THE OFFICE OF ASSERTION

An Art of Rhetoric for the Academic Essay

SCOTT F. CRIDER

Wilmington, Delaware

Dedicated to David Bell,
Marc Bertonasco, and
John Briggs,
good men skilled in speaking

We are speaking where we stand, and we shall stand afterwards in the presence of what we have said.

Wendell Berry
Standing by Words

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter-Paragraph Outline

1    Introduction: Rhetoric as the Liberal Art of Soul-Leading in Writing

2    Invention: The Discovery of Arguments

3    Organization: The Desire for Design

4    Style: Words and Sentences

5    Re-Vision: Products and Processes

6    Conclusion: Rhetoric as the Office of Assertion

Appendix 1  Student Essay: The Maturation of Telemachos

Appendix 2  Evaluation Standards for Essays

Appendix 3  Peer-Review Form

Works Cited

Preface

Having looked unsuccessfully far and wide for a very short rhetoric to use in my literature courses, I decided to write one. I found most rhetorics, even those I still very much admire, overly long, developed, and encyclopedic that is, better consulted than read all the way through. I wanted a shorter treatment: a long essay, not a textbook. Too many others were written with far too low a view of both students’ intellects and rhetoric’s nature. You have in your hands, then, a brief but serious rhetoric, one which can be read profitably in a weekend and which, for the interested student, can be used as an introduction to the classical art of rhetoric and composition. The works cited form a select library for the more advanced student to pursue. I think this book could be used as the rhetoric in any humanities course, including first-year composition, supplemented perhaps only with a handbook. Though I do think that advanced high school students, homeschoolers, and even professional writers will find the book profitable, it has been written primarily to the first-year college student.

Four of the book’s characteristics require comment. First, it is informed both by the classical rhetorical tradition and more recent discoveries concerning the writing process. Second, because I teach literature in a school with a core curriculum founded on great books, the approach is admittedly old-fashioned and assumes that the reader is interested in writing about those texts which have proven to be essential for anyone who wishes to understand, rather than simply dwell within, the contemporary world. One of the reasons I have used a student essay on Homer is my belief that students write better when they write about difficult and important texts, especially those central to so many other texts. I hope the Homeric material will not be distracting for a general reader who may not yet have read Homer. Indeed, my desire is that such a reader will be inspired to read Homer’s foundational poems. The end here is in no way reactionary. What both celebrants and critics of multicultural education have failed to understand is this: culture has always already been multicultural. There is no avoiding either the past or the present, because the important texts of our own present culture are themselves intertextual responses to past ones. One of the contemporary world’s most important poems, Derek Walcott’s Omeros, for example, is a poem which at once relies upon and redefines its Homeric intertexts. I shall ignore the culture war over curriculum because I believe it to be one long either-or fallacy. Third, the book discusses only one kind of writing: the academic essay. This is certainly not the only form of the genre, and I applaud the attempt to enlarge the kinds of writing we ask students to produce. I have assigned dramatic scenes, poems, and journals myself. Even so, most classes require an academic essay. My vision of what rhetoric is would certainly encompass many other forms of writing, perhaps even all, but the focus here is quite limited and highly practical. Last, the book assumes and argues that the writing that students do for teachers matters, that in itself such writing is perhaps one of the most important intellectual, emotional, and spiritual experiences in the life that students and teachers share. Whatever the soul may be exactly, it must be acknowledged by anyone, teacher or student, who hopes to be a good rhetor.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the University of Dallas, especially its Department of English, for encouraging me in this project and providing release time to complete it.

John Alvis, Ray DiLorenzo, Eileen Gregory, Greg Roper, Kathryn Smith, Glen Thurow, Gerard Wegemer, and Kas Zoller have been invaluable friends of the enterprise. Jeremy Beer, David Bell, John Briggs, Bill Frank, and Lance Simmons each gave the book an exacting, helpful reading. Wayne Ambler, then Dean of the UD Rome Program, encouraged me to use this book as the basis for the writing program in Rome while I was there, an experience which encouraged me greatly. I would also like to thank the tutors in the UD Writing Lab for assistance and advice from 1994 to 2004, especially the Directors of the Writing Program during that period: Joel Garza, Lisa Marciano, and Andrew Moran.

Since 1994, I have been fortunate to know a large number of fine students, from whose essays I have learned a great deal about the teaching of writing.

Many have commented upon parts of the book, and their readings have proven most helpful. I would like to thank all of them, especially Tommy Heyne, whose essay I use here to exemplify fine undergraduate writing, and Ruth Fiegenshue, whose essay I used in an earlier manuscript. I might have included a great many more essays from my students of the last ten years. An early student, Lynn Schofield, is now a teacher herself, and her use of and comments upon the manuscript were especially astute and encouraging.

