividness 45
(b) Emotive abstraction 45
vii
viii Contents
(c) Communication 45
(d) Actualisation in literary persuasion 46
(e) Actualisation in functional persuasion 47
5. Orientation and engagement 48
(a) Orientation and pbatic, metalingual and
poetic language: an example 48
(b) The emotional laser 49
6. Working with bias and emotion 50
7. Emotional engagement in functional persuasion: 51
(a) Unscripted emotion 51
(b) Political oratory 52
(c) Functional writing: the pampblet 53
8. Emotional engagement in literary persuasion: 54
(a) Drama 54
(b) Poetry 55
(c) Fiction 56
Conclusion 57
3 Reason: the Resources of Argument 58

Preface: old 'places'; new 'models' 58
1. The definition model 60
2. Cause and effect models 61
3. The similarity model 64
4. The oppositional model 66
5. The model of degree 68
6. The model of testimony 69
7. The genus/species model 71
8. The part/wbole model 72
9. The associational model 74
10. The root-meaning model 76
4 Reason: Choice and Judgement 78

Preface: the context of judgement 78
1. What is the issue? 79
2. Argument and relevance: 80
(a) Relevance and the issue 80
(b) Appositeness to audience 82
(c) Fitness for the occasion 83
3. Argument and probability 84
4. Rhetorical reasoning: 87
(a) The extended enthymeme 87
Contents ix
(b) Rhetorical induction 88

(c) The hypothetical syllogism 89
(d) The dilemma 90
(e) The disjunctive syllogism 90
5. Spotting the false argument 92
(a) Undistributed middle 92
(b) Accidental connection 92
(c) Ignored qualification 93
(d) Missing the point 93
(e) Begging the question 93
(f) False cause 94
(g) Many questions 94
Conclusion 94
PART TWO: PERSUASION IN ACTION 95

5 The Persuasive Process 97
Preface: ideas of order 97
1. Persuasion and the question of genre 98
2. Persuasive ordering: variations and examples: 101
(a) Unscripted discussion 102
(b) The set speech 104
(c) Written argument commercial persuasion 106
(d) Dramatic dialogue 108
(e) Poetry 110
(f) Prose narrative (fiction) 112
Conclusion 113
6 The Persuasive Repertoire 114

Preface: persuasive style 114
1. Lexical choice: 115
(a) Literary lexis 115
(b) Non-literary lexis and functional persuasion 116
2. Sound patterning 117
3. Figurative language or Trope: 118
(a) Metaphor 118
(b) Metonymy 120
(c) Synecdoche 122
(d) Irony 123
(e) Mislabel (Catachresis) 125
x Contents
4. Schematic language: 125

(a) Antithesis 126
(b) Puns and word-play 126
(c) Syntactic devices 127
(d) Repetition 131
(e) Amplification and diminution 132
(f) Tricks and ploys 134
Conclusion: using the repertoire 136
7 Afterword: The Interface - Further Roles for Rhetoric 137

Preface: future options 137
1. The interface of language and literature 137
2. Current critical rhetorics: 139
(a) Popular critical rhetoric 139
(b) Esoteric critical rhetoric 141
3. Eagleton: rhetoric as a political medium 142
4. Bloom: putting rhetoric in its place 145
Conclusion: between critical theory and practice 148
Appendix A: Further Rhetorical Devices 155

Appendix B: A Finding List for Rhetorical Devices 158
Notes 162
Select Bibliography 172
Index 175
Acknow ledgements
We wish to thank all colleagues in the Department of English Studies at the

University of Nottingham, Derby Tertiary College, Wilmorton and Derby
Tertiary College, Mackworth who have helped this book to see the light
of day. We would particularly like to thank Margaret Berry, Walter Nash
and Doris Crick whose examples of scholarly and critical thoroughness
have assisted us in our study of the links between language, literature and
rhetoric. Professor Alan Sommerstein of the Department of Classics and
Dr Peter Boyle of the Department of American Studies at the University
of Nottingham are also owed our gratitude for contributions from their
particular expertise, as is Professor John Hampton of the Department of
Medicine for his happy suggestion of a title, and Natasha Bourne for
allowing us to profit from her shrewd analysis of Prime Ministerial rhetoric.
We must also thank our friends and family for their encouragement and
support over an unconscionably long gestation.
In addition, with our publishers we thank the following for permission
to reproduce material: Cambridge University Press and Gordon Wells for
a diagram from Learning through Interaction edited by Gordon Wells;
Curtis Brown Ltd and the Estate of Sir Winston Churchill for permission
to quote from his speeches; Faber and Faber for poems by Philip Larkin
(,A Study of Reading Habits') and Sylvia Plath ('Metaphors'); and Penguin
Books for extracts from A. N. W. Saunders's translation of Demosthenes.
We also gratefully acknowledge permission from K.H.B.B. Advertising
Agency and from Toshiba Corporation, Europe, to reproduce the text of
advertisements (for the Saab Carlsson CD and the Toshiba 'First Family
of Portables', respectively).
xi
Introduction: Rhetoric Defined
1. RHETORIC: A 'LOADED' GUN
This book has been written in accordance with a very definite order
of priorities. Its main purpose in studying persuasive techniques is to
encourage you to develop them for yourself. Its secondary purpose is to
analyse persuasive pmctice both written and spoken, because you need
to analyse the persuasive language of others, before you can adequately
synthesise your own. This will involve the development of a variety of
critical skills. And in order to form judgements about the effectiveness
of any kind of persuasion, we shall need to place it within its functional,
structural and socio-historical context. In practice, this means looking at
extracts ranging from Shakespeare to the newspaper cookery column,
from John Keats's poetry to John F. Kennedy's speeches. Progressing
through a range of examples from successive periods, we shall examine
how persuasion is used for many different purposes - at one extreme to
create the ultimate tragic emotion, at the other to sell us a car. In so doing,
readers will have the opportunity to learn to recognise the flexibility of
persuasive techniques, and to develop this skill for themselves.
The very word 'skill' however, may seem suspicious to some readers
in its cool neutrality. In the context of craftsmanship or technology it
has strongly positive connotations (a skilled craftsman, a beautifully made
piece of furniture, or machinery): in a language context, however, the idea
of 'skill' can suggest manipulation, superficiality, irresponsibility, even
cynicism.
The real question should be, to what purpose is the 'skill' applied?
That expensive handmade chair. might be primarily a sign of status in
today's machine-made culture, rather than something of practical use. In
this perspective, the 'skill' of making the chair is as problematic as the
rhetorical 'skill' employed to sell it.
This contrast illustrates the range within which any skill, be it technical
or rhetorical, must operate. We may ask now whether there is anything in
the skill itself to govern its use one way or the other? Surely not. Yet it is a
recognised fact that, historically, rhetoric has not always been linked to an
earnest concern for objective truth; this has fed an anti-rhetorical tradition
which began with Plato and continues right up to the present day. Is it
possible to defend the loaded gun of rhetoric against this view by adapting
1
2 Introduction: Rhetoric Defined
the well-worn words of the Gun Lobby, and claiming that 'It's as good or
bad as the people who use it'?
The answer has to be 'no'. There may be a measure of truth in it, but it
has to be an inadequate reflection of the true nature and value of rhetorical
skills. The conventional mistake is to see the 'skill' in subjective terms, as
though rhetoric were simply a manipulative tool with which A works on
B. It is significant that a contemporary book which makes an impressive
case for rhetoric, does so in terms of social psychology. In Arguing and
Thinking (1987),1 Professor Michael Billig demonstrates the value of
rhetoric, not as monologue but as dialogue. He points out how the habit
of rigid categorisation and generalisation (likely to produce prejudice when
applied to social groups or to the regulation of social behaviour), may be
countered by the exercise of rhetoric in its particularising social context
After all, a consciously developed tendency to make exceptions to general
rules, to look for arguments on both sides of the question, has always been
part of a rhetorician's training. This reflects what actually happens in our
society today, at all levels of public and private discussion and debate.
In Billig's view, every argument, every generalisation, invites an excep-
tion or a counter-proposal from the individual (or group) invited to listen,
whether or not their response is openly expressed. Billig (p. 48) argues that
substantial benefits, in terms of human freedom and social dynamism, will
accrue from this dialogue:
The power of speech is not the power to command obedience by

replacing argument with silence. It is the power to challenge silent
obedience by opening arguments. The former result can be obtained
by force as well as by logos, but the latter can only be achieved by
logos, or rather by anti-logos.
We shall find that Billig's view of rhetoric, with its stress on dialogue and
dialectic, is crucial to our study of persuasion - particularly so, because it
emphasises the social and interactional nature of rhetoric.
2. RHETORIC DEFINED
But we are getting ahead of ourselves, not only in terms but in concepts.
What is meant by 'logos' and 'anti-logos'? What is 'interaction'? More
to the point, what is rhetoric? We must establish these basic definitions,
particularly focusing our attention on the nature and character of rhetoric,
before describing the methodology of the book.
Rbetoric could be very broadly defined as the 'arts of discourse':

or, more precisely, the 'art of persuasive discourse'. (Discourse is a
comprehensive term used by modem linguists to denote continuous forms
of spoken and written communication. Discourse analysis signifies the
study of naturally occurring spoken language, text analysis the study
of the structures of written language.) Persuasive discourse or rhetoric
is one of the oldest surviving systematic disciplines in the world: its
original insights and techniques remain largely valid, and it has survived
precisely because of its capacity to adapt to ideological and social change.
To demonstrate this remarkable continuity, we shall now quote one of
the earliest definitions and descriptions of rhetoric (both deriving from
Aristotle 384-322 BC),2 and, later in the chapter, compare this with some
modem theoretical accounts of language function.
Rbetoric then may be defined as the faculty of discovering the

possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever.
(This is the function of no other of the arts, each of which is able to
instruct and persuade in its own special subject; thus, medicine deals
with health and sickness,) . .. But Rbetoric, so to [speak] appears
to be able to discover the means of persuasion in reference to any
given subject. That is why we say that as an art its rules are not
applied to any particular definite class of things.
Rbetoric is thus defined by its unique breadth of application, and (it is

implied) by its adaptability to new subject areas as they evolve. (There
are, for instance, recent studies which explore the rhetoric of science.)3
And as our book will show, the question of subject is intimately related to
the situation in which persuasion takes place.
Aristotle classifies the 'means of persuasion' in three main categories,
and from these categories we derive three permanent working principles
of persuasion, which will be used to underpin the structure of our book.
These are: ethos (persuasion through personality and stance); pathos (per-
suasion through the arousal of emotion); and logos (persuasion through
reasoning).
But how does Billig's dialogic view of rhetoric mentioned earlier fit
Aristotle's definition of rhetoric and its function? This can be demonstrated
by drawing an analogy between the art of persuasion and the handling of
a chess problem. Both the rhetorician and the chess player will prepare
in advance by anticipating counter-strategies from their opponent. Their
essential skills will be demonstrated, regardless of the inherent strength or
weakness of the argument or the disposition of the chess pieces. And just
as the initial layout of the chess problem implies a potential dialogue as

well as a contest, so the rhetorician's search for his 'means of persuasion'
implies a counter-persuasion, long before the debate has even begun. Either
way we arrive at a dialogue.
Dialogue is not only a technical term used by Billig in his definition of
rhetoric; it is also a familiar word used to denote conversation, discussion
or debate. Linguists have a more precise and revealing term (particularly
relevant for our purposes), which is interaction. This term is important
because rhetoric (as we have seen) is a persuasive dialogue, and as such
it depends on a controlled interaction. The rhetorician seeks specifically
to exploit the ideological, personal and situational elements involved in
every interaction. Nevertheless, the audience's response will not be entirely
predictable, however shrewd the rhetorician's choice of the 'means of
persuasion' (see Aristotle, above). The audience might not realise they are
being persuaded; if they do, their response might be compliant, resistant,
or variable. On any given topic, something which enables the rhetorician
to interact effectively with one audience might not work with another. It
should now be clear that dialogue and interaction are both key terms for
our understanding of the nature of persuasive discourse or rhetoric.
Returning to Aristotle's definition of rhetoric, we shall now differentiate
between the two kinds of rhetorical 'subjects' to be explored in our study.
We shall use the term junctional persuasion to describe all kinds of
persuasive discourse concerned with everyday life, where real people
are being persuaded to a real purpose. We shall apply the term literary
persuasion to the techniques by which prose-writers, dramatists and poets
seek tD convince us of the imaginative truth and emotional significance of
their discourse. Of course there is much more to literary discourse than its
persuasive impact on the reader (although the critical theorists Wayne C.
Booth and Christine Brooke-Rose might think differently).4 We shall touch
on this much later in the book.
Our next point concerns the adaptability of rhetorical skills and the
conditions governing them, which will necessitate some brief consideration
of the historical context of rhetoric.
3. RHETORIC IN HISTORY
Rhetoric has its roots in the culture of Greece and Rome, as an acknowl-
edged system of persuasive techniques. Our intention, however, is not
to over-stress the historical dimension. It is more important for today's
potential persuader to recognise rhetorical skills as still directly relevant
In the following brief survey of the history of rhetoric, two important

points will emerge. The good news is that rhetoric is still endlessly
adaptable; the bad news is that within any society there seems to be
a direct correlation between the erosion of political freedoms, and the
limitation and degeneration of rhetoric.
Full accounts of the history of rhetoric are provided by George A.
Kennedy (1980)5 and Brian Vickers (1988),6 and all we shall offer here
is some illustration of rhetoric's changing character and potential.
Rhetoric grew with the democracies, political assemblies and law courts
of Greece and Rome, but received setbacks as a result of imperial
autocracy and barbarian invasion. Throughout the Middle Ages, though
relatively fragmented and narrowly channelled by Church and State,
rhetoric remained central to the evolving culture, and was then revived
as a complete system (based on rediscovered texts) during the Renaissance.
It has flourished as a practical political instrument since the seventeenth
century, though (until recently) it declined as a taught discipline. Today
rhetoric is enjoying a critical revival, continuing its practical political role,
and developing new variations in the media explosion of the late twentieth
century.
In the Greek city-states (and later in Rome) rhetoric served the dual
function of deliberation and decision-making. It provided the means of
accusation and defence in the law courts, and of persuasion in senates
and popular assemblies. Power and prestige were thereby conferred on
the orator/rhetorician, and the resultant demand for rhetorical education
resulted in systematisation as an academic discipline. Three distinct types
of persuasion were developed to serve three specific functions. These
were: political debate (centring on what was expedient or practicable as
public policy); legal or forensic advocacy (concerned with justice); and
demonstrative oratory (the oratory of praise or blame, typically employed
at funerals or other formal occasions). Significantly, the social function of
this last type of rhetoric laid it open to charges of triviality, when used as
a vehicle for display or public entertainment.
The success of rhetoric rapidly drew upon itself a counter-attack,
recorded in Plato's Gorgias,7 where Socrates deplores the skill taught by
sophists (teachers of rhetoric) as a mere 'knack' to disguise falsehood or
ignorance as plausible truth. (Plato's view can be recognised today in the
contempt frequently expressed for 'mere rhetoric' by those who exploit it
for their own ends!)
As Imperial Rome gradually declined over four centuries, rhetoric's
functions were eroded in the public sphere, although it continued to be
widely taught and practiced. (Quintilian published his great comprehensive
work on rhetoric, Institutio Oratoria, in AD 94.) Legal oratory persisted

in a restricted form (Kennedy p. 105) but there was more interest in the
declamations which functioned as a popular art form. Debate continued
both in the Roman Senate and in regional assemblies, but political oratory
without political power must have held little appeal.
Yet rhetoric was finding new creative outlets; what we have defined
as 'literary persuasion' was developing from the emotive rhetoric of
declamation. In Ovid's Metamorphoses (7 AD) the transfiguring effects
of passion are exhibited through the declamatory oratory of its victims, as
well as in Ovid's richly elaborated descriptions. 8
Meanwhile, rhetoric continued to be taught at a high level of sophisti-
cation right up to the time of St. Augustine (354-430 AD). Its techniques
and concepts (together with Platonic philosophy and the Greek and Latin
literary models) were incorporated by Augustine and others into a fully
intellectualised Christianity, involving new forms of Christian eloquence.
Following the barbarian invasions and the collapse of the Roman Empire
in the west, rhetoric entered its Dark Ages. Although literacy was recovered
quite quickly in the evolving feudal kingdoms of Europe, and maintained
in the monasteries and their schools, the earlier political and social roles
of rhetoric were largely lost, as were many rhetorical texts. Even those
still known tended to be misunderstood, their original context being lost
However, if rhetoric lost in one area, it gained in another. We would mis-
represent the type of rhetoric which evolved through the Christian centuries
from the age of Augustine, if we were to overlook the way in which both
reading and writing (especially the concept of authorship) were in effect
rhetoricised. Those texts (old or new, sacred or secular) which were central
to European CUlture, were customarily provided with scholarly prologues 9
proceeding along dialectical and rhetorical lines. These offered ways of
analysing the texts, of judging their nature, and of viewing their place in
the whole scheme of knowledge. (For example, Ovid's Metamorphoses
was regarded in the Middle Ages as an ethical text, a warning against
those very passions which Ovid so enthusiastically depicts.) Within this
Christian perspective, rhetoric was assigned the task of giving emotional
or imaginative weight to authoritative truth, rather than to discovering or
radically reinterpreting it
During the high Middle Ages, further specialised forms of rhetoric
began to evolve, reflecting new social, cultural and intellectual priorities.
There was a rhetoric of preaching, which encouraged dramatic and satirical
representations not only in the pulpit but also in drama and literary satire.
There was a special branch of rhetoric (the ars dictaminis) devoted to the
writing of letters, which were vital to the diplomacy of the time. There were
also rhetorical handbooks on the writing of poetry. Broadly speaking, all

this served the purposes of the cultural and political establishment. Yet it
was still possible for dissidents like William Langland in his satirical poem
Piers Plowman 10 to make use of rhetoric for the expression of political and
religious discontent, and thus to provide a model for later satirists.
The Renaissance involved a 'new birth' for rhetoric too; the complete
works of Aristotle and Quintilian were disinterred and studied exhaustively,
and the full art of rhetoric began to be practiced in Italy and elsewhere.
Nevertheless this growth was limited by a tendency towards political
autocracy throughout Europe.
The spread of printing had made rhetorical textbooks widely available;
in England this was to have a crucial effect on the rising art form, drama.
As a result, playwrights like Marlowe and Shakespeare (both products of
the Renaissance grammar school) 11 frequently exploited their rhetorical
training, in ways that were subversive of the political, social and religious
order of the day. 12
Rhetoric also featured in the pamphleteering battles of the early Prot-
estant and Puritan apologists,13 receiving powerful assistance from the
rhetorical teaching of Peter Ramus (1515-1572), the Protestant logician,
educator and martyr. Ramus had developed a simplified method of logical
investigation and argument, which he regarded as a dialectical rather than
a rhetorical procedure. It was supported by a curtailed rhetoric focusing
almost entirely on stylistic features. What Ramus did was to demystify the
processes of persuasive arguing and writing, making them accessible to a
new generation of controversialists, either self-taught or grammar school
trained. 14
We could go on to show how rhetoric continued to be taught, although
not. always with the same vigour in England as elsewhere. But instead
of detailing post-Renaissance developments, we end here with Ramus, to
whom our study owes a great deal. Though often accused of superficiality,
Ramus made it possible for the less well-educated rhetorician to think
through a topic, rather than blindly following a formulaic procedure. Even
so, Ramus's system did have its limitations, being more suitable for written
than for spoken persuasion. We hope to capitalise on his strengths and
avoid his weaknesses.
4. METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURE
It is now time to indicate in detail what our methodology will be. Perhaps
surprisingly, we shall return to Aristotle. From his analysis we can derive
useful structural principles. These will enable us to achieve the necessary

balance between a practical procedure simple enough to work with, and a
theoretical understanding complex enough to constitute a true account of
rhetoric.
In his Rhetoric (l.ii.3-6) Aristotle distinguishes three kinds of working
structural principles (or 'proofs'): persuasion by 'moral character' (ethos);
persuasion by 'putting the hearer into a certain [emotional] frame of mind'
(pathos); and persuasion 'by the speech itself, when we establish the true
or apparently true' (logos). He explains that the 'proof through character'
depends on confidence, which 'must be due to the speech itself, not to any
preconceived idea of the speaker's character'. He accounts for the 'proof
through emotion' by pointing out that 'the judgements we deliver are not
the same when we are influenced by joy or sorrow, love or hate'. Aristotle
then continues (I.ii.7):
Now, since proofs are effected by these means, it is evident that, to

be able to grasp them, a man must be capable of logical reasoning,
of studying characters and the virtues, and thirdly the emotions ~ the
nature and character of each, its origin, and the manner in which it
is produced.
This seems a pretty tall order. By this test nobody can persuade effectively
who has not done advanced courses in dialectic, moral philosophy and
psychology! In a single short book we can hardly offer our reader the sort of
understanding that Aristotle requires for the full development of persuasive
ability. But we have to make a start somewhere; and by substituting the
term 'structural principle' for Aristotle's general concept of 'proof', we
have already achieved something. In place of an abstract blanket term we
have implied a process, combining method, balance, and flexibility. We
intend to use the Aristotelian terms ethos, pathos and logos throughout the
book, as a convenient reminder of the three 'proofs'. Most importantly, our
discussion in Part One will be based upon these 'structural principles'.
(a) Personality and Stance (or Ethos)
We divide the concept of ethos into two interdependent concepts, personal-

ity and stance. Most of us will recall some kind of spoken exchange with a
teacher, friend or family member which created in us a sense of confidence.
This interaction most probably involved a communication of the speaker's
personality. We are likely to remember how their personality emerged, not
only in what they said, but in how they said it. Did the exchange amuse,
provoke, reassure, challenge or encourage us?
To be able to identify with an audience, impress them with our individu-

ality (or disturb and reorient their attitudes by an apparent withdrawal of
sympathy) is central to the communication of personality. In persuasive
discourse especially, this interactional skill is essential to the success of
the exchange. How is this success achieved? It results from whatever
combination of vocabulary, intonation, and structural organisation are
called for by the circumstances of the exchange.
Yet ethos involves more than a contact between speaker and audience,
persuader and persuadee. There must also be a wider framework of atti-
tudes, the sense of a position or viewpoint adopted by the persuader, and a
tone taken towards the topic of the interaction and its context We call this
aspect stance. Consider the difference between a personal complaint made
by a single individual, and one made on behalf of a number of individuals,
constituting a community of some kind - an occupational group, a social
class, or even a nation. The broadening of stance is measurable: at one
extreme we glimpse the self-obsessed, boring talker, and at the other, the
great public orator.
Interestingly, Aristotle's recommendation to a rhetorician ('study the
characters and the virtues') would seem appropriate advice for the persuader
keen to make effective use of personality and stance in persuasion. This
will be achieved through a response to the psychology and values of the
audience, and a choice of language which reflects this.
(b) Emotional Engagement (or Pathos)
It probably does not require Aristotle to inform the potential persuader that
audiences can be persuaded through their emotions. In adding the term
engagement to our version of this structural principle, we denote the need
to orient emotional appeals precisely towards audience and topic, and to
found them on sources of feeling accessible to speaker and audience, writer
and reader. This link between emotive source, persuader and audience
constitutes the 'engagement'; and though individual experience of emotion
will be variable, we can usually access a wider range of feeling via the
imagination. As we shall see in Chapter 2, persuasion uses a variety of
linguistic means for achieving this, on lines not dissimilar to ethos above.
(c) Modelling and Judging Argument (or Logos)
Amongst an amazing range of meanings (showing the Greek genius for

conceptual thought) the Greek term logos has signified at various periods:
'plea'; 'arguments leading to a conclusion'; 'thesis'; 'reason or ground of
argument'; 'inward debate'; 'speech' (Le. oratorical discourse); and 'verbal

expression'.1 5 As a structuring principle in rhetoric, logos includes: the
range of diverse arguments in the discourse; the structure of thought,
whether simple or complex, which these arguments compose; and the
sequence, coherence and logical value of these arguments. Moreover, in
order to be comprehensible, discourse has to be logical; as we shall see
in Chapter 2, logos structures emotion as well as reasoning. The 'models
of argument' which we shall consider in Chapter 3 represent the various
resources available to the persuader; and the processes of judgement which
we shall discuss in Chapter 4 involve the assessment, selection, focusing
and ordering of argument
(d) Rhetoric and Modern Linguistic Theory
We have used Aristotle's description of rhetoric as a means of presenting

the methodology in this book. As a final 'way in', we shall look briefly at
some modem linguistic theory equally relevant to our study of persuasive
discourse.
(i) Formalism and Structuralism

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1906) and Roman Jakobson 0896-1983)16
have been enormously influential on modem literary and linguistic theory.
Saussure introduced the idea of the word as 'sign', made up of the
signifier (sounds/written symbols) and the signified (meaning/concept).
This exploded the idea that language is a direct representation of reality
- it is just an arbitrary grouping of sounds or written signs which have a
culturally agreed meaning. At the heart of all human communication lie
multiple sign-systems (phonology, grammar, syntax etc.) which function
to convey meaning to us. For Saussure language functions on two axes:
the vertical or paradigmatic (the speaker or writer chooses a word from a
range of options); and the horizontal or syntagmatic (that is, the syntactic
relationship of words in a sequence - phrase, clause, sentence etc.).
Jakobson was particularly interested in the poetic function of language;
nevertheless three of his general linguistic ideas will be relevant to our
study of rhetoric, and will be mentioned briefly here.
First, there is his concept of binary oppositions or polarities in language
(associated with the Saussurean idea of intersecting axes mentioned above).
There are interesting links here with the oppositional or dialogic structure
of rhetoric.
Second is the Saussure-derived idea of 'equivalence' which Jakobson
links with the tropes (or 'figures of speech') of metaphor and metonymy.
When we put one word in place of another, on the basis of some perceived
or intuited similarity, 'equivalence' or association, we are using trope.
Jakobson described this 'poetic' process as taking place at Saussure's
famous intersection of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes, when we
select one word from a range of semantic options, and combine it with other
words to create a chosen syntactic pattern. This suggests why trope might
be important to successful persuasion - it enables persuaders to select,
combine and maximise the persuasive effects within their discourse. (For
more detailed discussion, see Chapter 6.)
Thirdly, Jakobson's model of the speech act and its associated functions
will be important in our subsequent analysis of dialogic structure and
function. In Jakobson's view the pattern of any speech event is as follows:
'addressor' > 'message context contact code' > 'addressee'. Moreover,
each speech event will be oriented towards one of these functions of
language: emotive (oriented towards the addressor 'My best friend won't
speak to me'); referential (oriented towards the message and context 'The
next train to York is late'); conative (oriented towards the addressee 'Now
you listen to me!'); phatic (oriented towards social contact 'Hi! How
are you?): metalinguistic (oriented towards the code or language itself
'What does this word mean exactly?'); and poetic (oriented towards the
message/poem 'My love is like a red, red, rose ... ').
Jakobson's linguistic notions will be useful to us because they confirm
our interest in dialogue, in linguistic polarities or oppositions, and in
the complexities of language function. Moreover we can make valuable
connections with the dialogic theories of Bakhtin and Billig, as we shall
see below.
(ii) Discourse Theory

Having introduced the term discourse earlier, we shall now look at some
theories of discourse analysis, turning first to the ideas of Austin, Grice and
Coulthard.
In Austin's speech-act theory, linguistic communication is described
as 'a co-operative venture between a writer (or speaker) and one or
more readers or listeners'. He defines this communication as 'either an
illocutionary or a perlocutionary act'.l7 Illocutionary discourse conveys
clearly expressed information; perlocutionary discourse persuades the
audience or reader to take some kind of action. For our purposes Austin's
concept of a perlocutionary act can be linked with the traditional concepts
of rhetoric as a technique of persuasion, and we shall make use of this in
Chapter 1.
H. P. Grice's conversational 'maxims'18 similarly derive from a view
of communication as a co-operative endeavour, though he introduces

additionally the notions of 'truthfulness', 'proportionality', 'relevance'
and 'clarity'. These notions chime significantly with our earlier remarks in
relation to ethos (personality and stance), and suggest that what holds good
for conversation may also apply to more protracted persuasive discourse.
Grice's 'maxims' will also prove useful in Chapters 5 and 6, where we
shall be analysing the role of persuasive ordering and persuasive style;
interestingly, the violation of his maxims will also be seen to have
persuasive significance.
Other discourse analysts include Coulthard [1977, new edn 1985]
(exchange structure); Brown and Levinson [1983] (politeness strategies
in interaction); Brown and Yule [1983] (information structure and textual
cohesion); and Stubbs [1983] (discourse organisation and exchange struc-
ture). From this listing of recent studies in the broad field of discourse
analysis, we can recognise a striking affinity with the traditional preoccu-
pations of rhetoricians. Our study of persuasive discourse will have much to
gain from this kind of focused approach to the structures of interaction.
William Labov is perhaps best known as a sociolinguist for his studies of
American Black English and social stratification in language. Nevertheless
he, too, is concerned with interactional structure: ' ... how one utterance
follows another in a rational, rule-governed way ... in other words, how
we understand coherent discourse' .19 This point will be relevant when we
consider extended persuasion.
A third aspect of discourse analysis is to see it within a social and
functional context. Coulthard declares himself 'interested in the level of
function of a particular utterance, in a particular social situation (our
italics), at a particular place in a sequence, as a specific contribution
to a developing discourse' .20 Gumperz discusses interethnic style and
ethnic style in political rhetoric;21 and Labov's studies of sociolinguistic
variables stress the role of social context in the production of interaction.
As students of rhetoric, we cannot afford to neglect this potential aspect of
the persuasive process.
(iii) Bakhtin
The work of Mikhail Bakhtin 0895-1975) has come relatively recently to
the attention of literary and linguistic theorists. Four of his major essays
were published in translation in 1981, edited by Michael Holquist and
entitled The Dialogic Imagination. It may not be difficult to guess the
relevance of Bakhtin' s ideas to our study of rhetoric. He argued that all
discourse (including written texts) is dialogic or double-voiced, 'echoing
other voices and anticipating rejoinders'. Bakhtin's own term for what he
calls 'multi-layered' discourse is heteroglossia, meaning 'many voices').

According to A. White, he envisages in every dialogic interaction 'prestige
languages [trying] to extend their control and subordinate languages
[trying] to avoid, negotiate, or subvert that control' .22 Here we have an
interaction not dissimilar to Billig's dialectic, between an authoritative
discourse and an inwardly persuasive discourse, which is potentially
subversive.
(iv ) Halliday
Finally, we turn to M. A. K. Halliday, whose theory of language as function
within a social context challenged the structuralist views of Saussure and
Chomsky. Unlike them, Halliday stressed the key importance of meaning
as the determining factor in all aspects of language function, whether
grammatical, phonological or lexical. Although structure remains present
in language at the linear level (syntax), the language user also has multiple
options (paradigms) available in the networks (or systems) of grammar,
phonology and lexis. Thus, in the context of spoken or written persuasion,
the persuader makes language choices according to audience, situation and
context. Halliday defines three language functions,23 which may be present
in any interaction. These are: (i) the ideational function (expressing ideas
about the real world - associated with logos); (ii) interpersonal function
(concerned with social relationships - associated with both ethos and
pathos); and (iii) textual function (distinguishing a text with a living
message from a dictionary entry - also associated with ethos). Persuasive
language exhibits all these functions, and it will be helpful in our study
of rhetorical method, structure and process to bear in mind Halliday's
definitions. They are a means of focusing on, and distinguishing between,
different kinds of persuasive discourse.
(v) Billig
We must reiterate the importance of Billig's theory of dialectic in rela-
tion to language generally and rhetoric specifically. Though primarily a
social psychologist. and therefore committed to a social view of verbal
interaction, Billig argues in his seminal book that the structural pattern
of rhetoric, with every argument implicitly, if not explicitly, opposed
by a counter-argument. offers an exact model of human thinking. The
constant movement between logoi and anti-logoi represents our thought
process as we move from example (particularisation) to generalisation
(categorisation) and back again.
This dialogic model of the human cognitive process is highly relevant
to a study of persuasive language for all sorts of reasons (particularly
structural), and we shall be refening back to some of Billig's ideas later

in the book.
(e) Methodology
The methodology of the book will be as follows. Part One will examine the
sources of persuasion, with four chapters devoted to the three Aristotelian
'structural principles' (one each to ethos and pathos and two to logos).
Part Two will be concerned with persuasion in action, with chapters on
the persuasive process and the persuasive repertoire. It will end with an
afterword which will summarise the 'interface' position of rhetoric between
literature and language studies, as demonstrated by our analyses throughout
the book. It will then point forward to the uses of rhetoric likely to be
encountered by a student in higher education, within the context of critical
theory and practice. At each stage, our examination will be supported by a
wide range of detailed examples. The first of these can be seen below.
5. AN EXAMPLE: THE RHETORIC OF CATCH-22
The following extract is from an American novel about World War II,
Catch-22.24 in which the author, Joseph Heller, urges us persuasively to
accept his view of the lunacy of military logic. The narrative voice is partly
Heller's own, but mainly we hear the voice of his hero, Yossarian.
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that
a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real
and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and
could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he
would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr
would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he
was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't
have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian
was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of
Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Danveka agreed.
The passage is intended to persuade the readers (with whom the author
is in dialogue) that Catch-22 means death. The ethos of Yossarian (the one
sane man in a world gone mad) is conveyed through the tone of controlled
bysteria. Taut, sbort statements are balanced by conditional clauses ('if

be was sane ... ' 'if be flew them ... ' 'if be didn't want to ... ').
Yossarian's colloquial and concrete language ('crazy' 'grounded') is con-
trasted with more abstract phrases ('concern for one's safety' 'the process
of a rational mind' 'absolute simplicity') which smooth over the realities
of war and death.
Yossarian's use of pathos is part of bis grimly bumorous tone ('be
was moved very deeply ... let out a respectful wbistle'), thougb there is
relatively little direct appeal to our emotions, except througb the cumulative
force of logic. Indeed, wbat is conspicuous in this passage is Heller's
masterly use of logos. Every statement is immediately undermined, every
proposition promptly refuted, in order to bammer borne the dreadful futility
of Catcb-22, ironically described by Doc Daneeka as 'the best there is.'
We can see bow the interconnecting networks of grammar and syntax
function to enact the mad logic of Catch-22. Modal verbs ('could',
'would') are used to bint at an underlying uncertainty; complex sentence
structures mirror the impossibly complex situation of the airmen. Only
Orr's apparently simple situation is described in straigbtforward syntax:
'Orr was crazy and could be grounded.'
There are other linguistic devices bere of the kind wbicb we will be
introducing later, and wbicb are well-known to traditional rbetoric. We
encounter the repeated antithesis of 'crazy' and 'sane', and the paradox
wbich results; there are many examples of repetition, particularly of phrases
like 'fly more missions' .
Througb this necessarily brief analysis, we have sougbt to demonstrate
a variety of approacbes to rbetoric already detailed in this Introduction, and
to be spelt out in greater detail in the following cbapters. It sbould be clear
to the reader that we bave identified the Aristotelean structuring principles,
that we bave made use of the tools of modem linguistic analysis, and that
we bave alluded not only to the use of traditional rbetorical devices but also
to the dialogic structuring of persuasion described by Billig.
Part One
The Sources of Persuasion
1 Personality and Stance
PREFACE
In the Introduction we emphasised the social and interactional nature of

language, and its particular relevance to rhetoric. We have offered some
broad definitions of rhetoric, focusing in particular on the Aristotelian
'proofs', which are to play an important part in our study. Having placed
rhetoric in its historical context, we have also linked it with some recent
linguistic theories. In all this, our purpose is to provide accessible ways of
approaching rhetoric for everyone who has an interest in the subject.
In this chapter we shall examine ethos, focusing on what we regard as
its main components, personality and stance; we shall then consider how
these components function in persuasive practice.
The term ethos (a Greek loan word) has a contemporary usage quite
separate from our rhetorical context. Today we mean the set of values
held by an individual or a community, reflected in their language, social
attitudes, and behaviour. When Aristotle used the word in the context of
rhetoric, he meant the 'proof' brought about by the character or virtue
of the speaker (revealed in his speech). Thus modem usage represents
a broadening out of the term, and this sense is implicit in what we
mean by 'stance'. In our terms, stance signifies something inherently
interactive, reflecting group values, but decidedly subject to the persuader's
own control. Together with personality, it constitutes the major focus of
this chapter, and both are illustrated in a series of examples selected from
literary and functional persuasion.
Before explaining this distinction between personality and stance, we
need to refocus briefly on interaction. By whatever means speakers or
writers enhance their persuasive appeal- paralinguistic features (body lan-
guage, gesture, voice change) or graphological features (layout, graphics,
illustration) - its ultimate success will depend on their use of language. To
be effective, language must be appropriate to the subject of the discourse,
its context, and its audience. A favourable response is unlikely if the
persuader has not tuned in to the audience; and he or she will need to
maintain this sense of being tuned in to their likely attitudes and responses.
We might say that not only are speaker and audience interdependent in
the persuasive process, but they shape and are shaped by each other in a
reciprocal involvement
19
20 The Sources of Persuasion
What do we mean by 'audience'? The answer becomes clear if we look

at how an audience actually functions. From infancy onwards, the central
medium of communication is language, to which our response may be
positive, negative or indifferent. Later this response will be less subjective,
and more affected by our social experience and attitudes. More complex
responses will then appear: for example, we may be opposed to the message
but sympathetic to the speaker, or vice versa. As readers or listeners we can
be persuaded (against our better judgement) into agreeing with something
inherently opposed to our real views; or we can be persuaded to collude
with the speaker or writer. Manipulating the audience is, after all, a skill
learnt in childhood: then we were arguing for another ice cream; now
we might be persuading a friend to come out for the evening instead of
studying. In daily life we all play the orator and audience by turns. Rhetoric
is only a more consciously structured and focused form of manipulative
verbal interaction, which requires a particularly astute assessment of the
audience.
1. PERSONALITY
We shall now present a kind of cinematic view of the persuasive interac-

tion, periodically stopping the process and presenting a series of 'freeze
frames'. Our first set of frames offers us various shots of the persuader
in the act of launching his initial appeal to an audience. Imagine him,
in the pose of orator (or perhaps a man of letters, a political demagogue
- even a head teacher?). What specific features of gesture or expression,
what words frozen on the lips does the imagination pick out? Classical
descriptions 1 of the persuader include Isocrates' account of the man 'who
will speak rightly and act justly'; Quintilian's claim that 'no man can
be a good orator unless he is a good man'; and in sharp contrast,
Plato's unflattering description of the rhetorician as a 'speech-rigger'
(logodaedalos). (This view reflects the Idealist philosopher's suspicion
of the relativistic and pragmatic persuader.) Today we are more inclined
towards the Platonic rather than the Isocratean view of the persuader. This
may be because the concept of 'image' (a modern version of ethos) is at
once a powerful and a suspect force in our society. Personal image (speech,
dress, life-style), 'corporate identity' (company logo, house-style, ethos),
and political 'charisma' (voice, language, 'grooming', appearance) are all
too familiar. Equally familiar are the heroes of popular culture (footballers,
musicians and film stars) with their carefully cultivated 'images'. In the
private domain, because most of us know the falsity of our own 'public
Personality and Stance 21
image', we tend to view other people's 'images' with suspicion; but in

the public domain, national and international figures are highly image
conscious - and less self-critical.
It is hardly surprising that persuasive language frequently stresses
personality. Particularly in functional persuasion (advertising or political
argument, the language of law or religion) success is frequently bound
up with the way the persuader's personality comes across. Examples
abound; an obvious one would be selling a basic product like instant
coffee or stock cubes by associating it with an amusing figure (Paul
Eddington of 'Yes, Prime Minister') or a glamorous one (fashion model
Jerry Hall). Here we see 'personality' and 'status' completely unconnected
with the product doing the persuading. More practically, we all recognise
the importance of projecting ourselves and our personality in everyday
exchanges (such as teacher/pupil, doctor/patient, social worker/client,
shop assistant/customer).
To sum up: any interaction involving spoken or written persuasion will
inevitably start with the communication of personality or image, though
the persuader may subsequently modify it, as circumstance and audience
dictate.
2. STANCE
Aristotle's view of the orator's (or persuader's) personality has been

extended today as a result of the media explosion in the 'global village'.2
Our opening 'freeze-frame' of the orator still remains the initiating point
of the persuasive process. But what of the other side of the persuasive
interaction? We shall now look at a corresponding set of 'freeze-frames',
this time of the audience, as they respond with amusement, cynicism,
distrust or unqualified enthusiasm to the selected mode of persuasion.
Their initial response and ultimate assessment will be substantially affected
by what they recognise as the persuader's stance, not just by personality.
We might say to a friend (having heard their opinion on something); 'Well,
now I know where you stand!' This signifies that we have recognised their
position (or stance) and can either agree or disagree with it
So however impressive the personality of a persuader, his attitude or
stance (to himself, his audience and his subject) will be crucial. Stance can
be defined in a variety of ways, and an interesting study by Lynette Hunter,
Rhetorical Stance in Modem Literature,3 explores the subject extensively.
She argues that stance expresses not what someone believes but how he
or she believes it, and that this will be conveyed variously in relation to
topic and audience. A persuader's stance may be open or closed, firm or

