UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Los Angeles

The Persuasive Essay

In Functional Perspective

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the

Requirements for the degree Master of Arts in

Teaching English as a Second Language

By

Denise Therese Perez

1997

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To My Mother and My Husband,

Who made it possible.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DEDICATION………………………………………………………….. iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………….. vii

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………. viii

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………….. 1

Context of the Problem…………………………………………. 1

Research Questions……………………………………………... 1

Rationale………………………………………………………... 2

Relevance to TESL……………………………………………... 3

Methodology……………………………………………………. 6

2. LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………………….. 9

One Genus, Many Species…………………………………….. 10

A Brief History of the Confusion

Between Modes versus Aims

of Discourse…………………………………………………… 13

Persuasion: A Social Semiotic Perspective…………………… 17

Kinneavy’s Aims of Discourse………………………………... 21

3. DATA ANALYSIS………………………………………………….. 32

Part I: Persuasive Genres …………………………………… 32

Advertisements………………………………………. 36

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Letters to the Editor………………………………….. 41

Letters to Constituents………………………………. 47

Editorials……………………………………………... 50

Feature Story ………………………………………... 58

Speeches……………………………………………... 60

Journal Articles………………………………………. 58

Summary of Text Characteristics……………………. 72

4. DISCUSSION……………………………………………………….. 80

From Pathos to Logos………………………………………… 80

Persuasive Texts………………………………………………. 80

Charge to the Reader vs. Thesis………………………………. 87

Means of Persuasion: Back to Pathos

and Logos……………………………………………. 88

Generic Variation: Optimal versus

Obligatory Elements………………………………… 89

Contextual Factors:

The Rhetorical Square………………………………. 92

Exposition versus Explanation………………………………... 95

Support and the Expository Essay…………………………… 101

Formal Logic………………………………………………… 101

5. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………. 104

Persuasion and Academic Discourse………………………….104

Components of Persuasion: A Summary……………………. 107

Generic Structure Potential of Academic Essays……………. 108

Predictability………………………………………………… 109

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The Undergraduate Persuasive Essay:

Is It Really a Genre?…………………………………… 111

“Real” Academic Genres…………………………………….. 114

The Undergraduate Persuasive Essay ……………………...... 117

Kinneavy’s Value in Current Rhetorical Theory ………….… 117

Kinneavy Revisited and Revised …………………………… 118

Kinneavy’s Original Aims of Discourse……………………... 119

Katherine Rowan’s Amendments……………………………. 120

A New Schema………………………………………………. 121

Dominant Function: A Caveat………………………………. 122

Teaching Strategies: A Final Word…………………………. 123

6. REFERENCES…………………………………………………….. 126

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all four members of my committee:

Dr. Marianne Celce-Murcia, Ms. Christine Holten, Dr. Charles Batten, and Dr. Assif Agha.

In particular, my gratitude goes out to the chair of my committee, Dr. Marianne Celce-

Murcia, for her unfailing patience, support and guidance. Not only has Dr. Celce Murcia given

me unique insights into writing theory as seen from a discourse perspective, her wisdom and

dedication to this project have made me a better writer. I would also like to thank Christine

Holten and Professor Batten for their extraordinary encouragement, and Professor Agha for his

much valued participation in my project.

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ABSTRACT OF THE THESES

The Persuasive Essay

in Functional Perspective

by

Denise Therese Perez

Master of Arts in

Teaching English as a Second Language

University of California, Los Angeles, 1996

Professor Marianne Celce-Murcia, Chair

Introducing college-level ESL students to the genre of the persuasive essay is, by all

accounts, a crucial task (Connor & McCagg, 1983; Purves & Purves, 1986; and Spack, 1988). It

is also a difficult one, given that no one has yet performed a definitive anatomy of this genre

(Peters, 1986). Because there is no one universal, agreed upon structure to pass on to students,

instructors have traditionally been limited when it comes to teaching persuasive writing. In

general, they seem to take one or two approaches: reduction of the genre into easily acquired

formulae, or instruction through models. Both of these methods, however, bring with them some

problems. In terms of the first approach, breaking down the persuasive essay into its basic

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components, students are usually taught the following skeletal elements: claim, three supports,

and counter-argument (c.f. Yarber, 1985; and Axelrod and Cooper, 1991). One may well ask,

however, whether any such essay structure exists in the real world. The other alternative,

teaching students through models, is also problematic. On the basis of what criteria, for

example, can we decide whether a model is “good”; how can students distill, from the

hodgepodge of essay styles found in typical readers, the “essential” elements which go into

successful persuasive writing? Then there are issues of context. As Kynell (1992) rightly asks,

is the use of professional writing excerpts as examples of specific rhetorical modes really wise,

given that the original models were not written with that intention (7)? Rousculp & Welsh

(1992) among many others echo this concern (3). Finally, one must ask whether the persuasive

essays students are required to write in the Academy share the same basic generic structures as

the mostly non-academic persuasive models they are asked to imitate. This study will attempt to

provide at least tentative answers to these questions. Specifically, in what follows, I will attempt

to lay forth a generic structure potential for the academic persuasive essay, indicating, as far as

possible, both optional and obligatory elements. In my conclusion I will contend that, while the

Halliday/Hasanian framework of functional analysis (Halliday & Hasan, 1989) is not

incompatible with written genres such as the persuasive essay, other paradigms, most notably

Kinneavy’s model of discourse (somewhat modified), can better aid our understanding, and

hence our ability to teach, persuasive writing.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Context of the Problem

In a recent discussion about the newly annotated bibliography, Research in the

Teaching of English (RTE), Russell K. Durst, co-author of the document, noted the need for

more studies of written text structure. Looking towards pedagogical application in composition

classes, Durst (1990) writes: “We . . . need more studies looking not just at types of writers . . .

but at types of writing, or genres . . . so that we can learn more about the kinds of text structures

writers use,” (400). This demand for more information about written discourse genres coincides

with a new focus on generic structure in general in certain schools of functional grammar, that of

Halliday and Hasan (1989) being chief among them. By studying the academic persuasive essay

from a functional perspective, I seek to accomplish two things: a) to uncover more precise

information relative to a fundamental Anglo-American text structure, and b) to sound the depths

and test the limits of one very important genre-based functional grammar theory.

Research Questions

More specifically, this study will attempt to answer the following questions:

1. Given that the function of the persuasive essay is to sway the reader, how is this

accomplished in academic versus non-academic contexts? Can one use a contextual

configuration to predict an essay’s macrostructure?

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2. What is the generic structure potential (GSP) of the academic persuasive essay? What

are its salient features? Which of these are optional, which obligatory to the

configuration of this genre?

3.

4. Can answers to the above questions help ESL teachers instruct students more effectively

in a module requiring them to write a persuasive essay?

Rationale

Halliday and Hasan (1989) have put forth an exciting new paradigm by which to study

discourse genres. They take up the notion that genres are a product of social and cultural

experience, and use it as one of the chief motivations for their work. While their research has

largely been focused on spoken discourse, their ideas, it would seem, hold at least as much

promise for discovering the structures of written texts. Scholars are just beginning to become

aware of this promise. Swales (1990), for instance, drawing in large part on the work of Halliday

a) Given the broad goal of persuasive rhetoric, is it indeed possible to determine a

GSP for the academic persuasive essay? If not, how does this affect the notion

of genre analysis?

b) Is the academic persuasive essay really a genre? Or does it entail several

genres? If so, what are they?

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and Hasan, has put forward a brilliant functional analysis of the scientific research report.

Conrow (1992), in a less massive endeavor, has had similar success in applying

Halliday/Hasanian principles to her study of the genre of the critical review. For this present

project, I am interested in seeing whether Halliday and Hasan’s framework, based on their work

in 1989, might shed some light on the persuasive essay, a perhaps less well defined genre of

written discourse.

Relevance to TESL

According to Halliday (1989), most L1 discourse conventions, i.e., tone, register,

organizational models, etc., are assimilated without instruction through culture. “[T]hey . . .

have to be learnt, of course,” says Halliday, “but – like walking and running – they are learnt

young and without the benefit of instruction,” (xv). Those who are not native to a culture can

most often pick up spoken discourse conventions with practice, given the pervasiveness of

accessible oral models. In the case of written discourse, however, the situation is different. The

intricate communicative codes unique to written texts are less accessible, less ‘in the air,’ than

oral forms; they also, in many cases, differ in aim, audience variables and in grammatical

structure. Briefly, one may say that written discourse differs from its oral counterpart in four

ways. It differs in 1) sentence level structure – written structures are often more nominalized,

hence more cognitively difficult to process than oral discourse structures, (see Halliday, 1989);

2) audience – the audience of written texts dos not share the same time or space as the writer of

the text, often leaving the novice writer with only a vague, unclear notion of her readers (Peters,

1986); 3) purpose – written discourse most often serves different purposes than spontaneous

speech (Purves & Purves, 1986); and, finally, 4) written organizational patterns – written

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conventions, that is, genres, tend to be unique, having few parallels in the spoken realm

(Halliday, 1989).

The first two of these four differences seem to arise due to differing cognitive variables.

That is, since one’s audience is displaced in time and space in a written context, it follows that

one must use more explicit nominal references as well as more logical connectors in order to

help a distant interlocutor comprehend one’s message. It thus seems necessary in written

discourse to compensate for the lack of prosodic and non-verbal communicative signals normally

available to speakers expressing themselves through verbal channels. With regard to the last two

of the differences mentioned, however, these seem to be more culturally determined. As Purves

& Purves (1986) note, it is “culture” which in the end “establishes standards for ‘good writing,’

and all that that phrase entails with respect to orthography and penmanship, diction, syntax,

grammar, structure, genre and format,” (p. 193, italics mine).

Thus, it seems clear that the rhetorical situation characteristic of written discourse

differs vastly from what one finds in the oral realm. Rarely for example in the spoken realm,

would one find a student pretending to speak to a congressman, when in reality she is speaking

only to her teacher. This rhetorical situation however is very common in an undergraduate

writing classroom in the performance of a typical persuasive essay assignment. Freedman

(1996), for her part, characterizes just this sort of decontextualized discourse as “epistemic” in

nature. “Ultimately,” Freedman states,

I argue that the social action undertaken in [law school] writing is

typical of that undertaken in much school writing, in that its purpose

is epistemic – not in the sense of producing knowledge new to the

reader, but rather in the specialized sense of enabling its writer to see

and interpret reality in new ways; in that these ways are the ways of

currently constituted communities of scholars, the purpose of, and the

action undertaken in, such writing is social and cultural as well. (92)

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Thus, the reality, both in Academia and in the ‘outside world’ seems to be as Halliday

(1989) suggests, specifically, that the very act of writing can and does change the rhetorical

situation fundamentally, creating not only new contexts and new rhetorical challenges for the

writer, but also new genres.

The net result of these basic, if sometimes subtle, differences between oral and written

discourse is that the latter must for the most part, and to most novice writers, be explicitly taught,

both to L1 and L2 speakers. While it is true, as Hairston (1986) claims, that the elements of

persona, purpose and message may in some cases change little whether one speaks or writes, we

can see in the above case of undergraduate level academic writing that this is not always the

case. This is especially true in the area of written genres, which for the most part differ

significantly from their oral counterparts – if indeed they have counterparts. In the case of L2

speakers, most have already learned complex rhetorical patterns in their native tongue; thus,

when their native rhetorical norms differ from those of the target language, they must re-learn

generic structures, as well as the possibly unique L2 contexts where they are appropriate. As

researchers have discovered, one of the premier instances where such cross-cultural rhetorical

‘relearning’ must take place is in the area of expository/persuasive writing.1

Such scholars as Kaplan (1986), Purves & Purves (1986), Takala, Purves &

Buckmeister (1982), Connor & McCagg (1983) and Khalil (1989) have dealt at length with

issues of contrastive rhetoric in genres related to expository writing. They conclude, in short,

that non-native speakers, to be proficient in their L2, must learn this L2 in a variety of levels, that

of “genre” being the most abstract and difficult. It would seem, then, that a better understanding

1 Of course, in the case of those L2 students learning written rhetorical patterns for the first time, only doing so in a

non-native context, the task is no less crucial for the instructor. In this instance, the instructor’s responsibility is the

more familiar one of socializing the student into written discourse conventions in general, just as is done for first

year L1 students at American universities.

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of English generic structure could clearly benefit non-native speakers seeking written proficiency

in English. ESL students in particular need to be introduced more effectively to the genre of the

persuasive essay, as proficiency in this very culture-specific genre can often be crucial in

determining academic success at the tertiary level.

Methodology

This study will be devoted to an analysis of what constitutes persuasive discourse per

se, focusing primarily but not exclusively on written discourse. In terms of methodology I will

trace suasive techniques and elements as they appear throughout a continuum of persuasive

genres. The genres were chosen on a scale of seemingly simple to complex. I begin with

analysis of written advertisements and end with a breakdown of the suasive elements found in

academic journal articles. My goal is to situate the undergraduate persuasive essay as a genre

within this continuum. Two speeches, which combine both oral and written elements, are also

considered. Because the speeches were composed in written format before they were delivered,

and are not spontaneous productions, I consider them as primarily written texts. The same could

also be said of the Chevron advertisement, which has a nearly identical audiovisual counterpart

generated for the medium of television. All of the above-mentioned genres are unified under

one theme: the environment. A common theme was selected so as to be sensitive to the various

incarnations a similar message may assume. In terms of analysis, the major Halliday/Hasanian

functional categories are explored, namely, manifestations of field, tenor and mode.

Specifically, under mode, I consider whether language use is constructive or ancillary

relative to the given text; that is to say, whether language is used alone to communicate

the message contained in the text, or whether other, extra-linguistic signals are the

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primary communicators of the idea, with language merely assisting in this goal (for

example, the use of printed words in a television commercial, or a printed caption under

an elaborate graphic serving to advertise a product). In this category, to follow Halliday

and Hasan more closely, one might also have considered such issues as theme/rheme, and

cohesive and structural devices. The former, however, do not weigh heavily in this

study; structural devices will be considered as ideational here, and thus will fall under my

discussion field.

Tenor in the Halliday/Hasanian framework refers to who is taking part in the discourse

and the means by which such relationships are verbally instantiated (for a complete

discussion of this framework, see chap. 2, figure 1). Under tenor I will analyze the

following interpersonal strategies: presence of rhetorical questions, exclamations,

imperatives, first/second person pronouns, references to common ground (between writer

and reader), and use of degree of probability modals. In this category I also consider

appeals to pathos and appeals to ethos, as well ass the charge to the reader.

Finally, under field, my chief interest lies in the central theme of the piece under

evaluation, and exactly how this idea is realized through language. In this regard, Peters

(1986) breaks interesting ground in her study of dominant function in student writing by

linking the traditional rhetorical idea of theme with the relatively novel concept of field

of discourse (171). “The importance of having . . . a theme,” writes Peters, “has always

been acknowledged in our rhetorical tradition (see Couture 1985: 68).” She continues:

… So far, however, the communicator’s theme or proposition has

been little discussed in relation to the functional model of language;

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little effort has been made to distinguish a communication’s theme or

proposition as it relates to the field or subject matter of the discourse,

the tenor or relationships established between discourse participants,

or the mode or method of textual presentation.” (171)

Peters draws an interesting conclusion in this regard, which I will discuss further on.

She also very perceptively links macro- and micro-structural elements such as logical

connectors with the concept of field in that they “mobilize the text’s theme,” (174)2

In this study I will consider under the rubric of field, the quality and degree of

support found in each text. In addition I will look for suasive position taking markers in

the guise of a) taxonomic terms to classify raw material (i.e., the writer’s specific

choice of words from the larger pool of synonyms the writer could have used, and what

this says about the writer’s stance, subjectivity, objectivity, etc., and b) value laden

descriptors, that is, basically, adjectives or other parts of speech used exclusively to

instantiate the writer’s system of values, her point of view. Finally, I will consider

logical connectors – macro or global structural devices (terms such as “first,” “second,”

“another objection,” etc.) All of these categories will be discussed in more depth in my

introduction to the chapter on Data Analysis. The general idea for the above framework

comes from Peters’ 1986 study of student academic writing, although I have greatly

modified analytical categories to suit my present needs.

2 Peters however seems a little ambivalent regarding macro-and micro-structural elements: for while she clearly

realizes their critical value in instantiating the theme which she considers to be the essence of the text, (and, thus, an

ideational feature), she still categorizes these elements primarily as textual strategies akin to cohesion. A solution

might be to categorize micro- locally cohesive structural elements as textual elements, and concede more central

importance to macrostructural, or globally cohesive elements, classifying them as part of the text’s field.

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Chapter 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

If one quickly scans the content of UCLA freshmen writing courses, one might safely

conclude that persuasive writing constitutes perhaps the fundamental writing form in the

Academy. One need only peruse the course syllabi in Writing Programs or the syllabi from the

35 and 36 composition-level courses in the ESL program to become aware of this fact. Indeed,

of the five sequential L1 writing courses taught at UCLA, from English A, an introduction to

university discourse, to English 131A-J, Advanced Exposition, the two most popular courses,

English 2 and English 3, strictly emphasize persuasion. The preparation begins in English 2 with

analysis and critique of university-level texts. The emphasis in this course, as one reads in the

UCLA catalogue, is on “revision for argumentative coherence and effective style.” The real

practice with argument, then, comes with English 3, the official freshman English requirement,

whose main goal is to introduce students to “[r]hetorical techniques and skillful argument.” Of

the 26 course syllabi I reviewed from English 2 and 3 courses, prepared for Fall 1991, all courses

assigned either persuasive essay assignments exclusively or combinations of summary,

comparison/contrast, definition, etc. type of assignments leading up to argument papers. There is

a very similar breakdown in the ESL section of the TESL & Applied Linguistics department,

with: a) ESL 35 (the equivalent of English 2) preparing students through summary and analysis

skills to approach persuasive writing; b) followed by ESL 36, the ESL counterpart to English 3,

whose primary focus is on persuasive writing, critiques, and a persuasive research paper.

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One Genus, Many Species

Given the prime importance of persuasive writing in Academia then, one would assume

that there is a general consensus among scholars and teachers as to what this genre actually

entails. One is somewhat surprised, therefore, to discover in the expert journals in the field that

this is not the case. Indeed, not only does there seem to be no consensus among writing

specialists as to what actually constitutes academic persuasion per se, there seems to exist a

fundamental uncertainty among experts as to how even to define “academic writing” in general.

Peters (1996), for example, seems to group all academic writing under the concept “academic

genre,” or more generally, “the genre of academic discourse,” thus coining a new term.

Interestingly, though, the only writing she points to as exemplifying this “genre” are essays of

argument and critique. For her, then academic writing is persuasive writing. This contrasts with

DiPardo (1990), who instead sees “expository” writing as definitive of academic discourse.

DiPardo defines the latter as “autonomous, written, formalized text” (65), which is

depersonalized and decontextualized. She bemoans the fact that such writing “even today

constitutes the prime goal of writing instruction,” (65). It is unclear whether DiPardo would

include under this category the persuasive essay.

It could be that the looseness with which the term “genre” is bandied about in

composition journals reveals an underlying disarray among scholars over what we are actually

teaching in college. For most of us, the only “genre” we have some confidence with is the

“essay” per se. “The essay is a powerful modern genre,” say Shumaker, Dennis and Green

(1990: 136), “a major vehicle for public discourse.” Not surprisingly, there exists a long

tradition of defining the essay genre, most of which distinguishes between the ‘formal’ and

‘informal’ subtypes, with academic discourse falling under the ‘formal’ category. Interestingly,

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however, within this categorization the informal, or personal, essay has a much clearer history

than the formal essay. Jim Krusoe (1994: E1) points to the difference between the two,

describing the personal essay as,

A different animal from its cousin, the formal one, that object of well-

meant punishment by generations of kindly English teachers. Where

the logic of the latter is meant to be airtight and its structure rigid and

unshakable, the structure of the personal is far loopier, more like a

poem’s . . . it is a playful tweak on the nose of those awful, earnest

authors of news-magazine opinions, which have names like “speaking

out” and “my turn.”

According to Holman and Harmon (1986: 187), the informal essay began in aphoristic and

moralistic writing, modified by the interjection of the personal element. Montaigne, the 16th

century French moralist, originated the genre, which was then further developed by Bacon,

Cowley, Sir Thomas Browne, Milton, La Bruyère, and the Victorians. The popularity of the

informal essay can be seen in the current popularity of Phillip Lopate’s (1994) The Art of the

Personal Essay, a wonderful anthology of prominent essays of this type from throughout western

history. In its evolution, the informal essay, say Holman and Harman (187), was “broadened and

lightened by free treatment of human manners, controlled somewhat in style and length by

periodical publication . . . [It] has developed into a recognizable literary genre, the first purpose

of which is to entertain, in a manner sprightly, light, novel or humorous.”3 This is to be

contrasted with the formal essay whose evolution, importantly, has been much less clearly

recorded. “Instead of crystallizing into a set literary type,” note the above two authorities, the

formal essay “has tended to become diversified in form, spirit and length, according to the

serious purpose of the author,” (p. 189). To sum up, the authors write:

3 Yet, if the informal essay can be considered a literary genre, there still seems little consensus on its form. Lopate

categorizes the essays in his anthology according to the following forms: Analytic Mediation, Book Review,

Consolation, Diary/Journal Entry, Diatribe, Humor, List, Lecture, Letters (Epistolary Essay), Mosaic, Newspaper

Column, Portrait and Double Portrait, Prose Poem and Reverie, Reportage, Valediction. Are these really “forms” or

does this constitute a classification according to function?