I would like to thank Sharen Craft-Baker, Karen Boyd, and Karen Gempel for their invaluable administrative assistance.

Special thanks go to Diane Crider, whose loving and continual correction of my speech when I was a boy remains an inspiration.

Final thanks are owed Trang Crider, whose intelligent and kind grace is itself an argument, and our son Kiên, already a talented rhetor.

This small book is dedicated to three mentors, each in his distinct way a Quintilian. I am able to write it only because all of them had the courage and patience to read student essays with care and to assume, on sometimes rather scant evidence, that they could be improved. I wish the book were as good as their standards demanded.

Chapter-Paragraph Outline

Below is an outline of the book by chapter and paragraph. Within the text, I will often cross-reference discussions by including in bold brackets the chapter and paragraph of the matter discussed, e.g., [1.2].

1. Introduction:
Rhetoric as the Liberal Art of Soul-Leading in Writing

2. Invention:
The Discovery of Arguments

3. Organization:
The Desire for Design

4. Style:
Words and Sentences

5. Re-Vision:
Products and Processes

6. Conclusion:
Rhetoric as the Office of Assertion

1

Introduction:
Rhetoric as the Liberal Art of Soul-Leading in Writing

[1.1] “Rhetoric” is a term of abuse, of course: Immediately after someone has distorted the truth during an interview on television, for example, the journalist will comment, “We know that was just rhetoric.” Rhetoric: this pejorative term now means any language, spoken or written, which is misleading or actually untrue. There is reality, and there is rhetoric. As a consequence of such usage, my readers may be surprised to learn that they will be studying this suspect art in order to learn how to write the academic essay. In fact, the art of rhetoric has always been suspect in the Western philosophical tradition, an outlaw of disciplines only occasionally allowed respectability; even so, many of the most important figures in the Western intellectual tradition were indeed trained in this art. In literature, the epic poets Virgil, Ovid, Dante, and Milton were themselves educated in rhetoric, and Homer arguably invented it. Shakespeare’s schooling was thoroughly rhetorical. In philosophy, rhetoric’s most thoughtful critics, Plato and Augustine, were both trained in rhetoric, and Augustine was himself a teacher of the art, even after his conversion to Christianity. Nietzsche was a professor of rhetoric. Even the “anti-philosopher” Jacques Derrida hoped to revive the art of rhetoric, though in its sophistic form. In politics, the founders of the American regime were rhetoricians, in part because they were lawyers, but more importantly because they were liberally educated, and, until very recently, a liberal education in the humanities was a rhetorical education. Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Cady-Stanton, King: these American leaders were all students of the art of rhetoric. Arousing both fear and interest, rhetoric has always been suspect, but it has still, interestingly, always been studied.

[1.2] The fear is mistaken, but the interest is not. This small book has two rather large rhetorical purposes of its own. On the one hand, it has a highly practical goal: improving the reader’s writing, especially of the academic essay. It will examine rhetoric as a productive art, the principled process of making a product, in this case an essay. On the other hand, it also has a more general goal: persuading the reader that rhetoric, as both a productive and a liberal art, is a good thing. To argue that rhetoric is a liberal art is hardly common. Intellectuals in both the humanities and the sciences generally believe that rhetoric is a corrupt form of inquiry—those in the humanities convinced either that its calculation precludes sincerity or that its informal reasoning precludes seriousness, those in the sciences convinced that its interest in the emotions precludes objectivity. As well, some in the humanities actually concede that rhetoric is not interested in truth, yet then defend it on those grounds; for them, rhetoric is composed of the rules of any discourse, and an interest in the truth or falsity of any word is naïve. Though they may or may not realize it, they are defending, not rhetoric, but sophistry. (We will return to this in a moment.) I grant that rhetoric is often misused, and I grant that it has its own limitations as an art. Many good things are limited, though, and there is nothing that cannot be abused. The misuse of rhetoric, according to Aristotle in the Rhetoric, does not condemn it:

If it is argued that one who makes an unfair use of such a faculty of speech may do a great deal of harm, this objection applies equally to all good things except virtue, and above all to those things which are most useful, such as health, wealth, generalship; for as these, rightly used, may be of the greatest benefit, so, wrongly used, they may do an equal amount of harm. (1.1.13)