indecisive, rigid or flexible. It may be highly structured and disciplined,
developing in a stage-by-stage process of interaction, like a game of chess;
or it may be unpredictable, disorganised, uncontrolled or even en tropic.
What is certain is that stance is dynamic and very much part of persuasion
as a process. Quintilian's Principle of Uncertainty (that there can be no
fixed rules governing success in persuasion)4 is relevant here. He stresses
the need for pragmatism, flexibility and adaptability in the use of persuasive
stance, whether in monologue or dialogue. Lynette Hunter (p. 14) takes
the specific example of political persuasion, and sees stance as crucial
in effecting a 'strategic connection' between individual and community.
She distinguishes between 'positive rhetoric' (which reveals value, as
the persuader's stance shifts or broadens in response to the audience);
and 'negative rhetoric' (which hides value and persuades from a single
viewpoint). She argues moreover that naivete towards stance, on the part
of an audience, results in something even worse: 'incomplete involvement.
lack of rigour and passivity, leading to submission to imposed strategies'.
Indeed, she asserts that 'the audience needs to assess stance, to determine
the strategy and partiCipate in the values revealed in the manner of its
mediation' (p. 64).
So bow is stance achieved? Someone might ask us: 'Where do you stand
in relation to this topic and this audience?' If this query does not provoke
our immediate response (reasoned or intuitive), we need to deliberate more
carefully on our stance, before seeking to persuade any audience on this
particular topic. We may feel justified in adopting an authoritative stance
in relation to our audience, refusing to yield a single point; or perhaps we
will choose to veil our stance in irony before the intended disclosure of our
real position. We might on the other hand adopt the kind of stance which
Lynette Hunter considers preferable, and interact openly with our audience,
indicating our initial position on any topic and the progress of any changes
in that position. We may even seek to project a consciously rhetorical
personality instrumental to our stance, such as Radical Questioner, Reviser,
Devil's Advocate, Mediator, Moderator, Gadfly - or anyone of a dozen
other roles. From this idea of 'projection' we can move easily to the next
question concerning stance in the persuasive process.
How is stance communicated? Billig would argue (p. 143) that the
choice of rhetorical language itself implies the existence of conflicting
views, and therefore explicitly signals a stance. For instance, if a military
force crosses your frontier uninvited, do you describe the situation in
positive or negative terms? Is it a 'liberation' or a 'rape'? It will depend
on your stance. Similarly, the communication of a persuader's attitudes
will represent their stance on any issue, whether political, religious or

ethical. Lynette Hunter also notes (p. 83 ff.) that the expression of stance
implies the involvement of the self. Hence the communication of stance to
an audience will signal the expression not only of subjectivity, but also
of intersubjectivity, as the audience responds to the persuader. We shall
explore the relationship of stance and self in the next section in more detail.
(a) The Persuader and the Self
Contemporary psychological, political and linguistic theory suggests that

the self is socially constructed and evolved. Michael Billig would go further
than this, and argues that the self is constructed as a result of dialogue and
dialectic. Another view (that of the Freudian critics Jacques Lacan and Julia
Kristeva)5 proposes that an awareness of subjectivity develops as soon as
the child becomes conscious of 'otherness'. Social identity begins with
entry into the symbolic world of language (and this might be described
as the very first use of rhetorical stance) because the language the child
acquires defines its position as 'subject'.
Whatever theory is adopted, the persuader's attitude to self will be a
key aspect of stance. Just 'being yourself' may not always be the best
way to start persuading an audience! Rather, you will need to apply a
combination of intuition and calculation to determine how much of your
'real self' should be revealed to others in the interaction. Your subsequent
strategy may be anything from confrontation to flattery. Having selected
what aspect of self to present, the persuader must also decide how much
ego and 'personality' to inject into his or her presentation. Whilst an
over-impersonal stance will seem chilly and bloodless, an 'ego-trip' or
flashy display of personality will be just as repellent Persuasion must
project vitality and intelligence, and as Walter Nash comments in his
recent book Rhetoric,6 'at the heart of all writing is calor cogitationis -
warmth of thought' (p. 212). It is this warmth, energy and exuberance
of personality which, appropriately channelled, will assist the persuader,
finding expression via changing mood and tone. These moods and tones
are an inseparable element in stance and its development; they involve
the expression of emotion, ranging from extremes of pity, rage or grief
to ironic humour. We shall discuss some of these now, in association with
ethos, rather than waiting till the next chapter on pathos.
(b) The Persuader as Humorist
Despite its occasional savagery, humour seems a good example of this

particular category of ethic feeling. It might suggest a detached, non-serious
stance; but since humour is a familiar defuser of tension, it may more

properly be seen as a signal of serious shared experience. Because it
conveys 'warmth of thought' as an indicator of stance, humour must also (if
it is to display real vitality) be an expression of the persuader's own person-
ality. Nash comments that '[in] rhetorical humour, as in all other aspects of
rhetoric, there is a compact, a presuppositional understanding, between the
beguiler and the beguiled' (p. 167). This 'compact' might be an agreement
to laugh with someone, or to laugh at someone; it might involve ironic self-
deprecation; or, less obviously, it might be a deliberately misleading 'com-
pact', a carefully prepared salutary shock. An audience might suddenly be
brought from laughing at others to the realisation that those 'others' resem-
ble themselves far too closely for comfort. The persuader might be laughing
at them, with the intention of jerking them out of complacency into self-
reappraisal. (The persuader's real stance can thus be rather different from
his assumed one - a breach of Grice's conversational 'maxim' of clarity
[see Introduction, above]). Conversely, there is the obvious danger that
humour might too readily beguile an audience into accepting unexamined
propositions. A more suspect use of humour from the perspective of ethos
is when a persuader adopts a stance towards an important person or issue
which uses stereotyping to deflect detailed examination.
We must conclude then, that in the context of stance, the persuasive
resource of humour requires responsible management
(c) Persuader and Topic
Another problem is posed by what we might term 'risk-taking'. This

concerns the topic of the persuasive discourse, and the persuader's stance
towards it Although inconsistency of argument is frequently encountered
in rhetorical exchanges (and is only a problem if anyone notices!), incon-
sistency of stance will expose the persuader to damaging accusations of
distortion or hypocrisy. An inability to face the demands of the topic
squarely will shed a glaring light on the would-be persuader. To be
successful, the persuader must anticipate a potentially negative response
from the a~dience, and deflect it Another risky way for the persuader to
cope with inconsistency of stance is to 'change sides', moving adroitly
from criticism to justification, or vice versa. Such a shift of position
might either be pre-planned, or a spontaneous reaction to the audience
(as described by Lynette Hunter) .. Nothing can be more persuasive to an
audience than the sense that, with the speaker, they are deeply involved
in the issue, responding honestly to its demands, and jointly reaching a
decision. Risk-taking can have its rewards!
We can now consider the next stage in this study of ethos in the per-
suasive process. We see another 'freeze-frame' of audience and persuader,
caught in a moment of vital interaction. What will the persuader do now?
Having adopted a stance, will he or she choose to maintain it throughout,
or make a sudden shift?
(d) Persuader and Audience
It should now be clear that an effective orator needs to be on his or her toes
all the time; as Cicero urged, he or she will require ingenium (creativity), as
well as animus (spirit or talent).? The only assumption he or she can make
is that the audience are at least willing to be persuaded. In the Introduction
we noted Austin's term perlocutionary, meaning the use of language to
change people's attitudes. Since changing attitudes lies at the heart of all
persuasion, we must seek to understand how this process works. Kenneth
Burke confinns the process in his definition of rhetoric as 'the use of words
by human agents to form attitudes (our italics) or to induce actions in other
human agents'.8 This is achieved when the persuader identifies with his
auditor, and 'talks his language by speech, tonality, order, image, attitude
and idea'. Burke's account tallies exactly with our view of persuasive
interaction.
Plainly, a two-way process occurs between the sender and the receiver of
a message. But what Burke describes above as a process of 'identification'
between persuader and audience may be more complex. Will the pattern
of mutual reflection and balance always be the same? If the person we are
seeking to persuade is at the same time seeking to persuade us to a different
viewpoint; or if we are addressing an audience which is adjudicating a
debate between two viewpoints, can there be any direct correspondence?
Gordon Wells in his essay 'Language and Interaction'9 offers a model
which may be of assistance.
In this essay, Wells is studying an example of mother-child interaction,
and the diagram overleaf is a more complex version of the Sender
> Message > Receiver communication model noted in the Introduc-
tion. It clearly demonstrates the crucial status and position of topic
in the relationship between persuader and persuadee. Topic provides
purpose and creates coherence. The diagram also shows how impor-
tant orientation is in relation to the immediate context of the mes-
sage as well as the audience's state of mind. The first necessity is
that the message should be understood within its context. In addition,
the persuader's orientation towards the audience (which we call stance)
will reffect his or her assumptions about that audience. Are we talking
SITUATION
FIELD OF INTER- } ~
_______ { SUBJECTIVE ATTENTION ~
~ DISCOURSE CONTEXT
SENDER • RECEIVER
~
~
~
;::
Construction of message
M
~
Meaning intention
Purpose - Topic - Attitude '"
Orientation ~
~
~
;::
$:)
Formal structure Formal structure '"5-
Lexis - Syntax - Intonation - Gesture Gesture - Intonation - Syntax - Lexis ;:s
Encoding/decoding
of message
Transmission Speech/Writing Reception

I I
down to them, pleading for their help and forbearance, or consulting them
as equals?
You will notice that the situations of Sender and Receiver in the diagram
are similarly patterned, except for an important reversal of overall direction.
Even so, a diagram can only represent in a rather drawn-out way what hap-
pens in a split second of discourse; and it is approximate in other respects.
As Wells is quick to point out (p. 64) 'it seems unlikely that su-ch a simple,
unidirectional model accurately describes what typically occurs' . Compare
the relatively straightforward attitude of the mother as Receiver (working
hard to understand her child's imperfect communication), with the selective
listening of a Receiver more interested in preparing to argue back. Yet more
problematic is the situation in which an audience is listening to a debate,
and is subject to the contradictory attempts by each persuader to 'talk their
language'.
We must remind ourselves that the most basic features of language
have an important part to play in persuasion: they lay the fouridations
of meaning and human contact. How can the persuader convey his
personality and stance most effectively to the persuadee? We will tum
to Halliday's theory of language function [see Introduction] to establish
some further criteria which the persuader must observe. First of all,
persuasion must fulfil the ideational function by using language directly
related to the audience's experience. At the same time the interpersonal
function (linking the sender and the receiver) should be clearly signalled,
perhaps through the frequent use of personal pronouns and modal verbs (I
would argue ... you will agree ... we should). The pronouns map out the
degrees of distance between persuader and persuadee and reflect changes in
that distance; and the use of modal verbs provides emphasis, conveying the
speaker's identification with the audience and respect for their judgement
Other grammatical features (such as verb tense, syntax, word order and
variation in sentence type) will lend textual cohesion and coherence to the
persuasion. The dialectic as modelled in Wells's diagram has now been
established.
3. PERSONALITY AND STANCE IN PRACTICE
(a) Functional Persuasion
All three extracts focus specifically on the ethos of the persuader, though
the audiences differ; and we will show how the two-way process of
persuasion works.
(i) Demosthenes
This extended extract (necessary to demonstrate the complex presentation
of ethos) is taken from a speech by the great Greek orator Demosthenes
to the Athenians threatened by Macedonian imperialism.to (Differences
between Greek and English in translation are unlikely to distort our
impression of Demosthenes' persuasive techniques.) An Athenian himself,
Demosthenes wishes to arouse the people to action; later in the speech
he will propose the financing of an expeditionary force against Philip of
Macedon, in which he will be a volunteer.
First, then, we must not be downhearted at the present situation, how-

ever regrettable it seems . .. The fact is that it is plain dereliction
of duty on our part which has brought us to this position . .. Why
mention this? To set this fact firmly before your minds, gentle-
men, that if you are awake, you have nothing to fear, if you
close your eyes, nothing to hope for. .. If... this country is
prepared to ... break with the past, if every man is ready to
take the post which his duty and his abilities demand in service
to the state, and set pretences aside. . . if we are prepared to
be ourselves, to abandon the hope to evade our duty and get
it done by our neighbours, we shall recover what is our own
with God's will, we shall regain what inertia has lost us, and we
shall inflict retribution upon Philip. You must not imagine that
he is a super-human being whose success is unalterably fixed.
He has enemies to hate, fear and envy him, even in places very
friendly to him. But now all this is beneath the surface. It has
nowhere to turn because of the slowness, the inactivity of Ath-
ens . .. When are we to act? What is to be the signal? When
compulsion drives, I suppose. Then what are we to say of the
present? In my view the greatest compulsion that can be laid on
free men is their shame at the circumstances in which they find
themselves ...
I have never elected to seek public favour by policies which I did
not believe expedient On this occasion too I have spoken simply and
bluntly without reservation . .. May the decision be one which will
prove best for us all.
Here the presentation of the orator's personality is that of a patriotic,

loyal and rational citizen, who wishes to take action to benefit his fellow
Athenians. Demosthenes is careful to identify with them, even when
attacking their inertia, and describes himself as a 'simple and blunt' man,
who is risking unpopularity for his plain speaking. How does Demosthenes'
choice of language communicate this? An obvious way of seeing how a
persuasive text presents the self is to examine the use of first, second,
and third person forms, whether in verbal inflexions or in pronouns. Just
prior to our extract he begins by frequently using '1', whilst he modestly
justifies speaking first. (He implies nevertheless that if they had listened to
him earlier, this speech would not have been necessary!). The sub-text is
'listen to me and take my advice, and the outcome will be favourable for
you' . More significant for the ultimate purpose of the speech (and reflective
of his stance) is Demosthenes' use of the first person plural pronouns and
adjectives. He immediately identifies himself with his audience: 'we must
not be downhearted ... our part ... our duty ... if we are prepared to be
ourselves . .. our neighbours ... we shall regain what inertia has lost us'.
This pattern continues till the final words: 'May the decision be one which
will prove best for us all'. Demosthenes' persuasion depends on standing
alongside his audience, recognising common problems and thereby urging
common action. Interestingly, he makes careful use of the second person
when he wishes to make a point strongly: 'if you are awake, you have
nothing to fear: if you close your eyes. .. You must not imagine that
[Philip] is a superhuman being ... ' And only when extreme language
is addressed to the Athenians does Demosthenes use the fully detached,
objective third person pronoun: 'their shame at the circumstances in which
they find themselves'.
Not only pronominal usage but also lexical choice can be used to convey
the orator's personality and stance, and although this is a translation
from Greek, we assume a reasonable semantic equivalence. Demosthenes
often chooses the vocabulary of casual conversation: 'I suppose ... '
'In my view ... ' etc. Then, by using modal verbs and subjunctives
to suggest potential action, Demosthenes presents himself to his audi-
ence in a friendly and positive way. Negative vocabulary reflects the
sorry state of affairs in Athens ('downhearted ... regrettable ... derelic-
tion of duty ... inactivity. .. shame') but is not damning since he so
wholeheartedly identifies with his fellow Athenians. Stirring words then
appear to counteract the negative tone and promise hope: 'best hope for
the future . . . awake . . . nothing to fear. .. recover again . . . inflict
retribution . . . '
In this oration Demosthenes needs to present his personality - and
arguments - in a highly positive light. He must also convey to the
Athenians a willingness to assume a stance alongside them. Even so,
he retains the option of ironic or authoritative detachment, as he sees
fit. With remarkable skill, the great Athenian orator manipulates ethos
to change the attitude and behaviour of his audience. For a discussion

of the logical organisation of this complex persuasive enterprise, see
Chapter 4.
(ii) Toshiba Advertisement

The visual impact of this advertisement is of major importance. Current in
the Summer of 1989,11 it was targeted at a business and finance-oriented
audience. The picture is of five men and three women: three men are
in business suits (one in late middle age, one in his late thirties, and
the other in his early twenties); two are in casual dress (ages about
twenty-five and thirty-five). The women are all young; one wears an
executive business suit, one jeans, one a neat sweater and skirt. All
are holding variants of the Toshiba portable computer. The photograph
parodies a family group, with the three seated figures relatively static:
two standing figures with arms extended, displaying the computer; and
the other three (respectively standing, perched, and lying down) all mak-
ing the thumbs-up sign. The picture conveys activity, liveliness and
good humour, balancing youthful enthusiasm and mature commitment.
Everyone is smiling! This 'family' seems to represent 'you' in the text
below, part of the 'First Family' of computers which 'we' (Toshiba)
produce:
A TYPICAL TOSHIBA USER NEEDS POWER, SPEED, PORTABILITY,

AND LOOKS LIKE THIS •••
We created the world's first, full line-up of powerful, portable
computers. Because we know from experience that every user has
different uses and needs. So we've designed models ranging from
notebook-sized laptops offering the maximum in portablity to power-
ful office portables that are a match for any desktop. Our super-
integrated technology makes it possible - giving you less weight,
more power, more speed and more choice. We call them the First
Family of Portables. And every one is as individual as you are. Call in
at your local Toshiba dealer and see which portable computer we've
designed for you.
Can a computer firm acquire personality and stance, and if so, how, and
why? Toshiba is choosing to present itself as a firm which takes a personal
interest in the individual needs of the computer user, and will provide
an appropriate range for all needs. By calling the range 'First Family
of Portables', Toshiba jokily recalls the American Presidential family; it
also personifies the computers, linking each with an individual 'member'
in the 'family group' photograph. Hence the company acquires an image

of good humour, status and personalised service, which is enhanced by
the text. The very first word is the personal pronoun 'We', occurring
four times; 'you' also appears nearer to the end, when all the necessary
information about the versatility of the range has been conveyed. 'You'
is actually the last word of the advertisement, because it is 'you' (the
persuadee) who will be initiating the purchase! Skilful pronominal man-
agement is used to create the desired effect, together with strongly positive
lexis: 'world's first full line-up of powerful, positive computers ... we
know from experience . .. maximum portability . .. powerful office port-
ables ... super-integrated technology . .. less weight, more power, more
speed, more choice . .. as individual as you are ... we've designed for
you: The final phrase expresses the relationship between consumer and
producer, and the orientation of the persuasion. All this (implies the
advertisement) is what we at Toshiba, your super-efficient, state-of-the-art,
friendly, good-humoured computer company has produced for you, our
interestingly individualised, perceptive and selective audience. The stance
is familiar, attentive, complimentary to the intelligence and vitality of the
customer, and it claiming equal merit and reciprocal respect. Everyone
feels happy - and the computers are sold.
The sentence structure is uncomplicated: the verb tense mostly simple
present, the verbs predominantly active and transitive and the imperative
(with tactful restraint) appears only twice in the last sentence. All the
Hallidayan functions (ideational, interpersonal and textual) are working
very nicely together in this piece of persuasive rhetoric. So are some
other devices from the persuasive repertoire, such as figurative imagery
(computers personified as a 'Family'), and the schematic devices of
repetition and accumulation, all discussed in Chapter 6. But the vast
majority of persuasive devices functioning in this text are focused on
personality and stance.
(iii) Parliamentary Language ('Unscripted')12

Mr Latham: While continuing to implement the policies which
have been approved by the electorate on three occasions, will my
Right Honourable Friend confirm that successful governments must
always be responding and listening to the real aspirations of the
people?
The Prime Minister: Yes. That is why under the ten-year-old
policies of Conservative governments we have created more wealth
than ever before, have spread it more widely than ever before, have
a higher standard of living than ever before, have higher standards
of social services than ever before, and have a higher reputation than
ever before. Yes, we have indeed been listening. I believe that these
are the real aspirations of the British people.
Although we might expect this oral answer to be unscripted, it plainly

isn't. The question has been set up in advance, to allow Mrs Thatcher
to list, in a highly structured way, the achievements of her government.
Although the pronoun 'we' appears only twice, it nevertheless exists as
the concealed subject of four other finite verbs ('have spread, have, have,
have'). The Prime Minister identifies herself strongly with her government
by using 'we' (though not everyone finds this 'royal' usage persuasive).
She is addressing the House of Commons where (at the time of writing)
the majority is heavily in favour of the Conservative party: it seems likely
that she is encouraging her supporters and defying the Labour opposition
by alleging substantial success in a number of areas. The personality of
the Government is, it appears, caring and public spirited, wealth-creating
and sharing, and worthy of international respect. The stance towards the
House, reflecting the stance towards the nation and the world, is one of
confident pride and implicit defiance. She anticipates both support and
hostility from her audience. As a consequence this is a particularly
interesting example of a speaker identifying positively and negatively
with her audience.
This polarity is reflected in the language. The Prime Minister
associates strongly positive lexis with her personality (implied) and
stance: 'created ... wealth ... standard of living ... standard of social
services. .. reputation ... real aspirations'. Significantly, she uses
comparative forms five times ( 'more' twice, 'higher' three times).
These are intended to deflate the opposition's potential arguments,
and at the end of every comparative clause, the phrase 'than ever
before' is repeated four times (antistrophe in traditional rhetoric). One
imagines the rising note of the Prime Minister's voice, pitched against
the hubbub of the opposition benches. Her language seems designed
simultaneously to goad and to overbear; it is powerfully interpersonal in
function.
In these discrete examples of jUnctional persuasion we made substantial
use of Halliday's theories of language function to demonstrate the com-
munication of personality and stance, and in particular the interpersonal
function. In the next set of examples of literary persuasion, we shall
encounter some different ways in which the author accommodates the
idea of personality, stance and audience (or reader response) within
a text.
(b) Literary Persuasion
The role of personality and stance in a literary text, where persuasion can
be hidden or overt, is quite complex. This is because, much more than in
functional persuasion, the narrative element is dominant The three main
literary genres (fiction, poetry and drama) all include narrative to some
degree. Recently, a number of important theories have been advanced about
the functions of narrative, some of which relate specifically to narrative dis-
course. Instead of focusing entirely on interaction and lexico-grammatical
realisations of language functions, we shall look at narrative discourse in
literature from a broader perspective.
Our particular purpose is to identify the characteristics of literary persua-
sion in relation to personality and stance. Here the relationship between the
teller, the tale and the audience is the key one. Weare indebted to Professor
Nash for letting us use his diagram (Rhetoric, p. 3) slightly modified. It
presents very clearly the 'outer' and 'inner' relationships between author,
text and reader, which seem to characterise literary texts.
POET I - - - - - - imagined - - - - - imagined - - - - - ~ Reader I

NOVELIST speaker addressee listener
f-----------~
inner relationship
f----------------------~
Outer relationship
The actual structure and ordering of literary narrative will be discussed

in Chapter 5; in this chapter (because of our chosen focus on personality
and stance) we shall concentrate on the wayan author presents characters
within the narrative. Michael Toolan's assertion 13 that 'to narrate is to
make a bid for a kind of power' is important in this context As a narrative
progresses, the narrator gains the reader's 'trust' and becomes a source of
authority and powerful persuasion. This can produce an unevenly balanced
relationship between author and reader: the narrator may be 'in' his own
story (e.g. David Copperfield), but may also invite the reader to share
an ironic perspective. Again, the reader may be given space to fill in the
textual interstices (especially in a fiction like Tristram Shandy where the
reader seems to have more power than the author himself). So the balance
of power between author and reader can be variable, and even deliberately
asymmetric.
We shall now turn to our literary examples, anticipating that the features
associated with ethos in functional persuasion will reappear, modified

however by the narrative context
(i) From Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice 14

In this extract the arrogant Mr. Darcy, having (against his better judgment)
fallen in love with the witty, beautiful but socially inferior Elizabeth
Bennett, makes her a proposal of marriage.
He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up walked about the
room. Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word. After a silence of
several minutes he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus
began,
'In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be
repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and
love you.'
Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, col-
oured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encour-
agement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her,
immediately followed. He spoke well, but there were feelings besides
those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the
subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority - of
its being a degradation - of the family obstacles which judgement
had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth
which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was
very unlikely to recommend his suit
In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to
the compliment of such a man's affection, and though her intentions
did not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was
to receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she
lost all compassion in anger.
The very title of the novel suggests the author/narrator's complex ironic
stance; this particular passage neatly reflects 'pride' and 'prejudice'. Mr.
Darcy's reported discourse consists of one short speech, while the rest
of the quoted passage is in third person narrative, mainly in the voice
of Elizabeth Bennett, whose response ranges from speechless amazement
to extreme anger. What is interesting is the way in which Jane Austen
manipulates her 'voice'. Sometimes her reported thoughts are heard via
internal monologue; at other times Austen will take over the narration,
providing ironic distance for the reader: ' ... roused to resentment by his
subsequent language, she lost all compassion in anger.'
Persuasion lies at the heart of this passage, and the role of personality and
stance is central. Mr. Darcy is the initial persuader: his self-presentation,
however, demonstrates someone who is uneasy with himself and his
situation, indicated by his physical restlessness and lack of linguistic con-
fidence. When fie does speak, it is 'in an agitated manner', and the lexis of
his proposal reflects this disturbance: 'in vain ... struggled ... will not
do ... will not be repressed'; this tone is only partially counterbalanced
by the final noun clause: 'how ardently I admire and love you'. Mr. Darcy's
serious failures in understanding are conveyed by his maladroit language,
and his offensive assumption that Elizabeth will sympathise with his desire
to 'repress' his feelings. The reader, guided by the author in the 'outer'
relationship described above, expects him to fail in his persuasion; he
does so because he has failed to identify with his 'audience'. Darcy's
preoccupation is with himself: and because he is at odds with himself,
ruled by the contradictory emotions of pride and love, his stance is a
failure. Not only is he unable to identify imaginatively with Elizabeth, but
he even destroys (at least temporarily) the chance of dialogue with her, by
rendering her silent!
In this abortive 'exchange', Darcy's failure as a persuader is directly
linked with the failure of personality and stance. His 'ardent' love is
vitiated by cold arrogance, his candour by insensitivity. Austen conveys
this not only by associating him with negative lexis ('inferiority' ,'family
obstacles', degradation'), but also by using oppositional structures. For
example, in paragraph 3 we note that 'tenderness' is balanced by 'pride',
and 'judgement' by 'inclination'. These oppositions suggest Darcy's emo-
tional confusion, as he risks 'wounding' his 'consequence'. This lexical
pattern is continued in paragraph 4, where Elizabeth's 'deeply rooted
dislike' is contrasted with her sense of 'the compliment of such a man's
affections'. Her emotions, however, gradually change as she moves from
being 'sorry for the pain he was to receive' to 'resentment' and 'anger'.
It might be rewarding to analyse the syntactic as well as the lexical
structures in the passage: but at this stage it is enough to have identified
the reasons for Darcy's failure. Jane Austen has also convinced us to adopt
her view of the exchange; in theory we are free to dissent, but in practice
we are more likely to assent not only to Austen's ironic stance, but also to
Elizabeth's angry and alienated one.
(ii) From Robert Browning, 'My Last Duchess'. IS

This is an extract from a poetic monologue, in which the Duke addresses
an envoy from his future wife's father. The Duke has just drawn the
ambassador's attention to a portrait of his first Duchess, and as he
describes her, it becomes clear to the reader that the Duchess's death
was not a natural one.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace - all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least She thanked men, - good!
but thanked
Somehow - I know not how - as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech - (which I have not) - to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
'Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
'Or there exceed the mark' - and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
- E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt
When'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.
This is a poem about the murder, by an inordinately proud, jealous

and all-powerful husband, of the wife who angered him by her simple
graciousness to all and sundry. The Duke effectively condemns himself
as the reader (if not his actual audience, the ambassador) begins to realise
what has happened. Yet the murder is never quite explicit. It is only our
reading of the poem which suggests the substance of those ·commands'.
How is the passage to be seen as persuasion? The Duke offers no
overt persuasion - he simply assumes that the ambassador will not only
sympathise with him, but will admire his resolute action. More significant
is Browning's persuasion of his readers, through the mounting evidence
in the text, that the Duke is a madman, driven insane by his pride and
egoism. By filling in the interstices in the text, the audience reaches
this fearsome conclusion. Unlike the Austen passage, the readers in this
text are more active in their 'outer' relationship with the text than is the
faceless ambassador in his ' inner' relationship (inside the text) with the
Duke.
Browning achieves this by his brilliant manipulation of personality and
stance in the presentation of the Duke, using the format of dramatic
monologue, with all its complexities. Browning evidently relishes the
challenge of recreating spoken discourse, showing remarkable skill in
handling the 'voice' of the Duke, to persuade the reader of his insanity.
In order to communicate personality, Browning uses appropriate lexis
to show the Duke's frightening arrogance and anger: the Duke refers to
'my favour . .. my gift of a nine-hundred years old name'; asks 'who'd
stoop ... 1'; refers to his 'disgust'; and at last says chillingly 'I gave
commands.' Stance is conveyed indirectly; as the Duke recalls disdainfully
what trivial pleasures delighted his wife (the 'dropping of the daylight in the
West' or 'a bough of cherries'), the reader is attracted by what disgusts him.
Our stance is a thousand miles from his. Furthermore, his disintegrating
reason is reflected in the increasingly complex syntax; his eloquent use of
rhetorical questions serves only to demonstrate his total separation from
common humanity.
In this poem we see a different use of personality and stance, with
the reader/audience playing an unusually active part in the persuasive
interaction. This reveals Browning's complex manipulation of persuasive
stance. What dominates the poem is the figure of the Duke and above all,
his voice. The irony of the whole poem is that Browning uses the Duke's
eloquence to seek to persuade us, not of the justness of his actions, but of
his criminal insanity.
(iii) From 1. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye 16

This is the opening of a novel about a troubled adolescent boy from the
East Coast prep-school culture in America:
If you really want to hear about it. the first thing you'll probably
want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood
was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had
me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like
going into it. In the first place, the stuff bores me, and in the second
place, my parents would have about two haemorrhages apiece if I
told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about
anything like that. especially my father. They're nice and all - I'm
not saying that - but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not
going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll
just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last
Christmas before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and
take it easy.
The entire narrative is in the first person; not surprisingly, the personality
and stance of Holden Caulfield constitute the central interest of the novel.
What is appealing about Holden is his fragile sense of self, his refusal to
conform to meaningless rules, and his hatred of 'phonies'. The narrative is
addressed as if to a sympathetic listening friend, though the age group of
the audience is not entirely clear.
The author has the difficult task of writing as if he were a seventeen
year old boy, who is 'good at English'. He also has to narrate events,
indicate Holden's psychological turmoil, and provide a fresh penetrating
critique of American society and its hypocrisies. In this world of adult
corruption Holden is the innocent abroad, who despite flunking out of
school and being a 'terrible liar' is a more loving and generous person
than the people who condemn him.
In the opening paragraph Salinger has to persuade us to be interested
in Holden, to like him, to sympathise with him, to find him amusing,
and (most importantly) to identify with him. Does Salinger succeed?
Before deciding that, we should look at the ways in which personality
and stance are communicated. Holden's stance is guarded: he's only
going to tell us what he chooses, and he refuses to say much about
his parents. At the same time he trusts his listener enough to reveal
his pent-up nervousness, conveyed by the tentativeness of the opening
conditional clause. It is a very long sentence, but most of it tumbles out
in a continuous stream of co-ordinating clauses ('and ... and ... but').
As Holden gains confidence in his narrative stance, he uses progressively
fewer complex sentence structures, and the conditional tense changes
to a more definite future: 'I'll just tell you.' His stance towards the
listening audience (for the readers are consistently addressed as if they
were listeners) becomes more personal and confiding as he explains
about his parents. Like the Ancient Mariner, he has succeeded both in
gaining the audience's attention, and also in persuading them to identify
with him.
Is this achieved just by the sentence structure and syntactic variation
already noted? It is perhaps also due to the disarming adolescent slang
(for which Salinger plainly has an excellent ear) which signals Hold-
en's rebellion. He talks about his 'lousy childhood' and 'all that David
Copperfield kind of crap', exaggeratedly alleging 'my parents would have
about two haemorrhages apiece ... touchy as hell ... my whole goddam
autobiography'. The effect of this hyperbole (see Chapter 6) together with
the colloquial usage, is to persuade the audience of two things: his honesty
and his vulnerability.
It also locates Holden's stance far closer to his listening audience than
his 'touchy' parents. His vulnerability is also conveyed by the repetition
of conversational fillers, indicating uncertainty (' ... and all ... and
all ... or anything'), as well as defensive parenthesis ('- I'm not saying
that -'). This opening paragraph also provides clear illustration of the
Hallidayan interpersonal language function, crucial to the whole novel;
note that the second word is 'you'. By the end of this paragraph the
readerl'listener' is persuaded to a relationship of sympathy and interest
with Holden, achieved by Salinger's skilful handling of ethos.
In the examples above, we have demonstrated some of the resources of
personality and stance available to the speaker and writer when seeking to
persuade. In Chapter 2 we shall look at the ways emotional engagement
(pathos) is used to enhance and strengthen persuasion.
2 Emotional Engagement
PREFACE: MAKING EMOTION WORK
The fact that speakers and writers deliberately play on the emotions of
their audiences cannot be escaped. This has not only produced a traditional
distrust of rhetoric, but also associated it with insincerity, irrationality
and rabble-rousing. Yet it would be odd if people seeking to persuade
did not appeal to the audience's emotions! How we feel about an issue
relates to our understanding of it, though we should also bear in mind
the perspectives of ethos and logos. As we all know from experience,
conveying emotion can present difficulties in interaction with people whose
ideas and feelings seem alien to our own. Conversely, we know how easy it
is to communicate emotion to those we are in sympathy with. This familiar
experience provides a starting-point for our discussion.
In this chapter we shall build on our discoveries about personality and
stance in persuasion, as we consider the achievement of effective emotional
engagement or pathos. We shall discuss this as a two-stage process, using
our 'freeze-frame' technique to isolate each stage. Firstly, before emotion
can be communicated by a persuader, there must be an appropriate orienta-
tion between persuader, topic and audience. (This already assumes that an
appropriate persuasive stance has been adopted.) Secondly there must be an
actualisation of emotion. This refers to the persuader's need to arouse in an
audience emotions of appropriate intensity, clarity and sharpness of focus,
which we shall demonstrate shortly. We shall show how these aspects
of emotional engagement are interdependent, using brief examples from
functional and literary persuasion. We shall conclude by demonstrating at
greater length a range of successful 'emotional engagement' .
1. EMOTION: UNIVERSAL AND CONTINGENT
What is 'emotion', and how do we barness and set it to work in our persua-
sion? How, indeed, can we reacb a practical understanding of something
we all recognise but find hard to define? Undoubtedly emotion is the 'raw
material' of rhetoric, because without real (or simulated) emotion, effective
persuasion is unlikely to take place, whatever the issue involved. Below
40
Emotional EngagemenJ 41
we list some of our most frequently experienced emotions: anger, pity,

pride, shame, love, hate, hope, fear, envy, greed, aggression, emulation,
vengefulness, indignation, scorn, admiration, jealousy, generosity ... the
list is endless. All emotion, to a greater or lesser extent, is socially
conditioned, and when out of control can be threatening to society as
well as the individual. This is probably as true of UNIVERSAL emotions
(our term) like joy, sorrow, hope and fear, as of socially constructed
emotions like acquisitiveness, aggression, vengefulness and shame. We
describe these as CONTINGENT emotions, making this distinction to suggest
a continuum between emotions common to humanity in general, and those
emotions which specifically reflect individual cultures and value systems.
From the viewpoint of rhetoric, all these emotions contain an implicit
element of 'binary opposition', such as love/hate: courage/fear: joy / grief.
These oppositions actually repeat and reflect the dialogic structure
(logos/anti-logos), described by Billig as 'central' to all persuasive
rhetoric (see Introduction). Thus we can see how important emotion
is to rhetoric in structural terms. Within any social context this binary
or dialogic tension will, however, be modified by cultural norms, which
are primarily designed to reinforce positive emotions. For instance, the
celebration of Christmas is associated with positive emotions (even in
our secular society); anyone who experiences the 'opposite' emotions of
misery or hatred at this time may well feel a complete social outcast
Another way of describing 'universal' emotion is to define it as a
response to major life experiences such as birth, death, love, or religious
conversion (though to some extent these emotions will be affected by
gender and ideology). We might, however, look at a specifically socially
constructed or 'contingent' emotion, generosity. (Its original meaning 'of
noble birth': Lat. generositatem is lost today; but oddly enough in certain
contexts this source is recalled, if the emotion is linked with a rather lordly
condescension). In Anglo-Saxon society 'generosity' expressed the instit-
utionalised bond between lord and thane, whereby the sharing of wealth
meant mutual loyalty and commitment; for us this social aspect has gone,
and the emotion suggests the warmth and self-giving of an individual.
It would appear that social history may be relevant when assessing the
function of emotion (universal or contingent) in any persuasive text. We
cannot assume however that a modem audience can reproduce the same
emotional response to a text as its first auditors. It will depend not only
on the nature of that society, but also on the status of emotion within it
For example, in eighteenth-century England, because Augustan culture
appealed pre-eminently to reason, the more imaginative forms of emotion
and emotional expression were suspect. In contrast, the Romantic period
tended to exalt emotion as valuable in its own right In the context of

persuasion, the relative status of logos and pathos differed significantly in
the Augustan and Romantic periods. For the Augustans, reason and order
would be applied to an argument, and then emotion called in to reinforce it
The Romantics, on the other hand, might well engage with an issue directly
through emotion. This is vividly illustrated in a stanza from Keats's 'Ode
on Melancholy' .1
The poet is advising on ways of coping with this characteristic 'Roman-
tic' emotion:
But when the melancholy fit shall fall

Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Imprison her soft band, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
Through the identification and expression of the emotion of melancholy,

and by exploring the oppositions of pain and pleasure, Keats gives us a
powerful experience of the emotion itself; we shall see how he actualises
the emotion later. The poem appeals to us today, just as it might have done
to bis friends in 1819. Is this because the poem conveys universal rather
than contingent emotion?
We must now address ourselves to the question of the cultural status
of emotion in our society today, especially in relation to persuasion.
In the texts to be discussed shortly, we show that emotion does have
substantial cultural status today; our working distinction between universal
and contingent emotion is also helpful. Both operate within functional and
literary persuasion, and both are integral to the persuasive process, though
subordinate to other language functions.
Professor Nash argues for an exclusive attention to the 'universal' or
'empathetic' emotions, because they provide the only reliable means of
emotive persuasion (Rhetoric, p. 31). He sees them as most at home in
literary persuasion or other formal discourse, such as a speech by Lincoln,
or a Pauline Epistle. Where contemporary culture is concerned, however,
he suggests that the rhetoric of-advertising draws on, but ultimately debases
imagery associated with 'universal' emotions (ibid p. 31). We shall argue
Emotional Engagement 43
that functional and literary persuasion deserve equal attention because we

see in the former not so much debasement of the universal emotions as
legitimate arousal of contingent emotion. It would seem quite appropriate
to appeal via advertising to people's desire to have a comfortable home or
an enjoyable holiday, for example.
2. EMOTION AND PREJUDICE
It should now be clear that our emotional engagement with any topic,
occasion and audience is culturally conditioned. But if we wish to persuade,
not only will our use of emotion demonstrate how skilfully we can handle
the audience's emotional responses, but it will also reveal our personal
prejudices. By whatever means emotion is conveyed to an audience, it is
experienced first by the persuader; and this is where prejudice is located.
Matching the prejudices of the persuader, however, are those prejudices
both individual and collective which characterise the audience.
How important is the link between prejudice and emotional engagement?
Unlike bias, which implies a disposition to adopt a particular attitude (but
remains open to argument), prejudice tends to shut the door on argument
and relies on established emotional associations. Coping with our own and
other people's prejudices can be a disconcerting experience, because we
are emotionally as well as rationally involved. An example of this would
be a casual remark from a friend expressing a prejudice we partly share.
We have several responses to choose from. Do we just go along with it,
not bothering to argue? Do we try to go one better, exaggerating our
agreement? Or do we pause to think out how we really feel, having
recognised our own prejudices in someone else!
Activating prejudice and emotion in the audience is a prime considera-
tion for any persuader in the public domain. It must be noted, however,
that the most effective persuasion is not achieved simply by appealing to
prejudice, but by revealing alternative viewpoints, inviting reassessment,
and thus enabling the audience to respond with real conviction. The emo-
tional instrument of prejudice is always lying ready to hand; but another
option is equally available to the persuader. He or she can convince an
audience to make a decision based on understanding as well as emotion.
3. THE ORIENTATION OF EMOTION
The concept of persuasion as an interactive process has already been dis-

cussed in some detail. We shall now return to the 'Sender-Receiver' model
(explored in Chapter I), this time to investigate a further important aspect

of emotional engagement, the orientation of a persuasive text. According
to the developed form of this well-known Formalist model, every message
communicated between sender and receiver involves three further elements
in addition to those already mentioned: contact (psychological or physical),
context (recognised by both) and code (means of expression).2
context
message
sender - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - receiver
contact
code
Depending on the emphasis of the message, its orientation and function

will be focused on one of these elements, as we saw in the Introduction.
How helpful is this model in our understanding of the role of emotion
in persuasion? By definition, all persuasive language is conative, since
it is oriented to the audience; and our diagram below may be helpful in
illustrating what we call a hierarchy of function in the persuasive process.
Phatic-- - ~
Emotive - - - ~
Metalingual - ~ - ~ Conative
Referential- - ~
Poetic - - - ~
Persuasion involves the sender as well as the receiver, so the emotive

function is vital; and because persuasion must have a topic, the referential
function is equally important (the other fWlctions will be examined later).
The balance of emotive and referential function can vary, depending on
whether the audience is required simply to agree with the persuader, or
to take real action. Demosthenes (see Chapter 1) wanted both from his
Athenian audience; if they accepted his arguments, they would be preparing
an immediate task force against Philip of Macedon!
We can now see that the role of emotion/emotional engagement in per-
suasion is complex. This concept of orientation should prove its usefulness
when we look in detail at some more examples of persuasion.
4. ACTUALISATION
(a) Graphic Vividness
Our next question is how exactly does the persuader use emotion to move
his audience? Quintilian's3 term enargia ('clarity' or 'vividness' in Greek) 4
is helpful in this context Enargia describes the quality lent to rhetoric by
the imaginative and emotional engagement of persuader and topic. (Mter
all, before we can move others to emotion we should feel it ourselves!)
According to Quintilian this desirable effect is achieved by using the
imagination (Greek fantasia) to picture circumstances or occasions in
which emotion is inherent This will involve the use of graphic language
(appealing directly to the senses) to recreate a scene vividly for the
audience, thus arousing their emotions. Quintilian's own illustration of
this is vivid, if gruesome (lnst. Orat. VI.ii.31):
I am complaining that a man has been murdered. Shall I not bring

before my eyes all the circumstances which it is reasonable to
imagine must have occurred . . . ? Shall I not see the assassin burst
suddenly from his hiding place, the victim tremble, cry for help, beg
for mercy, or turn to run? Shall I not see the fatal blow delivered
and the stricken body fall? Will not the blood, the deathly pallor,
the groan of agony, the death-rattle, be indelibly impressed upon my
mind?
It would be hard not to respond with horror to this powerful example of

the actualisation of emotion.
(b) Emotive Abstraction
In public oratory abstract concepts with strongly positive or negative

connotations are frequently used, like 'liberty', 'justice', 'dishonour' or
'tyranny'. These words reflect communal experience and common aspi-
ration, and when skilfully managed in an appropriate context, will arouse
powerful emotions in an audience. In a different idiom and context,
colloquial lexis can produce similarly powerful effects; 'liberty' is 'not
being tied down', justice is 'being fair' etc.
(c) Communication
So Quintilian's rhetorician must either feel (or imagine he feels) the emo-
tion he wishes to arouse in his audience, achieving this by using graphic
and abstract lexis as well as figurative language, or any combination

of the above. But be cannot assume that bis actualisation of emotion
will necessarily persuade bis audience; be may equally cbarm or repel,
amuse, enrage, or simply bore them. Tbe vital connection depends on
the persuader's ability to predict their likely emotional response and
willingness to engage with bis or ber persuasion. Interestingly, this further
confirms our point about the social context of emotion - wbat deeply affects
one society may leave another age unmoved.
Despite these provisos, the persuader must use actualisation (grapbic
or abstract) wben arousing and exploiting emotion, wbether the emotion
is universal or contingent, tragic or trivial. As we would expect, certain
features of structure and style will be integral to this process. Professor
Nasb demonstrates convincingly bow the arousal of feeling involves the
use of argument and repetition (pp. 29-53); and it is througb these means,
together with associated stylistic patterns sucb as antithesis and rbythmic
structures, that a powerful emotional interaction is establisbed between
persuader and audience. (These will be treated in detail in Cbapter 6; the
older categories of emotive 'amplification' will be described in Appendix
B.) We sball now look briefly at two illustrations of the actualisation of
emotion, one in literary and one in functional persuasion.
(d) Actualisation in Literary Persuasion
We bave already seen the powerful actualisation of universal emotion in