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The technique of the formal essay is now practically identical with

that of all factual or theoretical prose writing in which literary effect

is secondary to serious prose. Its tradition has doubtless tended to add

clarity to English prose style by its insistence on unity, structure and

perspicacity. (189)

Once one moves beyond the formal/informal or personal distinction, the categorization

of possible subtypes of the essay as a genre becomes murky. Holman and Harmon, considered to

be experts by Lopate for one, come up with 20 distinctions, few of which apply to academic

writing. In a note of resignation the authors conclude: “obviously, classifying the essay has

eluded human skill,” (186).4

The fact that there is no current consensus on what exactly an essay is, however, has not

prevented academics from offering up ‘objective’ classifications of their own. Typically, a

library reference sheet from one Los Angeles junior college provides students with the following

supposedly standard divisions of the formal essay: the expository, the argumentative and

descriptive essay. Of these distinctions it might perhaps be fair to ask whether the last of these,

the “descriptive essay” has any real existence anywhere. In another classificatory judgment,

Stephen Wilhoit (1993), in a novel vein, makes the distinction between “academic source-based

writing” and “argumentation” essays (29), as if argumentation per se somehow precludes

working from sources. Derrida makes a similar, and I believe specious, distinction when he

differentiates between “the art of persuasion” and the sense of logical demonstration” (Olsen,

1990: 27).

4 Indeed, this confusion over the abundance of literary forms which comprise the “essay” has had undesirable

ramifications for university-level writing courses in general regarding what specifically should be taught in these

courses. Discussing their own field of “Advanced Composition,” Shumaker, Dennis & Green (1990) sadly conclude

that, “Unfortunately, the wealth of models suggests again that advanced composition may well prove impossible to

define once and for all,” (138).

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Although the above classifications are related, Derrida’s is definitely one of the most

pernicious and abiding and, as we will see, has the greatest historical tradition. Because such a

distorted view of persuasion – one which separates suasion per se from logic – is so tenacious in

scholarly thought, persisting among scholars from Aristotle up until modern-day Kinneavy, I

believe it is of value to examine why this view has held such sway.

A Brief History of the Confusion between Modes versus Aims of Discourse

If one wishes to understand the modern day distinction (and confusion) between

exposition and persuasion, one needs to understand the rhetorical tradition of Aristotle and the

faculty psychology theories of the Enlightenment.

Aristotle and the classical rhetoricians who followed him were the first to make the

distinction between persuasive discourse and didactic discourse, the former being considered

manipulative and not subject to the rules of strict logic. At this point, persuasion was mainly an

oral phenomenon and continued to be so throughout the Middle Ages; speeches were constructed

spontaneously by means of memorized “stases” of argument which were learned at the schools.

It is fascinating how the first new “scientific” account of persuasion reinforced this

ancient tradition. George Campbell in his Philosophy of Rhetoric in 1776 was the first

rhetorician to base his ideas of persuasion on the cognitive theories that became known as faculty

psychology. Campbell, in Lockean tradition, understood the mind to be composed of four

faculties: the intellect, the imagination, the will, and the feelings or emotions. One could

perhaps call him the first functionalist – in a very distant way, an intellectual predecessor of

Halliday and Hasan – for he was definitely the first to categorize discourse according to the

function it served relative to something else, in this case the mental faculties. Thus, discourse

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which enlightened was seen as appealing to the intellect, that is, that was its function, and on

down the line. There was discourse which pleased the imagination, that which moved the

passions and that which influenced the will. This latter was considered to be persuasive, and

here, just as with Aristotle, persuasion is seen as divorced from the intellect.

While Campbell’s chief preoccupation was with the function of discourse, this cannot

be said of those who followed him, who began a tradition of substituting the means of discourse

for the ends. Thus, after Campbell, a fascination began with “modes of discourse,” that is, the

ways in which one appeals to the intellect, emotions, etc. –the traces of which one can still see

today in the misconceived “descriptive” essay category discussed above. In other words, a trend

emerged in which modes began to be seen as ends in themselves. The present-day modes of

discourse, narration, description, exposition and argument, made one of their first appearances in

George Gregory’s 1808 textbook Letters on Literature, Taste and Composition, an important

predecessor to Bain’s work in 1866. In almost modern format, Gregory presents description,

narration, exposition, argumentation and oratory as the principle modes of discourse, which he

relates to the faculties of the mind. This whole idea, however, is only treated in passing in the

book. The modes take on many incarnations up until the 20th century. One of the most popular

appears in 1834 with Samuel Newman’s Practical System of Rhetoric. In this text, the most

widely used rhetoric in America between 1820 and 1860, Newman, much like Gregory, puts

forth the descriptive, narrative, didactic, argumentative and persuasive modes as the five possible

categories of discourse. Here “didactic” is used in place of the more common term “expository.”

Most importantly, as Connors (1981) points out, Newman, as Gregory before him, but having

much more influence than the latter, “separates persuasion of the will from argument to the

logical faculties,” (emphasis mine) (445). This trend continued throughout the 19th century. One

15

cannot leave the 1860’s, as Newman’s influence was beginning to wane, without mentioning

George Quackenbos. This scholar seems to depart from the rest by offering a more reasoned

view of argument, although his view doesn’t seem to have taken hold. Quackenbos, in his 1863

text Advanced Course of Composition and Rhetoric, puts forth a seemingly contemporary

academic description of argument, namely, “a statement of reasons for or against a proposition,

with the view of inducing belief in others,” (D’Angelo, 1984: 35). Here he seems to de-

emphasize the passion and deceit intimated by other contemporary theorists. Importantly,

Quackenbos contrasts his view of persuasion with “exposition,” which he defines as “explaining

the meaning of an author, in defining terms, setting forth a subject in its various relations or

presenting doctrines, precepts, for the purpose of instructing others,” (35) – again, a very modern

definition.

If Newman was the first to popularize the modes throughout ante-bellum America, Bain

was the first to systematize them in the post-Civil War epoch. As Connors points out, modal

terms in Bain’s influential 1866 English Composition and Rhetoric “inform long sections of his

discussion,” (Connors, 1981: 444). Bain’s modes – description, narration and exposition

belonging to the intellect, argumentation pertaining to the will, and poetry addressing the

imagination – have endured to the present day (rigidifying, perhaps, our current views of

persuasion vis-à-vis exposition). In this case, while the modes themselves as classifications in

Bain’s paradigm are not new, their use as an organizing principle in a textbook and as a full-

fledged teaching paradigm are. Indeed, the modes as Bain conceptualized them coincide with

the emergence of the first freshman English composition courses as we know them today, both

being the result of a new shift in American colleges, a shift away from classical analysis of

16

argument, eloquence, style and belletristic focus, and towards a more varied scientific curriculum

(Connors: 446). Jon Harned (1985) sums up Bain’s significance nicely:

Up until the publication of Alexander Bain’s English Composition

and Rhetoric in 1866, most American college textbook rhetorics were

organized around belletristic discourse classifications; that is, they

divided up the subject of writing into established literary forms such

as orations, history, romance, treatises, sermons and the like. Bain’s

textbook brought about what we now, thanks to Thomas Kuhn, refer

to as a paradigm shift, sweeping away these belletristic schemes and

substituting five forms – Description, Narration, Exposition,

Persuasion and Poetry – that, with the exception of poetry, have

survived up to the present in Freshman Composition and are known in

the trade as the Modes of Discourse. (1985: 42)

One cannot speak of a total decline of modes per se as there are still too many

contemporary textbooks like Langan’s College Writing Skills with Readings (1993), which

organize themselves around the modes. Here one can still find fossilized assignments that call

for descriptive and narrative essays as genres, ignoring the function which the description or the

narration must in fact be subordinated to. Nonetheless, with the emergence of paragraph

emphasis and unity at the turn of the century (c.f., the “big four”: Barrett Wendell, John Genung,

Adams Sherman Hill and Fred Newton Scott), and then the emergence of single mode texts

shortly thereafter, most notably texts concerned only with techniques of exposition, the modes

lost much of their prominence. In the 1930’s composition as a discipline began to

professionalize itself with scholarly journals and conferences uniting professionals and creating

more accessible forums for new ideas. Thesis texts emerged in the 1930’s; general semantics

and communication theories informed writing paradigms in the 1940’s; and in 1950 George

Campbell’s very primitive notion of writing function comes full circle with the publication of

James McCrimmon’s Writing with a Purpose, quietly setting the stage among a host of other

17

developments for contemporary focuses on function in discourse (c.f., James Britton (1970) and

his triad of poetic, expressive and transactional discourse; James Kinneavy’s A Theory of

Discourse (1971), James Moffett’s (1983) notion of spectrum discourse – recording, reporting,

generalizing and theorizing; etc.).

Given such a great evolution from Aristotle’s view of rhetoric to the very sophisticated

cognitive and social theories of discourse that we have today, it is ironic that many scholars

nonetheless maintain the classical, limited view of persuasion, most notably Kinneavy, to whom

I shall return. The truth is, beyond the obscure John Bascon, who in 1873 declared that oratory

(i.e., persuasion) “may find its object in the understanding, in the emotions or in the will,”

(D’Angelo, 1984: 37), thus providing the most far reaching view of persuasion yet, most

scholars, or at least those who have given any thought to the matter, retain a somewhat uneasy,

undefined view of the relationship between persuasion and exposition.

Persuasion: A Social Semiotic Perspective

One might well wonder how Halliday and Hasan’s (1989) views of discourse hook

together with all of the above. To understand Halliday and Hasan, one needs to change gears

and shift from a cognitive view of discourse to a social-semiotic one. In brief, the social

semiotic perspective taken by Halliday and Hasan seeks to explain, in the words of Deborah

Brandt, “how social life is embedded in and perpetuated by discourse, (1986: 143) or in other

words, how social life determines everything about discourse, most particularly generic structure.

Actually, for Halliday and Hasan, the influences go both ways; indeed these two scholars see

context and text as interwoven in a kind of symbiotic relationship, where social contexts

18

permeate texts and texts permeate social contexts. In the words of Hasan, “[T]here is. . . a two-

way relationship between text structure and [social situation]: the ongoing structure of the text

defines and confirms the nature of the [social situation], while the latter acts as a point of

reference for deciding what kind of elements can appropriately appear when, where and how

often (1989: 70). On a macro scale, as Halliday says, the wish of the two scholars is to examine

“the systematic relation between the social environment as a semiotic construct on the one hand

and the semantic system and functional organization of language on the other,” (Halliday and

Hasan, 1980: 13-14). At a more simplistic level, the two scholars seem fascinated by the

element of prediction in social interaction, which is the single greatest factor in enabling,

Halliday believes, mutual intelligibility. Halliday puts it this way:

What is remarkable is how often people do understand each other

despite the noise with which we are continually surrounded. How do

we explain the success with which people communicate? The short

answer, I shall suggest, is that we know what the other person is going

to say. (9).

Specifically, Halliday believes that when confronted by a specific social situation we do

three things: a) we note what is going on (i.e., assign to the situation a “field”); b) we recognize

the personal relationships involved (i.e., assign to the situation a “tenor”); and c) we see what is

being achieved by means of language (i.e., mode) – hence the “function” in their functional

approach. Armed with this information we then make predictions about the kinds of meaning

that are likely to be foregrounded in that particular situation. In short, we sort of activate a verbal

schema of what is taking place which tells us what we ourselves should say and how we should

say it. And what the verbal schema in fact is is an oral discourse genre. It is interesting,

however, that Halliday and Hasan choose one of the most basic of possible oral discourse

situations to illustrate their ideas, for example, the sales encounter. Hasan, in discussing the

19

social variables of a sales encounter successfully predicts the oral generic structure for that

particular situation. The question is, is this possible with more complex situations and genres?

To answer this question, we have to go back to their theory in more detail. Halliday and

Hasan (1989) refer to social situations as “Contextual Configurations” or CCs. In the words of

Hasan: “A contextual configuration . . . is a specific set of values that realize field, tenor and

mode,” (55). Once we sort of “plug in” the above values or variables of a given situation, we

should be able to predict what Hasan refers to as a “text’s” Generic Structure Potential. Again,

Hasan: “If a text can be described as ‘language doing some job in some context,’ then it is

reasonable to describe it as the verbal expression of a social activity . . . So it is not surprising

that the features of the CC can be used for making certain kinds of predictions about text

structure,” (56). These predictions of course relate to the particular genre in question. Thus, one

should be able to predict four generic features: 1) obligatory elements, i.e., what must appear to

make a genre a genre; 2) optional elements, 3) any required sequencing of the above vis-à-vis

each other; and 4) the possibility of iteration.

If one looks more closely at how Halliday and Hasan define context of situation,

however, one soon becomes aware of extreme vagueness in their categories. Please see figure #1.

20

Figure #1 (Adapted from Halliday & Hasan, 1989, p. 12)

Context of Situation

Three Features

Field – refers to what is happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place:

What is it that the participants are engaged in, in which the language figures as some

essential component?

Tenor – refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and

roles: what kinds of role relationship obtain among the participants, including

permanent and temporary relationships of one kind or another, both the types of speech

role that they are taking on in the dialogue and the whole cluster of socially significant

relationships in which they are involved.

Mode – refers to what part the language is playing, what it is that the participants are

expecting the language to do for them in that situation: the symbolic organization of the

text, the status that it has, and its function in the context, including the channel (is it

spoken or written or some combination of the two?) and also the rhetorical mode, what

is being achieved in the text in terms of such categories as persuasive, expository,

didactic, and the like?

Specifically, if one looks at the definition of mode, one finds that Halliday and Hasan take for

granted basic generic functions, namely those relating to persuasive and expository genres,

without first defining what these entail. Indeed, it is to discover exactly what these entail that is

the main goal of this study. Thus, for this investigation, it would seem that Halliday and Hasan’s

paradigm approaches the object I wish to analyze from too much of a distance.

There does exist an alternative functional paradigm, aimed, it would seem, at the right

level, and which, I believe, shed some much needed light on the topic under consideration here,

the persuasive essay. This is James Kinneavy’s (1971) theory of discourse aims.

21

Kinneavy’s Aims of Discourse

When Kinneavy’s work, A Theory of Discourse, appeared in 1971 it had enormous

impact. It was embraced in the seventies by such leading rhetorical theorists as E.P.J. Corbett

(1992), Jim Corder (1996), Frank D’Angelo (1976), and Ross Winterowd (1975). It provided,

notes Fulkerson (1984), the conceptual basis for several modern textbooks as well as for

individual courses and composition programs. It became part of the canon that “any well

prepared college composition teacher must know,” says Fulkerson, and became required reading

for two NEH seminars. In the 1980s the book came out in paperback and then, for all intents and

purposes, seems to have been forgotten.

This is a shame, for there is much of value in Kinneavy’s approach. Kinneavy bases his

ideas of discourse on a communications triangle involving the speaker/writer, (the encoder); the

hearer/reader (the decoder); the language of communication (the signal); and, finally, reality, or

what is referred to (see figure #2).

Figure #2 Kinneavy’s Communication Triangle

Signal Encoder Decoder

Reality

22

This four-way communications network is built upon similar theories put forth by Plato (the first,

second, and third person view of discourse), Bühler (cited by Halliday and Hasan, 1989) and

Jakobson (1960) among others. From this basic network, Kinneavy builds a whole system of

discourse which elegantly showcases types of discourse based on the communications variable

most foregrounded by the speaker/writer.

Kinneavy situates his schema within a complete social framework of discourse not

incompatible with that of Halliday and Hasan. Thus, Kinneavy sees type of discourse as being

determined by language pragmatics, a phenomenon related directly to how and why people

actually use language. Kinneavy explains, “Taken together, the syntactics and semantics of the

language constitute the language as a potential tool” (22). What is critical is how people use this

tool.

Discourse study then is the study of the situational uses of the

potentials of the language… [it is] characterized by individuals acting

in a special time and place; . . . it establishes a verbal context and it

has a situational context and cultural context. (22)

This seems an exact parallel to Halliday and Hasan’s contextual configuration. “We study

language partly in order to understand language and how it works, and partly to understand what

people do with it,” writes Halliday (Halliday & Hasan, 1989: 44). “All use of language has a

context,” Halliday continues.

The ‘textual’ features enable the discourse to cohere not only with

itself but also with its context of situation. We have analyzed the

context of situation into three components, corresponding to the three

metafunctions [i.e., field, tenor, mode]. This enables us to display the

redundancy between text and situation – how each serves to predict

the other. (45)

23

Like Kinneavy, Halliday and Hasan imagine the relationship between language and ‘real life’ to

be a series of concentric circles: First one has a “context of situation” (45), the immediate

instance in which language is being used; this in turn is enveloped in an overarching “context of

culture” (46). Both of these areas then are shot through with historical precedent, which

Halliday and Hasan call “intertextuality.” Not unlike Bahktin’s (1981) concept of heteroglossia

(but conceived here as a discourse phenomenon rather than a purely linguistic phenomenon),

Halliday and Hasan define intertextuality as follows:

We have spoken of [context of situation and context of culture] as

‘determining’ the text, stressing the predictability of the text from the

context. ... But in fact the relationship between text and context is a

dialectical one: the text creates the context as much of the context

creates the text. ‘Meaning’ arises from the friction of the two. This

means that part of the environment for any text is a set of previous

texts, texts that are taken for granted and shared among those taking

part. (47)

In fact, this view of language has even more in common with Vygotsky (1934) than with

Bahktin. For while it is Bahktin’s insight that language, being shot through with historical

usages and already fashioned meanings, constrains an individual’s original power of expression,5

Vygotsky makes clear that each individual in certain ways creates language as much as language

creates or determines the utterances of each individual. “Word meanings develop,” (212) writes

Vygotsky. In everyone’s mind, Vygotsky notes, senses of words “combine and unite . . . The

senses of different words flow into one another – literally influence – so that the earlier ones are

contained in, and modify, the later ones.” Vygotsky gives the following example of this

5 Consider Bahktin’s own words on the subject in his essay the Dialogic Imagination, in Discourse in the novel,

(1981, p. 276). “Indeed, any concrete discourse (utterance) finds the object at which it was directed already as it

were overlain with qualifications, open to dispute, charged with value, already enveloped in an obscuring mist – or

on the contrary, by the “light” of alien words that have already been spoken about it. It is entangled, shot through

with shared thoughts, points of view, alien value judgments and accents. The word, directed toward its object,

enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words, value judgments and accents, weaves in

and out of complex interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet a third group: and

all of this may crucially shape discourse, may leave a trace in all its semantic layers, may complicate its expression

and influence its entire stylistic profile.”

24

potential for word creation in language in general, and in each individual’s mind in particular.

“Thus, a word that keeps recurring in a book or a poem sometimes absorbs all the variety of

sense contained in it and becomes, in a way, equivalent to the work itself. Titles like Don

Quixote, Hamlet and Anna Karenina illustrate this very clearly; the whole sense of the work is

contained in one name.” (247).

In the same way that actual words, burdened as they are with their unique histories and

at any point in time fixed meanings, comprise the language which each member of society is

obliged to use, so actual texts, each genre with its unique history, comprise the rhetorical tools

each individual in society has access to in order to express herself through language. Language

use is not heroically ‘free’ in society, but rather consciously or not language becomes packaged

in the specific genres which a culture, through its history and immediate necessity, has crafted.

And, of course, new genres, like new words, are created all the time. This is Halliday and

Hasan’s view of intertextuality. It is a shame that they do not develop it more.

Instead, Halliday and Hasan seem content to view the impact of culture in a global

sense. In their work Language, Context and Text they sadly limit themselves to examples of a

child’s discourse while playing, or a customer’s discourse at a service encounter. It seems from

their 1989 work at least, that Halliday and Hasan are happiest when they can factor out any trace

of cultural “intertextuality” and see only the basic needs of the individual, and how the individual

seeks to satisfy these needs through language. I believe that it is here where Kinneavy’s more

historical view of concrete rhetorical traditions, created in response to very complex individual

needs in society, is more helpful as a guide in understanding my topic of modern persuasive

discourse situated in the Academy.

25

Please see figures #3 and #4 for a visual layout of Kinneavy’s global understanding of

discourse.

