The Power of Words

Unveiling the Speaker and Writer's Hidden Craft

David S. Kaufer, Suguru Ishizaki, Brian S. Butler, Jeff Collins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135618117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In 1888, Mark Twain reflected on the writer's special feel for words to his correspondent, George Bainton, noting that "the difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter." We recognize differences between a politician who is "willful" and one who is "willing" even though the difference does not cross word-stems or parts of speech. We recognize that being "held up" evokes different experiences depending upon whether its direct object is a meeting, a bank, or an example. Although we can notice hundreds of examples in the language where small differences in wording produce large reader effects, the authors of The Power of Words argue that these examples are random glimpses of a hidden systematic knowledge that governs how we, as writers or speakers, learn to shape experience for other human beings.Over the past several years, David Kaufer and his colleagues have developed a software program for analyzing writing called DocuScope. This book illustrates the concepts and rhetorical theory behind the software analysis, examining patterns in writing and showing writers how their writing works in different categories to accomplish varying objectives. Reflecting the range and variety of audience experience that contiguous words of surface English can prime, the authors present a theory of language as an instrument of rhetorically priming audiences and a catalog of English strings to implement the theory. The project creates a comprehensive map of the speaker and writer's implicit knowledge about predisposing audience experience at the point of utterance. The book begins with an explanation of why studying language from the standpoint of priming--not just meaning--is vital to non-question begging theories of close reading and to language education in general. The remaining chapters in Part I detail the steps taken to prepare a catalog study of English strings for their properties as priming instruments. Part II describes in detail the catalog of priming categories, including enough examples to help readers see how individual words and strings of English fit into the catalog. The final part describes how the authors have applied the catalog of English strings as priming tools to conduct textual research.

II
Results: The Catalog in Depth

In this part of the book, we describe in detail the full hierarchy of our catalog of priming strings. From the top-level clusters, we turn our attention to the finer granularity of families, dimensions, and finally classes of strings. From the three major clusters of strings we have already overviewed, our catalog expands into six families, eighteen dimensions, and over 100 classes of strings. For each string class, our aim has been to include enough examples to help readers get a conceptual feel for the distinctness of each class.

The following chapter considers English strings from the first cluster, of internal perspectives, and the various families, dimensions, and specific string classes that constitute this cluster.

6
Cluster 1: Internal Perspectives

Language, more than visual media, make the interior of minds directly accessible to readers. Write the sentence:

100. John thought that the world was round.

and the content thought the world was round depicts priming actions from internal perspectives. Journals, diaries, and memoirs are distinctive because of the relatively high proportion of internal perspective words they contain relative to other features. Engineering reports and scenic fieldguides are distinctive for their relatively low proportion of internal thinking references relative to other features.

In this chapter, we cover families, dimensions, and finally, specific classes of English strings depicting internal perspectives. The internal perspectives we tend to think of most involve the present and often first-person cognitions of individual minds. These strings also involve private feelings and affect. They further involve temporal projection. Our memories and anticipations are, after all, just thoughts. We start with first-person cognitions first. We then turn to affect and temporal projections.

FAMILY 1. INTERIOR THINKING (EXPOSING AUDIENCES TO MINDS)

Dimension 1: First Person

Class 1: The Grammatical First Person The strings stereotypically associated with a mind on the page involve first-person (typically singular) self-reference, the speaker or writer's use of I, me, my, or mine. Self-referential pronouns individuate a point of view from all the mentalities and objects outside of it. Although a writer may establish point of view in the absence of first person or self-referential pronouns, self-referential pronouns, singular or plural, are sufficient to indicate that a message has a point of view.

Nonetheless, first person pronouns are not by themselves sufficient to establish a point of view that is personal or subjective. Impersonal and intersubjective technical reports can contain first person. A scientist or engineer can refer to him or herself (I or my or we) only to indicate that his or her individual consciousness is present. Consider the following:

101. I often use facts about Einstein’s laws in my work.

Writers can make first person self-reference without being visibly idiosyncratic, subjective, personal, or controversial. Moreover, even when writers never use it explicitly, the first person is arguably implicit in all writing. In her 1979 book White Album, Joan Didion observed that, from the start, “writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people.”

Some style manuals admonish writers never to use the singular first person I. This admonishment is an example of prescriptive grammar with little descriptive foundation. Unless a writer makes a conscious practice to follow the prescription, or a publisher expressly forbids it, the first person singular pronoun is, we have found, ubiquitous across all types of writing. With external pressure, writers can avoid it, but to do so can cause its own awkwardness and infelicity. Compare the colloquial 102 against the more awkward 103:

102. I believe it’s the right thing to do.

103. The present writer believes it’s the right thing to do.

First person singular pronouns, in summary, individuate a mind without specifying it or imbuing it with historical particularity. For further specification and historical particularization of a self, other words must be recruited—sometimes with the self-referential pronoun, sometimes not—to particularize and specify an historical self. We now turn to various string classes furnishing such recruitments.