Keats's 'Ode on Melancboly'. Looking back, we will see that this was
acbieved througb a combination of sensory and suggestive imagery and
lexis ('soft band' ... 'ricb anger'). Now consider bow Edgar Allan Poe
actualises the emotion of terror in bis famous sbort story, 'The Pit and the
Pendulum' . Here Poe graphically describes the situation of a prisoner of the
Spanisb Inquisition, lying in the inexorable path of a scythe-like pendulum,
bound band and foot. 5
Down - steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrast-

ing its downward with its lateral velocity. To the rigbt - to the left-
far and wide with the shriek of a damned spirit; to my beart with the
stealthy pace of the tiger! I alternately laugbed and bowled as the one
or the other idea grew predominant ...
. . . Down - certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three
incbes of my bosom! I struggled violently, furiously, to free my left
arm. Tbis was free only from the elbow to the hand. .. Could I
have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and
attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have attempted to

arrest an avalanche!
Poe intends to arouse fear and horror, with suspense literally wound to
screaming pitch. Graphic actualisation is achieved not only by visual
description, but also by creating an imagined sensation of mounting
physical tension in the reader, who experiences vicariously the imminent
agony of the spread-eagled prisoner. Poe also actualises emotion via sound,
comparing the noise of the massive blade to the 'shriek of a damned
spirit', and he repeats certain significant words ('down', 'arrest') as well
as skilfully stressing contrasts between lateral and vertical movement.
laughter and terror, the solid steel of the pendulum and the prisoner's
fragile flesh. All make their contribution to Poe's successful actualisation
of terror.
(e) Actualisation in Functional Persuasion
Similar devices appear in functional persuasion, though often conveying

very different emotions. One such contingent emotion is pleasure in food,
illustrated by an extract from a journalist's assessment of an Indian
restaurant 6
Vegetables are fresh, spicing well judged, and ingredients imagina-

tively varied. Sauces are nut-thickened, sometimes cream-enriched,
always different one from the other. Deep-fried delicacies such
as samosas and bel-puris are blessedly grease-free. Confirmed
aubergine-haters have been won over for life by the baingan bhartha
- crushed aubergines mixed with yoghurt, tomatoes, cashews, garlic,
fresh coriander and other aromatics. Similarly, the stir-fried mixed
vegetables in a gingery sour-sweet sauce have nothing whatever to
do with the travesties perpetrated elsewhere under the label "mixed
vegetable curry" or sweet-and sour anything.
At first this seems a straightforward report; the lexis mixes familiar

and exotic words, just as the flavours and ingredients of the food are
blended and contrasted. But there are also other devices to persuade
us of the particular excellence of the restaurant; indeed, each sentence
suggests contrasting emotions. (Do you love or hate aubergines? Mter
visiting this restaurant you'll love them!) Pleasure and disgust, prejudice
and enlightenment are manipulated to contrast this restaurant with less
successful ones. The adverb 'blessedly' even implies a link between eating
in this restaurant and a heavenly experience.
From these examples of literary and functional persuasion, we can
now deduce that (even where quite differing emotions are involved),
certain characteristic techniques tend to be employed by a persuader in
the actualisation of emotion.
5. ORIENTATION AND ENGAGEMENT
As we have just seen, the process of actualising emotion is neither simple

nor straightforward; nor, as we shall now see, is the orientation of emotion.
We have already seen that orientation suggests the dominant direction of
a message, and its consequent effect on language function. 'Emotive'
orientation, though located primarily with the sender, is nevertheless a
constant in every persuasive interaction (as linguistic theory and traditional
rhetoric confirm). Despite this however, emotion will be subject to vari-
ation, refracting and changing in relation to persuader and audience. Just
as a laser works in a two-way process, so emotional engagement reflects
the emotions on both sides of the persuasive interaction - and as a result,
we can observe the heightening of emotion in persuader and audience.
Managing the force of this emotional charge, and deciding how to aim,
focus and intensify its energy, will be a daunting task for the persuader.
As we saw earlier, orientation also involves phatic, metalingual and
poetic language functions. We shall see if these also work in the persuasive
interaction.
(a) Orientation and Phatic, Metalingual and Poetic Language:

an Example
We have selected an example of functional persuasion in order to examine

the proposition. It comes from a theatrical review by Jeffrey Wainright: 7
SHODDY PAINTWORK
When my father painted the parlour he used to use "wallop". It came

in large tins, he slopped some water into it, stirred it heftily and with
the largest available brush, walloped it on. The result was quick,
serviceable and covered cracks. Sue Townsend's Ten Fingers Nine
Tiny Toes, directed by Carole Hayman, is theatrical wallop, except
that it dispenses with anything so painstaking as a brush and leaves
chasms in its own argument. .
The meta lingual function of the second sentence, oriented towards code,
is obvious, as Wainwright expounds his amusing opening metaphor: 'Sue
Townsend's Ten Fingers . .. is theatrical wallop'. Though the prime func-
tion of the review is conative, he deliberately emphasises the meta lingual
orientation here, showing how the metaphor 'wallop' functions to convey
his meaning. There is also a phatic orientation here, though admittedly it
only works if the reader happens to recall the Music Hall song 'When
Father painted the parlour/You couldn't see Pa for paint ... '! If you
do, it establishes a shared contact and 'sing-along' camaraderie between
reviewer and reader. In turn this assists emotive orientation, conveying
to the reader Wainwright's sense of the comic clumsiness of the play and
its frenetic self-importance. Even a poetic orientation might be detected
here, Wainwright amusingly recalling the rhytbmicality of his father's
painting as he 'slopped ... stirred ... and with the largest available
brush, walloped it on' .
(b) The Emotional Laser
Pursuing further the analogy of the laser in relation to emotional engage-

ment, we can see from the example above how the various language
functions interweave in a persuasive interaction. The main value of the
laser analogy lies in the way it suggests both the strength of emotion, and
its potential for transformation.
We must stress that the analogy is approximate. Just as the progressive
build-up of energy in a laser-tube depends on the exact alignment of
the mirrors at each end; so the emotional charge of the persuasion
depends on the persuader's skill in aligning the image of his or her
personality and stance, with the image of his or her audience. This
'alignment' has been mentioned before, but the laser analogy does seem
to add something new, in that it develops the simple idea of 'reflec-
tion' (between persuader and audience) into something more emotion-
ally charged and energised. In these circumstances, anything that moves
the persuader will move the audience. Thus an emotive image will
function like the electric current within the laser, building up an oscil-
lating 'light energy' of emotion. (This may even explain why highly
charged emotion works in polarities, especially in poetry - see 'Ode to
Melancholy').
Other dimensions of the laser analogy might include the way the audi-
ence is affected by the emotional charge, and fuelled by the new energy,
possibly changing their perception of the persuader. Even the emotional
force itself might change or develop, especially if action is likely to result
In other words, emotion might function conatively, emotively (by being

referred back to the persuader) or even referentially.
Nevertheless, however intense the emotional discharge and however
real the change it might effect, it must still operate within an everyday
context of ideas and feelings accessible to everyone. And this is where
we must pause, before moving into analysis of texts in terms of emotional
engagement
6. WORKING WITH BIAS AND EMOTION
The question of prejudice has been considered, but we have not mentioned
the effects of ideology in the persuasive interaction. On the whole the word
'prejudice' has negative connotations; 'ideology', however, has broadened
from its Marxist origins 8 to become a general term for the attitudes, habits
of mind and emotions which govern us all. Our ideology tends to incline,
'weight' or bias us (at least initially) in one particular direction. Bias is
neither 'good' nor 'bad'; it can equally well represent our inclination
towards imaginative, humane and socially responsible behaviour, or signify
attitudes likely to result in anti-social behaviour. Bias is most clearly seen
in our use of language; in a persuasive intemction it will affect the conative
orientation (to the audience), and the referential nature of the persuasive
message. Most of all, however, it will be reflected in the emotional
engagement Without a degree of shared bias between persuader and
audience, there can be virtually no communication (in emotional or any
other terms). Certainly the 'laser' effect will not materialise.
Yet, recollecting our knowledge of the dialectical nature of persuasion,
we can see that bias is open to change both in persuader and audience. Most
of us entertain some contradictory feelings even at our most biased; these
may unexpectedly rise to the surface in certain circumstances, becoming
temporarily or permanently predominant. Exaggerated bias in a persuader's
arguments may produce these subversive feelings, and actually reverse the
polarity of our emotional engagement. A persuader needs to avoid produc-
ing this undesired response, which we may term 'reverse bias', through
careful anticipation. However, this conscious limitation of our emotional
engagement could hardly be described as dialectical. In marked contrast,
there is a genuinely dialogic rhetoric which openly anticipates objections
based on bias, and seeks to energize and transform the audience's 'reverse
bias' into a dialectic of reason and emotion. Through this 'dialectic of emo-
tion' the persuader can use emotional polarities to maintain or subvert bias.
Certain specific emotions may be associated with a dominant ideology, and
hence with bias. 'Hope' in a capitalist society has different economic and
social connotations from those it would have in a model Marxist society.
Similarly 'love' may connote non-institutionalised sexuality, or sexuality
within marriage, depending on the individual's perspective. Any persuader
who has to work across an ideological divide will need to confront and
reverse such connotations, harnessing their emotive power in- an opposite
direction. A more trivial example might be an argument between friends
about which film to see. Each will seek to reverse the other's bias (rational
andoemotional) in favour of their own choice.
To sum up then; orientation has been described as the focusing mode
in any interactional situation. In the persuasive interaction the orientation
effectively selects, organises and focuses emotion within the central dialec-
tic. This emotional engagement is always oriented to sender or persuader
(since unfelt emotion cannot persuade), and at the same time oriented to
receiver or audience (because persuasion is void without an intended effect
on the persuadee). And this is not all. Persuasion deploys all the language
functions involved in interaction, from referential and emotive to phatic,
metalingual and poetic.
We can now turn to some more detailed analysis of emotional engage-
ment in persuasion.
7. EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT IN FUNCfIONAL PERSUASION
(a) Unscripted Emotion
The passage is taken from a television news interview with a spokesperson

for an anti-poll tax campaign in England and Wales (lTN News [1 p.m.]
24 November, 1989):
Spokesperson: We'll be asking people to refuse to condone a tax

that is unfair, is unjust, and of which the effects are immoral. We'll
be asking people to stand up to Mrs Thatcher and say 'No, we're not
prepared to pay your Poll Tax'.
Interviewer. You are in effect just asking people to break the
law.
Spokesperson: You see in Scotland the issue isn't breaking the
law: the issue is whether or not you can afford to keep your children;
the issue is whether or not you can afford the rent and the mortgage
repayments.
Though the interview is pre-planned, the spokesperson bas to be sharp

enougb to take advantage of any further comments or questions. The initial
statement includes the modifiers 'unfair', 'unjust' ,'immoral' (all abstract
terms with negative connotations). The sentence structure seems (rather
bastily) contrived to end on a powerfully emotive note. The repetition
of the phrase 'We'll be asking people ... ' (with strong conative ori-
entation) provides a kind of armature for bis rbetoric. In response, the
interviewer skilfully twists the phrase by linking it to a different emotive
idea' ... asking people to break the law'. Tbe reply is another deft tum
back to the issue under discussion (sucb ploys are analysed in Cbapter
4), followed by a grapbic and emotive suggestion that children will be
suffering real deprivation as a result of the tax. Even in this brief extract
we can see the importance of emotional engagement
(b) Political Oratory
The following passage is taken from Jobn F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address

(20 January, 1961):9
Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms,

thougb arms we need - not as a call to battle, though embattled we
are - but a call to bear the burden of a long twiligbt struggle, year in
and year out, "rejoicing in bope, patient in tribulation" - a struggle
against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and
war itself.
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance,
North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life
for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have
been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum
danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility - I welcome it. I do
not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other
people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion
which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who
serve it - and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
These paragraphs provide an emotive blend of graphic imagery (light and

darkness, space and time) with abstract concepts ('hope', 'tribulation',
'freedom', 'responsibility', 'endeavor'). In the lexis and phrasing Kennedy
echoes Shakespeare (Henry V's speech at Agincourt), and quotes from St
Paul (Romans 12: 12) with reference to 'the common enemies of man'.
The sentences employ familiar persuasive structural patterns - repetitions,
inversions, alliterations, the balancing of oppositions, accumulations of
emotive lexis, climaxes and questions (see Chapter 6 for a detailed
account of these devices). Their purpose is to convey the reciprocation
of emotion between audience and persuader. Kennedy presents himself as a
twentieth century warrior king (emotive orientation), and actually re-works
his own battle metaphor metalingually ('not as a call ... ') to persuade his
audience.
(c) Political Writing: the Pamphlet
This extract is from the pamphlet Common Sense,lO by the eighteenth-cen-

tury revolutionary thinker, Thomas Paine. In it Paine argues the case for
American independence:
But Britain is the parent country say some. Then the more shame
upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages
make war upon their families; wherefore, the assertion if true, turns
to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so, and
the phrase, parent or mother country, hath been jesuitically adopted
by the King and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining
an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe and
not England is the parent country of America This new world hath
been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of liberty from every part
of Europe. Hither have they tIed, not from the tender embraces of the
mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of
England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from
home, pursues their descendants still.
Paine makes full use of all the resources of rhetoric, but we shall par-
ticularly note the integration of emotional engagement. At the opening he
skilfully detIects anticipated opposition by conceding a point, and then
turns it to his own advantage (see Appendix A, Tricks and Ploys). He uses
graphic and emotive lexis himself ('parent', 'shame', 'brutes', 'devour',
'savages'), though he decries the emotive language used by the British,
thereby unmasking the process of 'unfair bias' by which an oppressor
pretends to be a benefactor. Paine himself is guilty of corrupting the
referential basis of argument here, as well as cheerfully taking advantage
of the familiar prejudice against Catholicism. As we would expect, he
uses traditional rhetorical devices such as antithesis ('tender embraces'
contrasted with 'cruelty', 'mother' with 'monster') to enhance the impact

of the emotional engagement.
8. EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT IN LIlERARY PERSUASION
(a) Drama
We are using an extract from Shakespeare's play Macbeth (II.iii.107)

in which Macbeth gives a detailed and false account of the King of
Scotland's murder, significantly different from Quintilian's version of
murder. Macbeth is speaking to his fellow nobles (and we should recall
that Shakespeare's audience at various times would include nobles, as well
as ordinary people}.ll
Who can be wise, amaz'd, temp'rate and furious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.
The expedition of my violent love
Outrun the pauser reason. Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood;
And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature
For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breech' d with gore. Who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make's love known?
Macbeth immediately turns the spotlight on himself and his own pre-
tended emotion, defending his killing of Duncan's grooms on the grounds
that 'violent love' outweighed his sense of justice. He describes the
scene so graphically and extravagantly, that the horrific physical image
is overlaid by opulent images associated with kingship (,silver', 'laced',
'golden') instead of a hideously butchered body. Macbeth thus manages
to blunt rather than sharpen the horror, investing the corpse with a weird
beauty, and reducing the hearers' emotion from the universal horror of
murder to the contingent horror of an affront to monarchy. He describes
the unfortunate grooms as 'unmannerly' and bloodstained by their 'trade'.
Here the emotion of horror is transformed to aristocratic disgust at the
coarse brutality of the lower orders. By orienting emotion at Duncan's
death as a terrible insult to order, Macbeth seeks to signal to the peers
(who will shortly elect him King in Duncan's place) his loyalty to the
ideal of order and his fibless for kingship. Throughout the passage we
can see how skilfully Macbeth manages the orientation of emotion, both
in relation to the Scottish nobles whom he is addressing on stage and to
the original royalist audience in the theatre.
(b) Poetry
This short lyric by Tennyson is taken from The Princess (1847), a longer
poem inspired by the emergent feminism of the period.
Home they brought her warrior dead:

She nor swooned, nor uttered cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
'She must weep or she will die.'
Then they praised him, soft and low,
Called him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and rioblest foe;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.
Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stept,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.
Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee -
Like summer tempest came her tears -
'Sweet my child, I live for thee.'
Alfred Tennyson 12
The modern reader is likely to read this lyric with more emotional
detachment than Tennyson intended. The 'maidens' are trying to evoke
an emotional response in the Princess, and the poet has similar designs
on us. The archaic lexis, together with the pulsing trochaic metre and
the line repetition are planned to heighten emotional suspense rapidly.
Tennyson expects us to be progressively more moved by the warrior's
noble attributes, and by the graphic pathos of his unveiled corpse; but
however moved we may be, the mother fails to weep. Why? Because
Tennyson wants to show what we would call the emotional power of
patriarchal ideology. Only when the ancient nurse places the warrior's
child upon her knee does she respond (,Like summer tempest came her
tears'); she must live for her child's sake. The emotive icon of mother and
child is duly composed to move the reader 0.14), as the shower ofmatemal
feeling follows. It's ironic that this lyric is inset in a poem about female
education!
(c) Fiction
In this extract from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens,I3 we meet a

repellent group of people, whom Dickens intends us to dislike thoroughly.
They are pictures of superficiality and hypocrisy.
The great looking-glass above the sideboard reflects the table and
the company. Reflects the new Veneering crest, in gold and eke in
silver, frosted and also thawed, a camel of all work . .. Reflects
Veneering; forty, wavy-haired, dark, tending to corpulence, sly, mys-
terious, filmy - a kind of sufficiently well-looking veiled prophet,
not prophesying. Reflects Mrs. Veneering; fair, aquiline-nosed and
fingered, not so much light hair as she might have, gorgeous in
raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propriatory, conscious that a comer
of her husband's veil is over herself. Reflects Podsnap; prosperously
feeding, two little light-coloured wiry wings, one on either side of
his else bald head, looking as like his hair-brushes as his hair,
dissolving view of red beads on his forehead, large allowance of
crumpled shirt-collar up behind.... Reflects mature young lady;
raven locks, and complexion that lights up well when well-powdered
- as it is - carrying on considerably in the captivation of matme
young gentleman; with too much nose in his face, too much ginger
in his whiskers, too much torso in his waistcoat, too much sparkle in
his studs, his eyes, his buttons, his talk and his teeth.
The graphic quality of this scene is striking. How does Dickens not only
achieve this, but also manipulate our emotional response? The lengthy
paragraph (of which only part appears here) is structured by means of the
somewhat ominous repetition of 'Reflects', recalling that 'great looking
glass' which coldly mirrors them all. By this device Dickens withdraws
his (and our) sympathy from people who have themselves withdrawn
from reality, becoming nothing more than facades reflected in the glass.
Through ironically varied lexis ('raiment' 'mature young lady') Dickens
reveals their narcissism as infecting everything - conversation, appearance,
behaviour. In each descriptive sentence the accumulating details inflate and
deflate the subject, ending with the grotesque disarray of Podsnap and the
predatory 'teeth' of the 'mature young gentleman'. Readers might find that
Dickens has managed the emotive orientation and emotional engagement
so successfully here. that their feelings of scorn and disgust verge on a
nightmarish sense of horror.
CONCLUSION
In the extracts above we have demonstrated emotion (both contingent and

universal) used in order to persuade. Intentions on the part of the persuader
have ranged from urging high ideals (Kennedy) to conveying devastating
scorn (Dickens); and we are reminded of the cultural conditioning of
emotion by Tennyson's poem.
3 Reason: the Resources
of Argument
PREFACE: OLD 'PLACES', NEW 'MODELS'
We have now come to the third structural principle of persuasion, logos; as

always, we must emphasise its integral relationship with ethos and pathos
in the persuasive interaction. It is still important to remember that our
tripartite division of the sources of persuasion should be seen not as a linear
sequence, but as a simultaneous process. Our earlier 'freeze frame' analogy
is worth recalling here; the speaker, caught momentarily as an attitude is
being conveyed, may simultaneously be projecting an emotion, and/or
framing an argument. The persuader's personality or stance, together with
his or her emotional engagement with the audience, determine the choice of
persuasive arguments. This cboice (as the persuasive interaction develops),
also works in reverse, as argument in its turn will modify emotional
orientation and stance.
We sball now focus our attention on the resources of argument It will
be easier to understand this structural principle of logos if we distinguisb
its two traditional stages, since both are very useful today. These stages are
'invention' and 'judgement'. We shall treat invention in this cbapter, and
judgement in the next. By 'invention' we mean a method of thinking up
arguments on any given topic; by 'judgement' we mean the subsequent
evaluation of those arguments by the speaker or writer, resulting in some
being discarded, and others developed. As the audience hears the persua-
sive argument, they will make an evaluation of the logos. ethos and pathos,
and will be persuaded - or not! Chapter 4 will demonstrate how judgement
functions in measuring an argument's relevance and credibility.
As Billig bas demonstrated (Arguing and Thinking, pp. 39-50, 130-4),
every persuasive argument must attract a counter-argument, every generali-
sation a particularisation or exception. Every kind of persuasive interaction
must take place within the larger framework of a social dialectic. This
means that each of the distinctive resources of argument bas to be available
to all parties in the dialectic to enhance their case. However assertive our
use of these arguments, we may reflect that, as anti-logoi, they might
equally be turned round and used against us.
When asked to prove a point, most of us adopt a surprisingly narrow
58
Reason: the Resources of Argument 59
range of structured arguments. For example, we all refer to cause and effect,
and make use of comparison of people, objects or ideas. In classifying
arguments of this kind, rhetoricians and logicians have distinguished
between a small number of general models of argument, and a large
range of specific ones.!
Although Aristotle identifies a whole set of argument-types specific to
political argument (Rhetoric, l.iv-viii), other rhetorical theorists identify
a much simpler list of general arguments, applicable to all aspects of
persuasion. Our focus will be on the latter, because they are more generally
used and more easily recognisable.
Classical rhetoricians used the term topos/topoi (meaning 'place' in
Greek) to denote any kind of standard argument, including our general
models. The metaphor of place is interesting: it suggests somewhere
to go, or somewhere to look for an idea. A persuader might glance
through the topoi for his arguments, rather as we would run through
a mental check-list. For example, remembering the general topos of
cause, he might ask himself how this argument of cause could be used
to strengthen his persuasion. In classical rhetoric this practice was called
invention.
In our analysis of the resources of argument, we shall use the term,
'models of argument' instead of topoi. 'Model' suggests a scheme which
is not rigidly fixed and can be adapted to fit different circumstances.
The models we shall discuss offer a systematic, and coherent method of
'thinking through' a topic and selecting and organising the most effective
arguments. They are 'commonplaces' (to use another traditional term), but
only in the sense that they are generally available.
Our range of standard 'models of argument' derives from the sixteenth-
century educationist and populariser, Peter Ramus.2 We have rearranged
his scheme, giving priority to those models which in our recollection are
most commonly used today.
Before examining each in detail, we shall summarise the ten models
of argument, and demonstrate how they might be scanned by potential
persuaders, wanting to 'try them for size' to fit a particular topic. They
might ask: (i) how do we define it; (ii) what causes it or what effects does
it create; (iii) what is similar to it; (iv) what is opposed to it; (v) with what
degree of similarity or difference does it relate to something comparable;
(vi) what is affirmed about it; (vii) what genus and species does it belong
to; (viii) what are its constituent parts, or of what whole is it a part; (ix)
what is associated with it; (x) what are the root meanings of the words
commonly denoting it?
In practice, as we shall see, a persuader is most likely to opt for one
central 'organising' model of argument; other models fall into place to

support it.
1. THE DEFINITION MODEL
Most people will be familiar with the instruction 'Define your terms!'
perhaps located on an essay, or heard during a vigorous argument on a
controversial point. The requirement is to narrow down our generalisation
to a precise meaning. This process is exactly what the traditional model of
Definition entails. 3 According to this model, whatever requires definition
must first be identified as belonging to some general category (genus).
Then its unique features must be particularised, adding a further indication
(differentia) of any specific feature which make it essentially different
from other members of its genus. Aristotle's definition of man was
animal (general category) and rational (unique quality). Twenty centuries
later Jonathan Swift redefined man as animal (general quality) but only
'capable' of reason (unique quality). This bitter redefinition confirms that
in persuasive argument. every definition may prompt a counter-definition.
To Swift, 4 man was an animal usually defined by his unique degree of
irrationality, and though capable of reason, more often choosing not to
exercise it.
Definition in Functional Persuasion
(a) Ordinary conversation. This model is frequently employed in such

idioms as: 'What it boils down to is ... '; 'By definition he's a ... ';
'She's the sort of teacher who ... '; 'In the last analysis what sets him
apart is ... '
(b) Journalism (authors' own examples). 'This is the political party
which seeks to make vegetarianism compulsory'; 'Not so much the Green
as the Greens Party!'
Definition in Literary Persuasion
Our two examples (from Middlemarch 5 by George Eliot and the modern
epic poem Omeros 6 by Derek Walcott) use the Definition model to
introduce their heroines. Ironically, Dorothea Brooke is rich but looks
'poor'; Helen is poor, but has the hauteur of the 'rich':
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seemed to be thrown into
relief by poor dress.
Now the mirage

dissolved to a woman with a madras head-tie,
but the head proud, although it was looking for work.
I felt like standing in homage to a beauty
that left, like a ship, widening eyes in its wake.
"Who the hell is that?" a tourist near my table
asked a waitress. The waitress said, "She? She
too proud!"
In the Eliot extract we have an exact process of definition through differ-

entiation. Dorothea is beautiful in one specific way, which is not unique to
her personally (we recognise her contemplative and unselfconscious 'kind
of beauty'), but it is used to define her predicament. These lines open the
novel, and through this use of definition, the reader is prepared for what
actually follows - a struggle between Dorothea's principled humility, her
emotional needs and society'S expectations.
In contrast with this precise definition, Walcott introduces Helen with a
looser set of defining and distinguishing characteristics. Definition here is
part of a complex of imagery and observed detail which also involves the
models of comparison and cause/effect. Helen's beauty is implied through
the pride which accompanies and perfects it; and this pride is differentiated
in social and economic terms (,the head proud, although it was looking for
work'). A further distinguishing characteristic is the effect and intensity of
her beauty: even in the casually exploitative context of a Caribbean beach
bar, the narrator feels like 'standing in homage' to it (though he doesn't
do so). A third defining characteristic plays on the famous description of
Helen of Troy ('the face that launched a thousand ships'), and contrasts
Homeric grandeur with the beach bar environment. Moreover, Walcott's
Helen is 'like a ship' herself. In her 'wake', eyes 'widen' with desire.
2. CAUSE AND EFFECT MODELS
Cause is at once a simple concept, and a highly problematic one. Its larger
processes are so multiple and random that they lead to the most profound
scientific and philosophical questions. We shall, however, limit our discus-
sion to cause within the context of persuasive language. Cause/Effect is
the model of argument absolutely central to all persuasive discourse, used
everywhere in all public and private contexts. It is also important to note
that its structure is inherently dialectical.
We can break down this complex model into manageable pieces if we

schematise the way in which our minds work to isolate or inter-associate
the processes of cause and effect.
A simple cause usually produces a simple effect (I drop an egg and it
breaks). Or, a simple cause may have a complex effect (I drop the last
fertilised egg of a rare breed of chicken and the breed becomes extinct
with serious nutritional and ecological consequences).
A complex cause may have a simple effect (you oversleep, miss your
bus, arrive late for work, try to catch up all day and forget to go shopping.
The simple effect of all this is that your cat has no supper).
A complex cause may have a complex effect (German militarism, British
jingoism, a naval arms race, colonial rivalry, economic and nationalistic
tensions and other incalculable factors resulted in the equally complex effect
- World War I).
Looking at these combinations of cause and effect. we can see how dif-
ferently a persuader could use this model of argument simply by changing
the orientation (see Chapter 2). For example, a murder trial would be
oriented referentially to determine the cause of the murder (identifying the
murderer), and the task of the persuader or prosecutor would be to focus the
jury's attention on this. In a political speech, however, the persuader would
use conative orientation to address the supposed interests of the audience,
identifying the beneficial effects of his or her policies. The murder trial
could be described as cause-dominated argument. and the political speech
as effect-dominated. Both types can produce rhetorical oversimplification
and imbalance if used injudiciously. For example, a simple statement like
'the people are hungry', might have multiple causes, some unavoidable -
but the impulse will be to spread blame as widely as possible. Conversely
something with such profound effects as World War I might be ascribed to
one cause, the assassination at Sarajevo, with resultant oversimplification.
This kind of cause-dominated argument is characteristic of the 'pet theory'
which conveniently explains everything.
There are several variations of the Cause/Effect model, whatever its
orientation or degree of complexity. The Aristotelean 7 distinction between
four types of cause remains useful today. The four types are:
(a) Final cause: The purpose for which something exists, or the end to
which an action is directed.
(b) Formal cause: What makes something 'itself'.
(c) Material cause: The physical materials or conditions essential for
existence either generally (to sustain a given state of affairs) or
individually (e.g. to produce an object or an action).
(d) Efficient cause: The agency which brings something about.
Cause/Effect in Functional Persuasion
The Independent on Sunday for 15 September 1991 has a Leader on

the causes of urban rioting, entitled 'A dark logic ... ' We quote one
paragraph:
The social and moral values that underpin such behaviour seem
strange but, on closer inspection, more familiar. Respectable folk
establish social status through a new house, a new car, a university
place, a foreign holiday; on the other side of the tracks, you impress
with a daring car theft, defiance of authority, access to stolen goods.
This generation has been taught that the individual is supreme, that
to strive for success and material reward is paramount. Some have
reinterpreted these values for their own situation.
In this reasoning, social status is seen as the final cause motivating

respectable people and rioters alike; the individual activity through which
status is gained is strongly marked as an efficient cause; and material
causes (in the shape of material goods legally or illegally acquired) embody
this status. The leader-writer contrasts the ways in which each social group
defines the formal causes of status.
Cause/Effect in Literary Persuasion
Here we contrast and parallel two passages from fiction, both turning on
the idea of final cause or motivating purpose. In Dickens's Hard Times,
Mr. Gradgrind's motivation will be exposed as totally misconceived; and
in Alice Walker's The Color Purple the heroine receives what amounts to
a revelation, as she is brought to consider what motivates God.
Hard Times begins with a speech in which the Utilitarian Mr. Gradgrind
sets out his educational philosophy:8
'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing
but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and
root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning
animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to
them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children,
and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick
to Facts, Sir!'
Mr. Gradgrind takes the classical definition of man as 'a rational animal'
to a chillingly logical extreme. His discourse is effect-dominated. The
implantation of facts, to achieve the final cause of 'forming the mind'
(facts alone being the formal cause of such a mind) totally obsesses him
as the one desirable effect of his philosophy. Dickens ironically implies
the barrenness of this idea in the harshly repetitive language (see Chapter
6). Moreover, the oppositional model of argument (see below) is used
as the teacher addressed is instructed to plant nothing else but facts, and
'root out everything else'. He personifies the all-too efficient cause of Mr.
Gradgrind's educational philosophy in action.
The metaphor of growth has a very different effect in The Color Purple
by Alice Walker. The heroine Celie's much-admired friend, Shug Avery,
uses it to describe her understanding of God: 9
... It sort of like you know what, she say, grinning and rubbing
high up on my thigh.
Shug! I say.
Oh, she say. God made it Listen, God love everything you love
- and a mess of stuff you don't But more than anything else, God
love admiration.
You saying God vain? I ast.
Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think
it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere
and don't notice it
What it do when it pissed off? I ast
Oh it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God
care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying
to please us back.
No longer is God an 'old white man' ('God ain't a he or a she, but a

It'), but a creative spirit manifested in human love as well as in nature.
Liberation comes to Celie through enlightenment about what motivates
God (the final cause of Its actions), and about the effect humanity has
on God.
3. THE SIMILARITY MODEL
Similitude (or analogy) is important not merely as a widely used figurative

device, but as a strictly logical mode of argument In debate or discussion
it is often vital to establish whether A is comparable with B, before the
argument can proceed (irrespective of its ultimate object). Furthermore it

makes sense that this model of argument should be closely associated with
the models already discussed, since definition and cause/effect must be
used to determine comparability. (The similarity model will also be seen
to have links with our next two models, opposition and degree.)
Similarity in Functional Persuasion
This is a useful model for political oratory. Churchill's witty response

to German propaganda that Britain would have 'its neck wrung like a
chicken' was 'Some chicken! Some neck!' He doesn't entirely reject
the comparison, but turns the chicken into something gargantuan and
heroic!
This model occurs frequently in advertising, as seen in Saab's long-
standing exploitation of the fact that they make fighter aircraft as well as
cars. By making the comparison, they claim that the rigorous engineering
standards and design philosophy are the same for both.
Similitude in Literary Persuasion
Comparison is one of the dramatist's basic resources, especially when

criticising their own society. An audience is invited to compare their own
situation with that represented on stage. Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise
of Arturo Ui parallels Chicago gangsterism with Hitler's rise to power. As
he puts it in one of the alternative prologues to the play: 10
Friends, tonight we're going to show .. .

. .. Our great historical gangster play .. .
. . . we'll give you for your betterment
DOGSBOROUGH'S CONFESSION AND TESTAMENT.
ARTURO'S RISE WHILE THE STOCK MARKET FELL
THE NOTORIOUS WAREHOUSE FIRE TRIAL, WHAT A SELL!
THE DULLFEET MURDER! JUSTICE IN A COMA!
GANG WARFARE: THE KILLING OF ERNESTO ROMA •..
. . . we've decided to put on
A story in these parts little known
That took place in another hemisphere
The kind of thing that's never happened here ...
The capitalised lines refer to specific stages in Ui's rise, paralleling

equivalent stages in Hitler's rise - pointed out (for a European audience) by
the ironic disclaimer. By removing suspense about what the play will entail,
Brecht aims to concentrate his audience's political and moral awareness
upon the substance of his comparison. In his Jottings, he indicates precisely
how the similarity model is being used: how it is limited and what final
cause it is being shaped to serve: 11
Ui is a parable play, written with the aim of destroying the dangerous

respect commonly felt for great killers. The circle described has
been deliberately restricted; it is confined to the plane of state,
industrialists, Junkers and petty bourgeois. This is enough to achieve
the desired objective.
The imaginative exploration of poetry also draws heavily on the logical

resource of similarity. We don't merely feel poems; we think them too.
A well-known poem by Stevie Smith points to the similarity between the
physical state of an isolated, exhausted swimmer and the psychological
state of people isolated from society. In both cases, what observers find it
convenient to interpret as cheerful insouciance, indicates 'not waving but
drowning' .12
4. THE OPPOSITIONAL MODEL
This model is the opposite of the previous one, and is easy to recognise
and to use. It functions on the basis of contrast, and has many traditional
subvarieties: contraries (e.g. Good/Bad); contradictions (e.g. Good/Not
Good); privatives (e.g. Blind/Sighted); relatives (e.g. Parent/Child). The
rhetorical usefulness of the contrary is obvious and appears frequently,
especially in political argument, where characteristically it is integrated
with the Cause/Effect model (see below). A version of contradiction
is seen in Senator Benson's famous put-down of Senator (now Vice-
President) Quayle during the 1988 Presidential election campaign. 'I knew
Jack Kennedy ... Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are
no Jack Kennedy.' 13 Other subvarieties can be seen in familiar idioms and
proverbs ('Don't blame the children, blame the parents'; 'There's none
so blind as them that will not see'). Not only is the oppositional model
important in argument; it also contributes largely to form and expression.
It underlies the figurative device (or trope) of Irony (see Chapter 6); it is
also (according to recent critical theory) 14 fundamental to narrative of all
kinds.
Oppositional Models in Functional Persuasion
We find these models regularly in casual conversation: 'They should be

taught the difference between right and wrong'; 'He's all talk and no
performance'. Inevitably they bulk large in persuasive discourse, whether
spoken or written. For instance, opposition was one of the principal models
adopted by those who drafted the 'Appeal to the Soviet People' put out by
the Committee of Eight in support of its abortive coup of 19 August 1991.
The third paragraph begins: 15
The original enthusiasm and hopes [aroused by Mr Gorbachev's

reform policies] have been replaced by lack of belief, apathy and
despair ...
And at least eight further instances of the same model follow, for exam-
ple:
Only yesterday, the Soviet person who was abroad felt himself to
be a worthy citizen of an influential and respected state. Now he is
often a second-class foreigner, the treatment of whom bears the seal
of disdain or pity.
This oppositional structure draws in arguments from effect The Soviet

people are seeing the effects of failed policies and corrupted ideals, and the
Committee will now replace these with contrary effects. By these means the
Appeal seeks to distract attention from the vital issues of democratic choice
and legality. The one opposition which it does not seek to expose is all too
glaringly evident. setting off its own professed concern for legality against
the illegality of its action.
Oppositional Models in Literary Persuasion
In literary persuasion, opposition may be central to a writer's imaginative

vision. Sometimes the idea of opposition may itself be the object of
criticism (where it is seen to serve repressive purposes or to inhibit clear
perception). The poetry of W. B. Yeats and the fiction of Charlotte Bronte
provide instances of each.
Yeats uses oppositions throughout his poetry in a fully conceptualised
way.16 'The Two Trees' is a warning addressed to his beloved (Maud
Gonne, the political activist) of the spiritual and emotional dangers await-
ing her. Through metaphor, he presents the opposition between that inner
serenity which draws on the self-creative energies of the soul, and the
horror of a destructive obsession with reality:17
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,

The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear ...
Gaze no more in the bitter glass ...
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness, ...
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte attacks the false oppositions of reason

and passion, body and spirit, male and female, grace and nature, inherent
in the oppression of women. In Chapter 7 the hypocritical and tyrannical
clergyman Mr. Brocklehurst uses oppositional rhetoric to reproach Miss
Temple, superintendent of Lowood School, for extravagance. A half-page
diatribe, making much use of opposition, concludes as follows: 18
Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt
porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their
vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal
souls!
5. THE MODEL OF DEGREE
This model relates closely to the two preceding ones. We may compare
two things or people possessing the same quality but in differing degrees
('You think he's clever? Wait till you meet her!'). We might compare
past and present advertising campaigns, or even military strategies, noting
their basic similarities but recognising them to be subject to different
degrees of probability. For the purposes of persuasion, if we can show
that something less probable has actually happened, the more probable
case is (proportionately) much more convincing. The model may be used
positively or negatively: 'If she can recapture that constituency, she can
certainly organise a local pressure group' (positive); 'He can run a betting
shop, but could he organise the Tote?' (negative).
Degree in Functional Persuasion
Advertising (especially hard-sell) makes much use of this model, to the

extent that illustration seems superfluous. How familiar we are with the
claim that car A (or washing-powder A) has more X than car B, more
Y than car C, and more Z than car D - and costs less! For examples of
this model in political persuasion see Mrs Thatcher's parliamentary reply
(Chapter 1).
Degree in Literary Persuasion
An effective and mutedly tragic example of this model appears in Nadine

Gordimer's short story 'The Last Kiss', in which she presents the decline
of an Afrikaaner pioneer from his earlier financial success and mayoral
dignity: 19
The town outgrew Van As. As he got older, it got younger, more
vigorous and brash, became more and more of a show-off. He
was all right for Masonic gatherings and Dutch Reformed Church
bazaars and the Sons of England ball, but would he have done to
open swimming galas, judge beauty queens, or welcome a visiting
Hollywood film actress making an appearance in person?
The passage continues with further hypothetical instances of social and

rhetorical occasions which would overtax Van As's skills, in the degrees
to which he has developed them (,His English was not very good; his
Afrikaans, though that was his mother tongue, was not much better'). By
these means Gordimer seeks to persuade us of the inevitability of decline
and disgrace.
6. THE MODEL OF TESTIMONY
This model was always regarded as the weakest of the topoi, because it
depended on the reliability of a witness and was therefore not inherently
reliable. Yet its importance to every aspect of contemporary persuasion
is obvious. In an 'egalitarian' culture, which nonetheless elevates the
'expert' (especially in the media), testimony is endlessly sought and
provided, whether we are listening to interviews with 'ordinary people',
or to world-wide reporting, or reading accounts of a new 'miracle cure'.
A persuader seeking to use this model needs to be alert to its dangers,

particularly of the way in which all testimony (knowingly or not) is
susceptible to ideological shaping and orientation (see Chapter 2).
Testimony in Functional Persuasion
This model appears everywhere, from courts of law to advertising agencies,

where endless variations on the Satisfied Customer/Converted Sceptic are
produced ('I suffered agonies until I tried ... '). Testimony is also a stock
feature of party political broadcasts, where those interviewed declare their
support for a particular party, on the basis of opportunities afforded or
needs met. It may also be strikingly exemplified in news reporting, as
in the BBC Television reporter's denial that aircraft were lost in the first
raid of the Falklands war ('I counted them all out and I counted them all
back').
Testimony in Literary Persuasion
This can be effective in a variety of ways. In John Donne's poem 'The

Ecstasie' (11.69-76), the reader of the poem is invited imaginatively
to testify to the power of spiritual love, expressed through physical
love-making:2o
'To our bodies turn we then, that so

Weak men on love revea1'd may look;
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
'And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we are to bodies gone.'
Donne does not seriously ask us to become voyeurs; rather, he invites

the lover who reads this poem to witness and imaginatively empathise with
Donne's own testimony of love.
And in fiction, since the concepts of narrative voice and multiple narra-
tive began to be exploited, witness has played a vital part. In Wuthering
Heights, for instance, Emily Bronte uses the differing testimonies of
Lockwood, Nelly Dean and Isabella to unfold a mysterious ambiguity in
the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff.
7. THE GENUS/SPECIES MODEL
This dialectical model of argument is often found in debates, or discussions.

The typical pattern starts with a generalisation, such as 'all juvenile
delinquents come from a deprived background'. Another speaker, using
the same model, will then counter this by citing exceptions ('but wait a
minute, records show that some delinquents come from prosperous and
loving homes'). The first speaker may then counter this new generalisa-
tion with a further exception ('but perhaps those particular delinquents
are deprived in another sense, morally and culturally?') ... and so on.
This genus/species model of argument could be compared with Chinese
boxes, as the argument moves from genus to species, and from species
to sub-species or even sub-sub-species! Generalisation is used to predict
characteristics, and particularisation works to narrow down and limit their
predictability .
The Genus/Species Model in Functional Persuasion
As we have seen, this model is often used in casual conversation: 'Did you
say he's in his forties? Surely everyone's got a mortgage by then!' 'No, he's
an aging hippy - still living in a commune!' Here the initial generalisation
about group behaviour at forty is countered by an observation of activities
specific to a single social group. And in a more formal context this model
can be used to searching effect, as we see in Swift's important letter to
Pope of 29 September 1725. Here he attributes nothing but evil to the
human species, and to specific groups within that species, differentiating
only in favour of the individual:21
I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and

all my love is towards individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe
of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one, and Judge Such-a-
one. .. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man,
although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
Genus/Species in Literary Persuasion
In literary persuasion, this model is often used to attack possible bias in

the reader, or at least to undermine their expectations. It may even be used
to present the thought-processes of a character. In this passage from Ralph
Ellison's Invisible Man, a young black student (working in a paint factory
after being unfairly expelled from his Southern black college) is attacked
by Brockway, an elderly fellow-worker, for attending a Union meeting (our

emphasis):22
'I'LL KILL YOU, THAT'S WHAT!'

He had said it again and something fell away from me, and I
seemed to be telling myself in a rush: You were trained to accept
the foolishness of such old men as this, even when you thought them
clowns and fools; you were trained to pretend that you respected
them and acknowledged in them the same quality of authority and
power in your world as the whites before whom they bowed and
scraped and feared and loved and imitated, and you were even
trained to accept it when, angered or spiteful, or drunk with power,
they came at you with a stick or a strap or a cane and you made no
effort to strike back, but only to escape unmarked. But this was too
much ... he was not grandfather or uncle or father, nor preacher or
teacher.
Ellison's protagonist remembers how he was trained to accept any kind

of bullying authority (genus) embodied in black or white (species and
sub-species). He learns 'in a rush' to differentiate and reject them all. By
challenging Brockway, the protagonist breaks with authority for the first
time in his life.
8. THE PART/WHOLE MODEL
This is quite difficult to differentiate from the genus/species model, but

the key is to remember that parts are normally dependent on their wholes,
whereas the species comprising a genus can exist separately. Further
information about the quality, function or significance of the part (or
single entity) can be gained by seeing it in relation to a larger entity
or whole. Conversely we may learn more about the whole from the part,
though it can be risky to make too confident deductions about the whole.
(Even more dangerously, the state of one group [or pPtt] within a whole
society may be used to make false deductions about that society, resulting
in other groups being marginalised and forgotten.)
Part/Whole in Functional Persuasion
A fine example is provided in the Jerusalem Bible translation of Paul's

letter to the Corinthians (I. Cor. 12: 14-20):
Nor is the body to be identified with anyone of its many parts. If

the foot were to say, 'I am not a hand and so I do not belong to the
body', would that mean that it stopped being part of the body? If the
ear were to say, 'I am not an eye, and so I do not belong to the body',
would that mean that it was not a part of the body? If your whole
body was just one eye, how would you hear anything? If it was just
one ear, how would you smell anything?
Instead of that, God put all the separate parts into the body on
purpose. If all the parts were the same, how could it be a body?
Not only is Paul using the part/whole model, but also the similarity model
of argument to compare the human body and the Church.
D. H. Lawrence in his essay 'Nottingham and the Mining Country' asks
a rather different question about the part/whole relationship:23
... England bas had towns for centuries, but they have never been
real towns, only clusters of village streets. Never the real urbs. The
English character has failed to develop the real urban side of a man,
the civic side. Siena is a bit of a place, but it is a real city, with
citizens intimately connected with the city. Nottingham is a vast
place sprawling towards a million, and it is nothing more than an
amorphous agglomeration.
Lawrence seeks to persuade us that because 'village streets' are 'all the
same', they cannot comprise a whole worthy of the name of a city, like
Siena.
Part/Whole in Literary Persuasion
This is wittily combined with the oppositional model in Henry Reed's

poem 'Lessons of the War: Naming of Parts'. A party of recruits are
being inducted into the use of the rifle, an essential part of the whole
entity of war; in its turn the rifle is anatomised by the Sergeant Major's
unconsciously suggestive enumeration of its parts. The Part/Whole model
thus contrasts death with the sexual renewal of life: 24
And this you can see is the bolt The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:

They call it easing the Spring.
9. THE ASSOCIATIONAL MODEL
Although this model is open to criticism (on the grounds that it tempts the
user to make suspect logical and ethical assumptions), it is nevertheless
frequently employed, probably because of its ease in application, and
because it can be used to confirm and manipulate prejudices. It has
affinities with the figurative device metonymy, but discussion of this will
be reserved for Chapter 6. There are four main varieties of this model:
SUbject/ Adjunct; Lifestyle/Status; Place/Function and Time/ Activity.
(a) Subject/ Adjunct Association
Although 'Subject' and 'Adjunct' were Ramist terms, used to denote the
whole category of associational argument,25 we shall limit them to a
narrower application. Adjunct means an adjoined attribute, quality or
condition associated with a definable Subject These attributions may
be associated with an individual, a particular genus or species, but they
can also include ideological associations or assumptions. An example of
this would be the refusal of a task because 'that's man's work/women's
work!'
This associational model can also be reversed, as our illustration shows:
'I don't know why you call him generous: it's not his money he's giving
away; it's the Club's!' Here the argument turns on who can be described
as generous, the Club Treasurer or the Club Committee. In Ramist terms,
the Club is the subject to which the quality of generosity is attributed as
adjunct.
In the next example (a reverse procedure from the Adjunct to the
Subject) we can see again how the process of inference follows this
model. Prejudiced thought moves typically from a given Adjunct to an
assumed Subject, 'If he's mean he must be Scottish!' 'You can tell what
sort of school she went to from the way she talks!'
Life-style/Status Association
This particular association model operates widely throughout our consum-

erist culture and its assumptions are well-documented by sociologists.
Status is accorded to one's house, car, clothes, place of employment,
job, diet, drinking habits and leisure activities. Conversely the briefest
indications of a person's status will prompt predictions about their life-
style. Evidence of this Life-style/Status association occurs not only in
everyday conversation, but especially in that kind of advertising which
uses dialogue as part of its persuasion. For example, the slogan 'I bet he
drinks Carling Black Label!' has appeared for a decade in a seemingly
endless series, successfully condensing the association into an amusing
two-way process. Some absurd or outrageous activity is adjudged to be
appropriate to the sophisticated drinker of this beer (and his lifestyle).
Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart offers an interesting exam-
ple of this Lifestyle/Status model functioning within Mrican culture.
Okonkwo's wealth visibly signifies his social statuS: 26
Okonkwo's prosperity was visible in his household. He had a large

compound enclosed by a thick wall of red earth. His own hut, or obi,
stood immediately behind the only gate in the red walls. Each of his
three wives had her own hut, which together formed a half moon
behind the obi. The barn was built against one end of the red walls,
and the long stacks of yam stood out prosperously in it.
In The Castle, however, Franz Kafka makes a quite different use of this
model. There are minimal indicators of status in this surreal and oppressive
world; yet the following extract shows how people obsessively need to
confirm status and identity by clothes and situation, in order to define their
position in relation to the Castle, the seat of all power: 27
Well, he might be one of the lower grade servants ... but these
always have an official suit, at least whenever they come down
into the village, it's not exactly a uniform .... you can always
tell castle servants by their clothes, ... a peasant or hand worker
couldn't do with them. Well, a suit like that hasn't been given to
Barnabas and ... it makes us doubt everything. Is it really Castle
service Barnabas is doing ... ?
Place/Function Association
This associational model is embodied in characteristic comments like:

(Teacher to lazy pupil) 'You don't come to school to stare out of the
window! You come here to get on with your work!'. Alternatively, a
holiday postcard from the French Riviera reads 'St. Tropez', with a
romantic picture of a couple in the sunset, and 'Love' inscribed beneath.
Time I Activity Association
Deductions and expectations are endlessly based on this model: 'What, me?
at my time of life?' The murderous Macbeth envisages himself deprived of
'that which should accompany old age,/ As honour, love, obedience, troops
offriends' (Macbeth, V.i.24-5). Less seriously, it underlies the trade name
of 'Mter Eight Mints'.
10. THE ROOT MEANING MODEL
This is a model which, again, is open to all kinds of manipulation. It is

further undermined by recent theories about the social construction of
meaning in language. Nevertheless, the root meaning model of argument
retains some persuasive mileage, and remains unique amongst the models
in that it does not merely express logical concepts through the received
meanings of words, but seeks for meanings and arguments in the origins
of words themselves.
We shall consider some examples of its use in functional and literary per-
suasion, starting with the following piece of negative teaching technique:
'''Nice''? Can't you think of any other word? Do you know what it meant
originally? "Ignorant" - just like you!' Or a politician might appeal to the
root meaning of a term in order to expose some unexamined assumptions
in an opponent's argument: (Female politician to male politician): 'You
talk about the nature of society, as if it was something that just happened!
Unlike nature, society was made by men - and we're trying to make a
better job of it now!'
A different use of the root meaning model appears in Shakespeare's
late comedy The Winter's Tale (V.ii.142-7), where the rogue Autolycus
is pardoned at the instigation of the Old Shepherd, whose graciousness
matters more than his logical and etymological naivete.
Aut.: I humbly beseech you, sir, to pardon me all the faults I have
committed to your worShip, ...
Shep.: Prithee, son, do: for we must be gentle, now we are
gentlemen.
With this, the tenth model of argument, we conclude our analysis of the
resources of reason (or logos) available to a persuader. Finally, in this
chapter, we offer:
An Example
The National Health Service should be a completely adequate system

for the health-care of the nation, provided at public expense (Defini-
tion). It means precisely that not some kind of nationally-available
system you can pay for, or a nationally-available but second-rate
service if you're poor and ill and can't afford anything better
(Genus/Species). Today it is under threat from forces opposing
these public ideals and wishing to promote private care for the
sick (Contrary). The result is demoralisation for those who work in
the NHS, and confusion for those who need to use it (Cause-Effect;
Whole-Part).
Building up a structure of legislation to 'improve' the Health
Service, which in fact damages it, is like asking the fireman to
put petrol on the fire instead of putting it out (Analogy). Only in
this instance the fire is being lit all across the country! (Degree).
If you doubt this, ask anyone who has recently been in hospital or
who works for the NHS (Witness). What do we mean, we might ask
ourselves, by the terms National Health Service? Surely 'National'
implies the good of the whole nation, not just those able to pay?
'Health' means 'wholeness', not division; and 'service' means caring
and protecting, not destroying (Argument from Root Meaning).
Here we have used nearly all our models (and we could have used more)
to show how they might assist in the amassing of argument for a speech or
newspaper article on such a topic as the National Health Service. It is worth
thinking how the same models might be used in refutation of the above!
4 Reason: Choice and
Judgement
PREFACE: THE CONTEXT OF JUDGEMENT
We now come to the moment of truth in our study of the sources of

persuasive language. How will the audience (or indeed the persuader)
judge the persuasion? Judgement will certainly be exercised at both ends
of our familiar diagram (Sender> Message> Receiver). The persuader as
Sender will judge stance, emotional engagement and choice of argument
before beginning the persuasion, having assessed the audience. In spoken
persuasion it will be possible to monitor the audience response and adapt
techniques accordingly. In written persuasion, however, final judgements
have to be made before the book is published, the essay handed in, or the
advertisement printed.
The audience as Receiver will also exercise judgement, differing accord-
ing to the persuasive mode. In spoken persuasion especially the audience
will be affected to some extent by ethos and pathos as well as logos.
Depending on the occasion, anyone of these principles might come to the
fore. For instance, a demagogue like Hitler swayed his rapt audiences by
personality and stance, as he waited silently for their total attention before
speaking} Another example is Mark Antony's speech to the Roman crowd
in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (III.ii.73-262), in which much use is made
of a cunningly oriented emotional engagement. Again, referring back to the
imaginary speech about Health Service cuts at the end of Chapter 3, our
use of reasoned arguments is central to the persuasion.
In written persuasion, the judgement of audience or reader is less easy
to monitor, though sales figures, newspaper reviews and public interest
may give some indication. Moreover, writing is available to any audience,
intended or not, and may thus be judged in unexpected quarters. Enid
Blyton's books provide an example of this; though they were intended
only for children, educationists and librarians have criticised them for their
inherent class, sexist and racist bias.
In summary then, judging persuasion is more complex than might at first
appear. There are many, variables to be considered when analysing the
central interaction between persuader and audience, whether the persuasion
is spoken or written. Recalling Chapter 1 and the discussion of dialectic and
78
Reason: Choice and Judgement 79
persuasion, we must note that at all times the persuadee retains the options
of counter-argument or even rejection. These hidden but ever-present
options of dialogue or disengagement must infonn our understanding of
judgement.
We shall now consider the specific questions asked by the persuader
about his or her own rhetoric, and by the persuadee or audience about his
or her response. Broadly speaking these questions are: What is the issue?
How relevant are the arguments to it? Are the arguments logically valid or
at least probable?
1. WHAT IS THE ISSUE?
Lloyd George's advice to the young Harold Macmillan 2 was to make one
point only in a speech and talk about it exhaustively! This is good advice
for anyone judging persuasion - look for the issue acting as the focal point
for the ethos, pathos and logos. What is the argument about? In his Arte
of Rhetorique (1560)3 Thomas Wilson offers an amusing example of what
happens if you don't stick to the point and ramble on 'hittie missie':
[It] I shall have occasion to speak in open audience, of the obedience

due to our soveraigne King, I ought first to learne what is obedience,
and after knowledge attained, to direct my reasons to the onely proofe
ofthis purpose, and wholie to seeke confirmation of the same, and not
turn my tale to talk of Robin Hood, and to shew what a goodly archer
was he, or to speake wonders of the man in the Moone, such as are
needlesse, and farthest from the purpose. [our emphasis]
Wilson follows the Roman rhetoricians 4 and argues that there may be
at least three distinct ways of viewing one single act (e.g. homicide), each
claiming to pinpoint the issue. They are:
(a) Conjectural (concerning matters of fact): Did a killing occur? Was

the accused responsible?
(b) Legal (concerning the interpretation of law): Was this, by definition,
murder or manslaughter?
(c) Juridical (extenuation of action): Was the action acknowledged by
the accused justifiable on the grounds of accident or self-defence?
Aristotle (Rhetoric, I.iii.5) identifies the three broadest categories of

'issue' in rhetoric as: justice (forensic or law-court rhetoric); honour/dis-
honour (rhetoric of praise, blame or sheer display, tenned demonstrative
or epideictic rhetoric); and expediency (deliberative or political rhetoric).

This became an established distinction.
In politics today we still talk about 'the art of the possible'; 'It's not
a question of personalities but of policies' and 'It's not what we would
like to do, but what we can do', both characteristic political statements
of the issue, implying purposive action. Dissent and debate may arise in
.two ways; an issue may be simple or complex, agreed or contested. If we
agree on the actual issue with our opponent (a workable economic policy,
for example), it will be a simple issue. But if there is disagreement about
what the issue actually is, then it becomes a complex issue. For example,
one group might insist that pOlitics is about economic expediency, another
that social justice is a priority, while a third might argue that neither can be
an issue in itself without reference to the other. Whether simple or complex,
the choice of an issue sharpens our persuasive efforts and increases the
possibility of dissent within dialogue.
This question of issue is also relevant to literary persuasion. When we
ask what a novel is 'about' we are asking questions about real or apparent
issues in the text. A novel such as War and Peace may be described as
focusing on the issue of man's responsibility for his own fate. Another may
announce the issue in its title, as Jane Austen does in Persuasion; or even
advertise a tension between issues, as in Sense and Sensibility.
2. ARGUMENT AND RELEVANCE
Relevance (or appositeness) in argument will be judged according to: (i) the
relationship between the proffered argument and the point at issue; (ii) the
immediate circumstances of the persuasion; (iii) the relationship between
persuader/persuadee/audience. In the context of practical persuasion there
will also be a distinction between arguments of theoretical relevance and
those with topical or personal significance. Though primarily a logical
concept directing the proper use of the resources of argument, relevance has
its emotional and interpersonal equivalents (in ellws and pallws) through
the ideas of appositeness or fitness.
(a> Relevance and the Issue
If we can, to our own satisfaction, redefine the point at issue in an

argument, we will at the very least become convinced of the irrelevance
of our opponent's arguments. Or we may succeed in shaking the confidence
of the opposition, laying them open to persuasion and possibly to a change

of view. Yet we should not assume that discussion will always take an
adversarial form. Where two or more parties have set out to reach a
common view (for instance in a university tutorial), there may be the shared
satisfaction of a dialectic which progresses to a common conclusion. Where
the issue is clearly defined, and repeatedly and explicitly supported by valid
and relevant arguments, the confidence of the persuader and supporters will
grow further, and the reservations felt by waverers in the audience will
dissolve. At this point, non-adversarial discussion readily acknowledges
'the feeling of the meeting' or the common view. A spirited opponent
will then become even more determined to pick holes in the apparently
impregnable case, in order to prove that the others are still barking up the
wrong tree. This may be done by shifting the issue, or undercutting the
relevance of the arguments. Once again, the anti-logos will come into play.
The following examples will illustrate these two kinds of counter-attack.
(i) Shifting the issue (from a satirical piece on food snobbery by Deirdre
McQuillan, included in The Independent's preview of the Nineties):5
As with most other kinds of connoisseurship, the rules were simple:

remain one step ahead of the game by constantly changing the
goalposts. As soon as hoi polloi palates began to adapt to your tastes
and precepts, change them ...
As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connoisseur was
forced to whirl like a dervish to stay in front of the public's
enthusiasm for food. The transparency of their (sic) undergarments
was revealed. The startling fact of this nakedness was that taste did
not matter - what mattered was being there first, being different.
showing your superiority.
Food snobbery is attacked for endlessly 'changing the goalposts'. The

apparent issue concerns raising standards ever higher in the quest for better
eating. This gives place to the real issue, namely a desire to show one's
superiority .
(li) Proving irrelevance

Here we cite Rhetorica Ad Herennium (II.v.8):
For Subsequent Behaviour we investigate the signs which usually

attend guilt or innocence. The prosecutor will ... say that his
adversary ... blushed, paled, faltered, spoke uncertainly, collapsed,
or made some offer - signs of a guilty conscience. If the accused

has done none of these things, the prosecutor will say his adversary
had ... calculated what would actually happen to him that he stood
his ground and replied with the greatest self-assurance - signs of
audacity, and not of innocence. The defendant's counsel, if his
client has shown fear, will say that he was moved, not by a guilty
conscience, but by the magnitude of his peril; if his client has not
shown fear, counsel will say that he was unmoved because he relied
on his innocence.
Here there is agreement on the point at issue: did the accused commit
the crime or did he not? But the opposed logoi and anti-logoi reffect
disagreement over what the evidence is tending to prove - is it more
relevant to the prosecutor's case, or to the accused's? Or, from the
standpoint of a listening judge or juror is it relevant only in the sense
that it tends to disprove that case? Or, by the standards of a modem criminal
lawyer, is it too ambiguous to be relevant at all?
(b) Appositeness to Audience
If persuasion is to be effective, both the issue and the arguments bearing

on it must matter to the audience and have immediacy. A mixed audience
might well require a mixture of issues, if its overall attention is to be held;
and unless these are skilfully linked, the audience's response will be equally
mixed. For example, at a Prize-giving or Open Day, the Head will need to
address both parents and pupils: one group will be interested in the theme
of school as a preparation for life and provider of subsequent advantages,
the other will be assessing claims about their enjoyment of the school as
a community and source of valued educational experience. Overstress on
either issue could alienate half the audience, worrying the parents or bOring
the pupils.
But the relevance of argument and illustration will tend to broaden as the
issue deepens. Matters of great importance, calling for a fully developed
historical, imaginative and ideological context might well involve the
paralleling of the audience's situation with others seemingly remote in
place or time. An interesting example of this is John Donne's last sermon,
, . . . before the King's Majesty, in the beginning of Lent 1631', in which
the Dean of St Paul's offers a meditation on the Passion of Christ:6
I dare scarce aske thee whither thou wentest, or how thou disposedst
of thyself, when it grew dark and after last night: If that time were
spent in a holy recommendation of thy selfe to God, and a submission

of thy will to his, it was spent in conformity to him . .. I will hope
that thou didst pray; but not every ordinary and customary prayer, but
prayer actually accompanied with shedding of teares, and ... in a
readines to shed blood for his glory ... , puts thee into a conformity
with him. About midnight he was taken and bound with a kisse, art
thou not too conformable to him in that? Is not that too literally, too
exactly thy case? at midnight to have bene taken and bound with a
kisse?
Donne addresses a sophisticated congregation whose formal observance of

Christian rites and mores was belied by notoriously loose sexual behaviour.
He indirectly attacks their behaviour in the most penitential season of the
Church's year (when even marital relations were thought wrong). Donne's
ironic questions twist the previous sense of 'conformity', and link the
betrayal of Christ with the self-betrayal of the sensual 'believer'. He
deliberately uses the intimate form 'thee', thereby pointing the finger
at every individual member of the congregation, including the King. The
'kisse' becomes only too apposite!
(c) Fitness for the Occasion
Logical rig our, sustained attention to an issue and emotional intensity are
all demanded by the persuader. But if our purpose is to establish rapport
with a new acquaintance, or to present an audience with a less serious
lead-in to the main issue, logical rig our may be inappropriate. Consider
the response to an innocent piece of small-talk made to C. S. Lewis by
his idiosyncratic tutor 'The Great Knock' (W. T. Kirkpatrick).? Kirk has
an impeccable sense of the logical issue; but is his response apposite?
I said I was surprised at the "scenery" of Surrey; it was much

"wilder" than I had expected.
"Stop!" shouted Kirk with a suddenness that made me jump.
"What do you mean by wildness and what grounds had you for
not expecting it?"
I replied I don't know what, still "making conversation." As
answer after answer was torn to shreds it at last dawned upon me
that he really wanted to know . .. I was stung into attempting a
real answer . .. I had no clear and distinct idea corresponding to
the word "wildness" ... "Do you not see, then," concluded the
Great Knock, "that your remark was meaningless?" I prepared to
sulk a little, assuming that the subject would now be dropped. Never
was I more mistaken in my life. Having analysed my terms, Kirk was
proceeding to deal with my proposition as a whole.
Here we have a clear impression of what the relentless pursuit of logi-

cal judgement is like, when it usurps the phatic function of ordinary
conversation.
3. ARGUMENT AND PROBABILITY
Aristotle 8 distinguishes between the force of analytics or scientific dem-

onstration, which reaches incontrovertible and purely rational conclusions;
and dialectic, whose conclusions are based on probabilities rather than
certainties. This distinction relates readily to that made in The New Rhetoric
by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (pp. 26- 31), where persuasion and
conviction are contrasted. If we paraphrase and develop the implications
of this distinction, we can make the following assumptions. Conviction
signifies the assent of the intellect to a proposition, and involves the belief
that any other rational being, anywhere, would reach the same conclusion.
Yet conviction does not necessarily involve the emotions or the will, or
produce committed action. Persuasion, on the other hand, involves both of
these; though valid only for that particular audience, it may well produce
a transformation of attitudes as well as actions.
Everyone needs to exercise rhetorical judgement, and consider how to
assess the validity of arguments in terms both of their persuasive force
and of their logical probability. When assured that the premises seem both
probable and valid, and aware of the emotional and human overtones of
our judgment, then there is a substantial degee of commitment, as we see
in Paul's Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 8:38-9):
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, I
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate
us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
A not entirely dissimilar situation might be interviewing an applicant for a

baby-sitting job - is the person going to be suitable to look after our child?
The level of our commitment is total, though the purely logical grounds for
it amount to no more than strong probability.
To maintain our commitment, we must be satisfied that our judgment is
substantially more probable than that of our opponents, and be willing to

review and reaffirm it in the light of fresh circumstances. This is the issue
common to a current series of pamphlets, Counterblasts (published by
Chatto), designed to encourage left-of-centre opposition to the 'conviction
politics' of Mrs Thatcher. The following extract is from the first in the
series, God, Man & Mrs Thatcher, by Jonathan Raban. 9 Taking Mrs
Thatcher's address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
(21 May 1988) Raban uses a time-honoured technique of controversial
pamphleteering, quoting the opponent's text line by line and refuting it in
detail. Our extract begins with Mrs Thatcher's words, followed directly by
Raban's commentary:
We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth.
'If a man will not work he shall not eat' wrote St Paul to the
Thessalonians. Indeed, abundance rather than poverty has a legiti-
macy which derives from the very nature of Creation.
[Raban's commentary begins] This is both a non sequitur and a
false antithesis. Paul has, after all, been writing of work, not as a
means of gaining wealth, but as the means by which the easy-living
Thessalonians should 'eat their own bread'. He is referring back
to the third chapter of the Book of Genesis, where God lists the
punishments he will inflict on Adam for eating of the Tree of
Knowledge. Work is one of them. 'In the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground.' Neither Adam nor
the Thessalonians are offered abundance; they are both told to sweat
for mere sufficiency. Abundance is not the Biblical alternative to
poverty: sufficiency is.
[Raban quotes more of Mrs Thatcher's text] ... making money
and owning things could become selfish activities. .. Mrs Thatcher
likes to get down to what she calls 'the nitty-gritty', and this Sunday
School gloss on the Tenth Commandment is a nice example of the
way she gets down to it If one remembers her audience - of
doctors of divinity, elders and presbyters - one can only admire
the extraordinary fearlessness of her manner, as she lets them know
what's what in language more usually suited to the instruction of
five-year-olds.
It is exactly this manner that makes her beloved by so many people.
She is not ashamed to go among intellectuals, divines, the lab-di-dab
classes with airy-fairy ideas, and get down to brass tacks with them
in the sort of terms that you would use if your only regular reading
was the Express. She cuts fancy folk down to size, and there is a
heart-warming glee to be had at the sight of their discomfiture at the

hands of 'Maggie'.
Raban begins his critique by exercising logical judgement He attacks

Mrs Thatcher's use of the oppositional model, accusing her of creating 'a
false antithesis' (between abundance and poverty) in place of the Biblical
antithesis (between poverty and sufficiency). Accordingly, he sees as a
'non-sequitur' (or invalid inference), her conclusion that we are therefore
commanded to emulate divine creativity and acquire wealth in 'abundance'.
Mrs Thatcher's 'Weare told we must work and use our talents to create
wealth' would be recognised by Aristotle as the characteristic rhetorical
form of logical argument, the enthymeme (see his Rhetoric, I.ii.12-13).
This is a contracted version of the syllogism, the classic three-part logical
argument If we go further than Raban, and draw out the full logical
connection of her thought, the following major and minor premises and
conclusion emerge:
MAJOR: All work is for the creation of wealth;

MINOR: All human beings are told to work;
CONCLUSION: Therefore all human beings are told to create wealth.
The major premise of this argument is supported by the 'false antithesis',

which Raban has already disproved by his own recourse to the Bible. As
a result he has detected the non-sequitur and invalidated Mrs Thatcher's
major premise. Valid forms of argument prove nothing if founded on false
conclusions from earlier argument. All in all, Raban seeks to persuade
his audience of Mrs Thatcher's fallible invention (in her use of the
oppositional and cause/effect models of argument) and of her defective
dialectical judgement.
Raban then changes his methods of attack whilst remaining conscious
of his target audience/readership. His stance is alongside the cultivated
left-of-centre readership to whom the elegantly presented pamphlet is
addressed. They constitute a much broader 'church' than the audience
of 'doctors of divinity, elders and presbyters' (a rather exotic sub-group
of fellow-sufferers) whom Mrs Thatcher is addressing 'in language more
usually suited to the instruction offive-year-olds': ' ... making money and
owning things could become selfish activities' . Raban, looking towards the
entrepreneurial social group who form the core of Mrs Thatcher's political
support, displays a stance little short of contemptuous. He parodies their
characteristic idiom: 'lah-di-dah ... airy fairy ... brass tacks ... fancy
folk', and links their cultural level scornfully with the Express. This is
designed to arouse the defensive antagonism of his readers ('fancy folk'

themselves) to the Prime Minister. It balances their sense of grievance (at
being 'cut down to size' and denied their proper social role) with a soothing
sense of superiority.
Thus Raban reinforces logical judgement with ethos and patMs, as
well as commenting on the relationship between Mrs Thatcher's lexis
and her condescending stance, before going on to practice a little lexical
reductivism of his own.
4. RHETORICAL REASONING
We shall now examine the means of judging types of argument and of

framing counter-arguments - though we cannot provide anything like a
complete account of formal reasoning processes as applied to rhetoric.
(Recommended books on this topic are mentioned in the notes).l0 We
shall return to the speech by Demosthenes treated in Chapter 1, this time
choosing a different extract to show how he handles logos, which will
involve a brief discussion of syllogistic reasoning.
Four major methods of argument can be demonstrated in the
Demosthenes extract: (i) the usual kind of categorical syllogism or
enthymeme in both contracted and extended forms); (ii) the hypothetical
syllogism; (iii) the dilemma, which is a form of syllogism; (iv) the method
of induction, which is not a syllogism. A fifth method of argument - the
disjunctive syllogism - will be demonstrated using different examples.
(a) The Extended Enthymeme
... if you are awake, you have nothing to fear, if you close your
eyes, nothing to hope for. To prove this I point to two things,
the past power of Sparta, which we defeated by sheer attention
to business, and the present aggression of Macedon, which alarms
us because our attitude is wrong. If the belief is held that Philip is
an enemy hard to face in view of the extent of his present strength
and the loss to Athens of strategic points, it is a correct belief. But
it must be remembered that at one time we had Pydna, Potidaea,
Methone ... on friendly terms, and that a number of communities
now on his side were then autonomous and unfettered, and would
have preferred our friendship to his. If Philip had then adopted this
belief in the invincibility of Athens ... he could not have achieved
any of his present successes . .. As it was, he observed with insight
that these strategic points were . . . open to the contestants, and that
it is a natural law that ownership passes . . . from the negligent to the
energetic and enterprising.
Demosthenes' argument proceeds in two stages. Firstly he proves the

negligence of the Athenians, and secondly he points to its consequences.
His first unstated major premise, which employs the oppositional model of
argument (given in a rhetorical rather than a strictly logical form) is: 'that
to fly in the face of a successful example is to display a wilfully negligent
attitude'. The present lethargic attitude of Athens is both a reversal of
its former energy (its 'sheer attention to business'), and directly contrary
to Philip's energetic opportunism. This amounts to a minor premise:
'our present conduct flies in the face of (our own [earlier] and Philip's
[present]) successful example'. The conclusion (that 'our attitude is wrong'
[i.e. negligent]) is accordingly drawn by Demosthenes.
This is followed by a second enthymeme, in which only the major
premise - the 'natural law that ownership passes . . . from the negligent'
- is stated. Demosthenes' audience have to carry forward, as the minor
premise of this argument, the conclusion of the first enthymeme; and they
have to draw a further depressing conclusion for themselves. This is that
their own dogged inactivity causes the current advance of Philip just as
surely as his determined activity. This point is proved by Demosthenes'
reference to the enemy, who has succeeded not because of his initial
strength but simply because of his attitude. Here Demosthenes makes a
brilliant fusion of logical and rhetorical judgement, and unexpectedly turns
his argument around. What has hitherto demoralised his audience becomes
a way of boosting their confidence. Change your attitude and you change
everything.
(b) Rhetorical Induction
In his Rhetoric (I.ii.8) Aristotle distinguishes between two methods of

induction, scientific and rhetorical. Both derive general laws from par-
ticular observations, but the latter is founded on the use of example.
Like Machiavelli after him,11 Demosthenes enunciates a 'natural law' of
political science derived from particular examples. As we have seen, he
refers to the earlier example of Athens and Sparta and the current example
of Macedon and Athens. Demosthenes takes two sets of data as adequate to
prove the general rule that mind prevails over matter. He makes that into a
principle for the guidance of Athens; if Philip can succeed against the odds
in opposition to Athens, Athens can do the same in opposition to him.
(c) The Hypothetical Syllogism
Putting it more positively in relation to these historical examples,

Demosthenes states that 'alliance and universal attention are the rewards
to be won by obvious preparedness and the will to take action'. This
in tum becomes the starting-point of a new argumentative structure, the
hypothetical syllogism. In a full syllogistic and categorical form, the
argument would read:
MAJOR:'All well-prepared active states are successful';

MINOR:'Athens will be well-prepared and active';
CONCLUSION: 'Athens will be successful'
Demosthenes, however, does something different. He is making a strong

emotional appeal by building up suspense. To do this he puts his syllogism
into hypothetical form, using it to spell out how far his Athenian audience
must commit themselves to resolute activity at whatever human cost:
If then, this country is prepared to adopt a similar outlook ... ,

if every man is ready to take the post which his duty and his
abilities demand ... , if financial contribution is forthcoming ... ,
and personal service . . . , in a word, if we are prepared to be
ourselves, ... we shall recover what is our own ... and we shall
inflict retribution upon Philip.
In formal logic, the major premise of a hypothetical syllogism 12 takes

this form: 'If A is B, it is also c'. If we sum up the argument above,
it amounts to the following: 'If the Athenians are resolute, they will be
successful'. This is what the repeated 'ifs' add up to, indicating as they
do the required contribution of each part of the body politic. Rhetoric
and logic work together through a highly persuasive and suspenseful
ordering of sentence elements. In order to complete the argument we need
a premise telling us whether the ultimate condition (the single big IF) will
be fulfilled. This premise hangs in the balance, hinging on the audience's
response. Two valid forms of the hypothetical argument face them: (i),The
Athenians will prove to be resolute' (leading to the conclusion 'They will
be successful'); (ii) 'The Athenians will not be successful' (leading to
the conclusion 'They will not have been resolute'). The shadow of this
negative conclusion overlays Demosthenes' later appeal to his audience's
sense of shame (see full extract in Chapter 1): if they fail, they will have
only themselves to blame for refusing to act like 'free men'.
(d) The Dilemma
Demosthenes then remarks of Philip: 'He does not offer us a choice

between action and inaction. He utters threats, according to my infor-
mation, in overbearing terms'. If a choice of action or inaction had been
offered to the lethargic Athenians, they would have been faced with
these unavoidable alternatives: 'If we act, we risk immediate defeat; if
we remain inactive we will continue to lose power and influence'. This is
the familiar form of the dilemma,13 where both choices lead to unpleasant
consequences. A comparable dilemma today might be a govenunent's
need to choose between controlling the money supply (thus keeping down
inflation and putting up unemployment); or not controlling the money
supply (thus keeping down unemployment and putting up inflation). Either
way we lose!
If we were to develop the implicit Demosthenean dilemma. it would
become what logicians call a complex constructive dilemma. The minor
premise would take the form of a disjunction or statement of alternatives:
'But we must either act or remain inactive'. The implied conclusion would
be: 'We face either immediate or ultimate defeat'. Demosthenes however
chooses not to develop the idea, perhaps because he has no wish to offer
the Athenians the option of doing nothing! Whether they act or not, the
threat to Athens is immediate.
(e) The Disjunctive Syllogism
To illustrate this kind of syllogistic reasoning, we tum from Demosthenes

to some more recent examples. Imagine a policeman weighing up the
probabilities involved in the theft of a car:
X may have bought the stolen car in good faith from a dealer out of
town (as he claims); or he may have stolen it himself (as I suspect).
With his record it's hardly likely he wouldn't know the difference
between a straight dealer and a crooked one, so it's more likely
he stole it. He either stole it on his own, or with an accomplice;
he'd have needed someone to distract the attention of the car park
attendant - and somebody did just that.
We might take this example through several further stages of inference,

but our point is to show the pattern of the disjunctive syllogism in its
simplest form: 'A is either B or c; it is not B, therefore it is c'. Such
a pattern may form part of a powerful rhetorical persuasion, as it does
in the following passage from a tract by the early communist Gerrard

Winstanley, The Law of Freedom (1652).14 In his prefatory letter to Oliver
Cromwell, Winstanley imagines himself replying to Cromwell's defence of
'the elder brother' (Le. the landowning class of which Cromwell himself
was a member):
But you will say, 'Is not the land your brother's? And you cannot take
away another man's right by claiming a share therein with him.'
I answer, it is his either by creation right, or by right of conquest
If by creation right he call the earth his and not mine, then it is mine
as well as his; for the spirit of the whole creation, who made us both,
is no respecter of persons.
And if by conquest he call the earth his and not mine, it must
be either by the conquest of kings over the commoners, or by the
conquest of the commoners over the kings.
If he claim the earth to be his from the kings' conquest, the kings
are beaten and cast out, and that title is undone.
If he claim title to the earth to be his from the conquest of the
commoners over the kings, then I have right to the land as well
as my brother, for [neither] my brother without me, nor I without
my brother, ... cast out the kings; but both together assisting with
person and purse we prevailed, so that I have by this victory as equal
a share in the earth which is now redeemed as my brother by the law
of righteousness.
Winstanley anticipates the landowners' arguments, limiting their poss-

ible justification of private ownership to two alternative pleas. Either land
was created by )he spirit' for private ownership; or it was conquered
for that purpose. He adds two further alternative pleas to support the
'conquest' idea (his opponent having rapidly lost the 'creation right'
argument). This twofold 'either/or' process recalls the simple type of
disjunctive syllogism illustrated above. 1s The difference here is that both
alternatives are eliminated; the landlords' temporary relief at being able
to turn to the 'conquest' plea is turned into a trap from which there is no
escape.
The rhetorical effectiveness of anticipating and dismissing an opponent's
arguments is enhanced when such a tight logical structure is employed,
displaying summary judgement in its curt reversal of terms (,his and
not mine ... by the conquest of the kings over the commoners, or by
the conques~ of the commoners over the kings'). From his firm stance,
Winstanley projects an image of his opponent's desperate twists and turns
through the branching structure of the 'either/or' argument Logic provides

him with a brilliantly persuasive ordering of his material. The disjunctive
reasoning is converted into an insoluble dilemma for his opponents, each
potential argument being blocked by an insurmountable objection.
We have seen how logically valid reasoning can be attacked on the
basis of its false premises. We shall now examine some major errors in
the process of inference itself.
5. SPOTTING THE FALSE ARGUMENT
We provide our own short colloquial examples here to demonstrate the

processes of false inference as succinctly as possible. It should then be
possible for the reader to scrutinise anyone persuasive text. and either be
satisfied of its logical validity or find it faulty.
(a) Undistributed Middle
'All great poets are ignored in their lifetimes. I'm ignored; so I must be a
great poet.' If we transpose the terms of the major premise here (a process
which logicians call conversion),16 we realise that the category of those
who are ignored in their lifetimes is far broader than the category of great
poets. We cannot logically claim: 'All those who are ignored in their
lifetime are great poets'. In other words we can't 'distribute' the state of
being ignored entirely to the category of poetic greatness. Since 'ignored'
is the middle term between the two premises, the inference is false (as
was the major premise!). Another example of this error might be: 'He's
a fine socialist politician - working class to his fingertips!' We can see the
faultiness of this logic as soon as we convert or transpose the proposition:
'All working-class people are fine socialist politicians' .
(b) Accidental Connection
'I think we should give X the job: he knows some very useful people.'
'I spent ages over this: how can you say it's no good?' In most cases
there is no logical connection between the ability to do a particular job
and the 'usefulness' of the people we happen to know. Similarly, the time
we spent on a task has no logical connection with the intelligence, economy
and effectiveness with which we carried it out. Marlowe's Faustus makes
this error in thinking his 'magic' words called up the fiend, Mephostophilis
(Doctor Faustus, l.iii.45-9):17
FAUSTUS: Did not my conjuring speeches raise thee?