Figure #3*

Kinneavy’s Concept of Discourse

Context: Place of Discourse

in Language Study

Language Metalanguage

Reality

*(Adapted from Kinneavy, 1970, p. 21)

Given this map of Kinneavy’s overall understanding of discourse, one may locate a

major difference between Kinneavy and Halliday and Hasan. The latter, from the examples they

give in their 1989 work, seem to look only at situational or cultural influences on discourse.

Kinneavy takes these factors largely for granted in his book, understanding them as the sine qua

Signal Decoder Encoder

Pragmatics

Situational Context

—Personal and social

motivations for speaking,

reading, etc.

Cultural Context

— Larger social reasons

motivating science,

propaganda, literature,

comparative ethno-

science, etc.

— Large Social Effects of

the above

— Taste in the above

— Traditions

— Genres

— Period Characteristics

26

non of any discussion of discourse. Kinneavy, then goes on to consider other discourse

constraints, which he classifies as lying under the rubric of “pragmatics.”

It is here, I believe, that Kinneavy factors in Halliday and Hasan’s idea of intertextuality

by actually viewing the history of each genre of discourse concurrently while analyzing the

immediate aims, available modes, media, etc., of the individual seeking to express himself

through language. Halliday and Hasan create a framework for this but they don’t really follow

through. Below is a fuller view of Kinneavy’s idea of what constitutes discourse “pragmatics,”

basically, the variables which shape an individual’s specific use of language at a specific time.

One cannot readily perceive the idea of “intertextuality” in this schema, but it clearly underlies

the structure. Each mode Kinneavy considers, as well as each rhetorical aim he presents, has

been discussed and formulated in various ways since Aristotle. It is Halliday and Hasan’s failure

to introduce discussion of many of these variables – the established modes of discourse in

English, for example – which leaves gaps in their work. Figure #4*

27

Kinneavy’s Concept of Discourse Pragmatics

Most important to Kinneavy’s system is his quantification of the aims of discourse,

which emanate from the components of the communications triangle. Thus, his main focus

is on the particular rhetorical goal a speaker/writer wishes to achieve by her use of language,

among which he recognizes four principle goals or aims. Discourse, for example, whose

main focus is on the encoder is deemed expressive discourse; that which is focused on the

decoder is persuasive, that whose primary focus is on “reality,” and which thus de-

emphasizes the encoder and the decoder is “reference” discourse; finally, that discourse

which foregrounds the language per se of the message, is literature. Importantly, for

Signal

Encoder Decoder

Reality

Syntactics Phonology

Morphology

Syntactics

Semantics Meaning

Psycho-linguistics

Reference Pragmatics

Arts & Media Reading

Speaking

Writing

Listening

Modes Narration

Description

Evaluation

Classification

Aims Reference

Persuasion

Literature

Expression

*(Adapted from Kinneavy, 1970, p. 25)

28

Kinneavy, it is the aim of discourse which then determines everything else about it: its form

of logic, its organization and its style.6 In other words, it is the immediate aim of discourse,

as Kinneavy strictly defines it, which accounts for a text’s generic structure. This is to be

contrasted with Halliday and Hasan’s more loosely conceived ‘context of situation.’ In

reality, instead of being considered as an alternate paradigm, perhaps Kinneavy’s work can

be seen as a sort of fleshing out of the very good ideas which Halliday and Hasan articulate

in more general terms.

In Kinneavy’s system the modes, (i.e., narration, description, classification, and

evaluation) are tools; they can be used in the service of any aim of discourse. For a

breakdown of Kinneavian aims of discourse (61), please see Figure #5.

6 A claim which has not gone unchallenged (c.f., Fulkerson, 1984)

29

Figure #5 — A Theory of Discourse, 1971: the Aims of Discourse

Individual

Conversation

Journals

Diaries

Gripe sessions

Prayer

Social

Minority protests

Manifestoes

Declarations of independence

Contracts

Constitution of clubs

Myth

Utopia plans

Religious credos

Scientific Exploratory Informative

Referential Discourse

— Proving a point by arguing from

accepted premises

— Proving a point by arguing from

particulars

— A combination of both

— Dialogues

— Seminars

— A tentative definition of…

— Proposing a solution to

problems

— News Articles

— Reports

— Summaries

— Nontechnical encyclopedia articles

REALITY

SIGNAL

ENCODER DECODER

Literature

Expressive

Discourse

Persuasive

Discourse

Advertising

Political speeches

Religious sermons

Legal oratory

Editorials

Short story Drama

Lyric TV Show

Short narrative Movie

Ballad, folk song Joke

30

With specific regard to persuasive and referential discourse, Kinneavy offers the

following definitions. In terms of discourse focused on the decoder (i.e., persuasive

discourse), all other variables pale in comparison. Thus, “what is essential is that the

encoder, reality, and language itself all become instrumental to the achievement of some

practical effect on the decoder,” writes Kinneavy (39). Persuasion involves the “direct

inducement to some kind of action (intellectual, emotional, or physical),” according to

Kinneavy, who states that it “therefore differs from science and literature,” (219). Unlike

science, persuasion values “probabilities more than truths,” and therefore cannot be

supported on the basis of pure logic. Instead, suasive support, for Kinneavy, who is

obviously greatly inspired by Aristotle, deals with “apparent proof” or the enthymeme.”

Here Kinneavy approvingly quotes Aristotle’s rhetoric: “The duty of rhetoric,’ he says,

‘is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in

the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a

long chain of reasoning,’” (220). Predictably, then, Kinneavy takes the final step of

equating persuasion with emotional appeal. “A further specific differentia of persuasion

from reference discourse is the usual presence in persuasive discourse of emotional terms

and references,” (220). The examples Kinneavy provides of possible genres in this

category are advertisements, political speeches, religious sermons, legal oratory, and

editorials. Predictably, academic essays are not included in this rhetoric. . .

Finally, reference discourse for Kinneavy is everything that persuasive discourse

is not. It is objective, well-reasoned, well supported by empirical fact or deduction and it

is not emotional. It is, in short, everything an academic persuasive essay should be.

31

This seeming shortcoming in Kinneavy’s paradigm has not escaped notice. In his

brilliant critique of Kinneavy, Fulkerson (1984) points this out: “Kinneavy denigrates persuasive

discourse, implying that shallow emotional appeals, deception, and illogic are among its primary

features,” (49). “Undoubtedly,” continues Fulkerson,

Much sham reasoning exists in contemporary persuasion, but it does

not seems helpful to equate persuasion with propaganda… while

elevating into the status of science any discourse that attempts careful

reasoning. (50)

Clearly, Kinneavy’s work is based on previous theorists, not empirical evidence. Fulkerson, in

his critique says as much: “Instead of a finished taxonomy upon which we build curricula and

syllabuses, Kinneavy has provided a complex set of hypotheses to be tested, used, and modified

through rhetorical criticism,” (Ibid).

In a word, that is what the following section of this paper will attempt to do. Based on

evidence supplied from seven representative persuasive genres, I wish to carefully analyze the

components of real persuasive texts and distill from them those elements which compose their

generic structure. I will then apply the principles which can be gleaned from this analysis to a

reformulation of the Kinneavian paradigm to include the undergraduate persuasive essay.

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Chapter 3

DATA ANALYSIS

Persuasive Genres

In this section I analyze seven persuasive genres, 13 texts in all,7 taking for the

most part two examples from each genre8 from which I hope to trace a progression of

suasive techniques as I move from simple to complex. The genres are: magazine

advertisements, letters to the editor, a congressman’s letter to constituents, editorials, a

feature story, speeches, and academic journal articles. To control for topic, “The

Environment” was chosen as a theme unifying all thirteen texts. It is a topic, I believe,

given to both emotional as well as detached scientific treatment; it is also a popular topic

in freshman writing courses. I will analyze all functional categories in the above texts,

i.e., field, tenor and mode, and my chief interest in the pieces will be to ascertain the

following elements: a) the charge to the reader; b) presence of formal logic and/or

scientific exposition in the text; which is related to c) type and degree of support in the

text; I will also be looking for d) type and degree of emotional appeal, both pathos-based

and ethos-based; and e) interpersonal strategies: i.e., presence of rhetorical questions,

exclamations, imperatives, first/second person pronouns, and common ground indicators,

and finally, f) suasive position-taking markers, both i) taxonomic terms to classify raw

material (see next page for a fuller description of all categories presented here) and ii)

value laden descriptors. I will also mark the role which language is playing in the text,

7 Numerical breakdown: two advertisements; 2 letters to the editor; one Congressman’s letter to constituents; three

editorials; one feature story; two speeches; two scientific journal articles. 8 With the exception of two genres, the letter to constituents and the feature story, of which I will study only one

representative text.

33

that is, whether it is constitutive, or the only means of communication in the text, or

whether it is ancillary. Let’s look at these categories in a bit more depth.

I: Field

Again, the most relevant aspect of field, for this study, lies in the central theme

of each text under evaluation, and how this theme is presented. This entails considering

the use of logic, support, and macrostructural elements.

Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition

According to Kinneavy (1971), scientific discourse is distinctive in its

rigid use of formal inductive and deductive logic, the latter devolving from

absolute premises. This is contrasted with the “enthymeme,” which Ramage and

Bean (1992) define as

an incomplete logical structure that depends for its completeness on

one or more unstated premises. These unstated premises serve as the

starting point of the argument and therefore should be assumptions,

values or beliefs granted by the audience. (97)

Kate Ronald (1987) rounds out the definition by differentiating the enthymeme

from the syllogism. Thus, the enthymeme is understood as a syllogism with one

proposition suppressed. More importantly, however, it is said to differ from the

syllogism in that

it addresses matters of probability, it need not adhere to strict rules of

validity, and it employs ethical and emotional as well as logical

proofs. It serves persuasive purposes in those wide areas of human

affairs for which formal logic does not apply, including many

business and technical situations. (43)

In this study, it is therefore important to trace whether pure logic or enthymemic logic is

employed in the texts to confirm or refute Kinneavy’s characterization of persuasive

34

discourse. In addition to type of logic, Kinneavy differentiates scientific from persuasive

discourse in terms of style. Thus, scientific discourse is characterized by use of 3rd person,

density of presentation, use of scientific coinages or jargon, whose goal is that of

“instruction rather than persuasion, clarity rather than adornment, denotative rather than

connotative,” etc. (172). These are also things I will be looking at in my study.

Amount and Kind of Support

In this category I wish to trace the amount and kind of proof or

demonstration of the truth given to claims made. It is important to note because

unsupported claims usually sell themselves on the power of emotion alone and are

of course not considered scientific.

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

Interesting also is the presence in texts of subtle forms of value

judgments – i.e., taxonomic terms to classify raw material and value-laden

descriptors. This will be interesting to follow in the more “objective,” detached

journal articles in my generic spectrum.

Again, some of the framework above has been taken from Pamela

Peters’ 1986 study of student writing; however, it has been greatly expanded and

modified largely with Kinneavian concepts. Also, unlike Peters’ study, the present

analysis will be largely qualitative and exploratory. At the end of the thirteen

analyses I will summarize the results.

35

II: Tenor

In evaluating aspects of the interrelationships made apparent in the text between

the writer/speaker and the reader/audience, I will consider the following elements:

Charge to the Reader:

The central difference made between scientific or didactic discourse

versus persuasive discourse – the distinction made from ancient times up to and

including Kinneavy – is that the main concern of persuasion is to incite the

reader/audience to some action. As stated above in my discussion of Kinneavy,

the action desired on the part of the reader may be either intellectual, emotional or

physical. On the other hand, scientific discourse, it is asserted, has next to no

concern with the reader, only with the “reality” being discussed. Thus, I believe it

to be important in analyzing the following persuasive texts to determine what

effect the writer wished to have on the reader, (i.e., what, in other words, the writer

charges the reader to think, feel, or do). Are all persuasive texts really reader- (or

decoder-) based, as Kinneavy asserts? Conversely, are all ‘expository’ texts

primarily reality-oriented?

Type and Degree of Emotional Appeal

Here, as opposed to the above category, I seek to determine to what

extent suasion is based in the text on appeals to emotion or bald appeals to the

credibility of the writer.

Interpersonal Strategies

This category, unlike the others, is taken from Peters (1986), who in her

study of persuasive components looked for things such as reference to common

36

ground, rhetorical questions, exclamations, imperatives, degree of probability

modals and first and second person pronouns. Like Peters, I consider these to be

crucial components of persuasion and am interested in seeing how they are

distributed throughout the genres I am studying.

III: Mode

With regard to mode, my chief concern will be whether use of language is

ancillary or constitutive. As previously mentioned, I consider all texts collected here to be

primarily written texts.

I: Advertisements

In her study, Peters is largely concerned in the area of persuasive discourse with

tracing the elements that are effective in getting the theme across, (1986). The same

concern is fundamental in all advertising. In both the Chevron ad and the 50 Peaks Hiking

Boot ad, emotion is the prime means of suasion.

1) Do not disturb, (May 1, 1995: 62). Chevron magazine advertisement in

Newsweek, 85 words.

Summary: This advertisement wishes to instill on the part of the reading

public confidence in the company and admiration for the company’s

compassionate stance on environmental issues. The ad consists of a full-page

picture of a large fish on a fertile ocean floor, with the text embedded in this

piece of artwork.

i) Field

Thesis: Chevron does not disturb nature.

Amount and Kind of –

a) Formal Logic and/or scientific Exposition: 0

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Notably, there is no attempt made at formal logic in this advertisement, no

induction, deduction, etc. There is of course an implicit cause and effect assumption

underlying the ad, i.e., because we are so environmentally conscious, you should buy our

product. Thus, the logic of the ad is enthymemic.

b) Support: 0. There is also a notable lack of support to back the central claim

in this ad. How does the reader know that Chevron has not disturbed the ecosystem along

the Dugong Reef? The reader must take the claim in the ad at face value.

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: 0. As expected, there is no raw

material here to classify.

d) Value Laden Descriptors: At the most basic level the ad uses highly

emotionally charged vocabulary: “liquid glass” (– the ocean is crystal clear, totally

unpolluted), “coral treasure,” “cradles life that is so delicate,” “harm it forever,” etc.

The vocabulary here is emotionally packed with concepts of good and evil. Chevron is

“good.” Do not consider it to be an evil polluter.

i) Tenor:

Charge to the Reader: Trust Chevron; implicit charge: buy Chevron gasoline.

Interpersonal Strategies: In her study, Peters calls “interpersonal strategies”

those strategies which a writer uses to connect/relate to the reader. The assumption is that

such strategies are absent in the more reference-focused scientific discourse and much

more present in heavily persuasive discourse. As expected, the latter part of the

assumption proves true in the case of advertising. One way of connecting writer and

reader present in the Chevron ad is to establish some “common ground” between the

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two. Here, Chevron posits that all readers value pristine nature, that no reader will want

an oil company to destroy nature. The purpose of the ad is to assure the reader that

Chevron too holds these values, and will protect the reader’s values. This particular ad

uses only one other means of directly impacting the reader, the rhetorical question, but

the question here is central to the ad itself: “Do people go out of their way to avoid

crowds?” To understand the rhetorical importance of this question, however, we must

address the subject of ethical emotional appeals.

Appeals to Ethos: From Aristotle onwards, “ethos” has had the rhetorical

meaning of the speaker’s (or writer’s) personal integrity. Effective orators/writers, it

seems, have always known that establishing the reputation of honor and trustworthiness of

the “messenger” has enormous persuasive impact on the message one is trying to convey –

hence the expression ‘take my word for it.’ In terms of the Chevron ad, the entire ad is an

appeal to ethos. Thus, while the underlying message of the advertisement is: buy our

product, nowhere is this stated in the text. Instead, the text seeks to instill the reader’s

confidence in the company by establishing the fact that Chevron goes out of its way to

protect nature: i.e., “Do people go out of their way to avoid crowds? —People Do.”

(Chevron logo). All other things being equal, the assumption is, the consumer will, as a

result of seeing this ad, choose the environmentally safe Chevron product instead of

another brand which may not be so environmentally conscious. Thus, the entire verbal

text of the Chevron ad consists of an ethical appeal, although this is not the only type of

appeal made.

Appeal to Pathos. There is one central appeal made to the “pathos” or to the

emotions, feelings of the reader here as well. Above all, a feeling of well-being, of things

39

being as they should be, is invoked by the picture of the ad depicting a happy, thriving

ocean scene. This sense of well-being is then reinforced by the story-like wording of the

text “Below the liquid glass, below shadows and air, breathes a neon city where eels roar

and turtles fly.”

iii) Mode: Language

In this ad, language plays an ancillary role, that is, it is not the only means by

which this ad communicates its message. Here the words are embedded in a full-page

picture. In both ads, the picture adds to the emotive power of the text.

2) Hi Tec 50 Peaks Hiking Boots, (February 1992: 69). Advertisement in Sierra

magazine,

84 words.

Summary: This ad describes the company’s innovation with boots; the

enjoyment and use of these boots is linked by the advertisers with the fate of

the national parks.

Thesis: 50 Peaks hiking boots are the best; therefore, they will “last forever.”

Amount and Kind of –

a) Formal Logic and/or scientific Exposition: 0

b) Support: 0. Only the claim is made: 50 Peaks . . . taking the hiking boot to

new heights through a combination of technology, design, and trail-tested materials to

provide the best boot for all your outdoor adventures.”

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: 0

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d) Value Laden Descriptors: use of superlative: “best boot”; expressions

connoting exhilaration and fear: “new heights,” “help save”; and absolutes: “enjoy

forever.”

ii) Tenor:

Charge to the Reader: Buy our boots/help save the national parks.

Interpersonal Strategies: There is a clear common ground of values presupposed

by this ad, which is made possible by the specialized nature of the publication it is in.

Because this magazine, Sierra, symbolizes environmental consciousness, the

advertisement assumes that their goal to preserve U.S. National Parks is shared by the

reader. It is this assumption that makes the advertisement work. (The phrase “our

national parks” is mentioned twice.) In addition to common ground expressions, there are

five imperatives in the ad: “enjoy forever”; “then enjoy the beauty of our national parks”;

“look for details”; “find out how”; and “take the step.” These of course connect writer and

reader by directly addressing the latter.

Appeal to Ethos: Hi Tec 50 Peaks boot company establishes its ethical credentials

by showing, like Chevron, how it is saving the environment. Thus, if readers go to the

store outlet they can “find out how [they] and Hi Tec can save our National Parks.” This,

it is to be imagined, is a good reason to go to the store and buy their boots.

Appeal to Pathos: There are three emotional appeals in this ad, the first being an

appeal to the reader’s visual and physical pleasure. Immediately the reader is struck by

the beautiful picture on the page and lulled into thinking that she should be climbing the

mountains portrayed there. “Enjoy forever,” says the ad. The ad then instills in the reader

41

a desire for adventure. The 50 Peaks product is touted as the best boot “for all your

outdoor adventures. Whatever your mountain. . . . 50 Peaks.” In a quick about-face,

finally, come the subtle arousals of fear and guilt in the reader, as the ‘enjoy forever’

message becomes qualified by the “saving” the parks message. The reader is seized by

the uneasy feeling that inaction on her part, that is, failing to visit the boot store, will lead

to a loss of the parks. As with the Chevron ad, this hiking boot ad artfully manipulates the

reader.

iii) Mode: Language

Ancillary – Like the Chevron ad, the Hi Tech ad is embedded in a picture. The

upper part of the ad consists of a snapshot of a mountain sunset; the bottom section shows

a pair of boots superimposed on a sandy trail which is marked by the rugged footprints of

the boots. The logo “50 Peaks: Hi Tec” is also superimposed, all of which is surrounded

by a border composed of the names of the 50 national parks in America. The entire ad

plays with the name of the boots and the 50 national parks the advertisers wish to be

associated with; thus, when the ad says “enjoy them forever,” we do not know whether it

is the boots or the national parks that are being referred to.

II: Letters to the Editor

Because of the greater length afforded to this genre of persuasion, there is much

more latitude for letter-to-the-editor authors to develop their message. As expected, in the

two letters I analyzed a variety of persuasive strategies were utilized.

42

3) Harkin, J. (April 22, 1994: 12A). Beware of the latest anti-environmental strategy

[Letter to the Editor]. USA Today. Approx. 260 words.

Summary: The letter informs the public about a strategy called the “wise

use” movement, which, according to the writer, is meant to harm or

circumvent existing environmental laws. Writer wants readers to actively

block implementation of the wise use “takings” idea.

Field:

Thesis: The reader should make sure that legislators vote no on the “wise

use” bill.

Amount and Kind of –

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition: two definitions — “With a

common-sense sounding name, the wise-use movement is a coalition of over 500 major

mining, logging, oil, gas and commercial interests”; “Takings is an idea resulting from a

radical interpretation of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees just

compensation when the government confiscates property”; cause and effect — “because

of this situation, environmental gains may be curtailed”; deduction — use of example (see

below).

b) Support: two hypothetical examples — “For example, a company forbidden

to dump toxic waste into a public water supply would have to spend money to upgrade its

pollution-reducing capabilities”; “Under the takings concept, taxpayers would have to pay

the company for its ‘losses.’”

