I give you a meaningless paper." He knows that he has no audience except me. He knows that I don't want to read his summary of family relations in Utopia, and he knows that I know that he therefore has no rhetorical purpose. Because he has not been led to see a question which he considers worth answering, or an audience that could possibly care one way or the other, the paper is worse than no paper at all, even though it has no grammatical or spelling errors and is organized right down the line, one, two, three. . . .
This first perversion, then, springs from ignoring the audience or overreliance on the pure subject. The second, which might be called the advertiser's stance, comes from undervaluing the subject and overvaluing pure effect: how to win friends and influence people.
Some of our best freshman texts—Sheridan Baker's The Practical Stylist, for example—allow themselves on occasion to suggest that to be controversial or argumentative, to stir up an audience is an end in itself. Sharpen the controversial edge, one of them says, and the clear implication is that one should do so even if the truth of the subject is honed off in the process. This perversion is probably in the long run a more serious threat in our society than the danger of ignoring the audience. In the time of audience-reaction meters and pre-tested plays and novels, it is not easy to convince students of the old Platonic truth that good persuasion is honest persuasion, or even of the old Aristotelian truth that the good rhetorician must be master of his subject, no matter how dishonest he may decide ultimately to be. Having told them that good writers always to some degree accommodate their arguments to the audience, it is hard to explain the difference between justified accommodation—say changing point one to the final position—and the kind of accommodation that fills our popular magazines, in which the very substance of what is said is accommodated to some preconception of what will sell. "The publication of Eros [magazine] represents a major breakthrough in the battle for the liberation of the human spirit."
At a dinner about a month ago I sat between the wife of a famous civil rights lawyer and an advertising consultant. "I saw the article on your book yesterday in the Daily News," she said, "but I didn't even finish it. The title of your book scared me off. Why did you ever choose such a terrible title? Nobody would buy a book with a title like that." The man on my right, whom I'll call Mr. Kinches, overhearing my feeble reply, plunged into a conversation with her, over my torn and bleeding corpse. "Now with my last book," he said, "I listed 20 possible titles and then tested them out on 400 businessmen. The one I chose was voted for by 90 percent of the businessmen." "That's what I was just saying to Mr. Booth," she said. "A book title ought to grab you, and rhetoric is not going to grab anybody." "Right," he said. "My last book sold 50,000 copies already; I don't know how this one will do, but I polled 200 businessmen on the table of contents, and . . ."
At one point I did manage to ask him whether the title he chose really fit the book. "Not quite as well as one or two of the others," he admitted, "but that doesn't
matter, you know. If the book is designed right, so that the first chapter pulls them in, and you keep 'em in, who's going to gripe about a little inaccuracy in the title?"
Well, rhetoric is the art of persuading, not the art [of ] seeming to persuade by 15 giving everything away at the start. It presupposes that one has a purpose concerning a subject which itself cannot be fundamentally modified by the desire to persuade. If Edmund Burke[92] had decided that he could win more votes in Parliament by choosing the other side—as he most certainly could have done—we would hardly hail this party-switch a master stroke of rhetoric. If Churchill[93] had offered the British "peace in our time," with some laughs thrown in, because opinion polls had shown that more Britishers were "grabbed" by these than by blood, sweat, and tears, we could hardly call his decision a sign of rhetorical skill. . . .
Now obviously the habit of seeking this balance is not the only thing we have to teach under the heading of rhetoric. But I think that everything worth teaching under that heading finds its justification finally in that balance. Much of what is now considered irrelevant or dull can, in fact, be brought to life when teachers and students know what they are seeking. Churchill reports that the most valuable training he ever received in rhetoric was in the diagramming of sentences. Think of it! Yet the diagramming of a sentence, regardless of the grammatical system, can be a live subject as soon as one asks not simply "How is this sentence put together?" but rather "Why is it put together in this way?" or "Could the rhetorical balance and hence the desired persuasion be better achieved by writing it differently?"
As a nation we are reputed to write very badly. As a nation, I would say, we are more inclined to the perversions of rhetoric than to the rhetorical balance. Regardless of what we do about this or that course in the curriculum, our mandate would seem to be, then, to lead more of our students than we now do to care about and practice the true arts of persuasion.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
In Booth's introductory example about his graduate student, what inspired this student to write with persuasive power and adopt the rhetorical stance?
What various definitions of "rhetoric" does Booth discuss? Which definition does he settle on? Why?
Does Booth believe that rhetoric and persuasion can be taught, or does he see them as innate talents that people either have or do not have?
What sorts of things does Booth think English teachers should teach in composition classes? What kinds of assignments does he think composition teachers should give?
What advice does Booth recall from his own teachers? What did they teach him about the nature of persuasion?
What three elements go into what Booth describes as "the rhetorical stance?" Can you paraphrase this principle in your own words?
Briefly define the "pedant's stance" and the "advertiser's stance." In what ways do these stances disrupt the balance of the rhetorical stance?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Both Booth and Augustine question the effectiveness of teaching rhetoric or persuasion by teaching guidelines or principles. Compare the conclusions that both men reach.
Compare Booth's view of rhetoric with that of Gorgias in Plato's Gorgias (p. 166). Would Plato agree with the three parts of the rhetorical stance that Booth outlines?
How does Booth's view of the role of a teacher compare with that of Hsun Tzu in "Encouraging Learning" (p. 5)? How might Booth describe the latter's view of the appropriate way to teach students?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Describe the three "stances" that Booth discusses in this essay. Give examples of each stance from your own experience or from contemporary public discourse.
Analyze Wayne Booth's understanding of the term "rhetoric." Explain how his definition of this term differs from those of other authors in this chapter, such as Plato (p. 166), Aristotle (p. 177), or Augustine (p. 184).
Argue for or against the assertion that rhetoric, or the ability to persuade others, can be taught through guidelines and procedures. Consider some of the principles in the "Guide to Reading and Writing" section of this book (p. 603) and explain whether or not you think they can actually help people become more persuasive.