Speak.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS: That was the cause, but yet per accidens;
For when we hear one rack the name of God,
Abjure the scriptures and his saviour Christ,
We fly in hope to get his glorious soul.
Faustus' incantations happen to involve serious blasphemy, and this

rather than any intrinsic power in the words causes the devil's eager arrival.
The accidental connection between conjuring and blasphemy misleads
Faustus into thinking he has power over evil.
(c) Ignored Qualification
'You said everyone should see this film. I took my son to see it and he was
terrified.' 'Everyone should see this' carried the unspoken qualification
'provided they're not oversensitive'. Ignoring the qualification leads to a
false inference about the benefit to be derived from seeing the film.
(d) Missing the Point
'Wby should we listen to what he has to say? He's such an objectionable

man - look at the way he treats his constituents.' Specifically, this is
a case of the argumentum ad hominem, of directing one's argument at
the unpleasantness of a person rather than the merits or demerits of his
case. More generally, 'arguing off the point' is probably one of the most
familiar and tedious of logical errors: for example, arguing how interesting
an author's life was - rather than about the meaning or merits of his or her
work. In persuasive discourse, those who show ignorance of the issue are
guilty of this error.
(e) Begging the Question
'There are no spots in the Sun.' Here we may take as our prime example the
Inquisitor's famous refusal to look through Galileo's telescope at spots on
the surface of the sun (accompanied by the declaration that no such things
could possibly exist). At the most sophisticated level, question-begging
occurs when a proposition or hypothesis founded on disputable evidence
(evidence admitting of one or more other explanations), is treated as
an established truth and used to debar any further investigation of the
evidence. Thus, the selective argument which suggested a perfect and
unchanging universe leads to the Inquisitor's belief in a flawless, static

Sun, which in its turn attempts to forestall any contrary evidence.
In the context of rhetoric, we meet constantly with the question-begging
of logoi (founded as they are on challengeable evidence), and the question-
pressing of anti-logoi.
(0 False Cause
'Oh why did I insist that he caught that train?' This thought, inevitable
as it must be following a tragic or traumatic event, is nevertheless
irrational. Getting on the train did not cause the subsequent suffering -
in fact it was insignificant besides all the other variable elements whose
chance interaction led to the accident. If the unfortunate relative had not
joined the train it might well not have crashed in any case. This error
is characterised in Latin as post hoc, propter hoc (i.e. 'subsequent to, and
therefore caused by').
(g) Many Questions
'Aren't we offering you free elections in April? How can you say we're not
supporting democracy?' This fallacy consists of combining two separate
issues in a single question and demanding a single answer. 'Are you in
favour of free electionsT and 'Do you think an April election would leave
enough time for parties to organiseT should be separate questions and
may evoke contrary answers. 'Have you stopped cheating in examsT is
a comparable example.
CONCLUSION
We have shown the processes of judgement as employed in the construction

of arguments, noting throughout its integration with the principles of ethos
and pathos in the persuasive context. We bave also demonstrated the
destructive or sceptical analysis of arguments advanced by an opponent,
whether speaker or writer.
It is now open to the reader to experiment with argumentative structures,
guided by the key considerations of relevance (to a properly defined issue)
and appropriateness (to audience and occasion).
Part Two
Persuasion in Action
5 The Persuasive Process
PREP ACE: IDEAS OF ORDER
In Part One we analysed and illustrated the structural principles governing

persuasive techniques in English, arguing throughout that persuasion con-
sists of an interaction or dialectic between persuader and audience, and that
within every persuasive interaction exists the possibility of disagreement
and counter-statement.
In Chapter 4 we examined ways of judging persuasive argument in
spoken and written language, looking at both sides of the persuasive inter-
action. We referred briefly to the importance of (i) the persuasive ordering
of argument, and (ii) the stylistic choices made by the persuader. Clearly
the more he or she is aware of the audience and their likely response, the
more this will influence any decision about persuasive ordering and stylistic
choice.
Writing an essay is a familiar experience to most of us and we are
more used to 'persuasive ordering' than we realise. Studying the order or
arrangement of arguments was one of the conventional branches of formal
rhetoric laid down by the Roman rhetoricians,l who declared that a fully
developed persuasive speech should consist of seven stages. These were:
(i) Introduction; (ii) Narrative or Statement of Facts; (iii) Determination of
the Point at Issue; (iv) Enumeration and Summary of Points; (v) Proof of
the Case; (vi) Refutation of Opponent's Case; (vii) Conclusion.
This ordering was substantially influenced by the demands of the
structuring principles ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos required that at the
outset of a persuasive discourse, time should be devoted to establishing
the right kind of rapport with the audience - a major function of the
Introduction. Similarly, if the orator wished to benefit from the power of
pathos, it made sense to develop this in the Conclusion (or peroration),
thereby leaving a powerful impression in the audience's memory and a
strong stimulus to their wills. A Narrative of salient facts, presented in
the clearest light and from the most favourable angle, was also a likely
preliminary to any statement of Points at Issue, and to the processes
of Proof or Refutation which embodied logos. It is important to note,
however, that anyone of these stages could be omitted, or moved out of
order, should the persuader wish. A current example might be an irritable
response to someone's over-lengthy exposition 'Oh let's cut the cackle
97
98 Persuasion in Action
and get down to it!' A much earlier example can be found in Paradise
Lost (IX.675-6) when the Serpent 'brooks no prologue' in his haste to
denounce God's unfair ban on apple-eating. Similarly, marked variations
in ordering can be seen in both spoken and written persuasion.
Before examining the tradional persuasive ordering, it is necessary to
place it within the context of genre, because the structuring of any
discourse will inevitably be affected by its genre and the expectations
thereby aroused. Selecting an appropriate genre for a particular persuasive
purpose is as important as assessing audience and context.
1. PERSUASION AND THE QUESTION OF GENRE
Genre is a concept which most of us feel quite familiar with - until we try
to define exactly what it means. Its denoted meaning is 'kind, sort'; but its
etymology leads us back through French to Latin 'generare' (to beget). The
term 'genus' has a particular meaning in logic as well as biology. In the
science of logic it means 'a general concept'; in biological classification
it is the next stage down after 'family', and means a group with general
attributes in common, often divisible again into species and subspecies.
An example of this might be genre in literature. Most people will readily
identify the genres of drama, fiction and poetry; but each genre also has
its own 'subspecies'. Drama, for example, includes tragedy, comedy, farce,
epic, history play; fiction includes the novel as well as the short story and
novella; and poetry can mean anything from a sonnet to an epic, from lyric
to ode, narrative, ballad or satire.
Genre in a broader sense can refer to any specific range of activities with
features in common, such as music, dance, film, sculpture, architecture or
even historical texts. New genres are always evolving, as we can see in
recent developments of the concept of 'film' in television (commercials and
pop-videos) and cinema (experimental and 'special effects'). Within the
context of functional persuasion, genres range from Parliamentary language
to advertising copy and journalism. Together with the full range of literary
genres described above, these are described by linguists as differing text
types.
Further relevant aspects of genre emerge if we look at Frederic Jameson's
definition of literary genres (in The Political Unconscious)2 as 'institutions
or social contracts' (our italics) between the writer and a specific public.
This is a different way of expressing our previous point, that the selection
of genre will arouse mutual expectations in both author and audience about
mode, structure and likely content. For example, in a tragedy the audience
The Persuasive Process 99
does not expect a happy ending; they may also anticipate certain structural
patterns of events, and even character types. Jameson would go on from
this to argue that the form and structure of any literary genre is socially
engendered - since our very ideas of a happy or unhappy ending will be
moulded by ideology, and the writing becomes 'commodified ... and
institutionalised'. It is equally possible for any 'institutionalised' genre to
go against the socially constructed expectations of writer and public and
become a new genre. James Joyce did exactly this in Ulysses, by turning
upside down traditional expectations of fiction, and producing the ultimate
modernist novel.
Another relevant aspect of Jameson's 'social contract' theory is that
every text expresses its 'idealogeme' (or 'world-view') within the actual
form, structure and mode. An interesting implication of this for our
purposes is that a persuasive text (literary or functional) may itself be
a texture or interweaving of several such idealogemes. For instance, a
romantic appeal to honour (derived from the feudal model of society)
might be interwoven with utilitarian considerations of more recent origin.
This modal or functional description of genre (where form communicates
ideology) will be highly relevant to our discussion of the relationship of
genre to persuasion and persuasive ordering - since, on this view, genre
itself may have a persuasive function (if only at an unconscious level).
But the next question to ask must be whether persuasion can be regarded
as a genre in its own right. It is likely however, that no hard and fast
answer will emerge. Earlier in the book we described persuasion as an
interaction which effectively constitutes a social and ideological contract
between persuader and persuadee. This sounds remarkably like Jameson's
description of literary genre as social contract. Yet if Jameson is right
that all literary genres are ideologically structured, many may include a
persuasive element regardless of the writer's conscious purpose. Dickens's
novels, for example, whilst frequently focusing on current social issues, yet
reveal a broader and deeper response to the human predicament beyond
their overt or implicit ideology. Similarly a non-literary genre like legal
language mayor may not involve a direct persuasive function - a deed
of conveyance will not involve persuasion, a counsel's plea will. Yet on
the other hand a genre (or text-type) like advertising is persuasive in both
function and purpose, and so is most parliamentary language.
We see here a range of possibilities associated with genre and persuasion.
There appears to be a kind of persuasive continuum ranging through literary
and non-literary genres or text-types, in that some genres will have a
primary persuasive purpose, others will include the persuasive function
along with others, and some will involve no persuasion at all. Each will
have its own characteristic structure and fonn (or mode), reflecting the
expectations of author/reader, speaker/listener in appropriate language.
The persuasive function seems, therefore, to be an extra element in any
genre, except for overtly persuasive genres like advertising and political
oratory.
As we have already suggested, persuasive ordering is a vital part of
persuasive function in any genre. It would now appear that this function
may well be additional to the primary purpose of any genre or text-type.
Therefore to understand the persuasive process - to see how it might be
integrated with the other generic characteristics of a text - we need to
consider recent theory about discourse structure and ordering.
H. P. Grice's theory of conversational 'maxims' ,3 provides some
valuable insights into the criteria governing interactional structures. He
argues that effective exchange depends on: (i) truthfulness ('quality'); (ii)
proportionality ('quantity'); (iii) relevance; (iv) clarity ('manner'). These
maxims can also be said to reflect many characteristic features of the
persuasive genre. If we are to be persuasive in the fullest sense, we must
measure our use of logos (argument) in proportion to the distance existing
between the audience's views and our own. We must argue relevantly,
establishing a convincing ethos by our truthfulness and clarity of manner,
as well as matching pathos fully to the audience and the occasion. This
will have substantial implications for the selection and ordering of the
persuasive text.
Ruqaiya Hasan, in her seminal essay 'The Nursery Tale as a Genre',4
theorises a relationship between genre and ordering, which focuses on
the basic and irreducible structural elements, as opposed to Grice's ideal
maxims. Hasan confirms immediately that genre is socially constructed,
that every genre or text-type has its own 'pragmatic' purpose, and that
language functions either in an ancillary, or a constitutive role within a
given genre. The ancillary role of language is when its use is secondary
to the pragmatic purpose of the interaction, such as making a purchase,
visiting the doctor or advertising a product. The constitutive role is when,
despite its social context, the actual language becomes 'the primary source
of its definition' - i.e. a literary text. Language in literary genres is therefore
constitutive, and in non-literary genres it is ancillary. In both roles, the
emphasis is on language function.
We come now to the most relevant part of Hasan's discussion for our
purposes, where she proposes a theoretical framework for the structure and
ordering of any text-type or genre. This may provide a crucial model for
our own study of persuasive ordering. Hasan proposes a GSP (Generic
Structure Potential) which is 'an abstract category ... descriptive of the
total range of textual structures available within a genre G ... designed

to highlight the variant and invariant properties of textual structures within
the limit of one genre'. The GSP must be capable of specifying in any
text structure: (i) the obligatory elements required to define the genre; (ii)
the optional elements which mayor may not appear; (iii) the 'obligatory
and optional ordering of these elements'. Hasan goes on from this to
emphasise that every element of the GSP will have semantic attributes
and lexico-grammatical realisation.
Every genre, therefore, has its own GSP and its own pragmatic purpose.
We know that some genres include a persuasive function, others do not
The interesting question is whether the persuasive ordering in a genre
can be modelled on the GSP. In other words, is there what we might
call a GPP (Generic Persuasive Potential) in addition to the GSP, within
a given genre? Can we similarly isolate certain obligatory elements, certain
optional elements and a particular ordering of them? Another question
will be whether these 'obligatory and optional elements' could reflect the
traditional stages of persuasive ordering mentioned earlier in the chapter?
We can look for some possible answers in the following analyses.
2. PERSUASIVE ORDERING: VARIATIONS AND EXAMPLES
We shall explore a range of genres (both functional and literary) in

order to observe the interplay of persuasive elements, and to assess
which elements are obligatory, and which optional. We have chosen
six text-types for detailed consideration, of which three use persuasive
ordering in a non-literary or functional context, and three are examples
of literary persuasion.
We must now try to identify which obligatory and optional elements
might constitute the GPP of a text As we know, a persuasive interaction
will include three basic constituents - the persuader, the text/message, and
the audience. How can these be linked with the GPP? In whatever genre
the persuasion appears, there will be an Opening/Initiating Statement. This
is a lexico-grammatical realisation of the persuasive purpose of the text,
which may be expressed either as a question, a statement or a command,
in ancillary (functional) language or constitutive (literary) language. It
will not necessarily follow a linear sequence or ordering, but may start
in medias res, and neither the persuader's point of view, nor the point at
issue necessarily appear. Just as Hasan identifies the Initiating Event in the
nursery tale as obligatory and fixed,S so we can assert that in persuasion
some sort of Opening is equally obligatory. This Opening element differs
from Hasan's GSP in that it remains an aspect of junction rather than

fact or event Similarly the conclusion of any persuasive process is not
a fixed 'Final Event' as in Hasan, but a junction. Like the Opening,
the Conclusion will be expressed either as a question, a statement or a
command, in ancillary or constitutive language depending on the literary
or non-literary nature of the text. How this position is arrived at will depend
on the persuader's choices of argument, and his methods of utilising proofs
and disproofs. From this we can deduce a third obligatory element in the
persuasive ordering and function, namely Proof and/or Disproof. This
element will remain obligatory, whatever fOIm the persuasion takes, and
whether it is overt or not.
We have established three obligatory elements as part of the GPP; are
there other optional elements? We propose the following as significant
optional elements within the persuasive process: sub-divided arguments;
factual statements or narratives; repetition of arguments; deliberate omis-
sions; varied orderings; appeals to the audience's emotions/goodwill.
From this it appears that although our proposed GPP is analogous to
Hasan's GSP, there is a fundamental difference. In persuasion the elements
are junctions rather than actual textual structures, which become realised
in linguistic form. Moreover these functions can be found in any genre,
text or discourse type which includes a persuasive component We may
conclude then that any given genre will have not only a GSP but also a
GPP. Furthermore a persuasive text will utilise both optional and obligatory
elements of the GPP in its persuasive ordering.
In the light of this we shall now look at the six selected examples of
text-types and analyse the persuasive ordering involved.
(a) Unscripted Discussion
From a tape-recorded discussion on Euthanasia. The three participants (H.

J, and A.M) are aged between eighteen and seventeen years. At some points
they are speaking simultaneously.
A-M: I think it's wrong.

H: SO you think, that somebody, even if they think ... if they
appear to be completely brain-dead, should be left on a machine
that ... for evermore ...
A·M: Wasting valuable resources for people who could make
it ...
H: While somebody else's life could be saved if they'd been able
to use that equipment.
A-M: 1 reckon that everybody should have the chance to live; 1

mean, if they're on that machine they're still alive, aren't they? There
still must be some life in it for that person to breathe_
J: They're still technically alive; but they're not really alive_
They don't think; they're just a cabbage_
H: They're just a breathing corpse; that's not living_
A-M: Yeah, but there still must be some life in it for that person
to breathe_
H: 1 mean, that's all to do with what's more important, life or the
quality of life. 1 mean, that goes back to the abortion argument; that,
you know, should they kill off ...
J: Should you take life as its own thing?
H: .•. er, no, should you kill off handicapped children before
birth, abort them; is that the right thing to do; 1 mean, that's the
argument between life and quality of life.
A-M: It's all concerned with ...
H: That's the same thing with Euthanasia, isn't it; should some-
body who's just breathing, totally brain inactive, be allowed to stay
alive?
J: It all comes down to if you're going to enjoy your life or
not; 1 mean people who're on a life-support machine aren't probably
having a great time, a great party in there, are they?
(Laughter)
H: You see; the thing is, the thing is, you never know - you can't
tell, even if you ... the machine ...
A-M: You know, they said they could still be aware, of what's
going on round them ...
J: Imagine, they can hear people talking and saying, 'Well,
they're obviously not thinking; why don't we just turn off the
machine?'
A-M: Switch them off ...
J: Just imagine that!
H: Oh that's a horrible thought; that's a nightmare.
In this text-type the exchanges are all focused on a specific issue. The
three participants are exploring a question together, and A-M initiates the
discussion with the Opening Statement 1, 'I think it's wrong', which she
reiterates and rephrases 'I reckon that everyone should have the chance
to live ... ' J. introduces the implied Opening Statement 2, which is
redefined and exemplified by H. ' ••• that's all to do with what's more
important, life or the quality of life.' This also constitutes a point at issue,
and it is repeatedly explored, with proofs and disproofs being presented.

The third Opening Statement is introduced by H: 'You see; the thing is, the
thing is you never know - you can't tell, even if you - the machine ... '
A-M and J support this with proofs, and H makes the Concluding Statement
which is an assessment and comment on the discussion but not a conclusion
in logical terms.
Thus although the participants exchange views on three related issues,
and adduce some syllogistically varied proofs for each argument, there is
little use of disproof because they are in basic agreement. The main issue
is certainly redefined and elaborated at each tum in the argument, but as
you might expect in spoken discourse, characteristic modal attributes of
the genre (incomplete sentences, repetition, fillers, monitoring devices,
hedges and overlapping) tend to blur the persuasive ordering. What we can
confidently identify, however, are the Opening and Closing Statements, as
well as some use of the optional elements such as sub-divided arguments,
repetition and appeals to audience.
(b) The Set Speech
A SPEECH BY SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL5
CIVILISATION: AN ADDRESS AS CHANCELLOR TO THE

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL, 2 JULY 1938
There are few words which are used more loosely than the word
"Civilisation." What does it mean? It means a society based upon
the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors
and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot
and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and
independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws
are maintained. That is Civilisation - and in its soil grow freedom,
comfort and culture. When Civilisation reigns in any country, a wider
and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The
traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to
us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed
and used by all.
The central principle of Civilisation is the subordination of the
ruling authority to the settled customs of the people and to their
will as expressed through the Constitution. In this Island we have
to-day achieved in a high degree the blessings of Civilisation. There
is freedom; there is law; there is love of country; there is a great

measure of goodwill between classes; there is a widening prosperity.
There are unmeasured opportunities of correcting abuses and making
further progress.
In this very week we have seen a Prime Minister at the head of
a large and loyal majority bow with good grace to the customs of
Parliament, and we have heard Socialist Members speaking with
pride of the precedents of the early seventeenth century, and the
principles of the Petition of Right. In this respect for law and
sense of continuity lies one of the glories of England. And more
than that, there also lies in it an important part of her strength and
safety. SQch episodes are astonishing, but also educative, to countries
where dictatorships prevail, and where no one dares to raise his hand
against arbitrary power. They stir and cheer the minds of men in
many lands.
We have, however, to face the problem of the turbulent, formidable
world outside our shores. Wby should not the same principles which
have shaped the free, ordered, tolerant civilisation of the British Isles
and British Empire be found serviceable in the organisation of this
anxious world? Why should not nations link themselves together in
a larger system and establish a rule of law for the benefit of all? That
surely is the supreme hope by which we should be inspired and the
goal towards which we should march with resolute step.
But it is vain to imagine that the mere perception or declaration
of right principles, whether in one country or in many countries,
will be of any value unless they are supported by those qualities
of civic virtue and manly courage - aye, and by those instruments
and agencies of force and science which in the last resort must be
the defence of right and reason.
Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not
be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to
defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power
before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.
Here, then, we see the task which should command the exertions
of the rising generation which fills this spacious hall, and which may
bring to the life of Britain the surge of a new impulse towards the
organisation of world peace, and across the gulf of these eventful
years prepare and bring nearer the Brotherhood of Man.
We quote this powerfully rhetorical oration in its entirety. Addressing

a university audience as war approaches, Churchill appeals to each group
by his references to 'the rising generation' with their potential for 'civic
virtue and manly courage'; by his careful definitions of civilisation; and
by his allusions to the ideal of 'the Brotherhood of Man'. In its persuasive
ordering the speech follows the traditional fonn, with certain variations
and omissions. For a start, there is no separate Introduction; the element of
'Narrative' (reminding the audience of the happy days of Empire) derives
from the opening definitions of 'Civilisation'. The obligatory element
of Introduction and Opening is there ('There are few words ... more
loosely used ... than Civilisation') as well as the Concluding Statement
(,Here ... we see the task ... to bring nearer the Brotherhood of Man').
Extensive repetition of the tenn 'civilisation' appears in paragraphs one and
two, making balanced and orthodox use of genus and differentia, supported
by strongly positive lexis ('freedom, comfort, justice, traditions, cherished,
enjoyed, goodwill, strength, safety').
All this creates a favourable mood ready for the Point at Issue - that,
threatened by 'barbaric and atavistic forces', everyone must be ready to
defend 'civilisation'. Churchill uses rhetorical questions to emphasise the
need for British principles of justice in a dangerously divided world; this
is the nearest we get to the obligatory element of Proof. Nor is there any
Refutation of the Opponent's Case, because (as a measure of its persuasive
confidence) this speech assumes that no opposing argument is possible.
Finally the highly Latinate, polysyllabic lexis and complex syntactic
structures add weight and sonority to the persuasive discourse, and enrich
the GPP.
(c) Written Argument: Commercial Persuasion
MAY WE SUGGEST YOU TELL THE BOARD YOU ARE

CHOOSING A FIVE-SEATER FAMILY SALOON
So you've spent the last few months diplomatically 'losing' at golf.

You've laughed at the MD's jokes (some were even funny) and
you kept schtum when the Chairman's wife deliberately forgot your
name.
Yesterday it paid off. Your back was patted (not stabbed) and
you've just been told to invest some company money in some brand
new metal.
Allow us to make a suggestion. Test drive the stunning new CD
Carlsson from Saab. Of course, you'll be hooked from the moment
you sit in the driving seat, but then there's a problem. People may
think you're getting ideas above your already lofty station. And you
didn't get where you are today by people thinking you're getting
ideas above your already lofty station.
So here's what you tell the Financial Director;
Firstly, the new Saab is a four door, five-seater, family saloon.
Don't mention the integrated aerodynamic skirts, alloy wheels, or
exclusive badging.
Secondly, inform him there is 23.8 cu. feet of luggage space in
the boot, but omit there's 195 b.h.p. 16-valves, and an all new
turbo-charged power unit under the bonnet.
Say that it's quite nippy, andjolly safe when overtaking. But please
leave out the 0- 60 in 7.5 seconds, forget that it's faster than a Ferrari
Mondial from 50 to 70 m.p.h.
Oh, and mention the 38.1 m.p.g. Not the 140 m.p.h.
And finally, whatever you do, don't say the new CD was partly
developed by Erik Carlsson, the legendary rally driver. Just explain
that it's wholly favoured by Harry Dobson, the frugal company car
manager.
If all goes well, you'll soon be driving the new Saab Carlsson CD
into the company car park. Obviously, you'll be hiding it in a comer
until it's time to make your move. That day, in the not-too-distant
future when you 'accidentally' park it in the Chairman's space.
Or have we been addressing the Chairman all along?
Advertisement in The Independent Magazine, 21 October 1989. 6
Using deliberately unsubtle but nevertheless powerful flattery, this

advertisement is persuading the prospective buyer (whose identity is
cunningly disguised at first) to choose a Saab Carlsson CD for his
next company car. The overall tone dominates actual content at first; it
is conspiratorial and cynical, yet flatteringly polite. The potential buyer
(assumed to be male) is implicitly complimented on his ambition-led
tactics of manipulation and deceit. The colloquially styled invitation
seems framed to invite collusion between customer and salesman, whilst
the advertisement seeks at the same time to present the car as powerfully
'macho' and eminently practical. The target audience consists of the
business man himself - and also the company finance director!
The persuasive ordering of this advertisement opens with two para-
graphs of Narrative/Statement of Facts, used with cynical humour to
characterise the go-getting behaviour of the 'typical' customer, and to
speculate (with overt flattery and covert mockery) on the cunning way
he engineered this opportunity. It also successfully establishes the Point
at Issue - which car to buy? - in the context of company politics.
The ordering is unusual in that it's not until paragraph three that the
Initiating Statement/Command is spelt out - choose a Carlsson CD.
Subsequent paragraphs offer Proofs that this car is simultaneously a
family saloon and an excitingly sporty car. The ordering alternates one
set of arguments (turning on the issue of practical utility and economy)
with another (relating to the issues of pleasure and ambition). Just as
there was no obvious Opening Statement, there is no overt Concluding
Statement; the real conclusion lies in the flattering revelation of the
addressee's actual identity. The ideal customer for the Carlsson CD is
not, after all, one who merely aspires to be Chairman of the company
- but the Chairman himself! By choosing this car, he'll be showing
what has got him to the top and what keeps him there; he'll have the
double satisfaction of thwarting any upstarts and cornering the pleasure
for himself.
This advertisement demonstrates clearly that the familiar persuasive
ordering of Initial Statement, Narrative, Proofs and (implicit) Concluding
Statement is subject to adjustment Interwoven with it is a further range
of structural and lexical variations specific to the copywriter's ingenious
rhetorical strategy.
Turning to persuasive ordering in literary genres, we shall find some
rather different and less predictable patterning. The GPP still applies,
in that there are always elements which can be described in terms of
'Opening' and 'Closing Statements' but the role of Argument/Proof is
much less significant. The way most writers persuade depends as much
on lexical choice (and connotations) and the patternings created by sound,
syntax and sentence structure as on 'proofs' in any specific sense. In the
following extracts we shall see how persuasive ordering nevertheless does
have a crucial function within literary genres.
(d) Dramatic Dialogue
From Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Act IF

This two-act play consists mostly of a grimly comic dialogue between
Vladimir and Estragon, two strange tramp-like figures vainly waiting for
Godot, the 'man of power' who will solve their problems.
They resume their watch. Silence.

VLADIMIR)
ESTRAGON)(turning simultaneously.) Do you -
VLADIMIR: Oh, pardon!
ESTRAGON: Carry on.
VLADIMIR: No no, after you.

ESTRAGON: No no, you first
VLADIMIR: I interrupted you.
ESTRAGON: On the contrary.
They glare at each other angrily.
VLADIMIR: Ceremonious ape!
ESTRAGON: Punctilious pig!
VLADIMIR: Finish your phrase, I tell you!
ESTRAGON: Finish your own!
Silence. They draw closer, halt.
VLADIMIR: Moron!
ESTRAGON: That's the idea, let's abuse each other.
They tum, move apart, tum again and face each other.
VLADIMIR: Moron!
ESTRAGON: Vermin!
VLADIMIR: Abortion!
ESTRAGON: Morpion!
VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!
ESTRAGON: Curate!
VLADIMIR: Cretin!
ESTRAGON: (with finality). Crritic!
VLADIMIR: Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.
ESTRAGON: Now let's make it up.
VLADIMIR: Gogo!
ESTRAGON: Didi!
VLADIMIR: Your hand!
ESTRAGON: Take it!
VLADIMIR: Come to my arms!
ESTRAGON: Your arms?
VLADIMIR: My breast!
ESTRAGON: Off we go!
They embrace. They separate. Silence.
VLADIMIR: How time flies when one has fun!
Silence.
ESTRAGON: What do we do now?
VLADIMIR: While waiting.
ESTRAGON: While waiting.
Silence.
VLADIMIR: We could do our exercises.
ESTRAGON: Our movements.
VLADIMIR: Our elevations.

ESTRAGON: Our relaxations.
VLADIMIR: Our elongations.
ESTRAGON: Our relaxations.
VLADIMIR: To warm us up.
ESTRAGON: To calm us down.
VLADIMIR: Off we go.
Vladimir hops from one foot to the other.
Estragon imitates him.
This extract is not persuasive in any conventional sense of the word;

what Beckett is doing, however, is persuading us of the tragic futility of
his protagonists' existence through their patterned, ordered but ultimately
meaningless discourse. All they can do is talk and wait, quarrel and wait,
make up their quarrel and wait. Each of these exchanges is introduced by
a variant of the Opening Statement - 'Now let's make it up' - balanced
by a variant of the Concluding statement - 'Off we go' (used twice),
to initiate meaningless action. Clearly the ordering of the passage is in
itself a persuasive device to make Beckett's point - this rhetoric, far
from being persuasive, achieves precisely nothing because nothing is
being attempted. Vladimir and Estragon have given up; they are simply
'waiting' for somebody else to act for them.
The exchanges are also interesting in that each has its inter-
nal phonetic and semantic patterns and a climactic structure. For
example: 'Moron!' 'Vermin!' 'Abortion!' 'Morpion!' (i.e. scorpi-
on/moron); 'Sewer-rat!' 'Curate!' 'Cretin!' 'Crritic!' Through this
grimly punning humour Beckett further persuades us of his nihilistic
view of humanity.
(e) Poetry
A STUDY OF READING HABITS
by Philip Larkin 8
When getting my nose in a book

Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.
Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.
The poem describes the state of mind of its 'hero' in boyhood, adoles-
cence and early maturity, reflecting these stages in his changing attitude to
books. The title is at once serious and ironic. Larkin seems to have a dual
purpose in the poem: to show his 'hero' as unappealing but vulnerable,
and to challenge any easy assumptions about the 'value of reading'. To
achieve this, Larkin persuades us of the authenticity of the boy's changing
response to books, as imagination and fantasy are gradually replaced by
the disillusionment of reality. The carefully differentiated ordering of the
stanzas reflects the stages of his life. The contrast of lexis in stanza I
produces a form of Narrative, and we have adult cliche ('ruining my eyes',
'getting my nose in a book') balanced by the language of heroic fantasy
('keep cool', 'the old right hook', 'dirty dogs twice my size'). In stanza 2
the pattern is different - the schoolboy language (,inch-thick specs', 'lark',
'ripping times') is contrasted with the absurd but gross sexual fantasies
of the adolescent, linked by the ambiguous use of 'ripping'. In the final
stanza there is a different pattern of ordering (this time a linear one) as
the narrator gradually reveals his currently unhappy and embittered state
of mind.
By this unconventional use of persuasive ordering, Larkin convinces us
of the ambivalent nature of his central figure, and of the tragic way that
books have lent themselves to his self-deception. At the end of the poem we
become persuaded of the ambivalent nature of books themselves, having
been taken stage by stage through the 'hero's' disillusioning experience.
The deliberate crassness of the final line 'Books are a load of crap' is in
many ways both a Closing Statement and an Opening Statement for the
next argument.
(0 Prose Narrative (Fiction)
From The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury9
In this novel Bradbury presents a satiric picture of the lIDiversity world of

the sixties, its pretentiousness, cold-blooded ambition and obsession with
style. This passage reveals the protagonist, sociology lecturer Howard Kirk,
preparing for a beginning of term party.
After a while, Howard leaves the kitchen and begins to go around

the house. He is a solemn party-giver, the creator of a serious social
theatre. Now he goes about, putting out ashtrays and dishes, cushions
and chairs. He moves furniture, to produce good conversation areas,
open significant action spaces, create comers of privacy. The children
run around with him. 'Who's coming, Howard?' asks Martin. 'A
whole crowd of people,' says Howard. 'Who?' asks Martin. 'He
doesn't know,' says Celia. Now he goes upstairs, to pull beds
against the walls, adjust lights, shade shades, pull blinds, open
doors. It is an important rule to have as little forbidden ground
as possible, to make the house itself the total stage . .. Chairs
and cushions and beds suggest multiple forms of companionship.
Thresholds are abolished; room leads into room. There are speakers
for music, special angles for lighting, rooms for dancing and talking
and smoking and sexualizing. The aim is to let the party happen
rather than make it happen, so that what takes place occurs apparently
without hostly intervention, or rather with the intervention of that
higher sociological host who governs the transactions of human
encolIDter.
Bradbury's purpose in this extract seems to be two-fold. First, in

structural terms this party plays a crucial role in establishing character,
attitudes and relationships (balanced by another party at the end of the
novel, in which a kind of resolution is reached). Secondly, the way in
which Howard 'sets the scene', closely replicates the fictional construction
and ordering of a text The structural pattern here is interesting because it
changes from linear narrative (including dialogue) to authorial comment
and descriptive detail. Verb tense usage (simple present not present
continuous) emphasises the step-by-step nature of the 'scene-setting'
narrative. From a persuasive perspective the ordering is significant, as
the extract starts with the Opening Statement 'He is a solemn party-giver,
the creator of a serious social theatre' . The subsequent passage confirms this
description, as Howard arranges furniture and props like a stage manager

preparing for a play, the only difference being that many scenes will take
place simultaneously on this sophisticated and complex stage: 'It is an
important rule to have as little forbidden ground as possible, to make the
house itself the total stage'. Having designed the set, and established the
code ('one of possibility, not denial'), the Final Statement is made: 'the
aim is to let the party happen rather than make it happen ... without hostly
intervention ... rather with the intervention of that higher sociological host
who governs the transactions of human encounter.' This pattern of stage
management, interrupted by assessment, will continue as the novel (and
the character of Howard) unfolds. We are to be persuaded that he is a
ruthless and theatrical manipulator of other people's Iives, and by presenting
this detailed account of the party preparations, Bradbury convinces us.
Persuasive ordering is of value here in that it provides a rhetorical
framework in which Howard ' ... moves ... pulls ... produces ... ad-
justs ... opens ... designs ... blocks' in preparation for' ... dancing
and talking and smoking and sexualising'. This verbal detail together
with the high degree of nominalisation (,ash-trays, dishes, cushions,
chairs ... beds ... lights ... shades. .. blinds ... doors) enhances
the persuasiveness.
CONCLUSION
Having inspected a wide variety of persuasive ordering in functional and

literary texts, we can with more confidence leave our readers to their own
experimental devices. We have sought to develop a sense of the persuasive
process in relation to genre and its Generic Structural Potential, as well
as demonstrating our own Generic Persuasive Potential. We have shown
how persuasive intentions are structurally signalled within texts, so that it
should be possible for the reader to assess the ordering appropriate to topic,
audience and occasion. In the final chapter we shall focus on the lexical
and stylistic devices available to the persuader - namely, the 'persuasive
repertoire' .
6 The Persuasive Repertoire
PREFACE: PERSUASIVE STYLE
In Cbapter 5 we considered tbe ways in wbicb ordering functions in tbe

persuasive process. We sball now turn to an examination of tbe actual
language of persuasion. This will mean looking at tbe range of lexical
cboices, syntactic structures and sound patterning. In otber words, we sball
be examining tbe stylistic repertoire available to tbe persuader.
To define style is a task wbicb· can seem eitber utterly simple or
alarmingly complex, depending on your linguistic perspective. Language,
wbether we agree with the linguistic determinists or not, 1 represents an
individual's thougbt expressed in symbolic terms, througb a system of
grapbetics (written language) or pbonemes (spoken language). A writer or
speaker will adopt wbatever 'style' seems appropriate to situation, audience
and message. Just as language bas infinite communicative potential, it also
bas infinitely varied- stylistic potential. And wben language is used for
persuasive purposes, close attention to style is even more crucial, as we
sball sbow.
For tbe Greeks and Romans tbere were three 'levels' of rbetorical
style, 'bigb', 'middle' and 'low'. The high style combined figurative
language and ornament with complex syntactic structures, and tended to
be associated with the epic, the ode and other 'lofty' genres associated with
oratory. Tbe middle style, characterised by wit, urbanity and incisiveness,
was associated with satire and epigram and the more argumentative pbases
of rbetoric. Low, or plain style meant simpler forms of lexis and sentence
structure and was used for comedy, fables and familiar letters. Moreover,
there was an implicit link between these 'levels' of language and social
bierarcby.2 Comic characters, for instance, were 'low life'.3
These very different styles migbt even appear in a single item of written
or spoken discourse, as we see in John Milton's Areopagitica (a pampblet
'for the liberty of unlicenc'd printing'),4 wbere plain speaking, wit, and
elevated figurative language are all used to further the argument.
'Higb, middle and low' became accepted stylistic conventions open
to individual variation. A persuader migbt opt for the bigb style in a
formal speecb, or prefer to use the plain or familiar style, depending on
the audience.
Today these categories of bigb, middle and low style seem inadequate to
114
The Persuasive Repertoire 115
describe the tremendous variations in spoken and written discourse (though

they remain useful to us for reference, as a basic 'model' of categorisation).
Modem linguists prefer the broader term register to signify the enormous
range of style available in context to the speaker or writer.
Mter these preliminaries, we can tum to the central purpose of this
chapter - to demonstrate the resources of the persuasive repertoire, includ-
ing lexical choice, sound patterning, figurative language and schematic
devices. We shall use a wide range of examples from functional and literary
contexts, concentrating more on the smaller scale effects (which should be
easier to replicate), and avoiding the broader area of prose structure (see
Nash, 1980).5
1. LEXICAL CHOICE
The key importance of lexis is evident, though impossible to treat

adequately here. (See Ronald Carter, Vocabulary, for more detail.)6 We
shall use ethos, pathos and logos to provide specific focus and examine
some important aspects of persuasive lexis. For example, choosing the
right word in a given context might be influenced by your stance and
situation (ethos). Do you refer to a particular policeman as coloured, black
or Mro-Caribbean? Similarly, either positive or negative emotion (pathos)
will be conveyed by your choice of lexis. Is it field-sports or blOod-sports?
Is he a freedom-fighter or a terrorist? Was it youthful high-spiritedness or
louts on the rampage? Again, in the context of science and technology logos
will influence lexical choice, as we can observe in this account of Newton's
Law: 'Every body continues in a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight
line unless acted upon by a force' . In specifically persuasive lexis, although
ethos and logos will exert some influence, pathos will predominate. It is
worth noting, however, that social change can affect lexis, adding emotive
dimensions to purely scientific words (chlorofluorocarbon abbreviated to
CFC), or historic terms (patriarch).
(a) Lexical Choice in Literary Persuasion
As we saw in Chapter 3, Dickens attacks utilitarianism in Hard Times,

stressing its damaging effect on education by insistence on nothing but
'Facts'. Subsequently the boy Bitzer gives a utilitarian definition of
a horse: 'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four
grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive ... ' (ed. cit., p. 5). The
coldly logos-oriented language reflects the power of this philosophy to
destroy the human spirit, as the novel will later reveal.
In the eighteenth-century comedy Schoolfor ScandaF by Sheridan, there

is an amusing instance of ethos affecting lexis. Mrs Candour (who affects
to despise ill-natured gossip) enters the salon of Lady Sneerwell with the
very latest salacious news, adding:
I confess, Mr Surface, I cannot bear to hear people attacked behind

their backs; and when ugly circumstances come out against our
acquaintance I own I always love to think the best By-the-by, I
hope 'tis not true that your brother is absolutely ruined?
The malicious relish of 'attacked', 'ugly', 'ruined' contrasts amusingly

with Mrs Candour's pious insincerity (,I confess', 'I love to think the best',
'I hope 'tis not true') and conveys her character to the audience.
In Sylvia Plath's poem about being pregnant, 'Metaphors', powerfully
chosen lexis reveals the emotional complexity (pathos) of her state of
mind: 8
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
o red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
First a sense of mystery and excitement ('riddle'); then amusement and

irony ('elephant', 'house', 'melon', 'cow in calC); pleasure ('red fruit',
'ivory', 'fine timbers'); pride ('yeasty rising', 'new-minted', 'fat purse');
and finally apprehension ('bag of green apples', 'Boarded the train there's
no getting off').'
(b) Non-Literary Lexis and Functional Persuasion
There are many examples of non-literary language (scientific texts, legal

documents etc) where logos determines lexical choice. News reporting pro-
vides some interesting variations on this, because although the journalist's
prime responsibility is to report facts (logos), political and emotional bias
(ethos and pathos) will inevitably occur. Typical tabloid headlines ('Tug of
Love Drama', 'Bosses hammer Unions') reflect this in their lexical choice.
Advertising also purports to report facts but adds emotive lexis; and one
recent sophisticated advertisement goes as far as to show a picture of a car
labelled 'THE EMOTION', with the accompanying text headed 'THE LOGIC'!
[Lancia Dedra advertisement, The Independent, 16 January 1991]. All this
is equally true for political writing and political oratory, of which examples
abound.
2. SOUND PATIERNING
Spoken and written language in general, and persuasive language in

particular, make substantial use of sound patterning to create and enhance
meaning. This may be conveyed by using particular syntactic structures
or intonation patterns, and by familiar devices like alliteration, assonance,
consonance, dissonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme, half-rhyme, and internal
rhyme. We shall look at a range of examples here; later in the chapter
we shall also consider other schematic devices which make use of sound
components, like puns and word-play.
(a) Alliteration (repetition of initial consonant): 'How hot do you like
your hatch?' (Fiesta RS Turbo car). Functional persuasion, urging audience
to buy.
(b) Assonance (repetition of medial vowel): 'Amazing grace! How sweet
the sound . .. ' (hymn). Theological persuasion.
(c) Consonance (repetition of consonant in medial or final position): 'Cut
is the branch that might have grown full straight' (Epilogue to Marlowe's
Faustus). Repetition of final dental stop 't' stresses finality of Faustus'
damnation. Moralising persuasion.
(d) Dissonance (mingling of deliberately discordant sounds):
'Twas chatt'ring, grinning, mouthing, jabb'ring all,

And Noise, and Norton, Brangling, and Breval,
Dennis and Dissonance; and captious Art,
And Snip-snap short, and Interruption smart.
(Alexander Pope, The Dunciad) II .. 228- 31.9
Pope is attacking bad writers, the dissonance reflecting their dullness.

Satirical persuasion.
(e) Onomatopoeia (the sound suggests the actual meaning of a word):
The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide,

Slaps at the rocks the sun has dried,
And filling in, brimming in, sparkling and free,

The sweet susurration of incoming sea.
In these lines from 'A Bay in Anglesey,' 10 John Betjeman seeks to convey
the harmonious mood of the sea shore. Lyrical persuasion.
(f) Rhyme, half-rhyme, internal rhyme (exact or partial repetition of
sound, usually in final position; repetition of a group of sounds within
the same line):
'Whether it's Hollywood, Pinewood or Cricklewood, it really ought

to be Wedgwood ... Wedgwood. Wouldn't you?'
The advertisers are suggesting (with the additional help of an actress seated
romantically in some cloisters beside a set of china) that Wedgwood china
has an exotic and romantic appeal which we too can enjoy. Commercial
persuasion.
3. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE OR mOPE
Trope (Greek 'turn') is a traditional rhetorical term, still used by critical

theorists, denoting the whole range of figurative language. Its derivation
implies its function - to turn meanings in words via a less direct mode of
expression. Meaning is thus conveyed through the perception of similitude,
association or opposition. Skilfully used, trope gives language greater
precision and emphasis, whether in a broader or narrower context, and
this is obviously valuable in persuasion. We shall examine four basic
kinds: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. Two will be familiar,
the others less so - but all need careful examination as key elements in the
persuasive repertoire.
(a) Metaphor
In its simplest form, metaphor replaces one word with another, resulting
in one concept representing another. Jakobson's theory (conveniently para-
phrased and developed by David Lodge in The Modes of Modem Writing
(1977)),11 argues that this process takes place on the 'paradigmatic' axis of
language, when we select one word from an associated series or semantic
field. The following example ('The Sergeant-Major was barking orders') is
chosen from the semantic field associated with loud aggressive utterances
(human or animal). The metaphor 'bark' represents a kind of shout, and is
selected because of a likeness between the two, in order to make a point

about the Sergeant-Major's voice!
Metaphor can also be expressed in a single phrase or paragraph, in a
developed form like personification, or in an extended allegory like Animal
Farm. Proverbs and clicMs are highly metaphoric, but their persuasive
impact will vary in proportion to their familiarity. (An apt proverb or a
freshly-minted image can be tremendously persuasive.) The orientation of
the persuasive metaphor will also be significant, whether it communicates
the strength of the persuader's ethos, pathos or logos.
(i) Ordinary Conversation
'Isn't she a live wire?'

