On teaching rhetoric, using the play stuff happens

On Teaching Rhetoric, Using the Play Stuff Happens

Elena Kireichuk

Minsk State Linguistics University

In September 2015, ORF kindly provided the department of English History and Grammar of MSLU with a set of copies of the history play Stuff Happens by the modern British playwright David Hare presenting the controversy of the US war in Iraq from the perspective of political leaders (through quotes from their interviews and speeches), journalists, refugees, and just men in the street. In spring 2016, the play was discussed with

the study group Pragmalinguistics and Semiotics for the 3rd and 5th years of the English Department, in the course of Practical Rhetoric for logical fallacies in argumentation.

The rhetorical analysis of a literary text differs from classical text interpretation in that it is aimed at the explication of three kinds of persuasive appeals historically known as the Rhetorical Triangle: logos, ethos, and pathos. Logos is seen as the logical consistency of a message; ethos, as the author’s/characters’ credibility; and pathos, as an appeal to the emotional in the reader. A careful rhetorical analysis allows to elucidate the diversity of rhetorical devices in fiction and assess the strength of their impact on the reader. In neo-rhetoric, fallacies are conventionally split into the three categories derived from classical rhetoric: pathos, ethos, and logos. Depending on the type of appeal, “fallacies of pathos rest on a flawed relationship between what is argued and the audience for the argument; fallacies of ethos rest on a flawed relationship between the argument and the character of those involved in the argument; fallacies of logos rest on flaws in the relationship among statements of an argument” [Ramage 1998: 421].

Thus, analysis of the fallacy as the flip side of rhetoric’s basic concepts and devices may contribute to their thorough revision, strong memorization, and effective application. A proper study of the issue presupposes more than mastering avoidance of incorrect tools of argumentation that may weaken an argument’s validity and logical consistency. Often, fallacies are deliberately used to convince or manipulate unsuspecting people, when the correctness of the logic is more or less obscurely discarded for the sake of winning the argument or brainwashing the audience. So learning to identify and refute all kinds of fallacious appeals in different types of discourse is an essential skill of a debater.

The play Stuff Happens involves a most illustrative selection of various fallacious appeals and demonstrates their crucial role in political argumentative discourse. The most representative and impressive fallacies either generated by the play’s characters or deduced by them in their opponents’ arguments belong to the following categories:

• 1)    FALLACIES OF PATHOS

Appeal to Ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam} - assuming that a claim is true because it has not been or cannot be proven false.

Argument to Stirring Symbols (argumentum ad populum) - appeal to the fundamental beliefs, biases, and prejudices of the audience in order to sway opinion through a feeling of solidarity.

Appeal to Traditional Wisdom (argumentum ad antiquitatem) - an assumption supported solely because it has long been held to be true.

Appeal to Popularity (argumentum ad populum) - a fallacy n wnich a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because many people believe it to be so.

Appeal to Pity (argumentum ad miser icordiam) - an appeal to the audience’s sympathetic feelings in order to support a claim that should be decided on more relevant or objective grounds.

Provincialism - an assumption that the beliefs and practices of one’s group are more common or more correct than they really are. A common variation is nationalism, or Flag-Waving: expecting others to agree on the basis of national identity.

Red Herring (ignoratio elenchi} - shifting the audience’s attention from a crucial issue to an irrelevant one.

• 2)    FALLACIES OF ETHOS

Appeal to the Person (ad hominem) - attacking the character of the arguer rather than the argument itself by name calling, appealing to prejudice (ethnic, racial, gender, religious) or to guilt by association (linking to extremely unpopular groups or causes).

Strawperson (argumentum ad logicam) - substituting a person’s actual position or argument with a distorted, exaggerated, oversimplified, or misrepresented version of the argument.

Moral High Ground (“holier-than-thou”) - a reference to the status of being respected for remaining moral, and upholding a universally recognized standard of justice or goodness.

• 3)    FALLACIES OF LOGOS

Loaded Question (plurium interrogationum) - confronting the opponent with a question that will put them in a bad light no matter how they respond.

False Dilemma - oversimplifying a complex issue so that only two choices appear possible.

Correlation without Causation (post hoc) - assuming that event x causes event у because event x preceded event y.

Slippery Slope (reductio ad absurdum) - an assertion that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant (usually negative) ef_____

Hasty Generalization (secundum quid) - making a too broad or a hasty conclusion without considering all of the variables.