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: 0

d) Value-Laden Descriptors: The adjectives in “common sense sounding

name.” Use of quotation marks to undermine the validity of a concept: “’wise-use’”; the

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politically loaded term “green agenda,” which is also in quotation marks. “Radical

interpretation,” “this stealth campaign,” negative terminology is used well when

describing those whom the writer opposes.

ii) Tenor

Charge to the Reader: (explicitly stated) “Do what you can to make your

legislators aware of this stealth campaign against our planet Earth,” i.e., write to your

congressman and tell him why you are against the “Wise Use” scheme.

Interpersonal Strategies:

Common ground is established between the writer and the reader through the use

of the first person plural “we.” i.e., “Just when we [emphasis mine] thought there was

something to celebrate this Earth Day…” Here the author is in effect creating an

audience by addressing herself only to those people who share the same pro-

environmental values as she. This strategy of tapping into the values of the reader, which

we also saw in the above two texts, illustrates well Burke’s idea of the essence of

persuasion, that is, identification between writer (speaker) and audience. As Kinneavy

(1971) puts it: “the decoder is, presumably, divided in attitude from the encoder; otherwise

there is no point to persuasion. Thus the purpose of persuasion is to achieve identification

of speaker and hearer, according to Burke. This persuasion of the hearer may be to some

new intellectual conviction, or to new emotional attitude, or it may be a direct inducement

to physical action,” (219). In this case, as in the above two, the writer does not wish to

change attitudes, but rather appeals to those in the audience who share the same values

and cites them to action. And again, this incitement to action, unlike the situation in the

Chevron text, is explicit and in second person: “do what you can.” Finally, one must note

44

the two imperatives in this text, the one just mentioned and the one in the title: “Beware

of ....” All of these elements connect the writer directly to the reader and allow the former

to have sway in the text.

Appeal to Ethos: Another weapon in the author’s arsenal of persuasion is the

latter’s credentials. By using the above-mentioned “we” in the opening “just when we

thought . . . “ the author not only identifies with the reader as being in the same camp, but

notifies the reader of her authority in this matter: the author is pro-environmentalist and is

obviously well-informed in environmental issues. This is a good instance of Halliday’s

“radical” view of functionalism in language in the sense that it shows how even one word

can perform overlapping functions in a text.

Appeal to Pathos: The emotions roused in this text are those of fear. The

reader’s concern is touched off by the very title of the letter, “Beware of” and remains the

central issue of the text. The writer’s chief antagonists, the mining, logging, oil, gas and

commercial interests, are portrayed as corrupt enemies of the reader. Thus such language

as “scheme,” “tactics,” “radical,” to characterize the anti-environmentalists maintain the

reader’s feelings of distrust and apprehension throughout the text.

iii) Mode: Language

—Almost Constitutive. Embedded in the text is a symbol of a green earth with a

leaf in the center. This, of course, is a non-verbal element of persuasion. If the leaf

graphic was added by the editors, however, then one could say that the language is entirely

constitutive.

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4) Reilly, W. K. (August 15, 1992: 18). Memo on Rio Summit focused on U.S. gains

[Letter to the Editor]. The New York Times. App. 264 words.

Summary: this letter is both a critique of the media, which the writer believes

to be unfair in its reporting, as well as a somewhat emotional defense of

Bush’s environmental policies.

i) Field:

Thesis: The press is not giving fair coverage to the Bush administration’s

positive environmental record.

Amount and Kind of

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition:

There is a 27 word summary of the author’s memorandum in this letter, a major

point of the text.

b) Support: examples of successes (69 words); quasi-support: adducing of

verifiable claims based on the authority of the writer, (63 words), much more support

would be needed to make this “scientific” however.

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: 0

d) Value-Laden Descriptors: Morally charged words: “the problem Bush has

experienced is getting fair coverage”; “a fair reading makes clear ...”; “a responsible

course of action”’ “a bold initiative”; “the distortion of the intent and content of my

memorandum”; “the conference was a success”; comparatives/superlatives: “stronger

laws,” “spends more money.”

46

ii) Tenor:

Charge to the Reader: implicit charge — Don’t trust the media; support George

Bush.

Interpersonal Strategies: There are very few general interpersonal strategies in

this letter. The only ones of mention are the two first person references: “my,” “that we

ultimately did not sign.”

Appeal to Ethos: There are two types of ethical appeal present in this text. The

first, oddly enough, is the theme itself of the letter. Thus, if one counts the number of

words which function as bolstering up the reputation of the writer, and hence the Bush

administration, one could say that 67% of the letter consists of a direct ethical appeal. The

first part of this appeal can be seen in the paragraph defending a letter written by the

author previously: “The distortion of the intent and content of my memorandum on the

Earth Summit in Rio to Environmental Protection Agency employees is symptomatic of

the problem the Bush administration has experienced in getting fair news coverage for an

environmental record that is substantive, significant and impressive,” (46 words). The

second thematic ethical appeal points to the technical accomplishments of the Bush

administration compared with those of other nations at the summit: “The United States

has stronger laws, spends more money and takes the protection of endangered wildlife

more seriously than any other country on earth. That we ultimately did not sign this

convention reflects serious concerns relating to financing and protection of intellectual

property rights that had nothing to do with protecting biological diversity,” (63 words).

The second type of ethical appeal implicit in the letter rests on the credentials of

the writer, William K. Reilly, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

47

Appeal to Pathos: The emotions of the reader are only tangentially engaged in

this letter by the brief references to the audience’s sense of fair play. That is, the writer

wishes to present himself as an aggrieved party who has been victimized by hostile

players (i.e., the media and the environment). This can be seen in the wording: “the

distortion,” and “a fair reading.” These expressions are meant primarily to evoke

agreement, but they probably also to some extent evoke sympathy from the readers for a

victim of injustice.

iii) Mode: Language — Constitutive

III: Letter to Constituents

This item is similar to the political infomercials and advertisements typically run

on television. Here Congressman Waxman seeks to inform his constituents of the

positive role he is playing on their behalf in Washington. He discusses two main issues in

the letter: healthcare and environmental successes. Here I focus only on the portion of the

newsletter that deals with what Waxman is doing to keep our air and water clean. Of

interest is how this letter might differ structurally from regular Letters to the Editor and

Editorials which often are just as politically charged.

5) Waxman, H. (March 1994). Keeping Our Air and Drinking Water Clean; this

sample is taken from Mr. Waxman’s monthly Letter to Constituents, approx. 200 words.

i) Field:

Thesis: Waxman assures us that our drinking water is safe and our air is healthy

to breathe.

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Amount and Kind of:

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition: 0 — The letter is informative, not

explanatory or expository.9

b) Support: 0 — There is no support given for any of the claims.

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: 0

d) Value-Laden Descriptors: “I strongly oppose this effort”; “one of my

proudest achievements,” “I’m concerned that ...”

ii) Tenor:

Charge to the Reader: a) explicit ethical charge: have confidence in Henry

Waxman; b) implicit transactional10 charge: reelect Waxman.

Interpersonal Strategies: Waxman employs three interpersonal strategies:

common ground reference, use of imperatives, and first/second person pronouns.

Common ground is established through the “here and now” effect of present and present

perfect verb tenses. This is reinforced by Waxman’s use of the first and second person:

“our drinking water is safe,” “our air is healthy to breathe,” “we will continue oversight to

ensure...” “I sponsored,” “I strongly oppose,” “I count it as,” “one of my proudest

achievements,” and “I’m concerned that ...” With the use of “we” Waxman eliminates the

distance between himself and the reader. Waxman also appeals to all readers’ basic

values, i.e., “[a]ssuring that our drinking water is safe and our air is healthy to breathe ...”

Waxman then reaches out to the reader and shakes him up as it were with his use of modal

9 For a fuller discussion, see p. 80

10 I use the word “transactional” here in the Brittonian conative (1970) sense in which the speaker uses language to

get the addressee to do something, as reported by Halliday and Hasan (1989: 17).

49

imperatives: thus, “[n]ow, specific measures must be implemented and actual controls

installed.” His absolute injunctions show the reader that he is in control. They also touch

upon the readers’ fears that if these things are not done, the reader will suffer. One must

note that the emotional component of this letter lies principally in the fact that Waxman

provides no support for his claims. He generates an urgency in his message to

constituents by alarming them with no evidence and basically tells them that to avert

disaster they must put faith in his actions. Emotion is involved here, not reason.

Appeal to Ethos: Basically, the overriding message of this letter is an ethical one,

despite its purported public health/environmental significance. In sum, Waxman portrays

himself as a savior of the people. This is seen through the pictures shown on the page and

throughout the wording of the letter. Thus, Waxman shows himself as opposing the

weakening of “essential legislation”: “I strongly oppose this effort [i.e., to dilute certain

legislation]” he writes, “and will continue to work to renew the Safe Drinking Water Act

without weakening the law’s public health protections.” He’s an enactor of basic

legislation: “The landmark Clean Air Act of 1990 took ten years to enact into law,” he

points out, “and I count it as one of my proudest achievements in Congress.” Finally,

Waxman has it made known that he is a sponsor of basic legislation: “In 1986, Congress

passed legislation I sponsored that established a system for keeping contaminants out of

drinking water and ensuring the public was notified if standards were violated.”

Appeal to Pathos: As mentioned above, the emotional impact on the audience is

twofold: 1) the ad arouses the readers’ fears of bad drinking water and fears that 2) the

legislation preventing this evil is coming under attack – “Now that the law is under attack

by water companies seeking to relax its requirements.”

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iii) Mode: Language

—Almost Constitutive: there are accompanying pictures of Waxman on the

pages.

IV: Editorials

Compared with newspaper letters to the editor and political letters to constituents,

there seem few novel traits to be found in the “editorial” genre. Of note in all the above

are possibilities for structural and stylistic variation.

6) ‘Greening’ of Vermont (June 29, 1993: 18). The Christian Science Monitor. approx.

520 words.

Summary: this editorial advocates and defends a broader-based

concept of environmental issues, namely, the inclusion of an area’s

“beauty” and “serenity” as environmental concerns. These are

being threatened, according to the author, by megamalls and discount

stores.

i) Field:

Thesis: We must begin to reconsider environmental issues on a broader basis:

considering such elements as beauty and serenity as parts of the environment to be

protected.

Amount and Kind of:

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition: (0). There is not a great deal of

definition, induction, rigorous deduction etc. to be found in this text. It is largely

informative: fact plus interpretation.

51

b) Support: All claims here are either supported or attributed to an authority. It

is, for example, the “National Trust for Historic Preservation” which has placed Vermont

first on their endangered state list; it is the President of the National Association whose

fears are discussed; it is the Chamber of Commerce who calls the placement of Vermont

atop the list as a “gross overreaction,” and finally it is “critics” who have brought forth the

remaining facts presented. One also finds an example by analogy here. Quotation,

therefore, is the chief source of support for this text.

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: 0

d) Value-Laden Descriptors: this text is marked not so much by individual

adjectives that weigh the writer’s opinion, but by complete sentences that simply express

value judgments – exactly what one would expect to find in editorial writing.

ii) Tenor:

Charge to the Reader: Expand your concept of environmental issues and

measures, i.e., agree with the claims made here.

Interpersonal Strategies: Two main interpersonal strategies are pursued here: 1)

establishment of common ground between encoder and decoder; and 2) direct address

through rhetorical questions. First of all, one must note that the text is framed in a ‘here

and now’ scenario meant to include the reader. “At a time when the list of endangered

species and habitats seems to grow longer by the day,” opens the article, “Americans have

become accustomed to hearing environmental alarms.” This opening, however, not only

succeeds in constructing a shared time between the reader and writer, it also addresses the

reader’s probable state of mind. According to Katherine Rowan’s explanatory theories

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(1988), this approach of first approximating the reader or learner’s current understanding

of an issue and then expanding from there is a perfect example of the “transformative”

approach to explanation. That is, instead of just presenting new facts to the reader in what

is referred to by Rowan as a “quasi-scientific” approach to explanation, the writer seeks to

transform the reader’s present concept. This requires the writer (or speaker) to know or

guess at the reader’s/learner’s starting base of knowledge. As I will argue later, this

approach to explanation also applies to persuasion. You can see the writer actually

slipping into the mind of the average reader and expressing his probable questions in the

form of rhetorical questions in the text. Thus, “But who could have predicted that the

latest candidate for protection is the verdant landscape of an entire state?” can be seen as

the reader’s probable response to (and surprise at) the information thus far presented.

There are two other strategic rhetorical questions which do the actual “transforming.” The

first of these again takes the reader’s point of view: “Is this first-place standing a ‘gross

overreaction,’ as the head of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce has charged?” The

second then subtly introduces the writer’s point of view which he will try to persuade the

reader to adopt: “Or is it a legitimate way to help environmental groups capture public

support as they guard against overdevelopment?” Finally, the answer the writer gives

eliminates any point of contention between the reader and writer. Thus the answer:

“Probably both”; and the mechanism of persuading the reader is now in full swing. Of

course, such a “transformative” view of learning or in this case persuasion, simply gives a

name to the age-old injunction of the rhetors to understand your audience and to frame

your discourse with them firmly in mind.

53

Appeal to Ethos: 0

Appeal to Pathos: The chief emotion evoked and exploited in this editorial is the

reader’s fear. Clearly, one need only separate out the urgent and unsettling vocabulary

used throughout the text, to see that the writer’s goal is on an elemental level to alarm the

reader. A sampling of the typical call of alarm seen in many of these texts is evident

below. Thus, in this case at risk is

The verdant landscape of an entire state . . . the whole state is at siege

. . . Vermont, all 9,609 square miles of it, has just been placed at the

tip of the 1993 list of ‘Most Endangered Historic Places’ . . . The non-

profit group’s concern that a proliferation of megamalls and chain

discount stores threatens the area’s beauty and serenity . . . It sounds a

warning . . . Once a rain forest has been felled, for instance, its

ancient trees and complex ecosystems are gone – for good. . . . Closer

to home . . . there’s no going back to a bucolic state . . . ‘Save the

cows’ . . . if it alerts people a problem before it’s too late for anything

but regrets.

iii) Mode: Language – Constitutive

7) Porter, E.J. (June 29, 1993: 20). View from Capitol Hill: Earth Summit goals

essential. The Christian Science Monitor. Approx. 520 words.

Summary: Informs the reader of the newly agreed upon Earth

Summit accords; points out a problem with enforcing these

agreements. Draws an analogy with the Helsinki accords and

proposes establishment of a monitoring committee.

i) Field:

Thesis: The goal of the Earth Summit accords are worthwhile; we now need to

establish a new organization to enforce these accords.

Amount and Kind of:

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition: 0. (enthymemic logic)

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b) Support: 0. (The only support is implicit in the writer’s authority.)

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: 0

d) Value-Laden Descriptors: Superlatives and adjectives of emphasis: “one of

her greatest success stories . . . historic conference . . . the consequences of failing to

enforce them are enormous . . . there are new and urgent challenges.”

Again, in this type of genre, most value judgments are spelled out in complete

sentences, as there is very little raw data to qualify adjectivally.

ii) Tenor:

Charge to the Reader: Support the idea of establishing a monitoring commission

for the Earth Summit agreements.

Interpersonal Strategies: Two principal interpersonal strategies are pursued:

establishment of common ground inclusive of the reader and use of the first and second

person pronouns. As in the above editorial, the common ground established here is one

of time reference, specifically, reference to current events. Thus: “This month we are

celebrating . . ..” The ‘here and now’ aspect of the current events timeframe is reinforced

by use of the present perfect: “I have introduced legislation . . .. The solidarity between

writer and reader is then solidified through a heavy use of the pronoun “we.” Thus, the

above we in “this month we are celebrating . . .” as well as the following: “This must not

be the legacy we leave to future generations ... The Cold War is behind us... As we join

people around the world . . . we must recognize . . . demanding our leadership . . . our

commitment to human rights . . . will we have the foresight . . . our global environment . . .

enjoyed by our children and our grandchildren . . . every day that we delay . . .” etc. One

55

also sees strategic use of the rhetorical question in the conclusion to this editorial: “Will

we have the foresight to do the same for the global environment?”

Appeal to Ethos: There is a strategic ethical appeal-by-association in this

editorial. The writer here likens his proposal to a very successful proposal in the past, the

proposal to establish the Helsinki commission, which was brought together by Millicent

Fenwick. The writer here capitalizes on her success: “My late colleague, UC Rep.

Millicent Fenwick (R) of New Jersey, had an answer: the Helsinki Commission. Her

proposal for this joint legislative-executive branch organization has been one of this

century’s greatest success stories… I have introduced legislation to do for the Earth

Summit what Ms. Fenwick did for the Helsinki Accords....”

Appeal to Pathos: Again, a large component of the persuasive power of this text

lies in its arousal of the reader’s fears; these are underscored by a dramatic emphasis on

the importance of the issue as well as its urgency. “The agreements produced at UNCED

have the potential to change the course of history. However, the consequences of failing

to enforce them are enormous. Every day that we delay, scarce natural resources

disappear, the fragile ecosystems that sustain the earth are savaged, and the human

suffering exacerbated by our neglect multiplies. This must not be the legacy we leave to

future generations.” The writer points to other possible disasters if his ideas are not

adopted. These include “global climate change, ocean pollution, deforestation,

biodiversity loss, and persistent poverty.”

iii) Mode: Language – Constitutive

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8) Don’t water down the crucial desert bill (April 18, 1994: B6). The LA Times.

approx. 610 words.

Summary: a controversial desert bill has moved to the House: action must be

taken quickly before “the congressional session expires in the fall” and the

package collapses. Use of battle terminology.

i) Field:

Thesis: Voters need to force legislators to adopt the California Desert Protection

Act now up for vote in the House of Representatives.

Amount and Kind of:

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition: 0. This is a largely factual, not

theoretical piece.

b) Support: Fact based, more value judgments and narration in this piece than

claims made needing support.

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: 0

d) Value-Laden Descriptors: Adjectives of emphasis, adjectives denoting

positive and negative value judgments: “the Senate bill is a modern landmark . . .

nearsighted opponents . . . were visionaries”; “opponents are likely to try to water down

the already much compromised legislation”; “an obnoxious provision”; “also there is the

danger that . . .”; “the crucial desert bill.”

ii) Tenor

Charge to the Reader: Take political action.

Interpersonal Strategies:

57

─common ground: Use of the ‘here and now’ strategy. The full discussion is

put forth in present tense: “The House now takes up its version.”

─rhetorical question: (an indirect assertion) “It is known today as Central Park,

and who would deny that New York’s 19th Century leaders were visionaries?”

─imperatives (or modal equivalents thereof): 1) Don’t Water Down the Crucial

Desert Bill (title); 2) It must be swift, (i.e., let’s make this swift); 3) We must not miss it,

(i.e., don’t miss it); 4) Care needed . . . (make sure that legislators are careful).

Appeal to Ethos: It must be noted that this editorial is speaking to a certain

segment of readers only, those who espouse environmental goals and find favor with

democratic figureheads. Given these readers, two ethical appeals are present in the

editorial: 1) The picture of Dianne Feinstein, which adds authority to the appeal, and 2)

Verbal appeals to sympathetic figureheads; “But with two California Democrats holding

Senate seats, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and a sympathetic Democrat in the

White House, the seemingly moribund bill came to life even in the face of opposition from

some congressional Democrats. Feinstein, the main backer...”

Appeal to Pathos: There are two main emotional appeals made to the reader – 1)

appeals to fear: “But the eight-year battle is not over . . . opponents . . . are likely to try

to water down the already much compromised legislation”; “the bill could be hobbled”;

and 2) the message of urgency: “It must be swift, for if the House fails by summer to take

the bill to conference with the Senate, the package could collapse before the congressional

session expires in the fall”; “Much the same opportunity offers itself to 20th Century

California. We must not miss it.”

58

iii) Mode: Language – Almost Constitutive. The ad shows a picture of Diane Feinstein

with the caption: “Champion of the Desert Bill.”

V: Feature Story

The feature story is a newspaper genre intended to give a more thorough

treatment of a particular subject matter than a mere news article can. My question is: how

persuasive is a feature story?

9) Knickerbocker, B. (Jan. 12, 1993: 8-9). Environmentalism extends its reach. The

Christian Science Monitor. Approx. 1,452 words.

Summary: The thesis of the text is that: “[t]he environmental movement in

the United States today stands poised to have greater influence than ever

before.” The article describes and analyzes the extent and future of the

current U.S. environmental movement. The style is largely informative, not

expository.

i) Field:

Thesis: (verbatim from opening paragraph) ─ “The environmental movement in

the United States today stands poised to have greater influence than ever before.”