'Yes, but doesn't she wear you out?'
Each speaker employs a stock metaphor/clicM to express an individual

viewpoint. The first speaker's metaphor is oriented primarily towards the
subject of the exchange, and the second speaker's towards herself.
(ii) Oratory
(Churchill's 'Finest Hour' speech, 18 June 1940):12
I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle
depends the survival of Christian civilisation . .. Hitler knows that
he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can
stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world
may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then
the whole world ... will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age
made more sinister ... by the lights of perverted science. Let us
therefore ... so bear ourselves that. if the British Empire and its
Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This
was their finest hour."
The last sentence derives much of its emotive power from the contrasted
metaphors of 'broad, sunlit uplands' (the pastoral ideal, prosperity, peace
and freedom), and the looming 'abyss' (German rule and the hell of
'perverted science'). The audience must make a heroic but costly choice.
(iii) Literary Persuasion

The Octopus is both title and centrally structuring metaphor for Frank
Norris's fictional expa.>e of unscrupulous monopoly capitalism in
nineteenth-century America. The railroad system becomes an octopus in the

reader's imagination, despite the matter-of-fact tone of the description: 13
The whole map was gridironed by a vast, complicated network of

red lines ... These centralized at San Francisco and thence ramified
and spread north, east, and south . .. From Coles, in the topmost
corner of the map, to Yuma in the lowest, from Reno on one side to
San Francisco on the other, ran the plexus of red, a veritable system
of blood circulation, complicated, dividing and reuniting, branching,
splitting, extending, throwing out feelers . . . laying hold upon some
forgotten village or town, involving it in one of a myriad branching
coils, one of a hundred tentacles, drawing it, as it were, towards that
centre from which all this system sprang.
(b) Metonymy
Metonymy is a difficult term to define, and is thought to reflect a

process fundamentally different from that involved in metaphor. Lodge
(op. cit pp. 73-7) argues that metonymy is combinative (working on
the syntagmatic axis), whereas metaphor is selective (working on the
paradigmatic axis). Thus metonymy employs a principle of structural
association and metaphor functions on a principle of semantic association.
In metonymy one part of a syntactic structure is used to express another
part of that structure. We are familiar with the statement 'The White
House (or 10 Downing Street) issued a denial'. This is an example of
the Container/Content metonymy, where the residence of the President (or
Prime Minister) represents the staff working there who issued the denial.
(See variant ii below.)
Metonymy has close links with the associational model of argument
(discussed in Chapter 3). Through a common association, or 'compact
reference' (Nash, Designs, p. 55) within the minds of author and audience,
an idea put into words metonymically represents unexpressed or implicit
ideas and associations. This will have obvious implications for persuasion
in general, and advertising in particular. We can illustrate this in a recent
anti-litter slogan, 'Bag it and bin it and that way we'll win it!' Turning a
noun into a verb syntactically dramatises the need for immediate public
action. 'Bag' and 'bin' are metonymies for the obnoxiousness of litter
and the vigorous action required to eliminate it. (A fuller version with
less impact might read: 'Please win the battle against litter, by collecting
it in bags and bins'.)
Metonymy has also been a major resource of modem fiction. It can
reveal, through the 'realistic' description of an environment, those intan-

gible human qualities characterising an individual or social group (see
below).
Just as the association model of argument bad some important variations,
metonymy can also be divided into several categories. We shall illustrate
the first two (from literary persuasion) in more detail than the later
self-explanatory examples (from functional persuasion). A general proviso
about metonymy is that all variations are susceptible to oversimplification
and stereotyping, as our first example shows.
(i) Subject/Adjunct Metonymy

'None but the Brave deserves the Fair' (Dryden). This association of
bravery with men, beauty with women, persuades the modern reader of
nothing more than the sexist prejudices of the age and its author.14 A
different example is provided by Oscar Wilde's much-quoted epigram on
fox-hunters: 'The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable' (with assonance
further reinforcing the metonymy).
(ii) Container/Content Metonymy

Here we quote part of the description of a fenland abortionist's cottage
from Waterland by Graham Swift 15
Hanging from the ceiling beam, like amputated, mummified legs, a

pair oflong leather waders. But take a look at that ceiling! Look what
else it's hung with. It's hung with dead birds. .. It's hung with
strips of fur and eel-skin, a bloody-mouthed water rat dangling by
its hairy tail. It's hung with unnameable bunches of leaves, grasses,
roots, seed-pods, in every stage of freshness and dessication. With
misshapen things blackened with smoke that you don't like to ask
what they are. With all manner of bags and pouches that you don't
like to ask what's inside.
Reflecting the occupations of both husband and wife, Swift's description

conveys a sense of menace, of death as their means of isolated and stunted
survival, close to raw nature but remote from twentieth century ideals of
humanity. All this suggests the impending fate of the protagonist and his
pregnant girl friend. The figurative effect here works primarily through the
container (ceiling)! content (lifestyle) association.
(iii) Cause/Effect Metonymy

'That's the drink talking' (i.e. inappropriate speech caused by drunken-
ness).
(iv) Clothes/Wearer Metonymy

'It's a case of the blue jeans versus the blue rinse' (representing antagonism
between youth and age).
(v) Inventor/Invention Metonymy

'Sandwich', 'bobby', 'wellingtons', 'hoover', 'xerox' are all words in com-
mon use which were originally metonymical (i.e. inventions or innovations
named after their creator).
(c) Synecdoche
Synecdoche is a combinative device involving a relationship between an

expressed idea and an unexpressed one. It works on the mathematical
principle of dividing a whole into its parts, whereas metonymy works on
the associational principles of relation or inherence. Thus in synecdoche
the part represents the whole, as in American movie slang 'Get your ass
outa here', meaning 'Get yourself out of here'). Just as the part represents
the whole, so the species represents the genus, singular represents plural,
vice versa. Synecdoche can be an important ideological weapon through
which people, issues or ideas can be effectively marginalised by omitting
to mention them. For example, the unmarked form 'man' is still used
to represent all men and women; similarly, the stereotype upper-class
Englishman (in bowler hat or tweeds) was once taken to represent 'the
English national character', completely marginalising the rest of British
society.
(i) Part-Whole/Whole-Part Synecdoche

Here a part of something is used to signify the whole ('The cattle rancher
owned one thousand head more than his neighbour'). In reverse, the whole
signifies the part: an amusing example of this reverse structure appears
in the film script of Lucky Jim, where the pompous Professor of History
addresses a telephone enquiry to the university: 'History speaking'. The
humour depends on the audience appreciating the absurdity of his remark,
subsuming in one person the totality of history !
(ii) Genus-Species/Species-Genus Synecdoche

Though less common than the Part-Whole variety, this form of synecdoche
can be found. An example might be found in the kind of remark made
by a sentimental parent to a young child 'Mummy has to go to work
to earn the pennies to pay for our tea'. The Genus-Species variant
is used to sinister effect in T. S. Eliot's poem 'Sweeney Among the

Nightingales'01.21-4):16
The silent vertebrate in brown

Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel nee Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws.
Here an example of the human species is reduced to a mere 'vertebrate',

undifferentiated from the animal genus. This reductive synecdoche also
extends to the woman, described as an animal with 'paws', as she 'tears
at the grapes'. (This degrading representation of 'Rachel nee Rabinovitch'
reveals Eliot's notorious anti-Semitism, its emotion oriented towards the
poet, not the reader.)
(iii) Plural-SingularISingular-Plural Synecdoche

The Plural-Singular structure is seen in the disapproving phrase 'Some peo-
ple!' (which actually refers to one obnoxious person rather than a number).
An example of the reverse is the phrase 'the man in the street', meaning
'people in general'. In W. H. Auden's poem 'A Communist to Others',
the speaker begins by addressing those who are oppressed by capitalism
as a group of 'brothers'; he then turns to challenge three representative
individuals of the oppressing classes. The protagonist speaks not as an
individual but in the plural voice of the Party.n
And you, the wise man, full of hll-'!lOur

To whom our misery's a rumour
And slightly funny;
Proud of your nicely balanced view
You say as if it were something new
The fuss we make is mostly due
To lack of money
The singular address sharpens Auden's rhetorical attack by implying the

individual guilt of the oppressors. It also creates the possibility that his
reader will suddenly find the cap fitting.
(d) Irony
Unlike the other three kinds of trope so far discussed, Irony is essentially
oppositional. A word, phrase or paragraph is turned from its usual meaning
to a sense which is either directly or indirectly opposed to this meaning.

Although irony can be used in many ways, its oppositional nature makes
it especially useful in dialectic, both emotional and logical. We are all
familiar with the commonplace irony of everyday conversation (e.g. 'How
kind of you!' meaning the reverse); nevertheless, it is worth teasing out this
trope to show its flexibility for persuasive purposes.
Irony can be conveyed by intonation in speech, and by tone in writing,
thereby communicating the persuader's ethos, pathos and logos. Earlier
rhetoricians (such as George Puttenham in his Arte of English Poesie
[1589]),18 delight in distinguishing several types of ironic figures, on
the basis of difference in tone. These types are quite recognisable today,
and include the cutting 'bitter taunt' of sarcasm (in Greek this meant 'a
tearing of flesh'), the 'merry scoff' of light mockery, and the 'fleering
frump' (delivered with a sneer). The main point to note is the sheer
range and variety of shading between the two extremes of bitterness and
humour.
(i) Single Word Irony (Antiphrasis)

Here the ironic sense is the exact opposite of the word's usual meaning; the
tone is not necessarily sarcastic, but can be affectionate or admiring. For
example, tall men are often addressed as 'Tiny', and traditionally Robin
Hood's stout henchman was called 'Little John'. In political persuasion we
might encounter a critical comment like this: 'A prudent budget? It's given
us a balance of payments crisis!'. Mark Antony's speech to the Roman mob
after Caesar's murder (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, I1I.ii) is an excellent
example of irony in literary persuasion, his purpose being to demolish
the principled stance of the conspirators. This is achieved by repetition
of the word 'honourable', steadily undermined until it eventually signifies
the direct opposite of what it first meant.
(ii) Epigrammatic Irony

This occurs in a variety of fonns, including the ironic remark or one-off
comment and (more fonnally) the poetic epigram. Dennis Healey's quip
in Parliament (that being attacked by Sir Geoffrey Howe was 'like being
savaged by a dead sheep') is a famous example of the first The irony of
the poetic epigram is usually expressed in punning or word-play, as we see
in Pope's Epigram. Engraved on the Collar of a Dog which I gave to His
Royal Highness: 19
I am his Highness' Dog at Kew;

Pray tell me Sir, whose Dog are you?
The ironic play on the literal and metaphoric senses of 'Dog' would sting
anyone who stooped to read the collar.
(iii) Sustained Irony

Sustained irony is a major resource of the satirist, and appears everywhere
from political journalism to letters to the press. Sometimes an entire
discourse sustains and conveys a meaning quite opposite to its real sense
and purport - though the mask does occasionally slip. The most famous
literary example in English is probably Swift's Modest Proposal, in which
a fictional 'projector' sets out his practical scheme for fattening up the
children of the Irish poor to serve as food for the landlords - 'who, as they
have already devoured most of the Parents seem to have the best Title to
the Children' .20
We conclude our discussion of trope with a distinct sub-variety, which
capitalises on a sense of incongruity - and which can involve metaphor or
any other of the main tropes.
(e) Mislabel (Catachresis)
Here, a word is deliberately misapplied. It involves a form of figurative
language (most often metaphor). Typically, a word relating to one sense
may be used to describe another. In John Donne's 'Elegie IV', 41 the phrase
'A loud perfume' is a good example. Sometimes, the choice of word may be
ironic, as in 'He threatens to raise my salary!' where the mislabelling lies
in the word 'threaten'. This device invites us to use language inventively!
4. SCHEMATIC LANGUAGE
So far we have dealt with three of the four major categories in the
persuasive repertoire - lex is, sound patterning and trope. We shall now
turn to the fourth category, schematic language. But first we must clarify an
area of potential confusion, by distinguishing between the term 'figurative
language' and the phrase 'figures of rhetoric'. The latter traditionally
embraced both tropes and schemes. As we have already shown in this
chapter, the narrower term 'figurative language' is predominantly appli-
cable only to trope. The remaining 'figures of rhetoric' fall within the
category of schematic language, though it remains possible for schemes
to develop a figurative meaning.
It would be impossible to examine the whole range of schematic devices
in this chapter. As a result, we have selected some of the most frequently
encountered and most useful for discussion, such as antithesis, puns and
word-play, syntactic devices, amplification and diminution, and tricks and

ploys. (A further selection may be found in Appendix A.)
The traditional terminology for these schematic devices can present
problems for the modern reader, though there would be advantages in
using just the Greek and Latin terms, since many have acquired a generally
accepted meaning. To make the schemes more accessible, however, we
have in each instance added our own (English) version.
(a) Antithesis
This important schematic device (recognised by both Classical and Renais-

sance rhetoricians) occurs in its simplest form when two words are opposed
in a contrary relationship. This may be deliberate or accidental; in either
case the lexical opposition of contrary meanings will be of prime impor-
tance. In this exchange (Macbeth V.i.23-4) between the Gentlewoman
and the Doctor, observing the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth, the opposition
is subtler than it seems:
Doct.: You see her eyes are open.

Gent.: Ay, but their sense is shut
Antithesis will appear again in the chapter as an integral part of more

complex structures.
(b) PUDS and Word.Play
These schematic devices involve playing or punning on sound, sense, and

the structure of individual words, and we shall be looking at four types.
It's worth noting that these devices can be used for serious ends (to convey
ethos, pathos and logos) as well as for comic and trivial purposes.
(i) Deliberate Distortion (Rhetorical Mispronunciation)

This can be an effective way of conveying negative attitudes, ranging from
bewilderment to mockery or contempt. Witness Churchill's pronunciation
of 'Gestapo' as 'Just a po' (schoolboy slang for chamber pot).
(ii) Same-sound Pun (Antanaclasis)

This familiar device has several variants: when we have 'same sound/same
spelling/ different meaning', it is called a homonym; when it is 'same
sound/different spelling/different meaning it is a homophone. Both vari-
ants are included under the term antanaclasis (our same-sound pun) and
are frequently found in persuasive contexts. Uses range from advertising

('Sheer Delight' as the slogan for a brand of tights), to Samson's denuncia-
tion of Dalila's attempts' ... to win from me/My capital secret' (Milton,
Samson Agonistes, 393-4).21 Samson's use of 'capital' has at least three
meanings.22 'capital secret' relates firstly to the hair on his head (where
his strength lies). Secondly this is a secret of overwhelming importance;
and thirdly it will be literally fatal ('capital' as in 'sentence') to betray it.
(iii) Similar-sound Pun (Paronomasia)

Here Shakespeare provides a useful illustration, again from Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth's 'what thou wouldst highly / That thou wouldst hoZily'
(I. v.17-18) attacks her husband's scruples about murdering his King. There
is a similarity of sound between 'highly' and 'holily', but a significant
contrast of meaning (also involving the trope of irony). In contrast we
have the joky catchiness of the advertising slogan 'Beans means Heinz' .
(c) Syntactic Devices
When considering this category of schematic devices, we might profit-

ably recall Halliday's description of language functions as ideational,
interpersonal and textual. The main function of syntax is textual - to
make a text cohere and be comprehensible. As we might expect, persuasive
language subsumes textual function to interpersonal (ethos and pathos),
and ideational function (logos). Nevertheless, skilfully chosen syntactic
structures will enhance these functions, and add persuasive strength. (For
a fuller treatment, see Appendix A and Nash, Designs in Prose.)
There are multiple possibilities for syntactic variation in extended
discourse, paragraphs, sentences, phrases and even in individual words
as they change their grammatical function. We shall look at a varied
selection, including some devices which involve other resources of the
persuasive repertoire.
(i) Word-Class Variation (Traductio)

This is commonly used to surprise an audience accustomed to a certain
word having one grammatical function only. An instance occurs in Billy
Budd by Herman Melville, when the hero (a strangely innocent young
sailor) is challenged by the Satanic master-at-arms for accidentally spilling
soup on the mess deck: 'Handsomely done, my lad! And handsome is as
handsome did it, toO!'23 Claggart's malign obsession with Billy (leading
to both their deaths) makes powerful and ironic use of this word-class
variation.
(ii) Verb-based Variations

These are somewhat difficult to disentangle, since they depend on differing
permutations of the subject/verb/ object structure. For example, a verb with
one or more subjects may govern a variety of phrase structures (including
object complement, infinitive phrases, participial phrases, and adverbial
phrases). Zeugma is the name for this structure. It has several subvarieties
including syllepsis, which occurs when a verb with one subject governs two
object-nouns, one abstract and one concrete - 'He put on his business sense
with his business suit'. Another variant of the subject/verb/object structure
is hyperactive subject (or colon). Here a single subject is followed by one
or more verbs, each with its own object complement.
For economy of explication, we have selected examples of zeugma from
literary persuasion, and hyperactive subject from functional persuasion.
In Andrew Marvell's love poem ('To his Coy Mistress', 13-18)24 we see
him fantasising on the time he would like to spend persuading his mistress
to be his:
An hundred years should go to praise

Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze.
Two hundred to adore each Breast
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An Age at least to every part,
And the last Age should show your heart.
Marvell wittily links what interests him - the expanding time-scale of

this sexual and philosophical fantasy - to an unusual syntactic structure.
A single modal verb ('should go') governs a series of infinitive phrases,
and this use of zeugma highlights its odd semantic disproportions. In the
last line, almost as an afterthought, a new verb governs a new object, 'your
heart' - the key to all.
By contrast, the copywriter for Neutrogena Moisture Cream (Vogue,
March 1991) has to convey a much more threatening sense of time:
. . . Your skin is fighting a constant battle against dehydration,

struggling to maintain moisture in the face of an onslaught from
sun, wind, natural evaporation and central heating. A moisturiser can
help by both adding moisture directly to your skin and by attracting
already present moisture from within to the surface.
Each of the single hyperactive subjects, 'skin' and 'moisturiser', is linked

through an auxiliary to chains of active verb-forms.
(iii) Syntactic Parallelism (Iso colon)

The persuasive effects of syntactical structures can be developed by
using various kinds of parallelism to add emphasis, clarity, balance,
and cumulative weight. At best they convey the spontaneous energy of
deep feeling or conviction; over-use produces banal and trivialising effects.
With this in mind, development should normally be limited to three or
four clauses. Listed below are some examples useful either separately or
in combination.
1. Identical syntactic structure in each clause;

2. Identical or similar length in each clause;
3. A similar rhythm in each clause;
4. An antithetical balance within or between clauses.
Within these options substantial variation is possible, and can be

extended beyond the single sentence to the paragraph as a whole. A
literary example of syntactic parallelism is found in this eighteenth century
account of the Happy Valley (Samuel Johnson, Rasselas):25
On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures, on another
all the beasts of chase frisking in the lawns. The sprightly kid was
bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and
the solemn elephant reposing in the shade.
An example of syntactic parallelism in functional persuasion appears in

a leading article ('The Privacy of Dead Artists') in The Independent (9
September 1991) .
. . . This approach can be unfair to the artist and unhelpful to the

reader - though it may be easier and more entertaining to read
a biography than it is to come to grips with diffiCUlt poetry or to
appreciate complex paintings. .. (our emphasis)
The writer uses carefully balanced structures to convey a balanced argu-

ment
(iv) Left and Right-branching Sentences

Professor Nash has usefully identified these syntactic structures (Designs
in Prose, pp. 112-16). To summarise, a left-branching sentence keeps you
waiting for the main verb (one or more subordinate clauses preceding
it); a right-branching sentence comes in quickly with the main clause,

followed by one or more subordinate clauses or extended participial
phrases. Left-branching or suspended sentences are tenser, more dramatic
and potentially more emotive. Right-branching sentences offer a more
'relaxed' structure, suggesting a confident exposition or argument. In
literary persuasion the alternation of left and right-branch can help the
flow of narrative from paragraph to paragraph, as well as helping to set
up emotional and imaginative cross-currents. This is seen near the opening
of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway:26
. .. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp and trudge; in the bellow

and uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich
men shuffling and swinging; barrel organs; in the triumph and the
jingle and the strange high singing of some areoplane overhead was
what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. (LEFT)
For it was the middle of June. The war was over, except for someone
like Mrs Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her heart out
because that nice boy was killed and now the Manor House must
go to a cousin; or Lady Bexborough who opened a bazaar, they said,
with a telegram in her hand, John, her favourite, killed; but it was
over; thank Heaven - over. (RIGHT)
The discordant elements in the first. and the pressure of the immediate
past on bereaved women as revealed in the second sentence, work against
an easy confirmation of the statements made by the main verbs, whether
retarded for effect or prefaced (seemingly) for subsequent confirmation.
(v) Listings or 'Heapings-up' (Synathrismos)

The effect of piling nouns or verbs within a sentence can be highly persua-
sive, replicating a sense of emotional, intellectual or sensory pressure in the
audience. Woolf uses it to convey the confusion of London in the passage
above. A further powerful instance is seen in John Donne's comprehensive
listing (Holy Sonnets, 4:)27
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'ertbrow,

All whom warre, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despaire, law, chance, hath slaine, . . .
Here Donne uses metonymy as well as 'heapings-up' in his account of

all the different ways of dying. The pounding, staccato emphasis of the
death-list also draws power from the use of antithesis ('1Iood' and 'fire').
An effect of overwhelming accumulation is achieved through a sense of
weight as well as number.
Puttenbam also describes this term in his Arte (1589, p. 197) and calls
it 'the heaping figure'. Tbere are four ways of doing this: (a) using single
'staccato' words; (b) using sbort phrases of differing structure; (c) using
multiple conjunctions ('and ... and'); (d) creating an abrupt effect by
omitting all conjunctions. (For more details see Appendix A - many-links
and no-links.)
(d) Repetition
This is probably the major resource of scbematic rbetoric and the one with
closest affinity to the spontaneous expression of emotion. The pattern
created by a repeated word, or the rbythm created by a repeated phrase,
validate Coleridge's remarkable insigbt about rbythm 'striv(ing) to bold
in check the workings of passion' .28 Seven types of repetition are sum-
marised below, followed by an example eacb from functional and literary
persuasion.
(i) Initial Repetition (anapbora): word or phrase repeated at the begin-

ning of eacb one of a series of sentences or clauses.
(ii) Terminal Repetition (antistropbe): word or phrase repeated at the end
of each one of a series of sentences or clauses.
(iii) Random Repetition (plocbe): piecemeal repetition of important word
or phrase at points of empbasis in a sentence or paragrapb.
(iv) Instant Repetition (epizeuxis): a word or phrase immediately
repeated one or more times.
(v) Refrain (epimone): self-explanatory, but note that refrains may be
varied.
(vi) Stop-and-start (anadiplosis): repetition at the beginning of a sentence
of the word or phrase wbich closed the previous sentence.
(vii) Switch-around (antimetabole). Words or phrases repeated, often with
variation, in transposed or inverse order (A becomes B, B becomes
A). Further kinds of repetition will be found in Appendix A.
Functional Persuasion
'You can't get social security to pay your rent without a fixed address,
and you can't get a fixed address without social security to pay your rent!'
Here the switcb-around (or antimetabole) actually presents an urgent and
disturbing process of thougbt - a 'Catch-22'.
Literary Persuasion
In this extract from Ben Jonson's Celebration of Charis 4 (,Her Triumph',
21-30), Shakespeare's contemporary describes his imaginary beloved,
using initial repetition (as well as syntactic parallelism and other devices)
with power and delicacy:29
Have you seen but a bright lily grow,

Before rude hands have touched it?
Ha' you marked but the fall o'the snow
Before the soil bath smutcbed it? .
Ha' you felt the wool 0' the beaver,
Or swansdown ever?
Or bave smelt o'the bud o'thebriar,
Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
o so white! 0 so soft! 0 so sweet is sbe!
(e) Amplification and Diminution
This category of apparently opposed schematic devices is probably the

most large-scale we have yet encountered. It is important because it
provides the persuader with specific frameworks for structuring discourse,
offering the opportunity to amplify and diminish in two closely-related
senses. Amplification and diminution can be used both to develop an
argument in detail, and to sborten it; to enhance the importance of the
subject, and to denigrate it. Either can produce powerful persuasive effects,
often involving the use of trope.
The first devices to be examined are rather different from the rest, in
that they are ways of making a statement (i.e. over-stating or'understating).
They can equally apply to single words, or be extended to whole discourses
according to need.
(i) Hype (Hyperbole)

Persuasive exaggeration, or overstatement, is familiar to us all. It is a
stock feature of tabloid beadlines; any reported disagreement has to be a
'row', for instance. Hyperbole can be used literally, although the trope of
metaphor is often introduced. In the following groupings of words, denoted
meaning contrasts with non-figurative hype and then with afigurative ver-
sion: 'shocked' /'appalled' I'poleaxed'; 'disagreement' I'row' I'punch-up';
'pleased' I'thrilled' /'over the moon'.
The effects of hype can range from crude exaggeration to sublime poetry
('0, thou art fairer than the evening's air, / Clad in the beauty of a thousand
stars' [Faustus, V.i.109-10)). They may include ironic self-mockery ('I'm
totally exhausted by doing nothing all day').
(ii) Play-down/Understatement (Litotes)

In this device (the opposite of hype) the audience is left to deduce that
the speaker could put the point infinitely more strongly. This amplifies the
persuasive effect by conveying powerfully understated confidence. Again,
this device may be expressed literally or figuratively (,he wasn't short of
money' / 'he wasn't short of two pennies to rub together'). Another version
of litotes uses the double negative, as we see in 'he was not uninterested'
(meaning he was excessively curious).
(iii) The Categories of Description (Enargia)

In traditional rhetoric there were several devices for developing graphic
description of people, places, actions or times (real or imaginary) in order
to actualise emotion. (Readers may recall that in Chapter 2 we quoted
Quintilian's example, showing how to actualise revulsion in an audience
through the graphic description of a murder.) For example, rhetoricians
distinguished topographia (description of a real place), and topothesia
(description of an imaginary place). This distinction still has some value,
suggesting as it does the legitimate differences between faithful reportage
and the symbolic evocation of imaginary places. (The same point will
apply to the other categories to be found in Appendix A.) Metonymy and
metaphor can also be seen in this context
We have chosen two passages of deSCription to demonstrate topographia
and topothesia. One is by the social historian, Henry Mayhew (Morning
Chronicle, 9 November 1849)3° and describes the room of a poor seam-
stress; the other appears in Dickens's account of Satis House in Great
Expectations. 31
(Mayhew) There was no table in the room; but on a chair without

a back there was an old tin tray, in which stood a cup of hot, milkless
tea, and a broken saucer, with some half dozen small potatoes in it. It
was the poor soul's dinner. Some tea leaves had been given her, and
she had boiled them up again to make something like a meal. She
had not even a morsel of bread. In one corner of the room was a hay
mattress rolled up. With this she slept on the floor .
.(Dickens) It was then that I began to understand that everything
in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time
ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on
the spot from which she had taken it up . .. Without this arrest
of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects,
not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have
looked like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.
Mayhew's stark detail metonymically reflects the tenant's wretched

poverty, while in Dickens the objects in the room metaphorically share the
'arrest' of Miss Havisham's life - indeed, 'standing still' almost suggests
that the room has a perverse volition like that of its owner.
(iv) Amplijicatory Frameworks

Types of framework include: summary statements preceding or following a
set of graphic details (in order to focus their effect); antithetical structures;
build-up or incrementum - artful devices which achieve impact through a
mounting series of 'increments' (from A [bad] to B [worse] to C [worst]).
In the following extract from an unpublished letter (1859) written by a
young Yorkshirewoman to the man who later became her husband, 32 she
protests at his apparent inconstancy, using this device:
. . . if it had been a youth in his teens one would never have thought
anything more off it, but a man of your years and I ought to be able to
say sense, I could never have expected it, or if it had been a mere act
of gallantry I should never have thought off it again, but if you recall
all or a small part of what you said & tried to make me believe of
those occasions, you will I am sure be led to think you behaved very
wrong.
She uses build-up twice, first to amplify her incredulity at his behaviour
('teens' to 'years' to 'sense'); and secondly to increase the recipient's sense
of shame after his protestations ('gallantry' to 'all' to 'small').
(t) Tricks and Ploys
We have selected seven of these for consideration, all of which have

substantial persuasive potential. It's worth noting that syntax often plays an
important part in achieving these effects, as well as lexis. This is especially
true of the first two devices which have a strong lexical element. They are
nevertheless highly charged psychologically, for or against the subjects to
which they refer.
(i) Whitewash (Paradiastole)

This is the most potentially corrupting of all schematic devices in the
persuasive repertoire, unless used ironically. It flatters vice or error by
the application of a neutral or even a positive term. Examples might
be: 'severe' (meaning 'ernel'); 'tired and emotional' (meaning 'drunk
and disorderly'); 'a free spirit' (meaning someone who avoids responsi-
bilities).
(ii) DOing-down (Meiosis)

The opposite of whitewash, this involves hostile or reductive word-choice:
as in 'tarted up' (Le. redecorated), or 'fiddling' (i.e. rearranging).
(iii) Breaking off(Aposiopesis)

This device imitates the emotional, exasperated or insinuating breaking off
of a sentence, leaving words 'hanging in the air' . The effect ranges from the
comic' ... say no more: nudge, nudge, wink, wink' to the speechlessness
of extreme rage or grief. The effect on the audience may be to arouse their
curiosity, to prompt their collusion, or to impress them with a painful sense
of stress or suffering.
(iv) Self-Correction (Epanorthosis)

Here a word is expressed, then queried and replaced: 'We have a very
clever man as Sales Director. .. Did I say "clever"? Plausible might be
nearer the mark' .
(v) DOUbting (Aporia)

Currently a fashionable critical term,33 it conveys an inability to respond to
a topic because of its momentousness, its emotional or conceptual weight,
or the critical difficulty of putting it into words.
(vi) Passing Over (Occupatio)

Although this is very much a ploy, it is also notable for its amplificatory
and emotive effect. It exudes a sense of insolent mastery, pretending to
focus exclusively on the point at issue while bringing in side issues which
serve the persuader's purpose. The ploy is to pretend not to mention what
is being mentioned. Pretending to give nothing more than a meek funeral
oration, Mark Antony uses this device to arouse the Roman mob (Julius
Caesar, III.ii.141-6):
It is not meet you know how Caesar lov'd you.

You are not wood, you are not stones, but men;
And being men, hearing the will of Caesar,

It will inflame you, it will make you mad.
'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs;
For if you should, O! what would come of it?
(vii) The Question

Probably the most familiar of all rhetorical devices, this need only be
treated briefly here. There are various ways in which the question can be
used for particular persuasive effect We may use one question, or a series
of questions, which may be authentic or inauthentic (i.e. the questioner may
really want to know the answers, or he or she may only be using the form
of the question for dramatic effect, or to pressure the audience). For further
discussion see Appendix A.
CONCLUSION: USING THE REPERTOIRE
In conclusion we must stress that in our analysis of the persuasive

repertoire, our aim has been not to propose any restrictive models but
to encourage stylistic experimentation. Such experimentation will almost
certainly yield better results if it is supported by our own reading - whether
of functional or literary texts - to check the effect of these devices in a
broader context than this book can provide.
Ultimately readers should seek to put the repertoire to practical per-
suasive use in their own writing. How this is accomplished will to some
degree depend on the way the process of composition works for each
individual. Returning to Mark Antony's speech, which has provided useful
material in our consideration of the repertoire, we might ask ourselves: did
Shakespeare have the whole speech in his mind, in broad outline, before
he began to write, or did the line 'For Brutus is an honourable man', so
powerfully used, provide the starting point? We shall never know.
7 Afterword: The Interface -
Further Roles for Rhetoric
PREPACE: FUTURE OPTIONS
We can now examine the options available for the attentive and patient
reader who has followed us thus far, having acquired a variety of rhetorical
skills together with an understanding of rhetoric, its theoretical basis and
its terminology. As we have seen, these skills can be of practical use in
social, business and political contexts; they can provide an instinctively
heightened awareness of language; and they can be deployed and developed
academically in a variety of theoretical modes.
In this final chapter we are primarily concerned with the last of these
three uses. Uyou are completing an 'A' level course in English language or
literature, or continuing your studies at university or polytechnic, it should
be reassuring to learn that (after the effort you have put in working through
this book) rhetoric is important to a number of critical theorists writing
about texts. Our aim in this afterword is to prepare you for this, by
illustrating 'how they do it'. We shall focus particularly on the critics Terry
Eagleton and Harold Bloom. But first we shall briefly examine what has
recently become known as the 'interface' between language and literature,
an area where rhetoric plays an important part.
1. THE INTERFACE OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
In looking systematically at the techniques of persuasive language, we have

already been working at this interface between the disciplines of language
studies and literary studies (see the current 'Interface' series on linguistics,
language and literature.) 1
In the context of the physical sciences, an interface denotes the juxta-
position/interpenetration of two disparate materials like aluminium and
steel, and the combined strength or weakness resulting from this. When we
apply the term to the study of texts, we do not simply imply that bonding
together literary and non-literary language functions automatically creates
sometliing new. We also suggest that an interface can be detected between
137
138 Afterword: The Interface - Further Roles for Rhetoric
the differences of approach to texts taken by the linguist and the literary
critic.
Up to now, we have effectively ignored this problematic area, looking in
both directions in each chapter. All through the book, we have consistently
sought to find examples in both 'functional' and 'literary' persuasion (our
terminology). Within the persuasive context we have seen how a text
scrutinised for its linguistic choices can also be subject to critical analysis
of how it achieves imaginative 'reality' or 'presence'. Whether we have
looked at the casual use of a colloquial phrase ('Isn't she a live wire?'),
or at an advertising catch-phrase ('I bet he drinks Carling Black Label'),
or at Churchill's emotive rhetoric, we have stressed the interdependence of
language structure, lexical choice and figurative meaning.
It might be claimed that the activity of persuasion itself marks an
interface, not simply between two approaches to language, but between
two discrete areas of language. Consider three slightly different versions
of a simple statement/question/metaphor, which may carry us across the
interface. Version (i) 'I am at the door' (purely informational); version (ii)
'Should I be at the door?' (simple query or the beginning of an introspective
or imaginative inquiry); version (iii) 'Behold I stand at the door' (the
figurative expression of Christ's position at the door of the human heart
[Revelation 3:20)).
Persuasion, with its dialogic structure and context, is inherent in all
critical debates about literary form and expression, whether the crit-
ics are arguing about interpretation, evaluation or critical· methodology.
Depending on your critical stance, literary language might be brought
into the familiar arena of politics (as it is by Terry Eagleton [see below]
and Catherine Belsey);2 or equally it might be 'defamiliarised' within a
formalist perspective (as conveniently explained by Terence Hawkes).3
The example above from the Bible shows the bonded strength of a
statement which combines familiar social reality with powerful spiritual
and psychological implications. It also illustrates the actuality of the
inJerface we have been describing.
Our biblical example is quite different in its persuasive purpose from
the specific but ephemeral nature of political or advertising campaigns,
which stand on the functional side of our interface. We might however
wish to bond the language of functional persuasion with the literary side
of the interface, as James Joyce does in Ulysses, using the journalese and
advertising language of his day.
The rest of this chapter will focus on literary theory and criticism,
exploring in particular its specific persuasive functions, and looking at
two current and extremely different approaches. Our ultimate aim here
Afterword: The Interface - Further Roles for Rhetoric 139
is to enable an interested reader to discover his/her own place at the

interface between critical theory and practice. We intend to show how two
critics, Eagleton and Bloom, use the twin tools of rhetorical analysis and
persuasive language. To do this we will use the same tools ourselves.
2. CURRENT CRITICAL RHETORIC
By looking at diametrically opposed critics, we will indicate something

of the range between them, as well as highlighting their differences. Our
chosen writers exhibit sharply opposed views on the nature of the human
subject, its relation to language, and on how rhetoric is involved with
both. It is hardly surprising that this radical difference is reflected in their
writing.
(a) Popular Critical Rhetoric
Terry Eagleton's style in his Literary Theory4 can be described as 'popular'

rather than severely academic, aimed at a relatively broad audience, and
blending colloquialism with sophisticated irony, for a marked persuasive
purpose:
The strength of Leavisian 5 criticism was that it was able to provide

an answer ... to the question, why read Literature? The answer,
in a nutshell, was that it made you a better person. Few reasons
could have been more persuasive than that. When the Allied troops
moved into the concentration camps some years after the founding
of Scrutiny, to arrest commandants who had whiled away their
leisure hours with a volume of Goethe, it appeared that someone
bad some explaining to do. If reading literature did make you a
better person, then it was hardly in the direct ways that this case
at its most euphoric had imagined. It was possible to explore the
'great tradition' of the English novel and believe that in doing so
you were addressing questions of fundamental value - questions
wbicb were of vital relevance to the lives of men and women
wasted in fruitless labour in the factories of industrial capitalism.
But it was also conceivable that you were destructively cutting
yourself off from such men and women, who might be a little
slow to recognize bow a poetic enjambement enacted a movement
of physical balancing.
140 Afterword: The Interface - Further Roles/or Rhetoric
Eagleton's ultimate goal is to establish a development of rhetoric (whose

basic approaches he highly values) in the place of more recent ideas of
literature. He wishes us to view all writing in its historical and ideological
context, as a specific approach to a specific audience for a specific purpose.
Using logos as our focus, and recalling the central importance of issue in
logical judgement, the critical issue at stake in the quoted passage can
be identified thus: does reading literature 'make you a better person'?
(as Leavis suggests). Can we assume this well-read person is politically
aware, morally responsible and active for the public good? Eagleton's
ironic stance is clear in his allusion to the German reader of Goethe, or
the readers of the English novels of the past. Their lack of action implies
they were not 'morally improved' by their reading. We are thus prodded
by Eagleton into a much warmer indignation, faced with the naivety or
wilful blindness of the Leavisian critics (whose views were propagated
by the journal Scrutiny). Eagleton's ironic use of logos is thus aimed
uncomfortably at all his readers, though perhaps especially at the older
generation. However, we are all included in the indefinite 'you' whom
Eagleton anatomises and (at the same time) addresses. We are all caught
shuffling guiltily away from the invidious moral position in which he
places us.
Similarly, Eagleton deploys pathos against the acknowledged persua-
siveness of the Leavisites, through the graphically ironic picture of 'fruit-
less labour in the factories of industrial capitalism'. The style ranges from
colloquial irony ('someone had some explaining to do') to straight-from-
the-shoulder activist rhetoric against capitalism, with illustration.
And what of Eagleton's logic? Is it logical to argue, from the mere fact
that some people are not improved by literature, that no-one is improved by
it? Seemingly aware of some shaky logic here, he reduces the emotiveness
of the concentration-camp allusion, with the more reasonable claim against
a 'direct' or automatically beneficial influence. Yet he persists covertly
with this dubious logic right to the end of the quoted passage. In order
to demonstrate the gap between the social fact of oppression and Leavis's
literary idealisations, Eagleton balances real 'men and women' against
a trivial judgment, thus making a powerful rhetorical criticism. This
becomes a synecdochal representation of the whole range of Leavisian
critical judgements, marginal ising and occluding them all. Nor is this
simply an emotive trope: it's also a Part/Whole argument, and possibly
invalid. Is it entirely fair to infer that people capable of such silliness are
capable of anything? Perhaps not - but Eagleton seems to be targeting the
politically conscious reader here, and the apparent unfairness of his popular
rhetoric may be intentional.
Afterword: The Interface - Further Rolesfor Rhetoric 141
(b) Esoteric Critical Rhetoric
As an example of more esoteric critical rhetoric, we have chosen an extract

from Harold Bloom's A Map of Misreading (1975).6 Following on from
The Anxiety of Influence (1973),7 this book develops a highly complex,
even mystical theory about the origins and development of poetry, and
centres on that heroic figure, the 'strong poet' .
To know that we are object as well as subject of the quest is not

poetic knowledge, but rather the knowledge of defeat, a knowledge
fit for the pragmaticists of communication, not for that handful who
hope to fathom (if not to master) the wealth of ocean, the ancestry
of voice. Who could set forth upon the poet's long journey, upon the
path of labouring Heracles, if he knew that at last he must wrestle
with the dead? Wrestling Jacob could triumph, because his adversary
was the Everliving, but even the strongest poets must grapple with
phantoms. The strength of these phantoms - which is their beauty
- increases as the struggling poet's distance from them lengthens in
time. Homer, a greater poet in the Enlightenment than he was even
among the Hellenes, is greater yet now in our Post-Enlightenment
The splendors of the firmament of time blaze with a greater fury even
as time seems to droop in its decay.
Is this rhetoric or poetry? On the first page of his book, Bloom

argues that 'As literary history lengthens, all poetry necessarily becomes
verse-criticism, just as all criticism becomes prose-poetry'. Consider one
sentence taken from above and set out a little differently:
Who could set forth upon the poet's long journey,