Class 2: Self-Disclosure One of the surest ways English particularizes a first person consciousness is to frame it within a simple past or future. The result is a first person consciousness that self-discloses.

104. I went to the store daily.
(simple past retrospective)

105. I’ll go to the store daily.
(future resolve)

The past tense went signals an individual that has historicized him- or herself.

The writer of 104 offers individuation as a way of particularization, framing a unique life from a reflective vantage. The future I’ll go (105) signals a resolve for future action. In contrast to a past or future that provides a particularizing historical frame, the present generic (106) dampens the effect of particularization by moving from a unique mental act (e.g., retrospection or resolve) to a ritual that implicates the actor without revealing his or her inner mind.

106. I go to the store daily.
(present generic)

The present generic go signals a routine or habit in which the writer participates. Example 106 provides a survey response to help a questioner understand classifications (e.g., shoppers), but not the expression of a unique historicized self.

Class 3: Autobiographical Reference Speakers and writers achieve autobiographical particularization when their first person utterance resonates with a sense of historical continuity reflective of historical identity. We may think of the historical particularization of first person as autobiographical when it is accompanied with a more habitual and continuous past verb phrase (I would often), a temporally displaced past reference (I used to), a more time-bound specific action (I used the Kodak flashbulb), or a time-bound recurring reference (during World War II, I used to go…).

Autobiographical strings combine self-referential pronouns and the perfect aspect (have, had) with past phrases like used to, or with continuous temporal adverbs like always.

107. I used to go to the story daily
(I don’t anymore. The practice is over.)

108. I had (always) gone to the story daily.
(I don’t anymore…something happened to change that practice but that event is not specified. Compare with string 109 ).

109. Before Jake died, I had (always) gone to the store daily.
(I don’t anymore…Jake’s death put an end to that).

110. I have (always) gone to the story daily.
(still do)

These various strings prime the impression of a speaker or writer tapping from autobiographical memory. A major difference across strings 107-110 as autobiographical reports is that the writer of 110, relying on the present perfect have, recalls a phase of life that continues through the present.

Refashioning simple self-reference into the particularity of an individual life can also be achieved when self-referential pronouns are combined with the future tense. In this case, an historical life is not recalled but anticipated and personally willed. Consider by way of contrast:

111. I see you all the time.
(present generalization)

112. I’ll (get to) see you all the time.
(future contraction; expression of desire; autobiographical)

113. I will (get to) see you all the time.
(future; expression of desire; autobiographical)

114. I will (tend to) see you all the time.
(generalization of the present-in-future)

In 111, a present tense self-reference inhibits the perception of a subjective or historical self. The writer comments about bumping into the reader with a high frequency of occurrence while making no subjective commentary about this happenstance. In 112 and 113, the writer relies on the future to convey the private volition of a historical self. Note that in 114, a string that can overlap in surface form with 112 and 113, the writer projects a present generalization into the future. The present generic “tend to” reduces the personal and willful sense of will into an impersonal statistical regularity. The effect of 114 for the reader thus reproduces the effect of 111 but with future projection. Although a complex array of impressions, all of these various strings illustrate how tense specification can combine with self-reference to root particular, historical, and autobiographical selves on the page.

Dimension 2: Inner Thinking

Speakers and writers of English have more than tense as a resource with which to portray private and historical selves. They can also portray their inner mind through a dimension of strings we call inner thinking. The strings associated with this dimension form a variety of specific string classes: namely private thinking verbs, disclosures, evidentials, expectancies, and contingencies. We review each of these string classes next.

Private Thought and Subjective Disclosure

Class 1: Private Thinking Writers convey inner thinking through privatecognition or thinking verbs (e.g., contemplate, decide, discover), with or without an accompanying first person or temporal framing.

115. John contemplates leaving home.

116. Mary decides to find her mother.

117. Jill discovers she has lost her watch.

Of interest about these strings is that while we have all recognized ourselves in the act of contemplating, deciding, or discovering, we have never actually witnessed a contemplation, a decision, or a discovery (as direct objects of perception). The science of psychology may be uncomfortable about making assertive claims about our minds, but the English language is not. The strings just mentioned, unremarkable English, are direct and unqualified reports about that which we have no direct access—the inner minds of distinct and particular human agents.

Recall that we had cited string 106 to clarify how one can use first person and present tense without particularizing oneself or revealing one’s mind. What we learn from strings 115-117 is that with a specific subject, private-thinking verbs reveal the particularization of mind, no matter what other factors apply, including present tense. John’s contemplation (and Mary’s decision and Jill’s discovery) are not only individuating but also distinctive and historically particular to the individual. No one can share the private thoughts of another, but through thinking strings, speakers and writers make the act and often outcome of private thought visible to audiences.

Some fu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Words and Their Potency for Priming Audiences
• I Preliminaries
• II Results: The Catalog in Depth
• III Implications and Applications of Rhetorical Priming Theory