Amount and Kind of:

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition: 0

This article is informative with an approving viewpoint, no exposition involved.

b) Support: 100% of claims are supported ─ mainly quotes and facts,

marshaled after each claim, either straightaway or later on.

Persuasive Position Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: “in return,” “for example,”

“but,” repeated several times.

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d) Value-Laden Descriptors: Several: “the environmental movement in the

United States stands poised to have greater influence than ever before . . . it has seen

extraordinary growth... This is the fasted growing political movement in the country . . .

all over the country some of our best volunteers . . . were environmentalists.” Note the

explicit viewpoint in the conclusion.

ii) Tenor:

Charge to the Reader: No explicit charge; underlying assumption that the reader

approves of all the facts presented in the piece; secondary charge (*not central charge of

the piece) to environmentalists: Continue the job and address the criticism brought up in

the article.

Interpersonal Strategies: As mentioned above, this analysis, much like the Hi-

Tec boot advertisement and the Desert Bill editorial, presupposes or addresses itself to an

audience who favors environmentalism. The only interpersonal marker found in this text

is, in terms of values, a rather neutral rhetorical question: “Just how effective has all this

activism been?”

Appeal to Ethos: 0

Appeal to Pathos: Very little. Presence of superlatives which generate

excitement on the part of the reader. See Persuasive Position Taking Markers below.

iii) Mode: Language: Almost Constitutive. (Includes a picture of Alaska’s Arctic

National Wildlife Refuge.

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VI: Speeches

The two speeches analyzed here were definitely composed beforehand and thus

cannot be considered as spontaneous oral discourse. I find them worthy of study as they

represent two dimensions: a written editorial-like text plus a direct interpersonal element.

How will the speeches differ from editorials?

10) Ling, J. T. (June 2, 1993). Design for the environment: the challenge for the year

2000 and beyond. Vital Speeches of the Day, City News Publishing Co., (Inc. 1911),

Mount Pleasant, S.C.; approx. 3,136 words.

This presentation was given by Joseph T. Ling, 3M Vice President,

Environmental Engineering and Pollution Control. Delivered before the

National Industrial Waste Minimization conference, Taipei, Taiwan, June 2,

1993.

Summary: The thesis is that production and resource conservation are

inseparable if first world society is to sustain its current standard of living. If

such a concept is not adopted, resources will diminish. The speech provides a

background of the environmental movement and a critique: production is not

incompatible with environmental goals. Three concepts are presented:

“conserver society,” sustainable development, and design for the

environment.

i) Field:

Thesis: We need to become a “conserver” society – not overly environmental,

not blindly capitalistic, but rather, striking a mean between these two positions.

Amount and Kind of:

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition: 0. Text is informative with a

viewpoint, not expository.

b) Support: facts, anecdotes. Facts are based solely on the authority and

knowledge of the speaker.

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Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: “first,” “second,” “thus”

d) Value-Laden Descriptors: Entire text is value-laden

ii) Tenor:

Charge to the Audience: The audience is an audience of experts in the industrial

waste management field; the speaker wishes them to adopt the idea of a “conserver

society.”

Interpersonal Strategies:

This speech begins with a recounting of the common history between speaker

and audience: a background of the environmental movement is provided and a discussion

of the current situation for all present. Present tense verbs are plentiful as well as present

perfect. As in many of the previous texts there is a heavy use of first person. Unlike the

editorials, however, the entire speech is given in first person with excursions into third

person. There are 15 instances of “I,” 14 of “we” indicating speaker + public, and 3

instances of “we” referring to the speaker and his company. This is the first text marked

by the appearance of personal anecdotes. In addition to common ground indicators, the

speaker also makes use of several modal equivalents of imperatives. Thus: “We also

must not lose sight of the environment,” (i.e., don’t lose sight of); “We need to sustain the

environment . . . absolutely everything that goes into the north side of a factory should

come out of the south side as a product . . . all sectors must cooperate... The public must

demand... Government must consider... Industry must design...” (i.e., Sustain the

environment! Make sure that everything that goes into the north side...; Cooperate!

Demand! Consider! Etc.). Finally, the speaker asks two rhetorical questions, a) asking

62

the reader to corroborate his claim, and b) elucidating a new topic: “After all, what is

waste but a defect in the manufacturing process?” and “What do I mean by ‘Design for the

Environment?’ All of these things are meant to engage the reader directly into this topic.

One could characterize all these as decoder-oriented elements.

Appeal to Ethos: There are six mentions made about the speaker’s own

exemplary experiences in the 3M company. These are meant as direct support of his

claims as well as a bolstering of the authority of the speaker.

Appeal to Pathos: 0

iii) Mode: Language: (Ancillary11)/Constitutive

11) Evans, B. (January 13, 1993). The Endangered Species Act: implications for the

future. Vital Speeches of the Day, City News Publishing Co., (Inc. 1911), Mount

Pleasant, S.C.; approx. 5,280 words.

This presentation was given by Brock Evans, Vice President for National

Issues, National Audubon Society. Delivered before the Rotary Club of

Seattle, Washington, January 13, 1993.

Summary: This speech is a plea to save the endangered species and

ecosystems of the planet. The entire text is incredibly calibrated to break the

audience’s resistance to the message, stir up their deepest fears and untapped

reservoirs of self-interest, deflect biases, minimize negatives, and clear up

misconceptions. The listeners here, businessmen, are inherently hostile to the

unfriendly economic message of the speaker; the speaker thus tries in every

way possible to identify with them: flattery, admission of the lack of

popularity of the message, anecdotes which indicate that the speaker is in tune

with where the audience is at, that is, identifies with their interests (sports is

one example) and fears.

11 In this unique type of discourse, the written speech, I believe the function of language to be both ancillary and

constitutive in nature, depending on how the audience receives the message. In its original context the audience of

the two speeches here studied had recourse to aural and visual signals put forth by the speaker – i.e., stress,

intonation, gestures – which furthered the communication of the latter’s message. This clearly makes the language

of the discourse ancillary in nature. From my current perspective as a reader, however, not having been present at

the Rotary Club in Seattle when this speech was given, the language is purely constitutive in nature.

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i) Field:

Thesis: We must continue to support, and even expand, the Endangered Species

Act.

Amount and Kind of:

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition: Problem-Solution format,

enthymemic logic.

b) Support: Heavy factual support; credible due to authority of the speaker.

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: 0

d) Value-Laden Descriptors: Saturated with value-laden commentary if not

isolated adjectives.

ii) Tenor:

Charge to the Audience: A) Don’t weaken the Endangered Species Act; and B)

Help us save the environment: “We can do better than we have done so far. But we all

have a duty to do better, now that we understand what the Endangered Species Act is all

about. We have a duty to face this biodiversity extinction crisis head on, and do everything

we can to prevent it. It is no longer a matter just for biologists, physicians, or

environmentalists – I say it is a matter for everyone in this room to be concerned. And

perhaps you even more, as community leaders, so successful in your own businesses and

professions – because you have great influence and people listen to you. . . . Well, our

time has come; this crisis is our crisis, and this is our moment in history – not some other

time, not in the past and not in the future – but now. The extinctions are going on now,

64

not in some other time, and not in some other place. Our time has come. . . . I believe that

it is the duty of every one of us here to do everything in our power to pass on every

species and every acre that we possibly can into the future. . . . If we can succeed in this

venture at this moment in our history, that, I say, will be our gift of love, not only to the

whole American people, but to all future generations across the planet. I am very

optimistic that we can do it if we all work together. Thank you.”

Interpersonal Strategies: The speaker here uses 11 rhetorical questions, 12 quasi

imperatives (i.e., let’s, we need to, we must, etc.), 81 first person singular, 100 first

person plural, and 9 second person references, and consistent present and present

perfect tenses. At every moment the speaker is reaching out to his audience and urgently

trying to persuade them by relating to them.

Appeal to Ethos: Three main ethical appeals are presented here: 1)

demonstration of the sincerity of the speaker’s sentiment “and those of you who know me

know my passion for this special Northwest land . . ..”; 2) demonstration of depth of

sentiment: “[my passion] goes even deeper, for it caused me to leave a law practice here

in order to devote my life to fight and help keep ou8r way of life, keep the Northwest the

special place it is . . . [it has taken me] finally into ‘exile’”; and 3) commitment to his

environmental goals.

Appeal to Pathos: Of all the texts in this study, this speech goes furthest in

emotional appeals to persuade. The strategy is as follows:

1) Flattery of the Audience. I.e., The Rotary Club is a prestigious group,

Seattle is the most beautiful part of the country.

2) Identification with the audience. The writer/speaker shares the same home,

will suffer with the necessary reforms, shares certain values (i.e., distrust of

Washington), common desire among environmentalists and businessmen

65

alike to see antagonistic controversies end.

3) Understands audience’s values. This theme is not fun, sports is more fun;

speaker/writer understands the audience’s antipathies, given recent history,

towards this subject, airs out the understandable point of view of the

developers, etc.

4) Seeks to personify, in a positive way, the opposing camp; self-deprecation. “’Hey, things really are getting better around here’ I thought to myself; this

time they are waving at me with all five fingers, instead of the usual single

one.”

5) Introduces theme reluctantly. Seeks out the audience’s sympathy in not

condemning the bearer of bad news.

6) Defines what the Endangered Species Act is not.

7) Arouses an Apocalyptic fear in the audience: There is a need to address the

theme now because:

The ideas it represents are concepts of great power and great significance to

our common future as a human society... The issues it deals with . . . are,

literally, matters of life and death…. It is really about something much larger,

it is about this whole planet of ours, this little blue planet that is our only

home, and the only one that we will ever really have.... Because, you see, the

Endangered Species Act is really about a crisis of worldwide proportions – an

extinction crisis…. [Extinction] of all species is taking place so fast that

evolutionary response and ecosystem reorganization is impossible.... This

crisis is one that, therefore, affects our whole planet; it affects our health, it

affects our food, and therefore our whole survival as a human race.... Millions

upon millions of other acres are now also gone, and with them, millions and

millions of Yew trees are also gone – in fact, about 95 percent of the original

Northwest forest has now vanished off the face of the earth, never to return

again . . .. Across the globe the same thing is happening….” etc.

8) Instills the idea of irremediable nature of the losses. Five major instances

of emphasis on the concepts “forever,” and “never again” etc.

9) Caters to the audience’s sense of self-interest. Writer/speaker notes that

medicines will vanish undiscovered harming people and crops. Personal

anecdote of a friend’s child who was saved by a medicine found in some old

forest – now threatened.

66

10) Makes analogies. This technique is chosen so that the general audience can

grasp the undesirable limitations of the current act.

11) Begins and ends speech with tales of the speaker’s/writer’s personal

epiphanies. Writer/Speaker recounts tearful experiences evoking empathy

and respect.

iii) Mode: Language: (Ancillary12/Constitutive

VII: Journal Articles

Given Kinneavy’s classification (1971), one would expect scientific journal

articles dealing with the environment to most probably be reference type discourse. One

would expect rigorous logic and lack of emotion in treating the subject matter here. In my

study, I was very interested in verifying whether this was indeed the case.

12) Francis, G. (1993). Ecosystem Management. Natural Resources Journal: The

North American Experience Managing International Transboundary Water Resources; The

International Joint Commission and the International Boundary and Water Commission,

Part 2. Vol. 33, No. 2; Approx. 9,389 words.

Summary: This article consists of a highly complex and detailed review of

ecological ideas at all levels, historical, ontological, epistemological, etc., and

the advocating of certain of these ideas as applying well to management of the

Great Lakes region. The notion most discussed in this study, for which the

preceding discussion forms mainly a background, is that of “ecosystem

management,” which presents certain problems with respect to boundaries.

As the author points out, “[b]oundaries associated with jurisdictions,

administrative districts, and ownerships artificially transect ecosystems,”

(344). This is especially true of the international boundaries that transect the

Great Lakes region. The article advocates the continuing role of an

international joint commission in keeping a global view of the Great lakes

region and facilitating projects which enable ecosystem management to

continue there.

12 Please see footnote eleven on page 57 for discussion of this classification.

67

i) Field:

Thesis: We must continue to embrace the idea of “ecosystem” management and

apply these ideas to management of the Great Lakes region.

Amount and Kind of:

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition: This is not a theoretical document

as much as it is a problem-solution paper. As such, it is descriptive and suggestive more

than analytical. In other words, this paper is not primarily dependent on principles of

formal logic. The paper does, however, demonstrate many of the characteristics which

Kinneavy would label as “scientific style.” Thus, the article is written entirely in third

person; there appears a density of concepts presented with well over 30 needing discussion

and elucidation. While there exist a great many specialized terms which are explained to

the reader, as this is a survey of broad scope of ideas, a great many terms remain

unexplained, revealing the specialized audience for which this piece is written. Clearly

there is no adornment in the language, no metaphors, symbols, or connotations which

contain important implicit meanings in the article. In terms of audience, while the article

is written for environmentally conscious readers, nonetheless the writer of the piece does

seek to persuade the reader to adopt certain views largely by means of value-laden

descriptors.

b) Support: All claims made in this paper are supported, here by 123 footnotes

documenting scientific studies one might look up to corroborate the author’s points.

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material:

68

This article is quite dense with taxonomic terms classifying raw material. Ideas

here are all labeled. Thus, schools of thought are labeled, concepts are labeled, etc. There

is a rigid hierarchical organization of the text according to the various taxonomies of the

ideas presented.

d) Value-Laden Descriptors

As there are very few explicit value judgments made in this text, the author’s

political orientation as it were is revealed primarily through unstressed modifiers. Thus,

one is notified that the author values the ideas of ecophilosophy through the wording of

this almost neutral statement: “The importance of ecophilosophy for ecosystem

management lies in the critical reexamination it brings to bear upon the assumptions

underlying management. More deference is required towards Nature...” This is perhaps

the most marked value judgment statement in the text. Most other statements of value are

more subtle. “Four ‘schools’ to which ecosystem managers might turn for guidance are

as

follows...” Thus, unlike in previous texts, expressions of value in this academic article lie

in subtle modals and in a very denotative type of language generally. The writer’s

subjectivity is disguised almost to the point of annihilation. It takes a skilled reader to

penetrate to the subjective point of view in this article.

ii) Tenor

Charge to the Reader: (Note: This is an article written for experts in the field.)

There are two charges to the reader. 1) Set goals and mobilize citizens. “The challenge

now is to define some overall goal for the conservation of biodiversity, refine the

information system needed to provide a Great Lakes bioregional perspective on priorities

69

for further conservation actions, and mobilize conservation agencies and citizen groups to

take further measures”; and 2) The IJC (International Joint Commission) should exercise

oversight in helping to “stimulate the ‘horizontal’ networking relationships required to

overcome the boundaries [around the Great Lakes area] that impede ecosystem

management on a regional scale.”

Interpersonal Strategies: 0

Appeal to Ethos: 0

Appeal to Pathos: 0

iii) Mode: Language: Constitutive

13) Hamlett, J.M. & Epp, D.J. (1994: 59-66). Water quality impacts of conservation

and nutrient management practices in Pennsylvania. Journal of Soil and Water

Conservation, 49; approx. 4,519 words.

Summary: This study shows how a microcomputer model, CREAMS, was

used to measure the impact of two different land management practices.

Traditional manure and fertilizer application practices were compared with

an “improved” high management system that incorporated “best timing”

placement and types of nutrient additions. The CREAMS model verified

increased percolation, decreased runoff, reduced sediment exportation from

and other positive results using the new land management system.

i) Field:

Thesis: Nutrient Management Programs (NMPs), as measured here by a precise

tool of measurement (CREAMS), is the best one so far, and has the best results when used

in conjunction with the older form of land management “best management practices,” or

(BMPs).

70

Amount and Kind of:

a) Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition: Since this is a formal study, this is

the first text analyzed here which is purely inductive. Data has been carefully collected

and analyzed, presented in graphs and tables; conclusions have been carefully drawn

based entirely upon the data provided. This soil conservation text also possesses many of

the features distinctive of a “scientific” writing style: use of passive voice, de-emphasis of

agent, use of specialized jargon, density of concepts presented, etc. The two journal

articles are thus very similar in style.

b) Support: Like the previous text this one also cites a number of relevant studies

as support. All assertions are 100% supported.

Persuasive Position-Taking Markers

c) Taxonomic Terms to Classify Raw Material: Interestingly, few terms were

used to classify the data here. Data is simply presented and interpreted. The main

classifications to be found in this text consist in the terrain there analyzed, i.e., sediment

basin, parallel terraces, filter strips, etc.

d) Value-Laden Descriptors: 0. (Unless words such as “reduced” “effective”

etc., are considered. These occur in full value-judgment statements and are not

“descriptors” per se.)

ii) Tenor:

Charge to the Reader: Be aware of these new practices and encourage their use.

“If each farmer/landowner implements practices that reduce transport potential and

efficiently use nutrients, they can have much better control over nutrient losses.”

71

Interpersonal Strategies: 0

Appeal to Ethos: 0

Appeal to Pathos: 0

iii) Mode: Language: Constitutive

72

Summary of Text Characteristics

Theme: The Environment

______________________

1) Ads:

i) Chevron [84 words]

Thesis: Chevron does not disturb nature.

Appeal to Pathos/ethos: 100% Pathos/Ethos-based. Main emotions:

reader wellbeing, agreement with reader values; several interpersonal

strategies.

Support: None; Formal logic: none.

Charge to the reader: Kinneavy’s “emotional” charge (p. 39), explicit:

“Trust Chevron”13

ii) Hi Tec 50 Peaks boots [109 words]

Thesis: 50 Peaks hiking boots are the best; therefore, they will “last

forever”

Appeal to Pathos/ethos: 100% Pathos/Ethos-based. Main emotions: fear

of losing national parks; several interpersonal strategies employed.

13 Categorizing specific “charges to the reader” takes us into the realm of speech act theory. Together, all the

charges to the reader classified in this paper could fall under the category of “directives.” This term, taken from

Searle’s 1976 work as discussed by Levinson (1983), constitutes one of the five kinds of actions which, according to

Searle, one can perform in speaking. Briefly, these consist of: representatives, directives, commissives,

expressives, and declarations (Levinson: 1983: 240). Of these, the most important with regard to a statement’s

persuasive effect on the reader would be Searle’s classification of directives, defined by Searle as speech acts which

constitute “attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something...” (Levinson, 240). Kinneavy, without

mentioning speech act theory specifically, goes on further to classify “directives” as it were into three sorts, as

discussed in this paper on p. 24. Thus, according to Kinneavy (p. 39) persuasive discourse may induce the reader to

intellectual, emotional or physical action, categories which I use in my analysis in the chart above.

73

Support: None. Formal logic: None

Charge to the reader: (physical) “Buy product.”

2) Letters to the Editor

i) Beware of the latest anti-environmental strategy, by Jean Harkin

[approx. 260 words]

Thesis: The reader should make sure that the legislators vote no on the

“wise-use” bill.

Elements of pathos: arousal of readers; fear; ethos: appeal to politically

popular authorities; numerous interpersonal strategies employed.

Support: examples; enthymemic logic: explicit cause and effect reasoning,

definitions.

Charge to the reader: “Write to your congressman, persuading him against

the ‘wise use scheme.’” (physical)

ii) Memo on Rio Summit focused on U.S. gains, by William K. Reilly [approx.

264 words]

Thesis: The press is not giving fair coverage to the Bush administration’s

positive environmental record.

Direct ethical appeal: (defense of Bush environmental policy); little

pathos-based persuasion.

Interpersonal strategies: Few.

Support: Some; enthymemic logic.

74

Charge to the reader: (implicit, intellectual) Support the Bush

Administration’s environmental policies and procedures.

3) Letters to Constituents: Henry Waxman, March 1994; [approx. 200 words]

Thesis: Waxman is assuring reader that our drinking water is safe and our

air is healthy to breathe.

Elements of pathos: evocation of fear of bad drinking water)/ Ethos:

Waxman’s positive handling of the problem.

Support: Summary facts based on the official’s authority; no proof or

demonstration.

Charge to the reader: a) (emotional) explicit: “Have confidence,” b)

implicit (intellectual, physical): “Reelect Waxman.”

4) Editorials:

i) The Greening of Vermont, anonymous [approx. 520 words]

Thesis: We must begin to reconsider environmental issues on a broader

basis; considering such elements as beauty and serenity as vital parts of the

environment to be protected.

Appeal to Pathos: Begins and ends with pathos, fear arousing quotes from

those who believe that Vermont is the most endangered historical place in

the U.S.

Appeal to Ethos: None.

Support: All claims supported or attributed to authorities in the discussion.

75

Charge to the reader: (intellectual) “Accept the claim that the historical

‘serene’ state of Vermont is being overdeveloped at a dangerous rate.”

ii) Earth Summit goals essential, by Edward Porter [approx. 520 words]

Thesis: the goals of the Earth Summit accords are worthwhile; we no need

to establish a new organization to enforce these accords.