Faulty Analogy - an analogy too dissimilar to be effective.

Propositional Fallacy (non sequitur) - an inference that does not follow logically from the premises; a statement that is not clearly related to anything previously said.

Circular reasoning (circulus in demonstrando) - a type of reasoning in which the proposition is supported by the premises, which is supported by the proposition, creating a circle in reasoning where no useful information is being shared.

Contradiction in Terms - a statement that seems to contradict itself because of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions.

Begging the Question (petitio principii) - a form of faulty syllogisms: providing what is essentially the conclusion of the argument as a premise, or passing unreliable, arbitrarily assumed provisions (conventional wisdom, rumors, stereotypes) for arguments supposedly proving the thesis.

It must be stressed that actual errors in the characters’ reasoning or sloppily worded expressions which speakers would gladly take back are few (such as the one lending the play its title - the phrase that strikes a minor character as “the most racist remark” he has “ever heard” [Hare 2006: 119]). In the majority of the cases, the inconsistency of reasoning is not so easy to deduce and expose - it is intricate, hidden, and used as a deliberate rhetoric strategy of influence and manipulation. Often, the fallacious appeals combine for an ever-greater impact on the audience who thus are much likely to be misled and fail to spot the flawed reasoning. Below, there is a brief possible interpretation of the play’s several trickiest and best-veiled fallacies.

• •    BLAIR: The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world. But if the world as a community focused on it, we could heal it. And if we don’t, it will become deeper and angrier. This is the moment to tackle the problems from the slums of Gaza to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan [Hare 2006: 27].

The speaker’s far too wide generalisation (concerning a range of nations not involved in the conflict directly but evidently subject to regulation by the same methods) combines here with an appeal to pity and a sense of historical guilt in the First-World population towards the Third-World nations and simultaneously with an appeal to fear that this same Third World might unite and turn against the civilisation and culture the listener belongs to, thus threatening their values and way of life.

• •    RUMSFELD: Isn’t this moment now for a little reality? Before we commit? Before we commit young Americans to give their lives? Isn’t this the moment just to do the obvious thing and maybe stop listening to Europe? [...] Man’s coming at you with a knife. All they’re worrying about is which hand we use to take it away [Hare 2006: 99].

The effect of the loaded question is enhanced by an appeal to pity and metaphorical oversimplification and additionally sustained through emphatic syntax - a string of rhetorical questions.

• •    BUSH: Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility towards America and to support terror. States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By

  seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. All nations should know: America will do whatever is necessary to ensure our nation’s security. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. History has called America and our allies to action. Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom’s price. We have shown freedom’s power. And in this great conflict, my fellow Americans, we will see freedom’s victory [Hare 2006: 32-33].

The reader doesn’t even have to rack their brains trying to get through the speaker’s oversimplified holier-than-thou and two-wrongs-make-a-right manipulative endeavour, since it is helpfully and effectively commented upon by other characters as “simplistic”, using “the jejune language”, “straight out of Lord of the Rings", “stupid”, “best understood by the fact there are mid-term Congressional elections coming up in November” [Hare 2006: 33] later in the text.

• •    RICE: Like most Americans, I listened with some scepticism to the Cold War claim that America was a “beacon of democracy.” My ancestors were property -a fraction of a man. Women were not included in those immortal constitutional phrases concerning the right of the people “in the course of human events” to choose who would rule [Hare 2006: 6].

Here, the speaker’s retrospective thunders on race and gender discrimination in the USA may seem compelling as an argument firmly based on ethos, but on second thoughts, they turn out a pathetic blend of a double appeal to pity, flag-waving and a contextual fallacy. The speaker herself could not have been a sufferer under those sad conditions far back in history, rather, she is an epitome of what gender and race minorities can achieve in America today. Moreover, how the oppression of the above-mentioned classes of Americans or a presumably disadvantaged status of any one of them connect to the present -day issues of the US’s foreign policy, or whether they justify and entitle any course of action chosen by its government as inherently moral and correct remains beyond a watchful reader’s comprehension.

In literature as an art, emotional appeal is unquestionably a primary tool of communicating messages to the reader. That is why the principal element of the rhetorical structure of a literary work is pathos, ethos and logos synergizing and supporting it. In teaching reading and rhetoric as practical foreign language disciplines, the play Stuff Happens may provide effective study material to stimulate a heuristic appreciation of modern fiction and develop students’ linguistic competencies.