Upon the path of labouring Heracles ...
Here Bloom's 'prose-poetry' is actually turning into blank verse and at the
same time asking a powerful rhetorical question. We shall now examine
how Bloom's rhetorically resounding style persuades us of his concept of
the 'strong poet'. Prose poetry it may be, but it's also rhetoric.
Our chosen extract is built up from rhetorical oppositions. Bloom begins
by opposing 'poetic knowledge' to 'the knowledge of defeat' (expanded by
a Subjunctl Adjunct argument which moves from the nature of the poet
in question to the quality of his vision). Some poets who are by nature
'pragmaticists of communication', know and accept that searching for their
own image (as an 'object' fashioned by a process beyond their control)
is like chasing their own tails. They accept their derivativeness without
apparent anxiety. Bloom contrasts them with the 'strong poet' who can
- such is his nature - never accept that knowledge. Eagleton's persuasive
populism is very different from Bloom's elevation of the elite of 'strong
poets' . His powerful syntactic parallelism associates them with 'the wealth
of ocean' and 'the ancestry of voice', as they tread 'the path of labouring
Heracles' in their spiritual struggle. The reader is (i) being persuaded to
accept a kind of literary aristocracy; and (ii) being invited to acknowledge
a line of poetic prophets and the proclamation of a secularised religion of
poetry.
The poet's quest assumes overtones of heroic legend as he views his
destiny, knowing 'that at last he must wrestle with the [voices of the great
poetic] dead'. These voices though inseparably part of the 'strong poet's'
own voice, must be ceaselessly repudiated. And to enhance this sense of
heroism Bloom uses standard devices of amplification - antithesis, initial
summary and example. The poet's heroic struggle (or 'agon') is amplified
by a paradoxical antithesis between 'the Everliving' (i.e. God) and the
more intractable 'phantoms' of the dead, followed by a further paradoxical
summary of the poet's relationship with these 'phantoms'. Bloom next uses
Homer as an example (assuming a knowledge of classical tradition on his
readers' part) followed by an incrementum or build-up to confirm Homer's
continuing power. He concludes by contrasting time's overall splendour
and its contemporary decay, locating the reader within a vast retrospective
panorama of the historical past. rather than summoning him (like Eagleton)
to the picket line of the historical present.
It should by now be plain that these two critics not only take different
stances but in a sense inhabit different worlds, material and spiritual, popu-
list and elitist Both possess similar degrees of rhetorical skill, employed to
contrary ends. What we have gathered from a close reading of their critical
persuasion cannot, however, amount to more than an impression. We shall
look rather more closely at their ideas; and more importantly, at the place
which they accord to rhetoric in their mental schemes.
3. EAGLETON: RHETORIC AS A POLITICAL MEDIUM
In Literary Theory Eagleton moves through a series of rhetorical demon-

strations, marked by the lively persuasive style which we have already
illustrated. One by one the proponents of successive theories are patted
briefly on the head for what limited contributions they have made to the
work of criticism, and are then chastised for their weaknesses. It is as
Afterword: The Interface - Further Roles/or Rhetoric 143
though Eagleton were constantly repeating the pattern of an accusatory

speech, anticipating the defence, conceding some points (sometimes quite
generously), and then overthrowing the concession by showing how each
school of criticism fails in its main stated aim. For example, the Leavis
school fails to respond to lived experience in the real world; Phenomenol-
ogy becomes (p. 61) 'a symptom, in its solitary, alienated brooding, of the
very crisis it offered to overcome', and so on.
According to Eagleton, the common fault underlying all these inadequate
approaches is the assumption that texts can be studied apart from their
social, cultural and (above all) political contexts. This assumption has
normally involved the privileging of these texts under the title of Literature,
and the attribution of unchanging human qualities and values. (These are
believed to exist, irrespective of the historical circumstances of their
original production.) To Eagleton (pp. 208-9), all writing/criticism is
inevitably conditioned by the circumstances of its 'production' (a Marxist
term), which are invariably political:
Liberal humanist criticism is not wrong to use literature, but wrong

to deceive itself that it does not It uses it to further certain moral
values, which ... are in fact indissociable from certain ideological
ones, and in the end imply a particular form of politics. It is not that
it reads the texts 'disinterestedly' and then places what it has read in
the service of its values: the values govern the reading process itself,
inform what sense criticism makes of the works it studies.
Without specifying what these 'moral values' are, Eagleton's rhetoric

presents a hierarchy of final causes operative within humanism, where
literary values subserve ideological ones. In their tum these ideological
values subserve the interests of the politically dominant section of society.
Rhetoric is used against rhetoric by Eagleton, as he reverses cause and
effect, exposing a 'governed' and 'informed ... reading process' (this
sounds exactly like a system of rhetorical invention): and arguing that
'values' are not governed by 'reading', but 'reading' by 'values'. These
ideological 'values' are deployed by liberal humanist criticism as a means
of moulding literary texts in its own ideological image. And as Roger
Poole has pointed out8 in relation to similar passages, this unmasking
rhetoric makes a curious use of personification, which is very relevant
to our rhetorical analysis.
'Liberal humanist criticism' normally denotes a set of critical principles
held in Common by a group of people. But critical principles per se do not
have consciousness, cannot make moral choices, and cannot consequently
be praised or blamed. Yet Eagleton presents them as a personified being, a

living, choosing, responsible entity which can be properly rebuked for self-
deception. Poole describes this attribution of personal acts to an impersonal
and inactive abstraction as 'Hegelian grammar'. As rhetoricians, we might
see this as a form of metonymy, with the 'principles' representing the
people who believe in them and take responsibility for applying them. But
this would mean overlooking an important aspect of Eagleton's thinking,
which is the problem of how the 'responsible' self is actually constructed.
The importance Eagleton attaches to rhetoric may help in resolving this
problem. (If you want to maximise your investment in this book, his is the
critical camp to join!) Eagleton argues that (pp. 205-6):
Rhetoric, which Was the received form of critical analysis all the
way from ancient society to the eighteenth century, examined the
way discourses are constructed in order to achieve certain effects
(this should by now be pretty familiar!) . .. It saw speaking and
writing not merely as textual objects, to be aesthetically contemplated
or endlessly deconstructed, but as forms of activity inseparable from
the wider social relations between writers and readers, orators and
audiences, and as largely unintelligible outside the social purposes
and conditions in which they were embedded.
This view is in many ways refreshing. By proposing to substitute a revised

rhetoric, both artistic and critical, for the old categories of 'Literature' and
'literary theory', Eagleton is acknowledging that both writing and reading
require a purposive, flexible and open frame of mind in the individual.
(He has moved a long way from his depersonalised account of humanist
criticism with its 'literary canon'.) He seems to be making a personal call
for action and commitment. We may well recognise (having read so far)
that this focus on purposive critical activity is similar to our description of
purposive persuasive activity. For Eagleton, this activity and commitment
applies across the board and includes the persuasive reading of existing
texts (within the social dialectic), as well as the creation of new ones.
This implies a creative self-free, active, and responsible - which is both
constituted by society and working (with others) to transform it.
The central conundrum here is how to reconcile the view of the self as
social construct, with the self as source of exuberant creative energies.
Before leaving this problematic area, we shall apply the three rhetorical
principles to see if they can shed any light. Catherine Belsey's Critical
Practice 9 offers a valuable perspective; but our familiar rhetorical prin-
ciples of ethos, pathos and logos may offer a better one. For the political
agitator or the creative artist equally, the following principles hold good.
Logos embodies the impersonal social dialectic; pathos releases the psychic
energies not offered adequate expression by today's culture (as its critics
assert); and ethos offers a personal or communal position for action. We
glimpse here a coalition of forces which is both personal and impersonal. If
however we hold different views of the nature of human beings and society,
different ways must be found of adapting rhetoric to those views and setting
it to work.
4 BLOOM: PUTfING RHETORIC IN ITS PLACE
One such way of accommodating rhetoric might be to cut it down to size -

or at least to show it in a distinctly alternative light. We have throughout the
book treated poetry as a very important kind of 'literary persuasion'. Yet in
his essay 'The Breaking of Form', 10 Harold Bloom comments (p. to):
Rhetoric has always been unfitted to the study of poetry, though most
critics continue to ignore this incompatibility. Rhetoric rose from the
analysis of political and legal orations, which are absurd paradigms
for lyrical poems.
He goes on to quote Helen Vendler to the effect that 'Nothing in the

figures of paradox, or irony, or metaphor, ... specifies a basis in verse'.
Yet having briefly hammered the applicability of rhetoric in its normative
oratorical form, Bloom rapidly reminds the reader of his own radical
recasting and assimilation of the rhetoric of trope to the specific purpose
of reading 'lyrical poetry' (fully set out in his earlier work A Map of
Misreading - see above).
Bloom's first step (p. 11) is to change the rank-order of the tropes:
[The] supposed critical distinction between metonymy and meta-

phor, ... has become a shibboleth for weak interpreters. Jakobsonian
rhetoric is fashionable, but in my judgement is wholly inapplicable to
lyric poetry. AgainstJakobson, I follow Kenneth Burke in seeing that
the fundamental dichotomy in trope is between irony and synecdoche
or, as Burke says, between dialectic and representation. There is
precious little dichotomy between metonymy and metaphor or, as
Burke again says, between reduction and perspective. Metonymy
and metaphor alike I would trope as heightened degrees of dialectical
irony, with metaphor the more extended. But synecdoche is not a
dialectical trope, since as microcosm it represents a macrocosm

without necessarily playing against it
So what kind of critical tool-kit is Bloom fashioning out of the category

of trope? Firstly we should note his severe view of the very model of rheto-
ric (Jakobson's) which we have relied on for our account of orientation,
though his disapproval is aimed specifically at the metaphor/metonymy
distinction. This is despite the clearly opposed relationship of these two
tropes on the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes within the language
centres of the brain. 1l But neither this fact, nor the usefulness of the dis-
tinctions between prose, verse, film, drama etc. (see Lodge) 12 necessarily
invalidate Bloom's claim that this distinction is of minor importance in
the dynamics of lyric poetry.
Bloom demonstrates a distinct critical system with a specific purpose -
to reveal the characteristic structure of the 'strong poet's' lyric. To trace
the workings of 'poetic influence' in such a lyric, the reader must look
at how the tropes function, and how they are arranged. Bloom adopts
the metaphor of a 'map' for this pattern of tropes (note the title A Map
of Misreading). The map metaphor may be more helpful, however, if we
think of it as a route map, which measures a predictable progression
from trope to trope within the lyric. This characteristic structure, Bloom
asserts, is repeated through the whole succession of 'strong poets' from
the Renaissance onwards. What we have called 'tools' are represented
by Bloom as places on this 'map'; but if we wish to use the 'map' to
explore the imaginative landscape of lyric, we must seek to understand in
imaginative terms the poetic and psychological process involved in each
trope. In other words we must use the tools.
How he uses both map and tools will now be described in summary form,
as part of a broader understanding of Bloom's concept of 'influence'(and
the 'anxiety' which results from it). Bloom argues that the relationship
of the strong poet with the phantom voices of the past is a particularly
difficult one, because all great poets are inspired to create by reading the
great poetry of their predecessors. Yet to do so is to accept influence and
this is abhorrent to them, in the same way that (in Freudian theory) the
male infant hates and resents his father. For Bloom, the tropes 'map' the
route by which the poet as he writes is empowered to resist the 'phantoms'
of the past.
A Map of Misreading groups these tropes in three separate phases,
which it may help to envisage as stages in a journey across the map.
Bloom shows how they function dialectically, providing the poet with
the means of resisting the past, and bringing new creativity to the present
Afterword: The Interface - Further Roles for Rhetoric 147
The influence of earlier great poetry ebbs and flows as the later poet's
creative imagination wrestles with it, withdrawing from it three times
but allowing it back in a disguised form after each withdrawal. Finally
it appears, suggests Bloom, in a form representing a kind of victory over
the source of influence. (You can follow Bloom's complex explication of
this process in the Map [pp. 83-105] which uses Freudian theory as well
as more esoteric concepts.) Our intention in presenting this summary is
to suggest the importance of trope within Bloom's overall scheme, as it
refracts, fragments and inverts the poet's debt to the phantom voices.
With the trope of irony which begins the first phase, Bloom inverts the
desired and the undesired. Unable to portray directly the vision which he
has absorbed from his great poetic forebears, the more recent poet seeks
as a first stage to portray its absence. This is typified by Milton's Satan,
who seeks to make Hell represent that Heaven from which he is banished
- the irony is unmistakeable.
Having begun by excluding the original vision which inspired him, the
Poet then allows it a measure of indirect expression. To do this he uses the
trope of synecdoche, a fragmentary image which may be perceived as part
of the lost and rejected whole.
He then begins the second phase of struggle with a further withdrawing
from his 'precursor's' vision, reflected through the associational process
of metonymy. Our own example of this is in Wordsworth's 'Ode on the
Intimations of Immortality' (a key text for Bloom). In this poem the
Child (who stands for the Poet) plays with images of adult joy or grief
(U.90-94):
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral; ...
The Child's drawing is metonymically linked to the adult world as

Wordsworth's image of the Child is linked to his lost vision.
The two tropes which come next (hyperbole/hype and litotes/play-
down) have hitherto only been discussed as schemes (see Chapter 6). Here
they embody the second phase's movement towards directer representation
of the troubling source of 'influence'. We have seen how these devices can
involve the use of other tropes. By their sheer exaggeration or diminution
they can, moreover, transcend the literal and be figurative in their own
right. Bloom sees the pressure of 'the parent poem' as being expressed
148 Afterword: The Interface - Further Roles/or Rhetoric
at this point on the 'map' through one or other of these tropes. This
might appear in the form of an unexpected heightening or a suspicious
underplaying of the imagery, or perhaps as a loud voice erupting without
warning, or a 'still small voice' unobtrusively claiming attention.
In the third phase, the process of withdrawing is embodied in the familiar
trope of metaphor. Despite its conventional prestige, Bloom sees this trope
as a kind of retreat from the wholeness of vision. It makes a split between
'the polarities of subject and object' (Map, p. 101), expressing the inner
life through imagery drawn from the outward world. Although ostensibly
expressing his inner self, the poet is actually inhibiting its expression.
Then at the triumphant climax of his 'wrestle with the dead', the new
poet finally succeeds in imposing his own sense of dependent 'belatedness'
on the very poet who imposed it on him. To do this he uses the trope which
we call remote metonymy or metalepsis (see Appendix A). Bloom dem-
onstrates this (Map pp. 125-43) using Milton's description of the 'false
hero' Satan (Paradise Lost I. 1.283-313). Satan appears as a Homeric
hero, bearing a shield immense as the moon - an analogy also used to
describe the hero Achilles' shield in Homer's Iliad. But for Milton (and
for the modem reader), Galileo's invention of the telescope transformed
astronomy and man's view of his place in the universe. Milton compares
Satan's shield with the moon, knowing full well that the telescope has
revealed its 'spots', and that (by association) Satan's classical 'heroism' is
now tainted by arrogance. Milton is taking here a rigorously Christian view
of pagan heroism, transforming and renewing the moon analogy in a fresh
and powerful way. The 'anxiety of influence' has undergone a sea-change,
thanks to the enabling power of the trope. Through this device of remote
metonymy, cause and effect are reversed; Homer no longer seems to impel
Milton in his choice of the moon simile. Rather, Milton's new perspective
(symbolised by the telescope) makes Homer seem 'dependent' on him.
We may, of course, doubt whether all 'strong poetry' fits Bloom's thesis
as neatly as this. Are we equally entitled to be sceptical about Eagleton?
CONCLUSION: BETWEEN CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE
It should by now be clear that it is both possible and even desirable to

operate at the interface between critical theory and practice. We have
seen how rhetorical theory can be used to analyse and interpret the
significant features of critical theory and its style of expression. Rhetoric
can be viewed as the model for a total critical system (Eagleton) or it
can be selectively used as a major resource (Bloom). We would argue
that anyone can use a similar 'dual approach' to deal with any critical
theory, whether they wish to examine the inner imaginative life of writers,
to study literature as a social and political phenomenon, or both. By using
persuasive language as the bonding element, we can examine all aspects
of texts, working across the interface of language and literature.
Appendix A: Further Rhetorical
Devices
Appendix A includes a range of tropes and schemes not mentioned or

fully detailed previously. They illustrate the same range of persuasive
repertoire as Chapter 6, and are in the same categories. Most of the
illustrative examples have been invented to show the potential use of these
devices in contemporary English. Page references are supplied (wherever
appropriate) to Puttenham, Arte (1589) in the facsimile edition, and to Lee
Sonnino's invaluable Handbook to Sixteenth Century Rhetoric (1968).
A comprehensive list of modem English rhetorical tetmS, corresponding
to the whole range of devices covered in this book, will be found in the
brief Appendix B, together with a summary grouping of all devices in their
respective categories and (notmally) with the Greek or Latin name of each
identified device.
1. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE OR 1ROPE
(a) Allegory
This may be simply defined as a continued metaphor. We notice two

important sub-varieties.
(i) Fable. This is exemplified in the twentieth century by George
Orwell's Animal Farm. In Thomas Wilson's words, it involves actions
or speeches 'such as are attributed to brute beasts, (or) the parts of a man's
body' (quoted by Sonnino, p. 97). It concludes with a clearly underlined
moral.
(ii) Parable. This uses a wider range of imagery than fable, and is
typically enigmatic. It is designed to exercise the mind in interpretation,
and may involve striking dissimilarities, as well as similarities, between
the subject of the parable and the allegory employed. Wby for example
does Christ compare the zealous seeker after the Kingdom of God to a
dishonest steward short-changing his employer (Luke 16: 1-9)1
150
(b) Allusive Label (Antonomasia)
This is a form of metonymy, using the associational link to rename or

label something - more usually someone. Puttenham (p. 151) calls it 'the
surnamer', which suggests a dignified or poetic usage (though it can be
used comically). We may distinguish six kinds:
(i) Offspring identified through name of parent: e.g. 'Judy Garland's

daughter' (Lisa Minelli).
(ii) Person identified by place of origin: e.g. The woman from
Grantham' (Mrs Margaret Thatcher).
(iii) Some associated attribute (akin to a nickname): e.g. 'Mr Clean'
for a politician.
(iv) Identification through trade, profession or art (currently or for-
merly pursued): e.g. The carpenter' (for Jesus Christ).
(v) Application of a personal name, prominent for some characteristic
or accomplishment, to another person aspiring to the same distinction: e.g.
'The new Nureyev' (for an aspiring male dancer).
(vi) Application of the name of a nation or city (or perhaps a particular
street in some city) famous for some characteristic, to any person allegedly
showing that characteristic - e.g. 'A sybarite' for any addict of luxurious
living (after the former Greek colony of Sybaris). Modem instances may
be offensive, but equally may be facetious, as in 'Sloane Ranger' (from a
fashionable square in London).
(c) Personification (Prosopopoeia)
Attribution of a personality to material object, plant, animal, or abstract

idea. This device can be of major importance when it is associated with
cultural traditions. The obvious example is the ancient custom of personify-
ing ships as 'she' (see Catullus and Joseph Conrad). Personification is often
used today in advertising products like cars (see any number of television
adverts!). Personification is also related to Amplication and Diminution.
(d) Remote Metonymy (Metalepsis)
This trope is of great importance in the critical theory and practice of

Harold Bloom (see Afterword). As the name implies, it involves a chain
of associations (often a chain of causation) between the given image
and the thing signified, the intermediate links being supplied by the
152 Appendix A: Further Rhetorical Devices
audience's imagination. Thus 'three trips to the jewellers' might indicate

that a person has been engaged three times, through the intermediate link
'ring'. Puttenham (p. 152) calls this 'the far-fet' (i.e. 'the far-fetched').
(e) Transference (HypaUage)
A common term for this version of metonymy is 'transferred epithet'. If

we spoke of 'the furry purposes' of a cat on a mouse-hunt, we would be
transferring the quality of the animal's outside to its inward intentions.
The device is well-adapted to deflating pomposity by juxtaposing the
grandiose and the merely human, e.g. if one were to refer to the 'monetarist
toothbrush' of a politician or the 'strategic socks' of a general. There
may also be transference, reflective of the quality of experience, between
humanity and its environment - as in 'a perishing cold day'.
2. SCHEMATIC LANGUAGE
We begin this section with two brief categories of devices which are
varieties of lexical choice and aural effect, corresponding to the first two
sections of Chapter 6.
(a) Single Words
(i) Word-coinage. Words invented or 'coined' to express newly-

conceived qualities. Much seen in contemporary advertising (e.g.
'cookability' as an alleged quality of gas cookers, 'H2 0wner' as a
purchaser of shares in privati sed water undertakings).
(ii) Split word (tmesis) - in contemporary English this is most likely to
be applied negatively to proper names. The device divides a word, phrase
or name and inserts another word or words (e.g. 'John Clever-Dick Smith';
'Ha-blooming-ha!').
(b) Aural Devices
Sound-image (onomatopoeia). The Greek term denotes the 'making of

a word or name': it means a word which sounds exactly like what it
represents. Examples like 'squelch' and 'thud' will occur readily to the
reader, and new ones are still being invented for specific persuasive
purposes.
(c) Syntactic Devices
(i) Cross-over (chiasmus). A reversal of the order of syntactical elements

(A > B B > A), as in 'I admired many of his inventions; the purposes he
applied them to I found simply atrocious'. In this example the reversed
syntax signals a reversal of attitude.
(ii) Contrastive series. This is a development of syntactic parallelism
involving balanced sentences or clauses which continue a process of
opposition through three or more stages. It is found in overtly competitive
advertising. The rbetoric might involve a series of shorter ripostes, or a
series of longer ones. 'Tbey put their food on a plastic tray. We place
ours on a Royal Doulton plate with silver cutlery and cut-glass. They
pre-cook their food. We provide our five-star chefs with in-flight galleys
and the service of expert buyers in every major city on the flight routes'
(etc. etc.).
(iii) Correlative distribution. A series of subjects, followed by a series
of verbs. Probably only suitable in modern English for the production of
comic or burlesque effects. An example would be 'His head, bat, heart,
were punched, sat on, set on fire'.
(iv) Many cases (polyptoton). The most famous instance of this in
English is Lincoln's definition of democracy as 'Government of the people
by the people for the people', wbich correlates the genitive, ablative and
dative cases.
(v) Many links (polysyndeton). Multiple use of conjunctions between
successive words or phrases: 'Sick and tired and cold and hungry and
thirsty.' This is well adapted to conveying a subjective sense of cumulative
strain. Compare the antitype of this device, whicb follows.
(vi) No links (asyndeton). A staccato series of words or phrases
without conjunctions. Sharper and more aggressive than the many links
form: 'Sick, tired, cold, bungry, thirsty' (to our ears this sounds like an
accusation, where the other was a plea or a lament).
(vii) Paired series (scesisonamaton). A series of nouns each accom-
panied by an adjective. The noun and adjective may be linked by a repeated
preposition, or by a range of prepositions: 'Olive oil - rich in taste, ripe in
association, kind to cooks, kinder to the heart.'
(d) Repetition
(i) Staircase (climax). One of the most flamboyant of figures. A series of

sentences in which the last word or phrase of the preceding sentence is
adapted as the first word or phrase of the following sentence: 'Because I
lost my season ticket I was late for work; because I was late for work my
secretary got in a muddle; because he got in a muddle I lost the vital file
on the computer; because I lost the file we lost the contract'
(ii) Full-circle (epanalepsis). A sentence opening and closing with the
same word or phrase: 'In the bin is where litter belongs; so make sure you
put it in the bin!'
(iii) Prose rhyme (omoeoteleuton). Although it involves repetition, this
might also be classed as an aural device. A series of words or phrases
ending with the same inflection and sound - a prosaic form of rhyme.
An example might be 'First, you hurt me carelessly; then, knowing you
were hurting, you carried on regardlessly; and finally, you pretended to
apologise - gracelessly' .
(iv) Two-track repetition (symploche). A series of sentences, each
beginning with an identical or slightly varied word or phrase, and ending
with another word or phrase, likewise repeated at the end of each sentence
of the series. Combined with climax in the proverbial 'For the want of a
nail the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost . . . '
(e) Amplification and Diminution
Here we distinguish two major divisions; one relating to the emotive

element of graphic actualisation, and the other to the developed textual
coherence which exhibits ethos and logos.
TOPICS FOR ACTUALISATION (REPORTAGE AND FICTION)
In Chapter 6 we alluded briefly to the categorisation of amplificatory

devices in relation to their subject matter. Traditionally this was divided
between (i) evocations of real things or people, and (ii) portrayals of imagi-
nary things or people. The modern persuader, in reviewing the available
repertoire, needs the shortest and clearest possible check-list to serve as
a reminder of the main topics or subjects to which actualisation might
be applied. What is given here offers only glimpses of a fully-developed
'rhetoric of fiction'.
Traditional rhetoric recognises a distinction between the actualisation of
reality and the 'feigning' of imaginary or abstract things, but does not
apply this to every potential topic. Whilst recognising feigned place and
personality and assigning distinct terms· to them, it does not categorise
feigned time and action separately. This is because these rhetorical con-
cepts predate modern historiography, psychology and the whole ideology
of individualism. Consequently they reflect little or no interest in the idea
of circumstantial description of individual people or things. So a typical

description of time or action might equally serve for history or poetry. ( We
shall give the Greek and Latin terms here, but remind readers that current
persuasion makes catholic use of individualised as well as generalised
description, and of highly figurative or fantastic evocations, as required.)
(i) Action-shot (pragmatographia). The Greek term means 'descrip-
tion of an action'. We have an example in the graphic enargia of
Quintilian's murder scene (Chapter 2).
(ii) Actualisation of persons whether real (prosographia), or imaginary
(prosopopoeia). The latter covers fictional people, personified abstractions,
humanised animals and personified natural objects. One traditional method
of actualisation was to produce an itemised description of the limbs,
features and clothing of the person concerned. Today the persuader is
more likely to highlight only one or two items of appearance.
(iii) Speech-portrayal (dialogismos). The force of such evocations
was greatly increased when the actualised person was made to speak
- and sometimes to hold a dialogue with the persuader. Most rhetorical
authorities applied the term dialogismos to this, whether or not it involved
dialogue in the modem sense (Sonnino, pp. 168-9).
Bearing in mind that rhetorical training included the composition of
speeches expressing the comic emotion of a character (ethopoeia) as
well as tragic emotion (ethopoeia passiva), this would have a beneficial
effect on all aspects of literary persuasion. Today we would describe this
as revelation of character and characteristic emotion.
(iv) Time-portrayal (chronographia). This might involve actualisation
of the time of day or season of the year. Its most obvious use is in fiction
or poetry, but it can also contribute to a sense of circumstantial reality in
functional persuasion.
(v) Place-portrayal. As we have seen, there was a traditional distinction
between the actualisation of a real place (topographia) and that of an
imaginary one (topothesia). Consider this in relation to fictional realism
and science fiction today. Traditionally, there was even a standard form
of itemised description, depicting the locus amoenus or ideally beautiful
place (see E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages,
trans. W. R. Trask [London: Routledge, 1953] pp. 192-202).
STRUCTURAL AMPLIFIERS
(i) Antithesis. In Chapter 2 we considered the importance of antithesis

as a means of magnifying and articulating persuasive emotion, and we
looked at its argumentative aspects in Chapter 3. Plainly, the integration
of antithetical oppositions within a structure of syntactic parallelism will

greatly enhance the effect of an amplificatory passage.
(ii) Comparison (of kind and degree). This was discussed at length
in Chapter 3, and it is mentioned here chiefly as a reminder of its
importance in amplification - i.e. in the argumentative structuring of
emotional effects.
(iii) Break-down (merismus). This achieves impact (emotive, logical or
imaginative) by its directness, because it avoids introductory or summary
statement of an idea, presenting it through a 'break-down' of its main
aspects or constituent parts. For example, to expand the implicit idea
that 'families have arguments', we might write as follows: 'Parents argue
about money; children about siblings borrowing clothes without asking;
they all argue about when to get in and when to get up; even the cat
argues with the dog; everybody argues about chores, duties and privileges.'
Such a break-down might also involve schemes of repetition and syntactic
parallelism.
(iv) Leading summary (prolepsis). Here a brief summary statement is
followed by a detailed part-by-part amplification (as above). 'He was the
most bigoted man I'd ever met' (going on to outline his bigoted attitudes
one by one).
(v) Terminal summary. The summary may be placed after the itemised
details of a description or evocation. Where this involves an element of
repetition and contrast it is known in Greek as epanados (see Sonnino,
pp. 158-9). A modem example would be: 'A, B, X and Y walked into
my room and sat down around the table - A and B the most honest men
1 knew, and X and Y the greatest rogues'.
(vi) Descant (expolitio). We use the old term here to express the idea
of deliberate elaboration, amplifying a single idea. Puttenham includes a
poem by Queen Elizabeth as an example of this figure, although 'I doubt
whether 1 may terme it a figure, or rather a masse of many figurative
speaches' (See Arte, pp. 206- 8). A full dress version in a sixteenth-century
school rhetoric (Susenbrotus, English edn [1570], pp. 90-1) involves: (i)
the initial statement of a conventional idea ('a wise man will shun no
danger for the good of his country'); (ii) two reasons for this; (iii) a
moral proposition plus two subsidiary reasons; iv) a moral observation
or sententia; (v) a contrary instance; (vi) two more reasons; (vii) another
contrary; (viii) two more reasons; (ix) a simile; (x) a comparison of degree;
(xi) a particular example; (xii) another moral observation plus a reason;
(xii) a conclusion. Absurd as this seems, parts of the full recipe (such as
the sequence of contrary, simile and example) may still be found in modem
functional persuasion!
(f) Tricks and Ploys
(i) Apologising (licentia). Apologizing, sincerely or ironically, for a frank

expression of opinion. If sincere, this shows goodwill and tact towards the
audience; if ironic, it wrong-foots them and shakes their confidence: 'I must
apologise for not deferring to your enlightened views on . . . '
(ii) Conceding (concessio). Conceding something to an opponent
which is actually damaging to them: 'Yes, the Chancellor spent the whole
weekend working on his Autumn Statement; and yes, he really cares about
the economy: and look what a mess he's made of them both!'
(iii) ConfeDing (communicatio). Asking the audience what they would
do about a problem (implying that they COUldn't do better or differently).
(iv) Referring (permissio). Showing supreme confidence by referring
a matter (as self-evident) to the judgement of an audience.
(v) Questioning:
(1) Rhetorical question (interrogatio). A question to which the answer is
by implication obvious. Its effects may be very various, e.g. shaking the
confidence of an audience opposed to the persuader's view, or reinforcing
an opinion already formed or forming.
(2) Multiple questions (pysma). A barrage of rhetorical questions.
(3) Question and answer (subjectio). Asking a series of questions and
answering them ourselves. This might, for instance, show a very superior
stance in relation to audience and topic - or signal a mutual effort to shed
light on a murky situation by working steadily through the ascertainable
facts.
(4) Open question. A genuine question, to which we don't know the
answer. This question tests an audience's undeclared attitude, or expresses
a genuine uncertainty on a matter of common concern.
TWO MODERN PLOYS
(i) Dodging the question. Now a familiar rhetorical feature of the inter-
view (that most rhetorical format). The dodge may be executed with the aid
of anyone or more of the models of argument discussed, such as answering
a particular point in general terms, or shifting the point at issue to one more
favourable to the dodger.
(ii) Making it clear. Claiming to have 'made it clear' often helps to
dodge the question, implying that it has been answered already (a useful
political ploy).
Appendix B: A Finding List for
Rhetorical Devices
In this Appendix we provide a combined list of all the rhetorical devices

specified in this book, normally using our own English terminology and
adding one of the traditional Greek or Latin terms where applicable. For
each entry we indicate whether the device is discussed in Chapter 6,
(C6), consigned to Appendix A (AA) or mentioned in both (C6/AA).
We also provide a page reference to Lee Sonnino's A Handbook of
Sixteenth-Century Rhetoric, except in the case of devices identified more
recently or (as happens very rarely) unsatisfactorily defined by Sonnino.
The devices are listed in the same sections and same order as was followed
in both Chapter 6 and Appendix A, but are here arranged in alphabetical
order for each section.
NAME OF OUR SONNINO

DEVICE REFERENCE REFERENCE
1. Trope or figurative language

Allegory AA 120-2
Includes fable, parable
(fabula, parabola) AA 98,207-8
Allusive label (antonomasia)
Six types AA 149-50
Irony C6 105-6
Includes one-word irony
(antiphrasis) C6 130-1
Epigrammatic irony C6
Sustained irony C6
Metaphor C6 181-3
Metonymy C6 184-6
Includes Subject/ Adjunct C6
Container/Content C6
Cause/Effect C6
Clothes/Wearer C6
158
Apperulix B: Rhetorical Devices, a Firuling List 159
Inventor!Invention C6
Mislabel (catachresis) C6 16-17
Personification
(prosopopoeia) AA 54-6
Remote metonymy (metalepsis) AA 186-7
Synecdoche C6 172-3
Includes Whole-Part!
Part-Whole C6
Genus-Species!
Species-Genus C6
Plural! Singular C6
Singular!Plural C6
Transference (hypaUage) AA
2. Schematic language
(a) Single words (lexical choice)
Split word (tmesis) AA 76-7
Word-coinage AA
(b) Antithesis
(antitheton) C6 60-1
(c) Puns and word-play
Deliberate distortion C6
Same-sound pun
(antanaclasis) C6 193-4
Similar-sound pun
(paronomasia) C6 26-7
Sound-image (onomatopoeia) AA 132
(d) Syntactic devices
Contrastive series AA
Cross-over (chiasmus) AA 199
Correlative distribution AA
Left- and right-branching
sentences C6
(see Nash Designs)
Listings or heapings-up
(synathrismos) C6 56-7
Many cases (polyptoton) AA 24-5
Many links (polysyruleton) AA 19-20
No links (asyndeton) AA 78-9
160 Appendix B: Rhetorical Devices, a Finding List
Paired series (scesisonamaton) AA 211

Syntactic parallelism
(isoco{on) C6 43-4
Verb-based variations C6
Includes
Hyperactive subject (colon) C6 129-30
Syllepsis C6 50
Zeugma C6 22
Word-class variation
(traductio) C6 178-9
(e) Repetition
Random repetition (pioche) C6 64
Full-circle (epanalepsis) AA 163
Initial repetition (anaphora) C6 161
Instant repetition (epizeuxis) C6 174-5
Prose rhyme (omoeoteleuton) AA 170-1
Refrain (epimone) C6 141-2
Staircase (climax) AA 101-2
Stop-and-start (anadiplosis) C6 157-8
Switch-around (antimetabole) C6 42-3
Terminal repetition
(antistrophe) C6 63-4
Two-track repetition
(symploche) AA 47-8
(j) Amplification and Diminution
(i) Modes of statement
Hype (hyperbole) C6 68-9
Playdownlunderstatement (litotes) C6 204
(ii) Grapbic actualisation: topics
Action-shot (pragmatographia) AA 71-2
Actualised persons, includes:
Real people (prosographia) AA 83-4
Imaginary people, personified
things, animals, or
qualities (prosopopoeia) AA 54-6
TIme-portrayal
(chronographia) AA 176
Place-portrayal, includes:
Real places (topographia) C612 12S-9
Appendix B: Rhetorical Devices, a Finding List 161
Imaginary places (topothesia) C6/2 212

Speech-portrayal (dialogismos),
includes:
Revelation of character
(ethopoeia) AA 108-9
Characteristic emotion
(ethopoeia passiva) AA
(iii) Structural amplifiers:
Antithesis AA
Break-down (merismos) AA 80-1
Build-up (incrementum) C6 111-12
Comparison of kind and degree
(comparatio) AA 44-5
Descant (expolitio) AA 93-4
Leading summary (prolepsis) AA 146-8
Terminal summary AA
(g) Tricks and Ploys
Apologising (licentia) AA 127-8
Breaking off (aposiopesis) C6 142-3
Conceding (concessio) AA 50-1
Conferring (communicatio) AA 41
Self-correcting (epanorthosis) C6 65-6
Doing-down (meiosis) C6 95-6
Doubting (aporia) C6 82-3
Passing over (praeteritio) C6 135-6
Questioning, C6/AA
includes:
Multiple questions (pysma) AA 153
Open question AA
Question and answer
(subjectio) AA 165
Rhetorical question
(interrogatio) AA 117-18
Referring (permissio) AA 140
Whitewash (paradiastole) C6 51-2
Two 1f1Odem ploys
Dodging the question AA
Making it clear AA
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. M. Billig, Arguing and Thinking: A rhetorical approach to social

psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
2. Aristotle, The 'Art' of Rhetoric, trans. J. H. Freese, Loeb Classical
Library (London: Heinemann, 1959) pp. 14-15. All further quotations
from The Rhetoric are from this translation.
3. For example, Herbert W. Simons (ed.), Rhetoric in the Human Sciences
(London: Sage, 1989).
4. See Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric ofFiction (Chicago, 1961); Christine
Brooke-Rose, A Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative & Struc-
ture, especially of the Fantastic (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981).
5. G. A. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular
Tradition from Ancient to Modem Times (London: Croom Helm,
1980).
6. Brian Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1988).
7. Plato, Gorgias, trans. W. Hamilton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960).
8. See for example the internal debate of Myrrha (overcome by incestuous
desire) in Metamorphoses X (11. 320-55 in the original).
9. See A. J. Minnis (ed.), Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic
literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Aldershot: Scolar
Press, 1988).
10. William Langland, Piers the Ploughman, trans. J. F. Goodridge
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959). This is a prose translation: for the
effect of the verse see Tom Paulin's version of lines from the Prologue
in his Faber Book of Political Verse (London, 1986), pp. 58-9, or
(for the original) E. Salter and D. Pearsall (eds), Piers Plowman, York
Medieval Texts (London: Arnold, 1967).
11. See T. W. Baldwin, William Shakspere's small Latine and lesse Greeke,
2 vols (Urbana: lllinois University Press, 1956), and Sr. Miriam Joseph,
Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1947).
12. See the political readings of Marlowe and Shakespeare by Simon
Shepherd, Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre (Brighton:
Harvester, 1986), and Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion,
Ideology and Power in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Brighton:
Harvester, 1984).
13. For two phases of rhetorical subversion and propaganda see L. A.
162
Notes to pp. 7-14 163
Schuster et al. (eds), Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. 8 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1973), and G. E. Duffield (ed.), The Work of
William Tyndale (Philadelphia, 1965), and (for the later Marprelate
controversy), The Marprelate Tracts, 1588-1589, facs. (Menston:
Scolar Press, 1967), and Thomas Nashe, An Almond for a Parrat,
in Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958) III 337-76.
14. In the Cambridge comedy The Pilgrimage to Parnassus, Act III, the
Puritan Stupido has been tutoring himself with the aid of Ramus
(see lB. Leishman [ed.], The Three Parnassus Plays [London, 1949]
pp. 110-6); and in John Brinsley's Ludus literarius, or the Grammar
Schoole (ed. E. T. Campagnac [Liverpool: University Press, 1917]
pp. 182-3), the Rarnist An of Meditation is recommended as the most
promising way of enabling 'Schollers ... '[to] invent plenty of good
matter' (though a further clarification and exemplification is desired to
make the book fully suitable for school use).
15. See Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, new edn by S. H. Jones
and R. McKenzie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973) S.v. logos,
senses III. 1, 2,4,5; IV; V.4; VI.
16. Conveniently summarised in Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semi-
otics pp. 76- 87 (for full reference, see n. 2 to Chapter 7 below).
17. As summarised (with the elaborations of Bach and Harnish) by Martin
Steinmann Jr., 'Speech-Act Theory and Writing', in Martin Nystrand
(ed.), What Writers Know: the Language Process and Structure ofWrit-
ten Discourse (London/New York: Academic Press, 1981/2) p. 296.
18. H. P. Grice, 'Logic and Conversation', in P. Cole and l L. Morgan
(eds), Speech Acts (New York: Academic Press, 1975) pp. 41-58.
Summarised by Marilyn Cooper in Nystrand (see above) p. 112, and in
David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987) p. 117.
19. Quoted by Christopher Butler, Systemic linguistics: Theory and Appli-
cations (London: Batsford, 1985) p. 149.
20. See Malcolm Coulthard, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis, 2nd
edn, Applied Linguistics and Language Study Ser. (London: Longman,
1985).
21. John J. Gumperz, Discourse Strategies, Studies in Interactional
Sociolinguistics 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982),
pp. 187-203.
22. Quoted by M. V. Jones, 'Bakhtin's Metalinguistics', in Essays in
Honour of Walter Grauberg, ed. C. S. Butler et al., University of
Nottingham Monographs in the Humanities, VI (Nottingham: 1989),
p.108.
23. See M. A. K. Halliday, Explorations in the Function of Language,
Explorations in Language Study Ser. (London: Arnold, 1973)
pp.36-42.
24. Joseph Heller, Catch 22, Corgi edn (London, 1961), p. 54.
164 Notes to pp. 19-36
1: PERSONALITY AND STANCE
1. These views are summarised by Peter Dixon in Rhetoric. The Critical

Idiom. 19 (London: Methuen. 1971) pp. 7-20. and by Walter Nash in
Rhetoric (see n. 6 below) pp. 197-218.
2. This phrase is from one of the maxims or dicta serving as section
headings in the Sixties cult book by Marshall McLuhan. The Gutenberg
galaxy: the making of typographic man (London: Routledge. 1962).
The full dictum (p. 31) reads: 'The new electronic interdependence
recreates the world in the image of a global village'.
3. Lynette Hunter. Rhetorical Stance in Modem Literature: Allegories of
Love and Death (London: Macmillan. 1984) p. 5.
4. Institutio aratoria. lI.xiiLl. cited by Billig. p. 62.
5. As summarised in A. Jefferson and D. Robey (eds). Modern Liter-
ary Theory: a Comparative Introduction (London: Batsford, 1986)
pp. 151-63. 197-9.
6. Walter Nash. Rhetoric: the Wit of Persuasion (Oxford: Blackwell.
1989).
7. Cicero. De Oratore. I.xxv.113. cited in Nash. Rhetoric. p. 211-2.
8. Quoted by Marie H. Nichols. 'Kenneth Burke and the ''New Rhetoric'" •
in J. Rycenga and J. Schwartz (eds). The Province of Rhetoric (New
York: Ronald Press. 1965) p. 369.
9. In Gordon Wells (ed.). Learning through Interaction: the Study of Lan-
guage Development. Language at Home and at School 1 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 1981) pp. 22-72.
10. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd. from A. N. W.
Saunders (ed. and trans.). Greek Political Oratory (Harmondsworth:
Penguin. 1970) pp. 188-9. 198.
11. Text reproduced by kind permission of Toshiba Corporation. German
Division.
12. Hansard. 31 October 1939. With thanks to Natasha Bourne for her
permission to use this extract. which was included in the selection from
Hansard in her A-Level English Language project 'Analytical Study of
the Language of British Parliament'.
13. See Michael J. Toolan. Narrative: a Critical Linguistic Introduction
(London: Routledge. 1988) p. 3.
14. Pride and Prejudice. Vol. II. Ch. xi. Text from Oxford English Novels
edn. ed. Frank W. Bradbrook (London: Oxford University Press. 1970)
p.168.
15. Robert Browning. Poetical Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1940) p. 318.
16. J. D. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye (Harmondsworth: Penguin.
1958) p. 5.
2: EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
1. See M. Allott (ed.), Keats: the Complete Poems, Annotated English

Poets (London: Longman, 1970) pp. 539-40.
2. See Introduction above, n. 16.
3. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler, Loeb Classical
Library (London: Heinemann, 1921) II 434-5.
4. See Liddell and Scott, s.v. enargia.
5. Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Pit and the Pendulum', in D. Galloway (ed.),
Poe: Selected Writings (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967) p. 271.
6. From Hilly Janes's report on the Kalpna Restaurant (Indian Vegetarian
food), 2- 3 Patrick Square, Edinburgh, in The Independent, Saturday 4
November 1989.
7. From a theatrical review by Jeffrey Wainright, The Independent, Mon-
day 6 November 1989.
8. For a clear summary account of the varieties of Marxist thinking in
relation to ideology see David Forgacs, 'Marxist literary theories', in A.
Jefferson and D. Robey (eds), Modem Literary Theory: a Comparative
Introduction, 2nd edn (London: Batsford, 1986).
9. From Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy (Washington:
U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1962) pp. 2-3.
10. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776. See R. E. Spiller and H. Blodgett
(eds), The Roots of National Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1949)
p.336.
11. All Shakespeare quotations and references are from Peter Alexander
(ed.), The Complete Works of Shakespeare (London: Collins, 1951).
12. See C. Ricks (ed.), The Poems of Tennyson, Annotated English Poets
(London: Longmans, 1969) pp. 817-8.
13. Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, New Oxford lllustrated Dickens
(London: Oxford University Press, 1952) p. 10.
3: REASON: THE RESOURCES OF ARGUMENT
1. Following Aristotle, later rhetorics develop elaborate, subdivided sys-

tems for finding particular arguments appropriate to particular kinds of
speech and kinds of issue. This is true for example of the Rhetorica ad
Herennium (see translation by Harry Caplan, Loeb Classical Library
[London: Heinemann, 1954D, and the English vernacular rhetoric by
Thomas Wilson which is largely based on it, his Ane of Rhetorique
of 1560. Elaborate systems are also found in modem works such as
The New Rhetoric by C. H. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca (Notre
Dame, 1969). On the other hand Aristotle writes of 'topics common to
the three kinds of rhetoric' (Rhetoric, II.xviii.2 ff.).
2. A compact and reasonably readable English version of Ramus's logic is
that produced by the Scotsman, Roland Mcnmayne - The Logicke of the
166 Notes to pp. 60-72
Moste Excellent Philosopher P. Ramus Martyr, London 1574 (Menston:

Scolar Press facs., 1968). The standard form of Ramistic rhetoric is
represented in English (with lavish illustrations from Sidney's Arcadia)
by Abraham Fraunce's Arcadian Rhetoricke, 1588. See the modem
edition by Ethel Seaton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950). A
searching critique of Ramus will be found in W. Ong, Ramus, Method
and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass., 1958).
3. The old technique of definition is still taught in traditional logics written
in modem times - e.g. in A. A. Luce, Teach Yourself Logic (London:
English Universities Press, 1958) pp. 27-30 (definition), 129-30 (the
predicables, including differentia).
4. Letter to Pope, September 29, 1725 (see n. 21 below).
5. George Eliot, Middlemarch (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965) p. 29.
6. Derek Walcott, Omeros (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), I.IV.iii
(pp.23-4).
7. See G. E. R. Lloyd, Aristotle: the Growth and Structure of his Thought
(Cambridge, 1968) pp. 57-62.
8. Charles Dickens, Hard Times, New Oxford lllustrated Dickens (Lon-
don: Oxford University Press, 1955) p. 1.
9. Alice Walker, The Color Purple (London: The Women's Press, 1983)
p. 167.
10. Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, trans. R. Manheim.
In Collected Plays, Vol. VI, Part Two (London: Methuen, 1981)
pp.105-6.
11. Ibid., p. 109.
12. Stevie Smith, The Collected Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985)
p.303.
13. We checked this remark with Dr. P. Boyle of the Department of
American Studies, University of Nottingham.
14. See chapter on 'The Structures of Literature' in Hawkes, Structuralism
and Semiotics, pp. 59-122.
15. Text as printed in The Independent, Tuesday 20 August 1991, p. 2.
16. Yeats's symbolic system of antithetical 'gyres' or vortices is set out
in A Vision, revd edn (London: Macmillan, 1956), and poetically
summarised in 'The Phases of the Moon' (Collected Poems, 2nd edn
[London: Macmillan, 1950] pp. 183-8).
17. Yeats, ed. cit., pp. 54-5.
18. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966) p. 95.
19. Nadine Gordimer, Selected Stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983)
p. 192.
20. . See A. J. Smith (ed.), John Donne: The Complete English Poems
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) pp. 55-6. All further references to
Donne's poems relate to this edn (except in the case of the Divine
Poems).
21. Jonathan Swift, Satires and Personal Writings, ed. W. A. Eddy (Lon-
don: Oxford University Press, 1932) p. 429.
22. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p. 184.