Appeal to pathos: readers should fear (there is a potential for disaster)

Appeal to ethos: author’s credentials established; author has solution.

Support: Support is based on writer’s authority – his credentials as

Congressman from Illinois, his being a member of the Helsinki

Commission, etc. (No attributions)

Charge to the reader: (intellectual) Support the idea of establishing a

monitoring commission for Earth Summit agreements.

iii) Don’t Water down the Crucial Desert Bill [approx. 610 words]

Thesis: Voters need to force legislators to adopt the California Desert

Protection Act now up for vote in the House of Representatives.

Appeal to pathos/ethos: Great appeal to both: fear, positive congressional

leadership

Support: citation of facts

Charge to the reader: (physical) “Take political action.” Note: The writer

assumes that the intellectual viewpoint of reader mirrors his own; no

intellectual appeals are made for the reader to agree with the writer.

76

5) Feature Story: Environmentalism extends its reach, by Brad Knickerbocker

[approx. 1,452 words]

Thesis: “The environmental movement in the United States today stands

poised to have greater influence than ever before.”

Pathos: 0 (minimal: use of superlatives to inflate importance of issue);

Ethos: 0

Support: 100% of claims are supported – mainly quotes and facts,

marshaled after each claim, either straight-away or later on.

Charge to the Reader: No explicit charge to general reader; a direct plea to

a fraction of the readers, namely, environmentalists, to “continue the job”

and address the criticism brought up in the article.

6) Speeches:

i) “The Endangered Species Act: Implications for the Future,” by Brock

Evans [approx. 5,280 words]

Thesis: We must continue to support, and even expand, the Endangered

Species Act.

Audience: Potentially hostile – the audience for this speaker is the pro-

business Rotary Club.

Pathos: Saturated. (An artwork of pathos-based persuasion.)

Appeal to Ethos: None.

Support: facts, cause and effect, approx. 1/3 of speech.

77

Charge to the reader: (intellectual/physical) Go out and become

environmentalists; use your power to influence society.

Density of Concepts: 1 major concept: definition of the meaning of the

Endangered Species Act.

ii) “Design for the Environment: The Challenge for Year 2000 and

Beyond,” by Joseph Ling [approx. 3,136 words, not counting footnotes]

Thesis: We need to become a “conserver” society – not overly

environmental, not blindly capitalistic, but rather, striking a mean between

these two positions

Audience: Friendly

Pathos: 0

Appeal to ethos: 6 times – the credibility of the author and his company, 3M

Support: Very factual; authority of author, 3M Vice-President,

Environmental Engineering and Pollution Control, implicitly appealed to as

providing credibility of factual statements.

Charge to the reader: (intellectual) Adopt the idea of a “conserver

society.” The audience is the “National Industrial Waste Minimization

Conference,” Taipei.

78

7) Scholarly Articles

i) “Ecosystem Management” [approx. 9,389 words]

Thesis: We must continue to embrace the idea of “ecosystem

management” and apply these ideas to management of the Great Lakes

region.

Audience: Friendly, i.e., environmentalists

Appeal to Pathos: None; Interpersonal strategies: None

Appeal to Ethos: Credentials and accomplishments of International Joint

Commission often invoked.

Support: Not a “claim-support” format; rather, elaborate definition of

concept, the typical “scientific” style of discourse within the Kinneavian

framework; 124 dense footnotes.

Charge to the reader: (intellectual/physical) “Be aware of various

environmental approaches; use this one in your political action.” Political

actions outlined.

Density of Concepts: over 30 concepts presented, defined, discussed;

extremely dense, compact scientific style.

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ii) Water Quality Impacts of Conservation and Nutrient Management

Practices in Pennsylvania, by J. M. Hamlett and D.J. Epp [approx. 4,519

words]

Thesis: Nutrient Management Programs (NMPs), as measured here by a

precise tool of measurement (CREAMs) is the best one so far, and has the

best results when usedin conjunction with the older form of land

management “best management practices,” or (BMPs).

Audience: Expert

Appeal to Pathos: 0

Appeal to Ethos: 0

Support: 100%. Use of formal logic.

Charge to the reader: (intellectual/transactional) “Be aware of these

practices and encourage their use.”

Density of Concepts: Over 15 concepts presented; use of tables and

graphs; compact scientific style.

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Chapter 4

DISCUSSION

From Pathos to Logos

The above analysis, while too brief to provide a full structural breakdown of all the

genres discussed, does uncover, I believe, the chief elements of each genre. It also lays bare, if

one looks at the overview of the features analyzed, a revealing progression of key characteristics

as one goes up the list. As may already be clear, the genres studied here seem to shift from

attempts at persuasion entirely based on the reader’s emotions to those principally aiming at the

reader’s logical faculties – a shift, one might say, from pathos to logos.

Persuasive Texts?

Before I address this shift, however, it may be important first to mention a more

fundamental characteristic of the above data, namely, that all of the above texts are also shown

by analysis to be indeed persuasive in nature. This can most readily be seen by the presence of

some specific charge to the reader, either implicit or explicit, evident in all the texts, including

the feature story. Let’s examine these “charges” more closely.

According to Kinneavy (1971), who, as we have seen, bases his distinctions on

Aristotle, the existence of a charge to the reader is the chief determinant of whether a text is

“referential” or “persuasive.” To use his terminology, if the text has as its primary function to

incite the reader to some action (intellectual, emotional or physical), then it must be seen as a

discourse which is based on the reader or “decoder” and is thus persuasive in nature (39). All of

the above texts fit this description. In my study, I have analyzed all three types of charges, using

Kinneavy’s terminology. Most of the texts have “physical” charges to the reader; that is, they

incite the reader to take some physical action. A minority of the texts have only intellectual or

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emotional charges to the reader. About a third of the texts do two things: charging the reader

both intellectually and/or emotionally as well as physically to take some action. This can be seen

in figure #6. Note that implicit charges have been put in parentheses.

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Here, two things must be taken note of. Firstly, the two main types of charge to the

reader, the intellectual (/emotional) and the physical, bring us to the distinction made by

Newman, Gregory and all of the 19th century scholars of the Aristotelian tradition who, as

D’Angelo pointed out, “separate persuasion of the will from argument to the logical faculties.”

The logic, of course, ran that the latter type of discourse is ‘didactic’ or informative, not

persuasive in nature. My data, however, show this to be a specious distinction. Indeed, both

types of arguments, those aimed at modifying the reader’s will as well as those seeking to

modify the reader’s intellectual orientation, can – and indeed must – be considered as

persuasive discourse. To see why this is so, one most look closely at the scientific articles here

analyzed.

Again, one must go back to Kinneavy, who gives the most modern slant on the age-old

argument that scientific discourse is essentially reality-oriented and not reader-oriented. As I

mentioned earlier, according to Kinneavy, since scientific articles contain formal logic and

condensed style, and, more importantly, because they de-emphasize interpersonal strategies and

emotion, focusing primarily on the subject matter being discussed, such discourse cannot be

characterized as fundamentally persuasive. Instead Kinneavy characterizes all scholarly

discourse in general, and scientific writing in particular, as referential in nature. If one looks at

the scholarly articles studied here, however, this categorization is incorrect. While the scientific

articles considered here do in many ways correspond to Kinneavian expectations, they cross

Kinneavy’s lines in one important area: in the physical and intellectual charges to the reader

present in both texts. Both the “Ecosystem” and the “Water Quality” articles, despite their

highly scientific and condensed style, clearly charge their readers in concrete ways, in both cases

urging the reader of the text to do something, on the basis of an intellectual acceptance of the

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facts and premises clearly laid out and implicitly suggested in the article. All of the data in both

articles seem to be carefully marshaled in ways that support the author’s implicit suggestion that

the reader take some specific action. Specifically, the “Ecosystem” article ends with a section

entitled: “Beyond the Rhetoric.” Here the author suggests that existing jurisdictional boundaries

should be eliminated so that species whose ecosystems transcend boundaries can be better

conserved. That we need to conserve these species is the premise of the article; how we may do

so is concretely discussed in the conclusion. Essentially the article asks the reader to accept the

work done by the authors of the article (the IJC) and help expand it through their own academic

work. The “Ecosystem” article concludes as follows:

To provide broad guidance for what should be

sought through these various agreements, an

Ecosystem Charter for the Great Lakes-St.

Lawrence was proposed. It draws upon the

principles of sustainability for guiding human

actions within their Great Lakes Ecosystem home,

and points to some directions which ‘ecosystem

management’ should take…. This could help

stimulate the ‘horizontal’ networking relationships

required to overcome the boundaries that impede

ecosystem management on a regional scale….

Perhaps this is an idea whose time has come.

(Francis, G., 1993: 345)

In similar fashion, the concrete intellectual charge to the reader in the “Water Quality Impacts”

article is to be aware of two differing practices. The implicit physical charge to the reader,

however, which is clearly suggested based on this data is that the reader encourage the use of

both of these practices in combination. The article concludes as follows: “BMPs, as well as

NMPs, are effective in reducing total nutrient losses, particularly when surface transport

pathways are predominant. Specific control objectives such as runoff, erosion sediment, or

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nutrient reduction should be identified and BMPs and NMPs selected accordingly,” (Hamlett,

J.M. & Epp, D. J., 1994: 66)

How can one not consider these articles to be persuasive? These texts do far more than

explain certain concepts.

Here one could argue that the journal articles might indeed be persuasive, but are not

fundamentally or primarily persuasive. “Of course,” says Kinneavy (1971), direct inducement of

the reader to some kind of action (intellectual, emotional or physical) “may be achieved by

scientific proof, or an exploratory process, or even by literature. But … persuasion of the

decoder is indirect and secondary in these latter aims of discourse” (219). This claim, I believe –

again if one considers the two journal articles I studied – is also inaccurate, as the work of

contemporary scholars bears out.

IN their article “The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument,” (1988) Fahnestock

and Secor go far to refute the long-held idea that scientific discourse is not primarily concerned

with issues of value or of influencing the reader to take certain actions. It is the means by which

scientists persuade which seem objective, not the aim of the discourse itself. In their novel

approach, Fahnestock and Secor resurrect for purposes of analysis the classical stases of rhetoric.

As they point out, the ancients relied upon a memorized categorization of recurrent kinds of

issues, which have become known as “stases,” to construct their typical courtroom arguments.

These “issues” or stases followed a logical hierarchical order such that simple questions had to

be addressed before more complex ones in the discussion of an issue. The stases, thus, consisted

of the following questions needing to be addressed, regarding any matter, in the following order:

1) Questions of Fact, 2) Questions of Definition, 3) Questions of Cause, 4) Questions of

Procedure, and 5) Questions of Value. Interestingly, when they apply the stases of argument to

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literary versus scientific articles, Fahnestock and Secor come to the following revelation.

Literary articles, the two scholars conclude, seem primarily concerned with the upper stases, that

is questions of value; this is to say that literary criticism is primarily involved with value

judgements of aesthetic merit whereas “arguments of science are quite clearly conducted in the

lower stases, unconcerned in the body of the text with questions of value. Yet, if one considers

the implications of the two types of articles, scientific and literary, the literary article seems in

the end to be more purely referential in nature than its scientific counterpart. Secor and

Fahnestock (1988) put it this way:

An even more striking difference between the two

disciplines emerges when we ask what the

implications of these arguments are [emphasis mine]

in terms of the full stases. What happens when we

ask what impact they are going to have on their

disciplinary audiences? One can easily predict that

the science articles will lead to specific proposals and

altered actions (though perhaps not by the scientists

who wrote the articles. The article on salt marshes,

for example, primarily concerned with the techniques

of a particular set of experiments, concludes that the

process it has uncovered could have ‘profound

consequences for the cycling of energy and material

in wetlands’ (Luther et al., 1986, p. 748). It would be

hard to imagine a similar consequence for future

action following a reevaluation of the Intimation Ode

(p. 441).

In fact, though, Secor and Fahnestock are only half right, for points of view in literary

criticism can have equally pragmatic effects in certain circles in terms of validating current

literary theories, e.g., deciding which views are relevant, and determining which works merit

inclusion in a teaching canon based on their relevance, etc. In short, I believe that all arguments

do have direct social or intellectual impact (otherwise, they wouldn’t be arguments; they

wouldn’t have theses and support, etc.). It is a myth, in other words, to separate out any

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argument as purely referential in aim. The key here is the word “argument.” In this study, if

the presence of charges to the reader in the texts analyzed comprises an acceptable litmus test to

gauge whether the texts are primarily persuasive or not, the conclusion is that all of the essays,

because they do possess clear charges to the reader, are indeed fundamentally persuasive in

nature. One possible exception here could be the feature story, which many might argue to be

primarily informative. This, however, would be an incorrect conclusion, a point to which I will

return.

Charge to the Reader vs. Thesis

Up to now we have only considered one element of persuasion – albeit the one

considered by many to be the most important – the charge to the reader. This, however, is to

ignore the second crucial element possible in determining the functional nature of a text, the

thesis. Indeed, in all the above texts where the charge to the reader is not per se physical, but

rather “intellectual,” that is, when the text does not primarily urge the reader to action but rather

persuades the reader of a thesis, the classical scholar gets completely confused. Kinneavy

embodies a kind of schizophrenia typical of Aristotelian scholars when it comes to classifying

discourse which argues something intellectually, i.e., persuades the reader/hearer “to some new

intellectual conviction.” Thus, if a text has scientific structure and style, that is, it demonstrates

pure inductive and deductive reasoning together with specialized and condensed language – but

has a physical charge to the reader which serves as the primary aim of the text, then, as we

have seen, that text cannot be scientific according to Kinneavy. On the other hand, Kinneavy

characterizes as “persuasive” any text whose primary function is to encourage agreement with a

claim (i.e., “induces” the reader to some kind of “intellectual action”) (219). Scientific or

academic texts, however, which do just that, are considered as referential, not persuasive

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discourse. Hence the two journal articles here, both of which depend on inductive reasoning

and are based on carefully collected data, and both of which, I have argued, serve i) to incite the

expert reader to accept claims made and ii) to take specific actions, are not according to

Kinneavian categories scientific or persuasive. In this paper I will argue that they are both.

At this point I believe that we can already delineate two alternative obligatory element

sin defining persuasive discourse: the existence of a physical charge to the reader and/or the

presence in a text of a thesis – the “thesis” being nothing more than an intellectual or emotional

charge to the reader. Persuasive discourse, of course, consists of more, but these are the two

most fundamental elements, and they appear in all the texts studied here.

Means of Persuasion: Back to Pathos and Logos

Given, then, that we have established the fundamentally persuasive nature of all of the

texts studied here (including the feature story which has a thesis, namely, the title of the article)

the question becomes: how do the authors seek to persuade their readers/audience? It is this

that determines the fundamental difference between texts.

A continuum seems to exist in my data from those texts whose primary means of

suasion consists in emotional appeals to those whose modus operandi consists of appeals to the

reasoning faculties. This seems to be part of the generic structure potential for each of the

genres, with some genres showing more room for variation than others. Both advertisements,

for example, rely entirely on emotion to induce the reader to act. The emotion involved almost

always includes both pathos – or emotions aroused by the writer in the reader herself (i.e., fear,

delight, security) – and ethos, which is the ‘take it from me’ appeal to the writer’s integrity and

honesty. Interestingly, the Chevron ad is mainly ethos-based: “Do people really…? People

Do.” Thus because Chevron is so environmentally conscious, the reader can trust Chevron to

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do the right thing all the time. The reader should thus buy Chevron gasoline. There is also, of

course, pathos in the ad which is discussed in the data section of this study. The Hi Tec ad, on

the other hand, bases itself primarily on pathos, namely, fear. Thus, the reader should buy the

boots because if they don’t, they may soon have no natural parks to exercise them in. As it

turns out, this appeal to the reader’s fears is the chief emotion exercised in all the texts in this

study which deal with the environment. Indeed, there are perhaps few such highly charged

political topics which can arouse the public’s primal fears the way that discussions of the

environment do. Again, like the Chevron ad, the boot ad admixes the two elements, pathos and

ethos. The ethical argument in this ad has the reader buy boots from this company and not from

another, because Hi Tec is doing the right thing for the environment. Such elements occur with

greater or lesser frequency up through and including the speeches, but disappear altogether in

the journal articles. Thus, despite their obvious suasive goals, the journal articles seem

definitely more reference-oriented than the other genres – another point to which I will return.

Generic Variation: Optional and Obligatory Elements

While the advertisements have “emotion” as the most important part of their generic

structure potential, other genres such as letters to the editor, editorials and speeches seem to

show emotion as an “optional” element. This reinforces my belief that in these genres, as

opposed to the advertisement and the journal article on either extreme, the writer’s approach is

much freer. Much as Schumacher et al. (1989) conclude in their study of journalistic genres,

letters, editorials and speeches seem much less “genre-controlled” than regular news stories for

example. In their interesting study of news story- versus editorial-writers, Schumacher et al.

note the huge mental “wrestling” the editorial writers have to go through in order to produce

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their pieces. Experienced writers of news stories, on the other hand, seem to sail through their

task in much less time and with much less revision and planning. This is a consequence of the

tight news story “schema” these writers are able to instantiate in order to produce their prose,

the schema of the “inverted pyramid.” In sum, according to Schumacher et al. (1989) news

story writers perform four predictable activities when writing their pieces. They 1) use a pre-

organized structure (the inverted pyramid) into which information is inserted, 2) use a priority

list of information (information must appear in order of importance), 3) use a tight set of

linguistic and rhetorical constraints, and 4) demonstrate a considerable concern with accuracy,

(400). As opposed to their news-writing colleagues, the editorial writers, it seems, face quite a

few more decisions: the editorial writer “may refer to facts, but the major purpose is not to

introduce them to the reader.” Instead, the editorial involves an exhortation to accept the

writer’s opinion. The style of the editorial, the authors of the study conclude, “is thus much

more open than the news story and may necessitate greater concern with how to present a case

in the most convincing manner,” (393). This, I believe applies to all persuasive writing, even to

journal articles which have a clearer structure than most other persuasive genres. In sum,

persuasive writing in general, and the editorial, letters to the editor, and speech-genres in

particular, seem to be somewhat more open-ended tasks than the primarily informative writing

genres are.14

One can see the wide scope for decision-making within the genres studied here if one

looks at the journalistic genres studied for this project. In terms of the letters to the editor, for

example, we have basically two antitheses. The “Beware” letter clearly relies on the reader’s

14 As Katherine Rowan, however, makes clear in her article, “A Contemporary Theory of Explanatory Writing”

(1988), both persuasive as well as explanatory writing, the latter being a subcategory in her schema of informative

writing, involve quite extensive audience appraisals and considerations of audience knowledge and expectations on

the part of the writer. A fuller discussion of Rowan’s ideas will be found later on in this section.

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emotions to get the point across. Thus, the writer begins and ends the letter on a note of fear

and alarm (i.e., do this or else…), which effectively stir the reader. The “Rio-Summit” letter, on

the other hand, couldn’t be more emotion-free. In a somewhat impassioned tone the author

proceeds to set the record straight, as it were, with facts and predictable value judgments based

on those facts. A similar dichotomy exists with the editorials. Here we have the “Greening of

Vermont” and “Don’t Water down the Desert Bill” texts representing the emotional end while

“Earth Summit Goals essential” presents the more fact-based emotion-free end of the spectrum.

Finally one has speeches, with “Design for the Environment” calmly and enthusiastically

presenting fact exemplifying theory, and “The Endangered Species Act” on the other end setting

off any number of emotions in a similarly professional audience. (There is, however, an

important distinction to be made between the two audiences, which I will discuss next.)

One can conclude this discussion of generic variation on a cognitive note. If one looks

at the many cognitive studies made on writers up to this point (see Piazza (1987) for a nice

survey), it seems clear, in Sartrean terms, that persuasive writers are truly “condemned” to be

free. That is, a persuasive writer’s bane does seem to be the myriad choices available to him

when given a persuasive writing task. We can see this in the texts studied here. However,

while a writer may freely choose a largely pathos-based persuasive strategy, for example, or

instead opt for a more emotion free strategy, her choice is definitely shaped by other things,

namely, the nature/urgency of the topic, the nature of the audience being addressed, and the

writer’s own purpose. This brings us to Hairston’s (1986b) rhetorical square. The author might

also be constrained by precedent, or Halliday and Hasan’s (1989) often overlooked concept of

“intertextuality.”

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Contextual Factors: The Rhetorical Square

Surprisingly, many experts on writing show a reductionist tendency to assign all

elements in a writing task as being decided upon and determined by only one factor. This is one

of Kinneavy’s fatal flaws. As Fulkerson (1984) points out, Kinneavy never supplies any

empirical evidence to support his claim that it is the writer’s aim which determines everything

else about a piece of discourse, namely its structure, logic, organization and style. Fulkerson, in

his turn, quite correctly points out that the nature of one’s audience is perhaps more important in

determining how one goes about organizing and shaping a text. But, like Kinneavy, Fulkerson

stops there. It is the audience – and only the audience – that colors the decisions we make as we

write, he asserts. Halliday and Hasan, for their part, take the more global view in asserting that

it is the social situation which determines the complete makeup of any text. Unfortunately,

however, they provide only simplistic, if not somewhat far-fetched, examples of contextual

determinants, (e.g., the transparent example of the sales encounter at a market). Here purpose,

audience and context are wonderfully clear and direct. Written academic discourse situations

are invariably more complex.