Rhetoric is no more essentially destructive than physics. There is no need to fear this art. As the reader’s writing improves, he or she should experience an increasing intellectual power. This power is a good power, even if the student were to misuse it. When a journalist exposes misleading or untrue statements, for example, that is a good thing. What the journalist simply may not recognize, or will not admit to the audience, is that the exposure is just as rhetorical as the statement exposed. The art of rhetoric is not unjust; those who use it unjustly are. As Aristotle explains, “What makes one a sophist is not the faculty but the moral purpose” (1.1.14). Aristotle believes that rhetoric and sophistry are distinct: rhetoric is persuasion aimed at the truth; sophistry is persuasion aimed only at the appearance of truth. This book, then, offers a defense of rhetoric. The most important of its proofs is that rhetoric is a liberal art which liberates one both to defend oneself against untrue persuasions and to fashion true ones. Often, those untrue persuasions are one’s own; after all, we are all familiar with the sophist within, that part of us who arises, especially in haste or anger, to utter sham arguments, arguments that—in calmer, more reflective moments—we know are mistaken. So rhetoric can free one even from one’s own ignorance, disclosing the weaknesses of one’s own idea; having done so, it can then free others. Indeed, in freeing others, one frees oneself. I realize that this is quite a claim. After defining rhetoric and examining its constituent appeals and parts, I will make good on it.

[1.3] According to Aristotle, rhetoric is “the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever” (1.2.1). We need to discuss that definition at length. There are three essential parts to the definition. Generally, rhetoric is a faculty of mind. Two other aspects differentiate it from other such faculties: first, this faculty of mind discovers means of persuasion; second, it does so in particular circumstances. Rhetoric is not a formula, but a faculty; though it involves formulae, it is not essentially formulaic. A formula is a “rule” of composition, but such “rules” are themselves the result of thought. For example, every reader of this book is likely a master of a contemporary formula of composition, the Five-Paragraph Essay. The “rule” is this: every essay has five paragraphs—an introduction, three points, and a conclusion. Three other formulae follow: The introduction should begin generally and funnel into one’s thesis, the last sentence of the first paragraph; the next three paragraphs should be numbered—first, second, and third; and, finally, the conclusion should summarize the essay and funnel out toward some very general point. One can write such an essay without much reflection at all. Here is a very brief Five-Paragraph Essay:

Eating is important. Because everyone eats, restaurants have an important social purpose. My favorite restaurant is McDonald’s. I like McDonald’s for three reasons.

First, I like McDonald’s because the food is very good.The Big Mac is particularly tasty, so I order one every time I go there.

Second, I like McDonald’s because the food is inexpensive. I can eat lunch for under four dollars. This means that I can eat there often.

Third, I like McDonald’s because someone I don’t like works there, and, while I enjoy my inexpensive lunch, I can watch him slave over the grill for minimum wage.

In conclusion, I like McDonald’s because the food is good and inexpensive, and the staff entertaining.

Does this essay sound familiar? The reader’s essays have been much more subtle, no doubt; even so, once a formula is so easy to parody, it has probably lost its persuasive force. This formula does do limited work, granted, and there may be rhetorical situations when it is appropriate, even graceful. But the formula is not very flexible. Some of the “rules” of composition are often not rules at all, then. There are rhetorical principles which usually operate in most situations; there are even formulae which make composition much easier. In fact, the Five-Paragraph Essay is a variation of a much more flexible, classical shape that we will examine in Chapter 3. But rhetoric is not essentially those formulae; essentially, it is the faculty of discovering them. The Greek for “faculty” is dunamis, “power or capacity”; dunamis is the root of the English word “dynamism.” Rhetoric is the power or capacity of the mind to discover, the actualization of a human intellectual potential that, when actualized, releases energy.

[1.4] So far, of course, that is true of any other discipline. The first differentia, or distinguishing characteristic, separating rhetoric from other disciplines is that it is always discovering means of persuasion. For Aristotle, philosophy discovers truth; rhetoric, the means of convincing an audience of that truth. However, rhetoric often helps us discover what we believe about a subject as well, even as we are learning how to convince an audience of its truth. Although Aristotle probably would not agree, philosophy does not always precede rhetoric; instead, rhetoric is often an occasion for philosophy. As one searches for means of persuasion about one’s subject, one learns more about it. Generally, there are three “means of persuasion”: logos, pathos, and ethos—the logical, emotional, and ethical appeals. All three are legitimate, and all three are part of any suasion. Logos, though, is the primary appeal in academic rhetoric. One argues that one’s case is the most reasonable. At times, one will arouse and direct a reader’s emotion; at times, one will represent oneself in such a way as to establish one’s own intellectual and moral authority. Even so, logos—to repeat—is the central appeal in academic discourse. Rhetoric, then, is here the faculty of discovering the most convincing logos.

[1.5]