FRESHMAN RHETORIC

CHAPTER I

SIMPLE EXPOSITION OF FAMILIAR SUBJECTS

Quod est, eo decet uti; et quicquid agas, agere pro viribus. CICERO.

Use what powers you have; and whatever you work at, work at it as hard as you can.

To be under

Language an attempt at communication. stood is the first test of good speaking and good writing. Language is primarily articulate sound which conveys thought from one mind to another. It is an attempt at communication. If the attempt fails because of poor voice, defective articulation, false syntax, or misuse of words, the speaker alone is responsible. If it fails because of the partial deafness, the inattention, or the ignorance of the hearer, the speaker may be blameless, and his language above criticism, but he has failed notwithstanding. In other words, language in its earliest and principal use is purely social; not self-expression only, but self-impression upon others. It would be well for students of rhetoric to hold all their work up to this test: to inquire in all cases of imperfect transmission of their thought whether there be not a fault in the transmitter, rather than to assume that the trouble lies with the receiver or the connecting line. Το speak clearly is to be understood by all normal hearers who are willing to listen. The same test may of course be applied to the later and more artificial form of language which appears as writing. If the speech-sounds come to be represented - however absurdly by conventional signs called letters, and these appear as black marks on paper, designed to convey thought to

the brain by the eye rather than by the ear, then anything that retards the translation of black marks into thought is a barrier, a fault, a want of clearness. Poor spelling, defective punctuation, careless handwriting, even pale ink, things formal and unimportant in themselves, become vital when they block the way from mind to mind.

Now it is plain that when one is speaking to his brother, or writing memoranda for his own exclusive use, he may mumble his sounds and scribble his letters without limit; almost any hint of words will give the clew. The tones in which a student in his room rehearses formulas or definitions, the penmanship of his diary, are not communication at all, and are of no consequence to the world. They are of consequence to him, however, because they tend to weaken good habits and form bad ones. Therefore in all discussions of good speaking and writing we may safely disregard the exceptional private uses of language and deal with it as having always a social aim. aim is to place A's thought in B's mind.

That

The relation of correctness to clearness. Until telepathy becomes an ordinary means of human intercourse, this transfer of A's thought to B's mind can be best managed by strict obedience to logic and to custom: to logic, in those rules of syntax and paragraph structure which depend on the laws of thought; to custom, in all matters of spelling, pronunciation, punctuation, capitalization, and other formal details, as well as in the values of words and the anomalies of inflection. Clearness, that is to say, involves two kinds of correctness, correctness of thinking and correctness of form. The one is permanent, the other transient; the one endures from age to age, the other changes like the fashions of building or of dress.

An illiterate man may speak with great vigor, perfect clearness, and shocking incorrectness. He has achieved communication, but he has offended the ear and fractured the parts of speech. For this the peasant or the laborer is freely pardoned, because his life has furnished no better models. When, on the

other hand, the young men and young women on whom society has bestowed twelve years of costly education attempt to substitute for the English language a slovenly jargon and a misspelled and illegible script, they need not expect equal consideration. If in some points of English syntax and spelling correctness means following an irrational custom of the race, it is still the business of learners to conform. The scholar may criticize the anomalous usage of shall and will, but he knows enough to follow it. To reverse the consecutive vowels in receive may be a trivial offense, while to make the same blunder in spelling deity is grotesque and inexcusable. In short, while there are gradations of incorrectness, from the scholar's slip to the dunce's folly, no standard short of the best usage will do for learners.

Clearness and correctness, then, are scarcely to be separated in this study. One fault in a careless sentence may prevent the understanding of it, another may merely label it as the work of an ill-trained writer or speaker. Both are blemishes in the language of a college student, hindrances to his success in college and afterward. The slipshod recitation, the slovenly notes, the childish string of sentences linked together with and, all bear witness to incompetence or disrespect disrespect to one's fellows, disrespect to that fine inheritance of society by which the treasure of antique wisdom and the commerce of human thought are preserved.

Clearness and correctness can be attained by all. Any normal youth of eighteen with the usual schooling can master, if he has not already mastered, reasonable clearness and correctness in language. To this no exceptions need be admitted; and no more than this is demanded in the first term of freshman rhetoric. It is true that language has far more difficult problems than mere clearness and correctness. Το speak or write so as to win interest, attention, sympathy, conviction, delight, is to practice a fine art. Attainment here is a matter of degree. All may achieve some success in this art of using speech to communicate pleasure as well as understanding.

Those least gifted with imagination may improve surprisingly under proper guidance. Yet it is only fair to admit that in any group of students there will be some who will never go far along this path. Their talents lie elsewhere than in using words to convey feeling, to interest and to inspire. These artistic uses of language will be scarcely touched upon in the first half of our course; not that they should be neglected in the composition work from the very beginning, but that correctness and clearness should be made to seem possible for all. Therefore no student may say of any assignment, "This is not for me; I never could write well." The required tasks in this book call not for talent, but for industry; and industry will achieve all that the teacher, the college, or the world demands.

The problem of simple exposition. First of all, can the freshman say what he means? Can he tell what he knows? To ask him so early in life to tell what he does not know would be rather hard on him, and useless besides. But on a familiar subject he should certainly be able to put the right word in the right place, which is a fair definition of correctness. Let us see what this involves.

Suppose such a

The first step: a tentative division. simple case as the explanation of American currency to an Englishman. Shall one begin with the copper cent, and proceed in the order of ascending value to the bills of highest denomination? This will give a mere list of ten coins and bills of ten denominations. Or shall the division be fivefold, dealing in separate groups with the four metals and the paper currency? These purely formal divisions are no sooner conceived than rejected. We try again. May the silver and copper coins be combined in one group as fractional currency, and the bills and gold from the dollar upwards in another? In that case, what about the silver dollar, now scarcely current in Eastern cities but universal in the West? The position to be given to it will depend on the question whether the English