Hairston (1986b), I believe, presents the most realistic schema of interlocking variables

which affect writers. Her schema, the rhetorical square, shows four interdependent factors

which can, in varying degrees, determine a writer’s decisions. See figure #7.

Figure #7

The Rhetorical Square

message

audience

purpose

persona

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The beauty of this approach to understanding discourse variables lies in the fuller

understanding of context which it exhibits. Thus purpose alone cannot guide all of our writing

decisions, nor can a full understanding of the audience pre-decide all issues of organization or

style. Rather, it is all these things, which in turn interrelate in complex ways with the very

nature of the message that form the parameters for decision making that each writer faces.

One can definitely see that the interesting interplay of the above factors influenced the

structure and style of all of the pieces here studied. In terms of the two speeches made, for

example, both the nature of the audience and the message itself were the prime deciding factors

as to how many and which emotions might be necessary to make the speech effective. This is

the opposite of Kinneavy’s idea. Thus, in reality, considerations of audience, message and

writer’s purpose had to be calibrated in the speaker’s mind beforehand for each speech studied

here respectively, in order for the given speaker to make the correct rhetorical decisions, which

in turn enabled him to achieve his aim. This, rather than the writer’s aim alone (Kinneavy) – or

for Fulkerson the audience alone – determines how the message and audience would be

handled. This calibration is exemplified in the “Design for the Environment” speech. Here the

message was not a threatening one for the entrepreneurial audience [we don’t need to stop

producing our product to protect the environment]; therefore, the audience could be considered

friendly. Because of these two factors, then, [i.e., message + audience] the speaker could adopt

a colleague-like persona and use minimum emotion to encourage his audience to adopt his

ideas. This approach was not possible with the Endangered Species Act speech. In this case,

the different message of the speech [i.e., let’s rein in our urges to develop land] changed all the

dynamics for that particular speaker. Like the Design for the Environment audience, the

businessmen of the Seattle Rotary Club were professional. The difference with the Design

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speech was that the audience in this case was hostile to the message: businessmen from the

Seattle Rotary Club do not wish to hear that they should sacrifice their potential development

earnings for some lofty goal. As a result of this mix of audience and message with the second

speech, the speaker here fine-tuned a work of emotional art to try to sway his listeners. Unlike

the former speaker, the environmentalist before the Rotary Club could take no common ground

for granted and thus had to take extreme rhetorical measures to establish a common ground and

make palatable and absolutely necessary his message of industrial restraint. Thus in his speech

Brock Evans flatters, frightens, moves and cajoles his audience to accept the course of action he

suggests based on the claims he makes; none of these emotional moves are present in the

Design for the environment speech.

With the speeches, the audiences were similar but the messages were different. With

the advertisements, the messages coincided while the audiences diverged. The Chevron ad, for

instance, was placed in a general audience magazine (the Atlantic). Because the writer of the ad

could not assume shared environmentally conscious values in all the readers of the piece, the

writer appealed to two divergent emotions: the desire for the environmentalists in the audience

to safeguard the environment (which Chevron says it does in the ad), and the more selfish desire

among others in the reading public to profit from a thriving environment. This was the second

angle inserted in the ad for the sportsmen in the crowd. The Chevron message was thus mixed:

you should buy Chevron gas for two reasons – to save the environment or to vouchsafe the

existence of fish in your fishing hole, whichever you prefer. The Hi-Tec boots ad, on the other

hand, could count on a homogeneously pro-environmental audience. It used this advantage to

manipulate this audience through the unified, powerful emotion of fear. If you really want to

save the national parks, the message is, come to the store and do something about it. In other

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texts in my data, sometimes the message alone decides the audience. Thus, in the case of the

Earth Summit letter, the official involved wished to present his side of the story in a factual way

to the world. He singled out an audience, communicating only with those interested in this

somewhat obscure issue. In this case, the message was inherently “intellectual” and no appeal

to emotion was made.

In all the texts I studied then, some unique calibration of all four rhetorical factors

determined the emotional/factual makeup of the message. It is clear, however, that the

messages themselves might have been constructed differently, with different approaches taken.

Indeed, because most persuasive genres are not in fact “genre-controlled” but are instead

somewhat open ended, the persuasive endeavor must, in the end, be considered more of an art

than a science. This is true even in the most scientific texts, which is something I hope to show

in my conclusion. The “art” in persuasion comes with correctly assessing both message,

writer’s purpose, and impact on audience, calibrating the writer’s persona accordingly, and then

creatively using this information to formulate the most effective persuasive message. No

simplistic consideration of aim, audience, or social context alone will account for all the myriad

decisions which create effective persuasive pieces of writing.

Exposition versus Explanation

In terms of generic structure potential discussed up to now, so far I have covered two

important elements for the persuasive genres: 1) charge to the reader or thesis, and 2) generic

variation of optional elements; this consists of development through fact (logos) or through

emotion (pathos). Advertisements generally have a physical charge to the reader and develop

the persuasive message emotionally. Letters to the editor, letters to constituents, editorials, and

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speeches may have a physical or intellectual charge to the reader (or both), and may develop the

message either primarily through emotion or through facts or both. Journal articles we have

seen primarily seek to persuade a specialized audience of a thesis, but more often than not also

contain an important physical charge to the reader or important implications for the reader to

take some physical action explicitly mentioned in the conclusion. Also importantly, and distinct

from all the preceding genres, journal articles not only do away with emotional appeals, they

rely on exposition to further their theses. This differs from the simple presentation of fact

characteristic of the other genres. Let’s consider this in a little more depth.

Kinneavy separates reference discourse into three categories: scientific, informative,

and exploratory discourse. See below:

Figure #8: Kinneavy’s Reference Schema (1971)

The interesting distinction is between the first two, with exploratory discourse serving the more

marginal –albeit important—role of raising research questions or questioning existing

paradigms. Scientific discourse is a more common and critical subtype of reference discourse

and while primarily shaped like exploratory discourse, according to Kinneavy, “by the goal of

representing reality” it is secondarily concerned with the goal of furnishing proof for some

claim; this of course is normally what is considered to be expository discourse. Informative

Reference

Scientific Informative Exploratory

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discourse, in contrast, while again primarily concerned with the “reality” end of the

communication triangle, secondarily serves to make the claims that were ultimately ‘proven’

through science accessible to lay readers/hearers; these texts are therefore more concerned with

issues of daily life. These are the three reference discourse types put forth by Kinneavy. Since

1971, however, Katherine Rowan (1988) has made some important amendments to Kinneavy’s

frame4work for informative discourse which have had some impact on my ideas about

persuasion.

Rowan first of all refines and extends Kinneavy’s category of informative discourse by

carving it into two subdivisions: informatory discourse and explanatory discourse, which, as

she points out, are very different. Informatory discourse, says Rowan, “is designed to create

awareness of previously unknown facets’ of some phenomenon which is already familiar to

readers. “Traditional ‘hard’ news articles, weather reports, computer manuals, and instructions

for playing games” are all examples of such discourse. “Explanatory discourse, on the other

hand,” says Rowan, “presents concepts that are not, for most lay readers, understandable when

simply asserted. Instead, it concerns phenomena about which lay readers have some awareness

but not full understanding.” (34). Examples of this kind of discourse given by Rowan are

magazine articles discussing how new tax laws will affect citizens or a weather service

pamphlet distinguishing the magnitude of earthquakes from their intensity. In each case, the

reader is aware of the existence of tax laws and earthquakes but does not know how they work.

According to Rowan, one can explain how something works in three ways: you can elucidate

the phenomenon, you can explain it in a quasi-scientific way, or you can transform the readers’

understanding of the concept. These are the three types of explanatory discourse. I will talk

just a bit more about them, as they are relevant to my claims about persuasion.

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Elucidating explanations are the simplest. They are the terms defined in the glossary

section of a textbook and are basically definitions of words. These also appear in encyclopedias

and explanatory magazine articles (Rowan: 1988, p. 36). A more complex kind of explanation

is the quasi-scientific type which seeks to clarify the meaning of a “group of propositions.”

“Quasi-scientific explanations are most appropriately used,” says Rowan, “when individual

terms and assertions are understandable to readers but the way in which these assertions cohere

or are related is difficult to grasp,” (36). Examples of this type of discourse given by Rowan are

textbook sections that discuss the outbreak of the American Civil War by comparing and

contrasting two theories that account for its occurrence, newspaper and magazine accounts of

the 1986 space shutt6le disaster, etc. The problem with this type of explanation, says Rowan,

occurs if the reader already has some erroneous pre-conceived or intuitive notion about how a

thing works which somehow does not mesh with the neutral explanation given. This person

needs a more tailor-made explanation that will clear away her own mental obstacles to

understanding a counterintuitive reality. The type of explanation that can do this is, according

to Rowan, the transformative explanation, which is used to help readers grasp implausible ideas.

If a person does not first understand, for example, that light reflects back on objects and does

not merely shine on them, to explain the properties of light through an analogy with a bouncing

ball is not the most effective strategy for the explainer. This strategy would be quasi-scientific.

Instead, Rowan points out, the explainer needs to overcome the learner’s main problem with the

implausibility of light being an object like any other –i.e., transforming the learner’s intuitive

but erroneous understanding, before going any further in explanation. “Transformative

explanations are less common than elucidating or quasi-scientific explanations,” says Rowan,

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“because the classification of an explanation as transformative depends on knowing whether or

not lay audiences generally have erroneous theories about the phenomenon being explained,”

(37).

What do these distinctions have to do with persuasive writing? Rowan it must be

remembered still relies on Kinneavian categories, refining and expanding them. Therefore

Rowan, like Kinneavy, makes the important distinction between explanation/information on the

one hand and persuasion on the other. The above ideas, she says, can help “guide writers’

initial decisions about the sort of discursive goal they want to pursue, that is, persuasion,

explanation, and so forth,” (50). With all the above, Rowan contrasts exposition, which, for

Rowan, is an act which involves “searching for an answer to a scholarly question,” with

‘explanation,’ which she counters,’ “[helps] lay audiences understand established answers to

these questions,” (28). I propose a slightly altered classification.

Figure 9: Rowan’s System of Reference Discourse

(1988, p. 39)

15

15 This type of discourse, the only one of Rowan’s I have not gone into, describes discourse which basically restates

a given text. “Summaries, abstracts, and translations are examples of this discursive form,” states Rowan, (32).

Reference

Types of

Reference

Types of

Informative

Types of

Explanatory

Informative

Explanatory Informatory

Transformative Quasi-Scientific Elucidating

Exploratory Scientific

(Exposition) Representative

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On the basis of the data in this study, I believe exposition, defined as Kinneavy and

Rowan do, to be intrinsically persuasive in function, for exposition seeks to persuade the

scholar, by means of exhaustive data, of a particular line of reasoning. One of Kinneavy’s

conflicting points of view actually endorses this position, as I have pointed out above. That is,

Kinneavy believes that inducing a reader to accept a certain claim is a persuasive function.

What Kinneavy wrongly or by oversight denies is that this is also a scholarly function and in

fact defines exposition. Exposition, which is academic persuasion, should be distinguished, I

believe, from non-academic approaches to persuasion, the latter which are informatory or

explanatory in approach, as opposed to expository. Thus, I believe Rowan is on the right track

but falls short when she categorizes informatory and explanatory discourse as purely referential

in nature. Considered in and of themselves, of course, they are; however, when mixed together

with a point of view, informatory and explanatory discourse may also be components of non-

academic approaches to persuasion.

With regard to expository writing, after careful analysis, it seems most precise to

consider this to be a form of persuasive discourse, or, more specifically, an academic or

scholarly means of persuasion.

In all the texts I studied, only one was purely expository. This was the research article

on new approaches to soil conservation (i.e., the water quality article). The Ecosystem piece is

a strange breed in that it seems expository (no emotion, replete with 123 academic citations),

but it doesn’t exactly prove a claim. Instead, it explains the current ideologies influencing the

environmental movement, describes what a certain commission is achieving and advocates an

expanding role for this commission. All the other pieces were either informatory modes of

persuasion (Chevron, Hi-Tec, Memo on Rio Summit, Waxman’s letter to constituents, the

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“Greening of Vermont” editorial) or informatory/and explanatory pieces (the “Beware of the

latest anti-environmental strategy” letter, the “Earth Summit Goals” and “Don’t Water Down

the Crucial Desert Bill” editorial, the feature story, both speeches, and the “Ecosystem

Management” journal article). Not any one piece contained only explanatory discourse, as there

was always some new information being disseminated, and always a persuasive aim informing

the piece as a while. To complete this discussion of exposition versus explanation/information,

I would like to briefly mention support in the texts I analyzed.

Support and the Expository Essay

Along with the continuum in my data from pathos-based to logos-based means of

persuasion, one also finds a continuing presence of support for assertions made. Definitive

support (if such a thing exists) is found only in the water quality journal article, with the

Ecosystem article in a sort of expository-explanatory limbo. In reading the overall data one thus

goes from the advertisement which provide no support, to letters to the editor, which at least

begin to provide examples, to editorials through speeches which all provide supporting facts,

most of which, however, must be taken on the word of the author. One finishes with journal

articles, complete with extensive tables and footnotes, these latter rigorously interpreted. At

least one of the journal articles constitutes the prototype of the expository essay.

Formal Logic

It goes without saying that none of the texts studied here (with the exception of the

“Water Quality” article) involve formal logic. This is not to say that the reasoning in these

other pieces is “illogical,” only that the logic employed is not elaborate per se. For Kinneavy,

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the use of formal logic versus “enthymemic logic” is crucial and alone may categorize a text.

Thus, formal logic usually signals expository or “scientific” discourse, enthymemic logic

persuasive discourse. Kinneavy, as I mentioned, relies largely on Aristotle to make the

distinction between the two logics, the crux of which deals with the “absoluteness” of the

writer’s premises. A word on this might be helpful. “Aristotle,” says Kinneavy (1971),

discussion the enthymeme—

… considers rhetoric as dealing with the ‘approximately true,’ …

with ‘proof’ or ‘apparent proof,’ … with the ‘apparent

enthymeme,’ with ‘what seems probable… ‘ Aristotle’s two

‘logical’ proofs are not really logical in the scientific sense; they

only seem so. Example and enthymeme are not really

conclusive, as are real induction and deduction [emphasis

mine]… In view of all this, it seems fairly clear that persuasion

has to do with the ‘plausible’ with apparent proof and seeming

logic… Persuasion as such is averidical, neither true nor false…

[It operates] in the areas of attitude and opinion, not fact and

science. (220)

Such characterizations are a bit simplistic. Thus, the “Ecosystem Management” article,

although it uses scientific jargon and 123 dense scholarly footnotes, does not contain formal

logic as it is more definitional in character. For Kinneavy such an article would not be scientific

or persuasive. I believe it is both. In all the pieces studied here, whether the logic is

enthymemic or formal, I believe has little bearing on the persuasive or expository nature of the

texts. The existence of theses, charges to the reader and type and amount of support determine

the latter categories. Related to this question, it would be interesting to actually verify in

scientific texts how “absolute” the premises and conclusions in fact ar. I believe that

Kinneavy’s criteria for pure logic as alone denoting scientific discourse may apply only to

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mathematics and symbolic logic. Clearly there are many scholarly departments at the university

which produce first rate “scientific” text whose logic is enthymemic.

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Chapter 5

CONCLUSION

This paper began with some fundamental questions concerning the academic

persuasive essay. I wish at this point to present some tentative answers to those questions.

Persuasion and Academic Discourse

One of the first questions posed by this study was: How is persuasion accomplished in

academic versus non-academic contexts? The answer, it has been seen, lies in the presence or

absence of emotional appeals to the reader, amount of support for claims made, and amount of

explicit logical connectors as well as use of formal vs. enthymemic logic in the texts.

Specifically, we have seen that all the texts studied here were indeed persuasive in nature, given

that they all contained explicit or implicit charges to the reader. The charges however did vary

in terms of the extent to which they informed the texts in which they are present: in the ads, for

example, the charges to the reader could be seen as the most important component of the text; in

the feature article, by contrast, the charge to the reader is almost tangential to the text. All texts

also had a thesis, without which they could not be considered as a unified piece of discourse.

Where the texts varied were in the elements of logic, support, and in the specific type of appeal

made to the reader, which, together span the Halliday/Hasanian categories or field, tenor and

mode.

With regard to field, one finds that in non-academic persuasive discourse, there is very

little logical structure. In other words, there is practically no appeal made by the author to the

reader to logically arrive—by means of proofs and explicitly articulated warrants and

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assumptions—at the desired conclusion. Instead, the authors of non-academic discourse, it

would seem, simply ask the reader to agree with them, or appeal in other ways to the reader’s

emotions. Perhaps, as Freedman’s very intriguing 1996 study shows, the antithesis for this type

of a-logical, non-academic approach to persuasion would be the discourse produced by law

students. La discourse, Freedman argues, is “ruthlessly logical,” (101). Freedman characterizes

it this way:

…[A]lthough all academic writing must be logical in

the sense that the conclusions must seem to be

connected in a reasonable basis to the premises, the

emphasis in writing for law is almost entirely on

presenting the reasoning processes themselves.

Every logical step must be articulated. In other

disciplines, logical leaps are possible: Connections

are more often accepted as shared knowledge

between reader and writer. In writing for law, the

whole point of the exercise is to present not so much

the logical conclusions, but rather the rationale for

these inferences. (1996: 101)

Thus, one could consider the discourse produced in law courses, in terms of logic, as

representing academic discourse perhaps at a rarified level, and therefore serving as a

counterpoint to much of the discourse studied here. According to Freeman, the writing of law

students is also characterized by the inclusion of all possible counterarguments to any claim

presented by the writer, and there is no room in this type of writing for digression of any kind.

(101) In non-academic discourse, none of these rules apply: one sees little consideration of

other possible points of view, and digression seems to be more readily acceptable.

Related to the element of logic in non-academic writing, I have also noted that support

for claims made is scant or non-existent here as well. One finds little classification of material

presented in this kind of discourse, and a prominence of value judgments throughout the texts.

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This would complete my analysis of the Halliday and Hasanian elements of “field” considered

in this study.

In terms of “tenor” or interpersonal strategies, as mentioned above, there is a

predominance in non-academic discourse of value judgments and emotional appeals, although

the former also appears in academic discourse. In non-academic discourse there are also more

references to common ground, greater use of first and second person pronouns, rhetorical

questions, exclamations, imperatives and modal equivalents of imperatives; in other words,

writers of non-academic discourse seem to employ more interpersonal strategies than writers of

scholarly discourse do, an insight which Kinneavy (1971) was perhaps the first to clearly

quantify in his work. Among these interpersonal strategies, only the imperatives and modal

imperative equivalents are to some degree also present in academic discourse.

Finally, with regard to “mode,” one can say that in all the texts, language is the chief

conveyor of the ideas presented. Below is a summary of these results.

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Components of Persuasion

A Summary

I. Field

0% Some 100%

ads letters (#1, #2) journal articles (#2)

letters (#3 to constituents) speeches (#2)

editorials journal articles (#1)

feature story

speeches (#1)

0% Some 100%

ads letters (#1, #2) feature story (facts)

letters (#3, to constituents) editorials (#1) journal articles (data)

editorials (#2) speeches

0% Some 100% ads journal articles

letters

editorials

feature story

speeches

journal articles

II. Tenor

ads ads

letters letters

editorials editorials

speeches feature story

journal articles speeches

journal articles

Formal Logic and/or Scientific Exposition

Explanation/Information

Continued, next page

Support

Physical charge to the reader

(i.e., “Do this action.”) Intellectual charge to the reader (i.e.,

“Accept this thesis”)

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Components of Persuasion, cont.

ads

letters letters

editorials editorials

speeches speeches

journal articles

ads feature story

letters journal article

speeches

III: Mode: Language is Constitutive

All messages primarily communicated through language.

Generic Structure Potential of Academic Essays: Optional and Obligatory Elements

From the above chart, looking at the components of the speeches and academic journal

articles in comparison with other persuasive genres, it seems clear that the generic structure

potential of the academic persuasive essay is composed of the following elements: a thesis, a

charge to the reader, an invitation to the reader to follow logical reasoning, and support for all

claims made. This can be considered as a definition of expository writing in general and

comprises the obligatory elements of academic essays. Optional elements to the GSP of

academic writing would seem to be interpersonal strategies, which one can find in the quasi-

academic speeches but not in the journal articles, and explanatory development of material (as

opposed to exposition, c.f. p. 80 of this paper).

Appeal to Reader’s Pathos/ Writer’s

Ethos (emotion-based) Appeal to Reader’s Logic

Logos (fact-based)

Interpersonal Strategies Used Not Used

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Predictability

A second question initially posed by this study was whether one could use a contextual

configuration to predict the macrostructure of an academic essay. The answer to this question, I

believe, is no.

As we have seen, the ability to predict a genre’s macrostructure by knowing the exact

contextual variables surrounding any given discourse is a major impetus behind Halliday and

Hasan’s (1989) theory of genres. “Because of the close link between text and context,” says

Halliday, “readers and listeners make predictions; they read and listen, with expectations for

what is coming next…. The whole point of a passage may be missed if the reader or listener does

not bring to it appropriate assumptions derived from context of situation,” (46). And to show the

validity of predicting genres from context, Halliday and Hasan successfully predict the structure

of the service encounter (54), and analyze the obvious logic of a little boy’s discourse regarding

a toy train he is playing with (29). Such simple discourse is a far cry from the complex and

intricate academic structures under consideration here. More importantly, what is missing from

the example of situation and genre that Halliday and Hasan explicitly consider in their work is

the factor of cultural precedent and idiosyncratic tradition, not to mention the unique creativity

of the author, that have as much to do with the particular constitution of a genre as situational

exigencies have.

With regard to the genres considered here, for example, I would not have been able to

predict, at the outset of this study, whether the two speechmakers whose work I later analyzed

would have recourse to the work done by other scholars in their attempts to persuade an educated

audience or not. As it turns out, citing the work of others was left to the writers of the journal

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articles, and was not a modus operandi in the composition of the speeches. What was this the

case?

Obviously, one could cite here mere individual preferences, and I believe this definitely

to be a factor. I also believe, however, that we need to consider another important constituent of

context, one not fully developed by Halliday and Hasan, but one which could be invaluable in

explaining a good part of the data in this studay: that is, the consideration of tradition in the

genres here analyzed. Halliday and Hasan approach this consideration in their discussion of

intertextuality. “…[P]art of the environment for any text is a set of pervious texts,” notes

Halliday, (47), “texts which are taken for granted as shared among those taking part.” Halliday

continues, giving the example of intertextuality in a typical schoolroom:

Every lesson is built on the assumption of earlier lessons in which

topics have been explored, concepts agreed upon and defined; but

beyond this there is a great deal of unspoken cross-reference of

which everyone is largely unaware… This kind of

INTERTEXTUALITY, as it is sometimes called, includes … types

of logical sequencing that are recognized as valid… There are also

likely to be ‘coded’ expressions that are carried form one text to

another, more or less formulaic sequences that may signal what is

happening… At a deeper level the entire school learning

experience is linked by a pervading ‘intertextuality’ that embodies

the theory and practice of education as institutionalized in our

culture. (47)

Interestingly, this view of intertextuality corresponds closely with current views of

discourse communities (Swales, 1990; Bazerman, 1992; Freedman, 1996, among others), for

historically, it has been discourse communities who have set the generic traditions with regard to

written discourse. Swales (1990) is perhaps the most thorough in presenting the concept of

discourse communities as primary determinants of generic structures. Discourse communities,

according to Swales (p. 27) are characterized by6 the following:

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They –

1. have broadly agreed-upon sets of common public goals;

2. have mechanisms of intercommunication among its members;

3. use their participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information

and feedback;

4. utilize and hence possess one or more genres in the communicative

furtherance of its aims;

5. in addition to owning genres, have acquired some specific lexis; and

6. have a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant

content and discourse expertise.

I believe that the discourse communities to which the writers of all the texts I studied

belonged, determined to a large extent the presence or absence of the generic elements found in

each text. To answer the question about prediction conclusively, however, I believe that there is

not enough evidence here to conclusively determine all of the subtle generic conventions specific

to each genre here studied. Nevertheless, it definitely seems clear that, for each genre

considered, there was more to the structure of the text than the immediate situation dictated,

which is all one could have predicted from Halliday and Hasan’s formal theory (1989). Clearly,

Halliday and Hasan need to formally factor in intertextual variables to arrive at a sound theory

for predicting complex generic structures, structures such as those characteristics of formal

academic essays.

The Undergraduate Academic Essay: Is It Really a Genre?

The analysis which forms the body of this study looks a wide gamut of persuasive

genres. My goal in the present section is to situate the undergraduate persuasive essay within the

continuum of these genres.

A more direct approach to classifying undergraduate academic genres would be to

study them directly. Unfortunately, though, when one looks at them under a microscope, they

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seem to disappear as an entity. The fact is, student writing is an artificial creation and has no

generic structure, per se, outside of the professor’s directives unique to each assignment, the

discourse community to which the professor belongs, and the general directives to be found in

multitudinous freshman rhetorics. Freshman essays are basically heuri8stics given by teachers to

train students for real writing situations. To use Freedman’s term, they are “epistemic” (p. 92)

activities. Referring to undergraduate law essays, Freedman says: “Educationally, we must

recognize… that, although typical of much school writing, the social action evinced in the genre

examined differs from that of most workplace argument as well as the argument of much public

discourse,” (92). Anson and Forsberg (1990) are quite correct in characterizing the freshman

English writing class as a “dummy run” situation. Current interest in studying the features of

“real” discourse communities, for example, they say

Has led some researchers away from school settings, whose

discourse communities [are] inevitably defined by the

educational system … and whose writing tasks are typically

assigned by a teacher or researcher in order to accomplish a

pedagogical goal or provide data to answer a research

question…. For these scholars, school writing is often

rhetorically limited, used for what Britton, Burgess, Martin,

McLeod and Rosen (1972) have called ‘dummy run’ practice.

Without rich, varied audiences and purposes, the consequences

of such writing are substantially different from the writing

found in non-academic settings (202).

Reither (1993), in speaking of Burke’s scene-act ratio of understanding discourse, condemns the

quality of current freshman writing as a result of what freshmen are exposed to in their

composition classrooms.

The scene-act ratio gives us ways of thinking about the kinds of

scenes our courses offer our students. If we ask, “What kinds of

‘strategic answers’ are appropriate to the scenes that are our

classrooms?” the answer seems to be that our classrooms are ‘fit

containers’ for exactly the kinds of writing our students produce

in them. If we33 find that our students are not doing the kind of

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writing we want them to—and not learning to write the ways we

want them too— the reason is likely that, by and large, the

students are designing their texts ‘strategically’ [i.e., they are

pursuing a reasoned rhetorical strategy] to encompass the

situations in which they find themselves –and our classrooms

are ‘unfit containers’ for the kinds of writing we want them to

do and learn. Our classrooms, that is, are getting precisely what

they deserve (112).

Other voices chime in when it comes to admitting the uncomfortable “vagueness”

necessarily inherent in most student writing assignments in general, especially in freshman

writing courses. In point of fact, in most freshman composition courses, students are never sure

what teachers are looking for, and therefore do not know how to be “effective.” “People read

texts with varying expectations and their judgments of merit vary as a result,” say Faigley &

Hansen (1985: p. 148). An English instructor will evaluate “according to how well [the student]

met the standards of a handbook notion of an essay; [the content instructor] evaluates according

to the depth of exposure to new knowledge,” (148). Perhaps the quintessential example of the

chameleon-like character of the ‘undergraduate student essay” is revealed in Mike Rose’s (1983)

article on remedial writing courses. There he relates a business professor’s dismay over the

writing style of his undergraduate English majors: “Students come to us writing over-academic,

highly embroidered prose,” writes Rose. “We, in turn, have to retrain them to write simple,

direct reports for companies, reports that someone will like reading,” (112). “In sum,” says

Rose,

Student writing at the college level is always contrasted with

what is expected in “real life” with “authentic” genres, and the

new approach in composition seems to be to get students to

actually confront and practice such real genres (112).

“This paper advocates research into the production of authentic genres in real contexts,”

concludes Johns in her article “Written Argumentation to Real Audiences” (1993: p. 76). She

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advocates this link of research “to facilitate understanding of some of the general, community-

specific and task-specific aspects of audience awareness and argumentation that confront

writers,” [and] “give students experiences writing authentic argumentative texts to real

audiences,” (84-5).

“Real” Academic Genres

In sum, if one wants real authenticity in academic writing there is only one place to go:

to the professional journals who publish discipline-specific essays. Journal essays are, though

few undergraduates know this, the prototype, albeit much simplified, of the writing they are

expected to perform in college. The exact quantification of journal essay norms, however, has

so far proved elusive. The more one reads about discipline-specific essay norms, the more one

realizes that there is no such thing as “academic” writing in general, (as some writing scholars

cited at the beginning of this study believed), but rather there is “literary criticism,” or

“biology” or “sociology” essays. Each discipline has norms which some of us are aware of, and

which scholars upon careful analysis are just discovering.

Swales (1990) for instance, throws a monkey-wrench into Halliday and Hasan’s notion

of predictability in his analysis of scientific journal articles. Thus, far from Halliday and

Hasan’s (1989) notion of genre as a transparent entity which directly reflects, as much as

possible through language, the social situation to which it is responding, according to Swales, in

biology articles we find the opposite. Swales finds, for example, that although most scientific

discoveries begin as arbitrary and unplanned laboratory experiments, in writing they are not

presented as such. In fact, the genre of the scientific research paper itself transforms the

scientific experience, so that initial exploratory experiments become, when forced through the

appropriate generic conventions, products of unique foresight and vision. Text, then, in this

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case, ceases to be a direct, transparent linguistic rendition of context, as genre itself imposes its

own values on the linguistic product. To take Halliday and Hasan’s social semiotic theory at

face value this should not seem possible. Sales’ findings are corroborated in Gragson and

Selzer’s article “Fictionalizing the Readers of Scholarly Articles in Biology,” (1990). There

again, the social context of the biology experiment is not mirrored in the scientific prose of the

subsequent article4, but rather it is created by it. Specifically, Gragson and Selzer discover that

by carefully choosing the wording of their articles, biologists create friends or enemies of their

audience; they decide what their audience is knowledgeable in, and what they need to explain to

them. The writers, in a very real sense, create their own audience.

There are any number of discipline-specific quirks and entire logical approaches which

cloud the concept of “academic writing” as an entity. Placing the topic sentence at the end

instead of at the beginning of a paragraph, for example, while fine for an English paper is

disastrous for sociology or science reports. ON the other hand, the use of passive constructions,

while avoided in the English department, is preferred in the sciences. Kinneavy (1971) is on the

mark in his observation that the sciences wish to de-emphasize the writer and reader

linguistically. However, even similar disciplines show different preferences. Thus, Rose (1979)

points out that while an individual’s reflections on personal events are considered legitimate

evidence in many areas of sociology and anthropology, they are considered much less legitimate

by behavioral psychologists (112). We’ve already discussed the different stases addressed in

literary articles of a critical nature versus scientific ones – that is, that literary writing concerns

itself more directly with questions of value while scientific writing spends a larger amount of

time in the lower stasic realms of definitions, causes, etc.

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In addition to different stylistic and methodological assumptions, different disciplines

seem to differ in philosophy and logic. An unexpected result of this is the different use that the

different disciplines make of sources. Kaufer and Geisler (1991), for instance, seem to be the

first to have documented the up to now implicit pattern of citation that is always followed in the

social sciences. According to their schema, the social science writer argues his point on what is

considered the “main path” of argumentation. He will then reinforce this point by citing a

source he disagrees with (going down the faulty path) then explaining why the source is

incorrect. This brings him back to his own arguments (return path). This pattern of citing

sources will continue throughout the paper, usually with the unfavorable sources cited first,

dispatched with, and the favorable ones kept for last. The argument then ends with a crescendo

of agreement on the final page. While this citation procedure is fairly obvious in the social

sciences, Kaufer and Geisler find the whole process to be very obscure in philosophical articles

which, according to the authors, tend to deeply embed the faulty and return path structures. The

social sciences are thus more dialectical, using their citation practices “more for background and

support” than for contrast as citations tend to be used in philosophy. Finally, one might point

out Peck-MacDonald’s (1989) fascinating distinction between data-driven versus concept-

driven logical approaches. According to Peck-MacDonald, for example, the discipline of

literary criticism is a more data-driven exercise, very given to a writer’s forming of new

abstractions not yet adopted in the discipline. Here the abstractions come from the writer as she

develops ad hoc new categories to correspond to her novel interpretation of a work. This

approach is thus “upwardly diverging” in that the writer starts from the data and creates an

open-ended set of new concepts which she did not start out with. This kind of writing is

contrasted by Peck MacDonald to the more “conceptually-driven” writing common in the social

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sciences. In this latter discipline, for example, it seems that new abstractions on the part of the

undergraduate student would not be welcome. Instead, the student is to take concepts already

argued about and accepted in the discipline and apply them. Thus, writing in English classes

versus social science classes require two different cognitive approaches to the situation on the

part of the student.

Where does this leave the undergraduate essay?

The Undergraduate Persuasive Essay

On the basis of the specificity of each academic discipline, I believe that the typical

undergraduate essay is also discipline specific. In the continuum of genres I have studied for

this project, therefore, I will rank the undergraduate essay as a subgenre of the discipline-

specific graduate essay it is really a facsimile of. It therefore will share the generic structure

potential of the particular discipline as well as the more general characteristics of journal

articles we have discussed above.

Kinneavy’s Value in Current Rhetorical Theory

There are two other issues with which I opened this study, which I wish to refer back to

here. The first regards Kinneavy’s place among current rhetorical paradigms in composition

theory, and the second concerns what we as teachers may glean from the present analysis.

In the final analysis, as I have mentioned before, the theories of Kinneavy and those of

Halliday and Hasan are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, I believe they are

complementary. The latter, at least from their 19l89 essay, seem to take a more global approach

and also seem more comfortable with spoken discourse. Kinneavy, on the other hand, provides

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fascinating insights into written discourse, and does so in a framework which dovetails perfect

with that of Halliday and Hasan. Both sets of theorists take as a given the social nature of

discourse and the social exigencies and conventions which shape discourse. In an ideal world,

one could fuse the insights of these two works into a comprehensive discourse theory. Indeed,

this was Kinneavy’s ideal: that we in discourse could somehow move beyond our pre-

paradigmatic fractured state and create a new, unified paradigm for discourse.

While I believe this to be an achievable ideal in the not so distant future, I believe that

any current discourse theory embracing Kinneavian principles would have to be revised,

however, to reflect more accurate knowledge about academic persuasion. Specifically, we in

academia should acknowledge, based on empirical evidence, and based on current definitions of

persuasion, that expository discourse is inherently persuasive in nature; and that proving claims

by means of support and logic does in the end focus as much, or more, on the decoder (i.e.,

reader/listener) than it does on the reality being discussed. Expository discourse must be

recognized for what it is: an essentially polemic mode of discourse which argues for a specific

interpretation of reality. It is not simply a mirror of reality for the reader, as Kinneavy

apparently would have us believe.

Finally, any current acceptance of the Kinneavian framework would also have to

include the excellent insights into explanation and information put forward by Katherine Rowan

from her 1988 study, “A Contemporary Theory of Writing.” I believe that a viable revision of

Kinneavy’s framework is possible, and that such a framework might help current composition

instructors better apply Halliday/Hasanian principles in their own teaching of writing.

Kinneavy Revisited and Revised

In what follows I lay out a modified view of Kinneavy’s categories.

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120

121

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Dominant Function: A Caveat

Of course, there are many who would dismiss any attempt at categorization at all as, at

most, imprecise. Such scholars might claim that, if one seeks pure categorization, then all pieces

of discourse must be seen as mixed bags, much as are human beings. I am reminded of a

passage by Virginia Woolf in her essay “Street Haunting,” in which she both bemoans and

celebrates this fact.

…it is nature’s folly, not ours. When she set about her chief

masterpiece, the making of man, she should have thought of one

thing only. Instead, turning her head, looking over her shoulder,

into each one of us she let creep instincts and desires which are

utterly at variance with his main being, so that we are streaked,

variegated, all of a mixture; the colours have run (In Lopate,

1994: 261).

In terms of this study, it has been rightly pointed out, for example, that to some extent all

discourse is persuasive, whether consciously intending to be or not. My own feeling is that,

while absolute categorization or genre description would be impossible, the effort to categorize

and describe is not in vain, and indeed is helpful, for such study reveals prevailing ideas about

discourse in whatever community one is in. The guiding idea in this study has been that of

“dominant function.” Thus, while there are certainly trace elements of persuasion to be found

even in the most objective-minded encyclopedic entry, traces of cultural value that seep into all

human reference to reality, nonetheless it may certainly be said that persuasion is not the

dominant function of that piece of discourse. Persuasion is, however, the dominant function of

much discourse, academic essays included. Given the subtlety of means by which we in any

given culture persuade, I believe it is worthwhile for students from other cultures and languages

to study and understand the persuasive techniques common to the cultures in which they wish to

function and express themselves. In terms of the Anglo-American undergraduate essay, as a

123

genre, one cannot overstress its importance to ESL students as a skill to be mastered relative to

their overall success at the university. I believe that the results of this study might be helpful for

teachers of these students in that it provides an overview of persuasive techniques that are

optional or obligatory to a wide range of genres. It is my hope that situating the undergraduate

academic essay within this overall persuasive framework may remove some of the mystery and

confusion which often surrounds this genre.

Teaching Strategies: A Final Word

If it is true that there is no one “generic” academic discourse, but rather only discipline-

specific discourses, then I believe it is time that we reconsider the old, and much debated,

Writing-Across-the-Curriculum programs of the 1970s. Perhaps when we see our tasks as

writing instructors as that of socializing our students into real discourse communities, rather than

trying to socialize them into some vague, non-existent Academic Community, as we in fact try to

do in most freshman writing courses, we will have more success in producing better writing –

because it will be more authentic– in the writing classroom.

Of course, student writing will never be entirely ‘authentic,’ because it is, after all, only

a heuristic for students. However, as Freedman makes clear, writing whose function is epistemic

or heuristic—in other words, whose fundamental purpose is to enable the writer to interpret

reality in new ways—has a social function as well. Referring to her study of undergraduate

students’ writing in an introductory law course, Freedman outlines the social nature of

“epistemic” writing:

To view the interaction [between student and teacher] as an

initiation rite clarifies a great deal that which has been troubling

to those concerned with writing pedagogy. Typically, as

Herrington (1985) observed, the writing that is elicited in

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disciplinary courses is condemned for its rhetorical artificiality

(it asks students to tell the professor what the professor already

knows) as well as for the limited and limiting audience it seems

to imply (teacher as examiner). However, to suggest that such

assignments are pointless because they are artificial

rhetorically may be to miss the real point of what is going on

[emphasis mine]. What is going on is best understood as an

initiation rite—a rite that is created not just as a hurdle for

students to go through, but as a way of experiencing and

expressing those qualities that are necessary for, and

characteristic of, the initiates to the community.

Here Freedman is speaking about disciplinary writing courses. The task of socializing

students into authentic disciplines is more difficult in the typical, all-purpose English 1 course,

however. This is why I believe that we may need to return to the idea of basing generic English

1 courses on real genres, allowing students to read both primary texts for ideas on their topics,

but also journal articles which model accepted ways of arguing about those ideas.

It is interesting, when reviewing the ideas of so many excellent pedagogues, how the

idea of models in the teaching of writing remains so controversial. Derrida (1990), for one, for

as much as he favors exposing students to the original canon of literature which he was exposed

to, and which he ultimately “deconstructed,” is against teaching through models. “[Derrida]

cautions against imposing rigid schemes on writing students,” says Olsen, who interviewed

Derrida in 1990. Instead, Derrida suggests that “we continually question and destabilize the

authority of models of composition and that we seek to invent each time new forms according to

the situation,” (p.3). This, I believe, is fine for established scholars to do. Students, however,

just like Derrida, need to be first exposed to existing and accepted text structures, and the

philosophies that underlie them, before they can challenge them.

Hairston (1986a), it seems, would agree with this. Hairston praises the virtues of good

academic models which, among other things, teach students the use of examples and facts,

125

respect for the intelligence of their readers and the research required to persuade these intelligent

readers (187). I agree with Hairston that the content of writing courses should be writing; and

that themes should be chosen only secondarily to a) considerations of discipline-specific essay

assignments; and b) as examples of acceptable discipline-specific writing. For this reason, I

question the preponderance in most English 1 anthologies of what Kaufer & Geisler (1991)

might characterize as primary texts, that is, texts in which there are no references to other

sources. As Kaufer & Geisler make clear, all discipline-specific academic writing is “text-

bound”; this is the type of writing students themselves will be asked to produce. As a result, I

believe that students need to be presented with many text-bound models of academic discourse –

ideally texts taken from a variety of disciplines. A Writing-Across-the-Curriculum type of

freshman English course could best accommodate the models and general approach I believe are

necessary to meet writing students’ needs in today’s academe.

126

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