RHETORICAL QUESTION

by James Lincoln Warren

As I promised I would do eventually, here’s my take on the third of the subjects covered by the “Trivium” of the medieval classical education: Rhetoric. (The first two subjects were Logic and Grammar.) Of the three, Rhetoric is the most misunderstood.

The OED defines rhetoric as “The art of using language so as to persuade or influence others; the body of rules to be observed by a speaker or writer in order that he may express himself with eloquence.”

Seems straightforward enough, but actually, it ain’t. It might seem to the Gentle Reader that Logic is the, well, more logically appropriate choice to persuade people, and that Grammar comprises the rules of expression. So what is rhetoric? Look at it this way: if Logic and Grammar consist of the science of expression, then Rhetoric comprises the art of expression.

For our purposes, rhetoric falls into two basic categories: (1) words chosen to influence opinion by clever implication, and (2) the employment of verbal devices.

As an example of the first, consider how the two adversarial sides of the abortion debate identify themselves. (Although I have strong personal convictions on this issue, here I am not taking sides, so please don’t write in defending or attacking one position or the other—my concern here is strictly how language is used to make a point. Polemics belong to another website than this one.) Persons who believe that a human fetus is imbued with the full rights of human existence at conception call their movement “the Right to Life”. People who believe that abortion can be justified and does not involve the taking of a viable human life refer to their position as “Pro-Choice”. As a matter of strict fact, neither of these terms is accurate, since both invoke a much broader platform to defend their position. In a strictly logical sense, both terms beg the question. (To understand what is meant by “begging the question”, the Gentle Reader may wish to consult the “Diction City Police Department Interoffice Memorandum” discussing the logical fallacy known as “petitio principii”, which may found here.)

Nobody will dispute a human being’s right to life itself—in Jefferson’s famous phrase, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, itself a modification of John Locke’s assertion that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” The genuine issue is whether that right extends to a fetus. Likewise, in any free society, the right to make life choices is sacrosanct. The issue is whether one’s choice can ethically impinge on the survival of a fetus. The question that is begged by both labels is that central issue of whether or not a fetus has or should have individual rights.

This is an example of rhetoric by word choice. By calling their positions by names that assume each is an extension of an inviolable human right, they attempt to influence the opinions of others by invoking a specific manifestation of those rights, and thereby suggest that the opposing viewpoint is in favor of suppressing those rights.

The most notorious rhetorical device of this stripe is the euphemism. Propagandists in general and the advertising industry in particular are masters of the euphemism, but it doesn’t end there. Another manifestation of this type of rhetoric is professional or trade jargon. “Myocardial infarction” sounds much more educated than “heart attack”, just as “petitio principii” suggests a sophistication completely missing from the prosaic “begging the question”. Sometimes jargon can be used as euphemism—in military operations, there is a concept called “collateral damage”, which refers to the unplanned and unintended destruction to persons and property during conflict, the side effects, if you will, of applied violence. Although in its strictly military sense, it usually refers to damage to property and infrastructure and is most frequently measured in dollars, it also includes civilian casualties, and can be deliberately used to make the tragic death of the innocent seem more palatable.

Precise diction is the hallmark of good writing, but the second type of rhetoric, the use of conceits and figures of speech, is much more interesting to the writer. One famous type is the “rhetorical question”, a statement made in the form of a interrogative to which the answer is so obvious that a reply is unnecessary—when Shylock asks, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”, he already knows the answer. What he is really doing is making the point that he is as completely human as any other person.

That aside, the most common and useful rhetorical devices are called tropes. A trope is a verbal trick used to describe something in terms of something else, in the OED’s definition, “a figure of speech which consists in the use of a word or phrase in a sense other than that which is proper to it.” The most common such device is the metaphor, closely followed by the simile, but there are many others, such as synecdoche, metonymy, personification, and so forth.

Synecdoche is the technique whereby you refer to something specific in terms of something comprehensive—using the word “America” to mean the government of the United States, for example. Metonymy uses the name of a part to represent the whole—calling a sailor a “hand”, or using “hired gun” to mean assassin. Personification treats an inanimate object or abstract concept as a human being—as with assigning emotions to the weather.

As you can imagine, the skillful use of rhetoric makes all the difference between vital prose and dull writing. Rhetoric is commonly used without any sort of conscious decision—the boatswain’s mate who calls on “all hands” to assist in getting the ship underway isn’t aware that he is using a rhetorical device. Most rhetoric is idiomatic, and I don’t think that it’s necessary that every writer and reader make a comprehensive study of the subject to effectively make use of it, but some basic knowledge of it should be taught. Being aware of rhetorical devices increases expressive potential and multiplies the possible choices for both telling and understanding a good story.

In spite of its tremendous usefulness, rhetoric suffers from a rotten public image. Because it is intended to persuade, its intentions are suspect. This is to be expected in a world where charismatic leaders inflame their followers into destructive rampages, I suppose. Most people think that rhetoric is nothing but verbal bombast, language long on style but short on substance, a weapon of the unscrupulous—how many times have you heard a speech dismissed as being “mere rhetoric”? This attitude does rhetoric a serious disservice.

It is important to remember that rhetoric is nothing other than verbal technique—and like all technique, its value isn’t innate, but in how and to what it is applied. This is why rhetoric does not stand on its own, but requires the other two subjects for its utility. Just as force can be used in the commission of a crime as easily as in the service of justice, so rhetoric can be applied in the propagation of lies as well as in the promulgation of truth. That is not the point. The point is that the application and appreciation of technique is what separates the expert from the novice, the expressive from the inarticulate. A writer is first and foremost a reader, and a reader has a right to expect that a writer give him his very best—and that means a fortunate confluence of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric.