Rhetorical Style THE USES OF LANGUAGE IN PERSUASION Jeanne Fahnestock
Table of Contents Introduction 3 Style in the Rhetorical Tradition 6 Schools of Language Analysis 9 Rhetorical Stylistics and Literary Stylistics 12 Plan of the Book 13 Source of Examples 16 What This Book Is Not and Is 17 Notes 19 PART ONE I WORD CHOICE /. Language of Origin 23 The Historical Layers of English 23 The Old English Core 24 The Norman French Contribution 25 The Language of Learning from Latin and Greek 27 IncorporationsfromWorld Contact 29 An American Vocabulary 30 Homonyms and Synonyms from Different Origins 31 Clarity and Sincerity: When Core Words Dominate 32 Elevation and Panache: Featuring French Borrowings 33 Formality and Erudition: Words from Latin and Greek 34 Analyses with Word Origins 35 Summary 39 Notes 40
viii I Contents 2. New Words and Changing Uses 42 From Nonce Constructions to Wider Use 42 1. Foreign Borrowings 43 1. Compounds 44 Free versus Bound Morphemes 45 3. Adding Prefixes and Suffixes 45 Prefixes that Change Meaning 45 Suffixes that Change Use 46 Derivational Families 46 4. Clipping 47 5. Blends 47 6. Conversions 48 7. Catachresis 49 8. Acronyms 50 9. Proper Names to Common Nouns 50 10. Analogy 50 11. Fabrication 51 12. Onomatopoeia 51 13. Taboo Deformation 52 14. Doubling 52 Loss and Migration 53 Junk: A Case Study 54 Accumulating Senses 57 Summary 58 Notes 59 j. Categories of Word Choice 61 Lexical Field 62 Level of G enerality 63 Abstract versus Concrete Diction 64 Levels of Generality in Argument 66 Ad Hoc Levels of Generality 68 Functional Categories 70 Taking a Census of Parts of Speech 70 Modern Rhetoricians on Word Choice: Burke and Weaver 75 Summary 76 Notes 77 4. Language Varieties 79 Low, Middle, and High 80 Geographical and Social Varieties of English 81
Contents \ ix Regiolects and Sociolects 82 Idiolects 83 Registers: Occupation, Avocation, Discipline 83 Genre and Register 85 Shifting and Mixing Language Varieties 86 Language Varieties and Humor %% Spoken versus Written Style 90 Familiar Language 91 Prepared Phrases, Cliches, and Idioms 92 Maxims and Proverbs 94 Allusions 95 Summary 96 Notes 97 $. Tropes 100 Synecdoche 101 Metonymy 102 Antonomasia 103 Metaphor 104 Extended Metaphor and Allegory 107 Simile 109 Full Analogies no Irony in Irony in Written Texts 112 Irony and Intention 114 The Persuasive Effects of Irony 115 Intolerable Irony 116 Hyperbole and Litotes 117 The Amphiboly and Paradox 118 Paralepsis/Praeteritio: Denying while Saying 119 Grice's Maxims and the Detection of Other Meanings 120 Analysis: Women Drivers 121 Summary 122 Notes 123 6. Figures of Word Choice 127 Schemes of Words 127 Agnominatio 127 Metaplasms: Altering a Single Word 129 Polyptoton 130 Spreading Concepts through Polyptoton 132
x i Contents Etymological Arguments 132 Ploce 133 Antanaclasis (Puns) 134 The Presence ofthe Word 135 Figures of Sound 136 Figures of Word Selection 137 Synonyms (Synonymia) 137 Synonyms and Conceptual Drift 138 Euphemism 139 Correctio 139 Emphasis (Significatio) 140 Summary 141 Notes 142 PART II I SENTENCES 7. Sentence Basks: Predication 147 Active versus Stative Predication 148 Subject Choices 149 1. Humans 149 2. Rhetorical Participants 150 3. Things 150 4. Abstractions 151 5. Concepts 152 6. Slot Fillers 152 Analyzing Subject Choices 152 Verb Choices 154 1. Tense 154 2. Aspect 156 3. Mood 156 4. Negation 157 5. Modality 158 6. Active versus Passive Voice 159 In Defense of the Passive 160 7. Semantic Categories 162 Analyzing Verb Choices 163 Subject/Verb Analysis 164 The North Pole 164 A Trend at New Trier 166 Nominal versus Verbal Style 168 Nominalizations 169 Personification {Personae Fictio) 170
Contents \ xi Personification in Science 171 Multiplying Subjects and Verbs 172 Summary 174 Notes 175 8. Sentence Construction: Modification 178 Adverb Clauses 179 Adjective Clauses 180 Noun Clauses 182 The Consequences of Clause Types: Kennedy's Options 182 Modifying with Phrases 183 Phrases Built on Verbs 184 Participial Phrases 184 Infinitive Phrases 186 Phrases Built on Nouns 187 Appositives 187 Absolute Phrases 188 Resumptive Modifiers 188 Summative Modifiers 189 Prepositional Phrases 189 Single-Word Modifiers 190 An Epithetkal Style 191 Multiplying and Embedding Modifiers 192 Amount of Modification 194 Minimal Modification 194 Heavily Modified Styles 19 5 Analyzing Modification 196 The Ubiquitous Saddam 197 "To the People of Ireland" 198 Summary 199 Notes 200 9. Sentence Architecture 203 Emphasis 203 Emphasis by Position 205 Emphasis by Sentence Role 206 EmphasisfromInversions 207 Combining Sources of Emphasis 208 Placement of Modifiers: Branching Left, Right, and in the Middle 208 Loose and Periodic Sentences 210 Periodic Sentences 210
xii! Contents Loose Sentences 211 A Periodic Style 112 A Loose Style 213 Composition 214 Iconic Form 115 Absence in Words, Presence in Syntax 217 The Default Form/Meaning Relationship 219 Summary 220 Notes 221 10. Figures of Argument 223 Parallelism 224 In Syllables (Isocolon) 224 In Stress Patterns 225 In Grammatical Structure (Parison) 225 From Repetition 226 Uses of Parallelism in Argument 2.16 Comparison 226 Induction 227 Eduction 228 Strategic Repetition 230 Antithesis: Argument from Opposites 231 ' Antimetabole: Argument from Inversion 233 Definition as a Figure 235 Summary 237 Notes 237 //. Series 239 Definition of a Series 240 Series and Categorization 241 Bracketing 242 Series and Order 243 Item Length and Order 245 Gradatio 246 Series and Conjunctions 246 The Overall Length of Series 248 Opening Up or Shutting Down 249 Summary 250 Notes 251 12. Prosody and Punctuation 253 Speech and Writing 254
Contents I xiii Prosody 255 Prosody into Punctuation 257 Printing and Punctuation 259 Punctuation and Meaning 264 Figured Prosody 266 Passage Prosody 267 Variety in Sentence Length 269 Summary 271 Notes 272 PART III I INTERACTIVE DIMENSION 13. Speaker and Audience Construction 277 Pronouns 279 Uses of \ 280 /to You: Genres of Fictional Address 283 Uses of We 184. The Objective Voice 286 Changing Footing: Managing the Interactive Dimension 287 Pronoun Analysis: Lincoln's First Inaugural 288 Disidentification 290 Figures of Speaker/Audience Construction 291 Calling on: Apostrophe 291 Partitioning the Audience 293 Purging the Audience 295 Frankness of Speech: Licentia 296 Figuring Speech Acts 297 Asking and Answering Questions 298 Rogatio and Formal Arguments 301 Summary 302 Notes 303 i. Incorporating Other Voices 306 Direct Speech 307 The Stylization of Direct Speech 309 Indirect Speech 311 Ambiguous Zones in Indirect Speech 311 Reporting Speech Acts 314 Representing Thoughts 315 Texts as Speakers and "Text Acts" 315 Invented Speakers 316 Double Voicing and Heteroglossia 319
xiv I Contents Multivoicing: The Blogger's Specialty 321 Summary 322 Notes 323 i$. Situation and Occasion 325 Immediate Deixis 325 ThematizingDeixis 327 Immediate Deixis in Written Texts 328 Occasion 329 Constructing Situations and Occasions 331 Exigence in Written Texts 332 TheBurkean Scene 333 Imaginary Deixis 334 Demonstratio and Descriptio 335 Description and Emotion 336 Ekphrasis: The Stand-Alone Description 337 Summary 339 Notes 340 PART IV I PASSAGE CONSTRUCTION 16. Coherence 345 Signs of Cohesion 346 Given/New or Topic/Comment Patterns 348 Interrupting the Topic String 3 51 Schemas and Coherence 352 Interclause Meaning Relations 355 Inferred Relations 357 Signaled Relations 359 Combining Sources of Coherence 360 Summary 362 Appendix: Interclause Meaning Relations 363 Notes 370 17. Passage Patterns 372 Compositional Units in the Rhetorical Tradition 373 Syllogism andenthymeme 374 Progymnasmatic Patterns 378 Comparison in Different Grain Sizes 379 Paragraphs 381 Parataxis and Hypotaxis 382 Metadiscourse: Figures of Discourse Management 384
Contents ; xv Summary 386 Notes 387 18. Amplification 390 Quintilian's Methods of Amplification 391 Analysis with Quintilian's Methods 393 Copia and Presence: Multa demultis 394 Erasmian Methodsfor Copia 396 Epicheireme 399 Diminishing 402 Amplification and the Sublime 404 The Last Paragraph of On the Origin of Species 405 On Darwin's Word Choices 407 On Darwin's Sentence Architecture. 408 On Darwin's Passage Construction 410 On Darwin's Amplification and Interaction with Readers 411 Summary 414 Notes 415 References 419 Index 435