23. D. H. Lawrence, Selected Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950)
p. 121.
24. Henry Reed, A Map of Verona (London: Cape, 1946) pp. 22-3.
25. See The Logicke (cited in n. 2, above), pp. 30-5.
26. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (London: Heinemann, 1958) p. 10.
27. Franz Kafka, The Castle, trans. W. l.Ind E. Muir (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1959) p. 165.
4: REASON: CHOICE AND JUDGEMENT
1. As seen on archive film in Ludovic Kennedy's programme 'The Gift

of the Gab', BBC 2, 15 August 1989.
2. Quoted in 'The Gift of the Gab' (see n. 1 above).
3. Thomas Wilson, Ane of Rhetorique, 1560, Tudor and Stuart Library
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909) p. 87.
4. As in Rhetorica ad Herennium, I.x.18-ll.xvii.26 (pp. 32-105 in Loeb
edn: see Chapter 3, n. I), and Quintilian, Institutio aratoria, ill.vi-xi
(pp. 407-537 in Loeb edn, Vol. I).
5. Deirdre McQuillan, 'The wild dance of the gastrobore', The Independ-
ent, Saturday 30 December 1989.
6. In H. Gardner and T. Healy (eds), John Donne: Selected Prose, chosen
by Evelyn Simpson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967) p. 390.
7. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life, Fontana
Books (London: Collins, 1959) pp. 109-10.
8. See Aristotle, Topics, trans. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, in J. Bames
(ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle: the Revised Oxford Translation,
Vol. I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) p. 167 (the basic
distinction between demonstration and dialectic is drawn at Topics,
I.i.l00a, 25-30).
9. Jonathan Raban, God, Man & Mrs Thatcher, Chatto Counter Blasts
No. I (London: Chatto & Windus, 1989) pp. 12,42-3.
10. See for example A. A. Luce (Chapter 3, n. 3, above) and Alec Fisher,
The Logic of Real Argument (Cambridge, 1988).
11. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. G. Bull (Harmondsworth: Pen-
guin, 1961). See for example Ch. Vll on 'New principalities acquired
with the help of fortune and foreign arms', which generalises from the
successful ruthlessness of Cesare Borgia.
12. See Luce, pp. 145-9.
13. This is an example of what Luce (p. 155) calls the 'Complex Construc-
tive Dilemma'.
14. In Christopher Hill (ed.), Winstanley: The Law of Freedom and Other
Writings (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) pp. 283-4.
15. See Luce, pp. 149-54.
16. See Luce, pp. 75-8.
168 Notes to pp. 97-114
17. See 1. B. Steane (ed.) , Christopher Marlowe: the Complete Plays

(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) p. 274. All further quotations from
Marlowe relate to this edition.
5: THE PERSUASIVE PROCESS
1. E.g. Rhetorica ad Herennium, l.iii.4 (Caplan, pp. 8-11).

2. Frederic 1ameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially
Symbolic Act (London: Methuen, 1981).
3. See n. 18 to Introduction above.
4. Ruqaiya Hasan, 'The Nursery Tale as a Genre', NOllingham Linguistic
Circular, XIII (1984) 71-102.
5. See Randolph S. Churchill (ed.), Into Bailie: Speeches by Winston S.
Churchill (London: Cassell, 1941) pp. 35-6. This and the extract
from the 'Finest Hour' speech (see note 12 to Chapter 6, below)
are reproduced with acknowledgement to Curtis Brown Group Ltd,
London on behalf of the Estate. Copyright the Estate of Sir Winston
S. Churchill.
6. Text reproduced by kind permission of K.H.B.B. Advertising Agency,
82 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H OBA.
7. Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot (London: Faber, 1956) pp. 75-77.
8. Reproduced by permission from Philip Larkin, Collected Poems (Lon-
don: Marvell Press and Faber, 1988) p. 131.
9. Malcolm Bradbury, The History Man (London: Secker & Warburg,
1975) p. 71.
6: THE PERSUASIVE REPERTOIRE
1. Linguistic determinism is the belief (associated with Edward Sapir

and his pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf) that language, by organising
our concepts through more or less finely discriminated ranges of
words, determines the way we think. See Cambridge Encyclopedia
of Language (n. 18 to Introd. above) p. 15. Sapir's theories are stated
in his Language (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1921).
2. The implied parallel between 'levels' of style and the orders of society
is plain enough in the Rhetorica ad Herennium's summary (IV.viii.11),
as translated by Harry Caplan (pp. 252-3):
The Grand type consists of a smooth and ornate arrangement of

impressive words. The Middle type consists of a lower, yet not of
the lowest and most collOQuial, class of words (ex humiliore neque
tamen ex infima et pervulgatissima verborum dignitate). The simple
type is brought down (demissa) even to the most current idiom of
standard speech.
Notes to pp. 114-127 169
3. Aristotle states that 'Comedy ... is an imitation of men worse than the
average ... as regards the Ridiculous' (Poetics, Warrington trans. [see
n. 8 to Ch. 3 above) p. 10). It is implied (p. 9) that comedy has a style to
match its subject. Horace on the other hand indicates that the language
of comedy is that of private life (Ars Poetica, II. 90-1).
4. See e.g. C. A. Patrides (ed.), John Milton: Selected Prose
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974) pp. 196-248.
5. W. Nash, Designs in Prose, English Language Series 12 (London:
Longman, 1980).
6. R. Carter, Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives, Aspects of
English Ser. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987).
7. R. B. Sheridan, The School for Scandal, ed. F. W. Bateson, The New
Mermaids (London: Benn, 1979) p. 20 (I.i.233-7).
8. Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. from Ted Hughes
(ed.), Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems (London: Faber, 1981) p. 116.
9. In J. Butt (ed.), The Poems of Alexander Pope (London: Methuen,
1968) p. 744.
10. See 1. Guest (ed.), The Best of Betjeman (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1978) p. 109.
11. David Lodge, The Modes of Modem Writing (London: Arnold, 1977)
pp. 73-81. Metaphor and metonymy are defined in relation to each
other.
12. Into Battle p. 234 (for full reference see n. 5 to Chapter 5 above).
13. Frank Norris, The Octopus: a Story of California, Signet Classics edn
(New York: The New American Library, 1964) pp. 204-5.
14. John Dryden, 'Alexander's Feast; or the Power of Musique', ll. 12-19
(see 1. Kinsley [ed.), The Poems and Fables of John Dryden [London:
Oxford University Press, 1962) p. 504).
15. Graham Swift, Waterland, Picador edn (London: Pan Books in assoc.
with Heinemann, 1984) pp. 262-3.
16. 'Sweeney Among the Nightingales', ll. 21-4. In T. S. Eliot, Collected
Poems 1909-1962 (London: Faber, 1963) p. 59.
17. See Edward Mendelson (ed.), The English Auden: Poems, Essays and
Dramatic Writings 1927-1939 (London: Faber, 1977) p. 121.
18. There is a modern edition of Puttenham by G. D. Willcock and A.
Walker (Cambridge, 1936); but our references are to the Scolar Press
facsimile (Menston, 1968), which is legible, accurately paginated and
well indexed.
19. Ed. cit., p. 826.
20. A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from Being
a Burden to their Parents or Country, in Eddy (see Chapter 3 above,
n. 25) pp. 19-31.
21. See J. Carey and A. Fowler (eds), The Poems ofJohn Milton, Annotated
English Poets (London: Longmans, 1968) p. 360. All further references
to Milton's poems relate to this edition.
22. See OED 2nd edn (1989), s.v. 'Capital'. Sense A I, 'Relating to the
170 Notes to pp. 127-141
head', is recorded from 1225; sense 2 (b) 'Punishable by death', from

1526; and sense 6 'Chief, or head' from 1535, citing Milton's use here
to illustrate an extension of this sense to 'other things' sense 6 (d).
23. Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories, ed. and introd.
Harold Beaver (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967) p. 350.
24. See H. M. Margoliouth (ed.), The Poems and Letters of Andrew
Marvell: Volume I Poems, 3rd edn, revd P. Legouis with E. E.
Duncan-Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971) p. 28.
25. Samuel Johnson, Prose and Poetry, selected by Mona Wilson, The
Reynard Library, 2nd ed. (London: Hart Davis, 1957) p. 392.
26. Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964)
pp.6-7.
27. Text (and number assigned to sonnet) from H. Gardner (ed.) Donne:
the Divine Poems (Oxford, 1952) p. 8.
28. S. T. Coleridge, Biographia litera ria, Ch. xvm - e.g. Everyman's
Library edn, ed. G. Watson (London: Dent, 1956) p. 206.
29. See G. Parfitt (ed.), Ben Jonson: the Complete Poems (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1975) p. 129.
30. See E. P. Thompson and E. Yeo (eds), The Unknown Mayhew:
Selections from the 'Morning Chronicle' 1849-50 (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1984) p. 166.
31. From Pip's first visit to Satis House in Chapter 8 (Angus Calder [ed.],
Great Expectations [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965] pp. 89-90).
32. Unpublished letter from Sarah Ellen Gaukroger to John Cockcroft, 24
February, 1859. Family collection.
33. See David Lodge's 'Condition of England Novel', Nice Work (London:
Secker & Warburg, 1988) pp. 242-4, also C. Norris, Deconstruction:
Theory and Practice, New Accents (London: Methuen, 1982) p. 49.
7: AFfERWORD: THE INTERFACE - FURTHER ROLES FOR

RHETORIC
1. See the Routledge Interface series (Series Editor Ronald Carter).

2. See for example Catherine Belsey's discussion of the Sherlock Holmes
stories in her Critical Practice (London: Methuen, 1980) pp. 109-17.
3. See Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics, pp. 62- 3.
4. See Eagleton, literary Theory, p. 35.
5. This influential school of criticism, led by the late F. R. Leavis, stood
for the moral and social value of the right sort of reading of the right
sorts of books - a stance exemplified in Leavis's The Great Tradition
(1948).
6. Harold Bloom, A Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1975).
7. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973).
Notes to pp. 143-146 171
8. Roger Poole, 'Generating believable entities: post-Marxism as a theo-

logical enterprise', Comparative Criticism, VII (1985) 49-71. 'Hegelian
grammar' is defined in n. 1 (p. 69).
9. See Belsey, Critical Practice, pp. 56-67.
10. See n. 30 to Chapter 3 above.
11. As summarised in the section on 'Two Types of Aphasia' in The Modes
of Modem Writing (see n. 11 to Chapter 6 above) pp. 77-9.
12. See The Modes of Modem Writing pp. 79-103.
Select Bibliography
1. RHETORIC: CLASSICAL AND RENAISSANCE TEXTS
Aristotle. The 'An' of Rhetoric, trans. J. H. Freese, Loeb Classical Library

(London: Heinemann, 1959).
- - , Topics, trans. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, in J. Barnes (ed.), The
Complete Works of Aristotle: the Revised Oxford Translation, Vol. I
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984).
Cicero. De Oratore, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (London:
Heinemann, 1942).
Fraunce, Abraham. The Arcadian Rhetoricke 1588, ed. Ethel Seaton (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1950).
Plato. Gorgias, trans. W. Hamilton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960).
- - , Phaedrus, trans. W. Hamilton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973).
Puttenham, George. The Arte of English Poesie, London 1589 (Menston:
Scolar Press facs., 1968).
Quintilian. lnstitutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler, 4 vols, Loeb Classical
Library (London: Heinemann, 1921-2).
Ramus, P. The Logike, London 1574 (Menston: Scolar Press facs., 1968).
Rhetorica Ad Herennium, trans. H. Caplan, Loeb Classical Library (London:
Heinemann, 1954).
Wilson, Thomas. Arte of Rhetorique, 1560, ed. G. H. Mair (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1909).
2. MODERN RHETORICS
Beale, Walter H. Real Writing, Second Edn (Glenview, Illinois and London:
Scott, Foresman and Co., 1986). [Representative here of the developed
American •Freshman's Rhetoric'.J
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: California University Press,
1969).
Nash, Walter. Rhetoric: The Wit of Persuasion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
Perelman, C. & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on
Argumentation, trans. 1. Wilkinson and P. Weaver (Notre Dame and
London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969).
Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1936).
172
Select Bibliography 173
3. MODERN SURVEYS AND SUMMARIES
Billig, Michael. Arguing and Thinking: A rhetorical approach to social

psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Dixon, Peter. Rhetoric, The Critical Idiom 19 (London: Methuen, 1971).
Hunter, Lynette. Rhetorical Stance in Modem Literature: Allegories of Love
and Death (London: Macmillan, 1984).
Howell, Wilbur S. Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700 (New York:
Russell, 1961).
Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradi-
tionfrom Ancient to Modem Times (London: Croom Helm, 1980).
Lodge, David. The Modes of Modem Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and the
Typology of Modem Literature (London: Arnold, 1977).
Minnis, Alistair J. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Atti-
tudes in the Later Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1988).
Miriam Joseph, Sr. Shakespeare's Use of the Ans of Language (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1947).
Ong, Walter. Ramus, Method and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass.:
Havard University Press, 1958).
- - , Rhetoric, Romance and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of
Expression and Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971).
Sonnino, Lee. A Handbook to Sixteenth-Century Rhetoric (London:
Routledge, 1968).
Vickers, Brian. Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry (London: Macmillan,
1970).
- - , In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
4. LANGUAGE STUDIES BEARING ON RHETORIC
Brown, G. and Yule, G., Discourse Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1983).
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. c., Politeness: some Universals in Language Use
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
Butler, Christopher. Systemic Linguistics: Theory and Applications (London:
Batsford, 1985).
Carter, Ronald. Vocabulary. Aspects of English (London: Allen & Unwin,
1987).
Cockcroft. Robert. 'Rhetoric and Cohesion', Occasional Papers in Systemic
Linguistics, IV (1990) 89-101.
Coulthard, Malcolm. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis, 2nd edn. Applied
Linguistics and Language Studies Ser. (London: Longman, 1985).
Graham, Keith. 1. L Austin: a Critique of Ordinary Language Philosophy,
Harvester Studies in Philosophy 1 (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1977).
Grice, H. P. 'Logic and Conversation', in P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds),
Speech Acts (New York: Academic Press, 1975) pp. 41-58.
174 Select Bibliography
Gumperz, John J. Discourse Strategies, Studies in Interactional Sociolinguis-

tics 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Halliday, M. A. K. Explorations in the Functions of Language. Explorations
in Language Study Ser. (London: Longman, 1973).
- - , An Introduction to Functional Grammar (London: Arnold, 1985).
Hasan, Ruqaiya. 'The Nursery Tale as a Genre', Nottingham Linguistic
Circular, XllI (1984) 71-102.
Jakobson, Roman. 'Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Linguis-
tic Disturbance', in R. Jakobson and M. Halle (eds), Fundamentals
of Language, Janua Linguarum 1 (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1956)
pp.55-82.
- - , 'Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics', in Thomas A. Sebeok
(ed.), Style in Language (Cambridge, Mass.: M.lT., 1960) pp. 350-77.
Labov, William. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English
Vernacular (Philadelphia, U. of Pennsylvania Press, 1972).
Leech, Geoffrey N. A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. English Language
Ser. 4 (London: Longman, 1969).
Leech, G. N. and Short, Michael H. Style in Fiction: a Linguistic Introduction
to English Fictional Prose English Language Ser. 13 (London: Longman,
1981).
Toolan, Michael. Narrative: a Critical Linguistic Introduction (London:
Routledge, 1988).
5. CRITICAL APPLICATIONS OF RHETORIC
Bloom, Harold. A Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1975).
Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1961).
Brooke-Rose, Christine. A Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative and
Structure, especially of the Fantastic (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981).
Burke, Kenneth. The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1961).
De Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight: &says in the Rhetoric of Contemporary
Criticism, Second Edn, Revd (London: Methuen, 1983).
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: an Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
Norris, Christopher. The Deconstructive Turn: &says in the Rhetoric of
Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1983).
Simons, Herbert W. (Ed.) Rhetoric in the Human Sciences, Inquiries in Social
Construction (London: Sage Publications, 1989).
Index
advertisements (functional persuasion) Butler, Christopher, 163, 173

After Eight Mints, 76
Airline (imaginary), 153 Carter, Ronald, 115, 169, 173
Carling Black Label, 75 Cicero, 25, 164, 172
Ford Fiesta RS, 117 'clarity'maxim, 12,24, 100
Lancia Dedra, 117 see also Grice, H. P.
Neutrogena Moisture Cream, 128 Cockcroft, Robert, 173
Saab aircraft technology, 65 Coleridge, S. T., 131, 170
Saab CD Carlsson, 166-7, 168 complex cause and effect, see models
Toshiba computers, 30, 164 of argument
Wedgwood china, 118 consonance, see sound patterning
advertising, 42-3, 69, 70, 99 constitutive role of language, 100
alliteration, see sound patterning see also literary persuasion
ancillary role of language, 100 contingent emotion, 40
see also functional persuasion contradictions, see models of argument
anti-logos (anti-Iogoi), 2, 13,58, contraries, see models of argument
81-2,94 conviction (distinguished from
see also Billig, Michael persuasion), 84
appositeness to audience, 82- 3 Coulthard, Malcolm, 12, 163, 173
argumentum ad hominem, 93 criticism and rhetoric, 139-48
Aristotle, 3-4, 7-8, 19,21,59,
79-80,84,86,88,162,165,167, De Man, Paul, 174
169, 172 demonstrative persuasion character-
assonance, see sound patterning ised, 5,79
audience, 19-20,21-22,23-5,27, Demosthenes, 28-30,87-90
36-8,44,78,82-3,86, 101, 157 dialogue, 2, 11-13, 138
Austin, J. L., 11, 163 Dickens, Charles, 99
differentia, 60-1, 71-2, 166
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 11, 12-13, 163 see also models of argument,
Belsey, Catherine 138, 144, 170-1 definition
Beale, Walter H., 172 dilemma, 87, 90, 92, 167
bias, 43, 50-1, 71 disjunctive syllogism, 87, 90-2, 167
Billig, Michael, 2-4, 11, 13,22-3,58, dissonance, see sound patterning
162, 173 Dixon, Peter, 164, 173
Bloom, Harold, 137, 139, 141-2, drama (literary persuasion)
145-8,170,174 Beckett, Waiting for Godot,
Booth, Wayne C., 4, 162, 174 108-10, 168
Blyton, Enid, 78 Brecht, Arturo Ui, 65-6, 166
Brooke-Rose, Christine, 4, 162, 174 Marlowe, Faustus, 92-3,117,
Brown, G. and Yule, G., 12, 173 133,167-8
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. C., 12, 173 Milton, Samson Agonistes, 127, 169
Burke, Kenneth, 25, 145, 164, Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, 78,
172, 174 124, 135-6; Macbeth, 54-5,
175
176 Index
76, 126-7, 165; The Winter's Poe, 'The Pit and the Pendulum',
Tale, 76 46-7,165
Sheridan, The School for Scandal, Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye,
116, 169 37-8,164
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 33
Eagleton, Terry, 137-40, 142-5, 148, Swift, Waterland, 121, 169
170, 174 Tolstoy, War and Peace, 80
efficient cause, see models of argument Walker, The Color Purple, 64, 166
emotion, see pathos Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 130, 170
emotional engagement, 9, 40-57, 78 figurative language, see trope
emotive abstraction, 45, 52 figures of rhetoric, see schematic
enthymeme, 86-7 language and trope
ethos, 3, 8-9, 13-14, 19-40, 58, 78-9, final cause, see models of argument
87,94,97, 100, 115-16, 119, 124, formal cause, see models of argument
144-5,154 Fraunce, Abraham, 166, 172
fitness for the occasion, 83-4
false arguments, 92-4 functional persuasion, 4
accidental connection, 92- 3 functions of language, 13, 102
begging the question, 93-4
false cause, 94 generic persuasive potential, 101-13
ignored qualification, 93 generic structure potential, 101-2
many questions, 94 see also Hasan, Ruqaiya
missing the point, 93 genre, 98-101
undistributed middle, 92 Graham, K., 173
fiction quoted or cited (literary graphic vividness (enargia), 45-8,
persuasion) 52-4, 154-5, 160-1
Achebe, Things Fall Apart, 75, 167 Grice, H. P., 11-12, 100, 163, 173
Austen: Persuasion, 80; Pride and Gumperz, J. L., 12, 163, 174
Prejudice, 34-5, 164; Sense
and Sensibility, 80 Halliday, M. A. K., 13, 127, 163, 174
Bradbury, The History Man, Hasan, Ruqaiya, 100-2, 168, 174
112,168 Hawkes, Terence, 138, 163, 166, 170
Bronte, C., Jane Eyre, 68, 166 Hitler, A., 78, 167
Bronte, E., Wuthering Heights, 70 humour, 23
Dickens: David Copperfield, 33, 37; Howell, Wilbur S., 173
Great Expectations, 33-4, 170; Hunter, Lynette, 21-4, 164, 173
Hard Times, 63-4, 115, 166; hypothetical syllogism, 87, 89, 167
Our Mutual Friend, 56-7, 165
Eliot, Middlemarch, 60-1, 166 ideational function, 13,27,31, 127
Ellison, Invisible Man, 71-2, 166 see also Halliday, M. A. K.
Gordimer, 'The Last Kiss', 69, 166 ideology, 50-I, 55, 70, 74, 82, 99,
Heller, Catch-22, 14-5, 163 140, 143, 154, 165
Johnson, Rasselas, 129, 170 induction, 87- 8
Joyce, Ulysses, 99, 138 interaction, 2, 4, 100
Kafka, The Castle, 75, 167 interpersonal function, 13, 27,
Melville, Billy Budd, 127, 170 31-2, 127
Norris, The Octopus, 119-20, 169 see also Halliday, M. A. K.
Orwell, Animal Farm, 119, illocutionary discourse, 11
150 see also Austin, 1. L.
Index 177
'image', 20-1 logos, 2-3, 8, 9-10, 13, 15,40,42,

invention, 5&-77, 143 58-94,97,100,115,117, 119,
see also models of argument 124, 140, 144-5, 154
interface, 137- 8
!socrates, 20 Macmillan, Harold, 79
issue, 79-84, 93, 108, 140 material cause, see models of argument
Marlowe, Christopher, 7, 162
Jakobson, Roman, 10-11, 118, Minnis, Alistair J., 162
145-6,174 Miriam Joseph, Sr., 162, 173
Jameson, Fredric, 98, 168 models of argument (places, topoi),
journalism quoted (functional 10,5&-76
persuasion) association, 59, 74- 6, 118, 141;
feature writing (food snobbery), life-style! status association,
81, 167 74-5; place!function
investigative reporting (Mayhew, association, 75; subject/adjunct
Morning Chronicle), 133, 170 association, 74, 141;
leader writing (riots, artists' time/activity association, 76
privacy), 63, 129 cause/effect, 59,61-4,67,77,
restaurant review, 47, 165 86, 143, 148, 166; simple and
tabloid headlines (imaginary), 116 complex cause and effect,
theatrical review, 48, 165 62; efficient cause, 63-4;
war reporting (Falklands), 70 final cause, 62, 63-4, 143;
judgement, 7&-94 formal cause, 62-4; material
cause, 62-3
Kennedy, George A., 5, 162, 173 definition, 59-61, 64,77, 166
Kristeva, Julia, 23, 164 degree, 59, 6&-9,77
genus/species, 59, 71-2, 77
Labov, William, 12, 163, 174 opposition, 59, 61, 64, 66-8, 73,
Lacan,Jacques, 23,164 85-6,88, 118; contradictions,
laser analogy, 4&-50 66; contraries, 66, 77;
Leavis, F. R., 139-40, 143, 170 privatives, 66; relatives, 66
Leech, G. N., 174 root meaning, 59, 76-7
Leech, G. N. and Short, M. H., 174 part/whole, 59, 72-4, 77, 140
legal (forensic) persuasion character- similarity, 59, 61, 64-6, 73, 77, 118
ised, 5, 79 testimony, 59, 69-70,77
letters quoted (functional persuasion)
Cockcroft family letter, 134, 170 Nash, Walter, 23-4, 33,42,46, 127,
Swift to Pope, 71, 166 129-30, 164, 169, 172
'levels' of style ('high', 'middle' and Norris, Christopher, 170, 174
'low'), 114-15
lexical choice, 115-16 onamatopoeia, see sound patterning
liberal humanist criticism, 143-4 Ong, Walter, 166, 173
life-style! status association, see ordering of persuasion, 97-113
models of argument conventional fully developed
literary persuasion, 4 order, 97
Lloyd George, D., 79 obligatory elements: closing
Lodge, David, 118, 120, 146, 169, statement, 102, 104, 106, 108,
171, 173 lID-I, 113; proof/disproof,
logic, see logos 97, 102, 104, 106, 108, 110;
178 Index
opening/initiating statement, Auden, 'A Communist to Others',

101-2, 106, 108, 111-12 123, 169
optional elements: conclusion (final Betjeman, 'A Bay in Anglesey' ,
appeal to emotion), 97, 102, 117-18,169
104; deliberate omission, 98, Browning, 'My Last Duchess',
102; determination of point 35, 164
at issue, 97, 101, 103, 106-7; Donne: 'The Ecstasie', 70, 166;
enumeration and summary of Holy Sonnets, 4, 130, 170
points, 97; introduction (appeal Dryden, 'Alexander's Feast',
to goodwill), 97- 8, 102; 121, 169
narrative, 97, 102, 107, Ill; Eliot, 'Sweeney Among the
proof of own case (separate), Nightingales', 123, 169
97, 106; refutation of opposing Homer, niad, 148
case (separate), 97, 106; rep- Jonson, 'Her Triumph', 132, 170
etition of arguments, 102, 104; Keats, 'Ode on Melancholy' , 42, 46,
subdivision of arguments, 102, 49, 165
104; variation of order, 102 Langland, Piers Plowman, 7, 162
orientation of language functions, II, Larkin, 'A Study of Reading
25,40,43,48-51,78 Habits', 110-11, 168
conative, 11,44,50-1, 62 Marvell, 'To his Coy Mistress',
emotive, 11,44,50-1,54-5, 128, 170
57,119 Milton, Paradise Lost, 147-8
metalingual, 11,44,48-9,51,53 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 6, 162
phatic, 11,44,48-9, 83-4 Plath, 'Metaphors', 116, 169
poetic, 11,44,48-9 Pope, Dunciad, 117, 169
referential, 11,44,50-1, 62, 119 Reed, 'Naming of Parts', 73-4, 167
see also Jakobson, Roman Smith, 'Not Waving but Drowning',
66, 166
paradigmatic axis of language, 10, Tennyson, Princess lyric, 55, 165
118,146 Walcott, Omeros, 61, 166
see also Lodge, David; Saussure, F. Wordsworth, 'Ode on Intimations of
de Immortality', 147
parliamentary language, 31-2, 164 Yeats, 'The Two Trees', 68, 166
see also political oratory quoted political persuasion characterised, 5, 80
pathos, 3, 8, 13, 15,40-58, 78-9, 87, political oratory quoted (functional
94,97,100,115-17,19,124, persuasion)
140, 144-5 Churchill, W. S.: 'chicken'
Perelman, C. and Olbrechts-Tyteca, L., comparison, 65; on civilsation,
84, 165, 172 104-5, 168; 'finest hour'
perlocutionay discourse, II, 25 speech, 119; rhetorical
see also Austin, 1. L. mispronunciation, 126
personality, 8, 17-24,28,78 Demosthenes, 28-30, 44,87-90,
persuasion (distinguished from 164
conviction), 84 Kennedy, J. F., Inaugural Address,
place/function association, see models 52, 165
of argument Lincoln, A., on democracy, 153
Plato, 5, 20,162,172 Thatcher, M.: parliamentary answer,
poetry quoted or cited (literary 31-2, 164; quoted by 1.
persuasion) Raban,85
Index 179
political writing quoted or cited actualisation of real persons

(functional persuasion) (prosographia), 155, 160
Appeal to the Soviet People, 67, 166 antithesis, 53-4, 126, 142, 155-6,
Lawrence, D. H., 'Nottingham and 159, 161
the Mining Country', 73, 167 amplification and diminution,
Machiavelli, N. (cited), 88, 167 132-4,154-6
Paine, T., Common Sense, 53, 165 amplificatory frameworks,
Raban, J., God, Man & Mrs 134,155-6
Thatcher, 85-6, 167 apologizing (licentia), 157, 161
Swift, J., A Modest Proposal, 125, break-down (merismus), 156, 161
166, 169 build-up (incrementum), 134,
Winstansley, G., The Law of 142, 161
Freedom, 91, 167 breaking off (aposiopesis), 135, 161
Poole, Roger, 143-4, 171 categories of description (enargia),
post hoc, propter hoc, see false 133-4,155
arguments comparison of kind and degree,
prejudice, 43, 74 156, 161
probability, 84-5 conceding (concessio), 157, 161
'proportionality' maxim, 12, 100 conferring (communicatio), 157, 161
see also Grice, H. P. contrastive series, 153, 159
Puttenham, George, 124, 131, 169, 172 correlative distribution, 153, 159
cross-over (chiasmus), 153, 159
Quintilian, 5-6, 7, 20, 22, 45, 133, deliberate distortion (rhetorical
153, 164-5, 167, 172 mispronunciation), 126, 159
descant (expolitio), 156, 161
Ramus, P., 7, 59, 74, 163, 165-7, 172 dodging the question, 157, 161
register, 115 doing-down (meiosis), 135, 161
see also 'levels' of style doubting (aporia), 135, 161
'relevance'maxim, 12,94, 100 example, 142, 156; see also descant
see also: Grice, H. P.; issue fable, 150
religious discourse full-circ1e (epanalepsis), 154, 160
'Amazing grace' (hymn), 117 hype (hyperbole), 38, 132-3,
Donne, last sermon, 82-3, 167 147-8, 160
Jesus, parable (Luke 16), 150 hyperactive subject (colon),
St Paul: I. Cor. 12,73; Rom. 8, 84 128, 160
Revelation 3, 138 initial repetition (anaphora),
Rhetorica ad Herennium, 81-2, 165, 131, 160
167-8,172 instant repetition (epizeuxis),
rhyme, half-rhyme, internal rhyme, see 131, 160
sound patterning leading summary (prolepsis),
Richards, I. A., 172 156, 161
left and right branching sentences,
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 10-11, 129-30,159
13,163 listings or heapings-up
schematic language, 125-34, 152-7 (synathrismos), 130-1, 159
action-shot (pragmatographia), making it clear, 157, 161
155,160 many cases (polyptoton), 153, 159
actualisation of imaginary persons many links (polysyndeton),
(prosopopoeia), 155, 160 153, 159
180 Index
multiple questions (pysma), syntactic parallelism (isocolon), 129,

157, 161 132, 142, 160
no links (asyndeton), 153, 159 terminal repetition (antistrophe), 32,
open question, 157, 161 131, 160
paired series (scesisonamaton), terminal summary (epanados),
153-4,160 156, 161
passing over (occupatio), 135-6, time-portrayal (chronographia),
161 155, 160
personification (prosopopoeia), transference (hypallage), 152, 159
143-4,151 tricks and ploys, 134-6, 157
place-portrayal (topographia, two-track repetition (symploche),
topothesia), 155, 160-1 154, 160
play-down! understatement (litotes), verb-based variations, 128, 160
135, 147-8, 160 word-class variation (traductio),
prose-rhyme (omoeoteleuton), 127, 160
154, 160 word-coinage, 152, 159
puns and word-play, 126-7, 159 whitewash (paradiastole), 135, 161
question, 136, 141, 157, 161 zeugma, 128, 160
question and answer (subjectio), Scrutiny, 139-40
157, 161 St Augustine, 6
random repetition (pIoche), 131, 160 Shakespeare, William, 7, 162
referring (permissio), 157, 161 Simons, H. W., 162, 174
refrain (epimone), 131, 160 simple cause and effect, see models of
repetition, 131, 153-4, 160 argument
revelation of character and Sonnino, Lee, 158-61,173
characteristic emotion sound patterning, 117- 8
(ethopoeia and ethopoeia passiva), alliteration, 117
155, 161 assonance, 117
rhetorical question (interrogatio), consonance, 117
157, 161 dissonance, 117
same-sound pun (antanaclasis), onomatopoeia, 117-18
126-7, 159 rhyme, half-rhyme, internal
self-correction (epanorthosis), rhyme, 118
135, 161 stance, 8,21-33,78,91
similar-sound pun (paronomasia), see also Hunter, Lynette
127, 159 Stubbs, Michael, 12
sound-image (onomatopoeia), Susenbrotus 1570 edn, 156
152, 159 syntagmatic axis of language, 10,
speech-portrayal (dialogismos), 120, 146
155, 162 see also: Lodge, David;
split word (tmesis), 152, 159 Saussure, F. de
staircase (climax), 153-4, 160
stop-and-start (anadiplosis), textual function, 13,27,31, 127
131,160 see also Halliday, M. A. K.
suspended sentences, 130 time!activity association, see models
switch-around (antimetabole), of argument
131,160 Toolan, Michael J., 33, 164, 174
syllepsis, 128, 160 topic, 24-5
syntactic devices, 127-31, 153, 159 trope, 118-23, 145-8, 158-9
Index 181
allegory, 150, 158 genus, 122-3, 159; part-

allusive label (antonomasia), 151 whole/whole-part, 122, 159;
irony,24,34, 123-5, 145, plural-singular / singular-plural,
158: epigrammatic irony, 123, 159
124-5; 'fleering frump' 'truthfulness' maxim, 12, 100
(Puttenham), 124; 'merry see also Grice, H. P.
scoff' (Puttenham), 124;
sarcasm, 124; single-word universal emotion, 40
irony (antiphrasis), 124, 158; unscripted material (functional
sustained irony, 125 persuasion)
metaphor, 118-20, 145-6, 148, 158 Benson/Quayle put-down, 66, 166
metonymy, 120-22, 144-5,147, Lewis, C. S., recollected conversa-
158: cause/effect, 121, 158; tion, 83-4, 167
container/content, 121, 158; tape-recorded discussion (eutha-
clothes/wearer, 122, 158; nasia), 102-3
inventor/invention, 122, 159; television news interview, 51-2
SUbject/adjunct, 121, 158
mislabel (catachresis), 125, 159 Vendler, Helen (quoted), 145
remote metonymy (metalepsis), 148, Vickers, Brian, 5,162,173
151-2, 159
synecdoche, 122-3, 140, 145-6: VVells, Gkrrdon, 25-7,164
genus-species / species- VVilson, Thomas, 79,165,167,172

Persuading People - An Introduction To Rhetoric

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First published 1992 by

Copy-edited and typeset by Grahame & Gr8hame Editorial, Brighton

ISBN 978-0-333-47163-0 ISBN 978-1-349-22254-4 (eBook)

A catalogue record for this book is available

Introduction: Rhetoric Defined 1

PART ONE: THE SOURCES OF PERSUASION

3 Reason: the Resources of Argument 58

4 Reason: Choice and Judgement 78

(b) Rhetorical induction 88

PART TWO: PERSUASION IN ACTION 95

6 The Persuasive Repertoire 114

4. Schematic language: 125

7 Afterword: The Interface - Further Roles for Rhetoric 137

Appendix A: Further Rhetorical Devices 155

We wish to thank all colleagues in the Department of English Studies at the

1. RHETORIC: A 'LOADED' GUN

The power of speech is not the power to command obedience by

Rbetoric could be very broadly defined as the 'arts of discourse':

Rbetoric then may be defined as the faculty of discovering the

Rbetoric is thus defined by its unique breadth of application, and (it is

as the initial layout of the chess problem implies a potential dialogue as

In the following brief survey of the history of rhetoric, two important

work on rhetoric, Institutio Oratoria, in AD 94.) Legal oratory persisted

also rhetorical handbooks on the writing of poetry. Broadly speaking, all

4. METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURE

useful structural principles. These will enable us to achieve the necessary

Now, since proofs are effected by these means, it is evident that, to

(a) Personality and Stance (or Ethos)

We divide the concept of ethos into two interdependent concepts, personal-

To be able to identify with an audience, impress them with our individu-

(b) Emotional Engagement (or Pathos)

(c) Modelling and Judging Argument (or Logos)

Amongst an amazing range of meanings (showing the Greek genius for

argument'; 'inward debate'; 'speech' (Le. oratorical discourse); and 'verbal

(d) Rhetoric and Modern Linguistic Theory

We have used Aristotle's description of rhetoric as a means of presenting

(i) Formalism and Structuralism

(ii) Discourse Theory

of communication as a co-operative endeavour, though he introduces

calls 'multi-layered' discourse is heteroglossia, meaning 'many voices').

structural), and we shall be refening back to some of Billig's ideas later

5. AN EXAMPLE: THE RHETORIC OF CATCH-22

bysteria. Taut, sbort statements are balanced by conditional clauses ('if

In the Introduction we emphasised the social and interactional nature of

What do we mean by 'audience'? The answer becomes clear if we look

We shall now present a kind of cinematic view of the persuasive interac-

image', we tend to view other people's 'images' with suspicion; but in

Aristotle's view of the orator's (or persuader's) personality has been

topic and audience. A persuader's stance may be open or closed, firm or

will represent their stance on any issue, whether political, religious or

(a) The Persuader and the Self

Contemporary psychological, political and linguistic theory suggests that

(b) The Persuader as Humorist

Despite its occasional savagery, humour seems a good example of this

stance; but since humour is a familiar defuser of tension, it may more

(c) Persuader and Topic

Another problem is posed by what we might term 'risk-taking'. This

(d) Persuader and Audience

Transmission Speech/Writing Reception

3. PERSONALITY AND STANCE IN PRACTICE

(a) Functional Persuasion