An analytical poke

Every now and again I come to think of the big disconnect between the act of performing rhetorical communication and rhetorical analysis. Rhetorical communication happens any time you strategically choose your words to get someone to do something (from passing the salt to approving a bank loan). Rhetorical analysis is the act of looking really closely at some sort of rhetorical communication and analyzing what's going on in it. The communication usually happens very fast, and the analysis very slowly. That's the disconnect.

The disconnect is, of course, inevitable. An analysis has to perform many tasks, and be explicit about most of them. It has to provide context, justify the significance of the communicative act under analysis, and describe it in sufficient detail to convey to readers what's going on. This takes quite a number of words, even if only performed with the minimum of surplus verbiage. Even after subsequent revisions with the explicit intent to reduce word count, there will by necessity be a substantial amount of words to it. It goes with the territory.

The communicative act, on the other hand, only has to do what it set out to do. Once done, it's over, and other things can commence. In trivial cases, it literally takes seconds - the salt is passed. In other cases, it can take a bit longer, but tends to be limited by the physical constraints of the human body. A speech can only be so long. All said and done, other things happen. Life goes on.

Thus, analyses tend to end up being much ado about seemingly nothing. On first glance, you might wonder how it is even possible to write thousands of words about something that takes seconds to perform. Then you dig into it and discover that there's a lot going on in that one moment, which indeed needed all those words to unpack. Worse, you begin to look at similar situations for similar implications - the analysis continues inside you. Further communicative acts require at least some thought before they become routine again.

The power of rhetorical analysis lies in this disconnect. A good analysis will disconnect you from a situation, and then force you to reconnect to it in a new way. You think you knew what's going on, but looking back on it you realize that, no, there's more to it. Your perspective has changed, and so you must pay attention to the differences made visible. You have permission to be perturbed.

In all this, life goes on. But you still have to reconnect.

That thesis I wrote about Patreon

I wrote a thesis about Patreon.

There are different ways of going about writing a thesis about Patreon. An intuitive approach would be an instrumental, goal-oriented investigation as to which strategies work and which do not. The findings of such an investigation could then be distilled into a simple list of do's and don'ts, which readers could implement in short order and (probably, maybe, hopefully) generate more revenue.

I did not write that kind of thesis. If you came here looking for simple, straightforward advice about how to run your Patreon page, then this wall of text is not for you. (Neither are the posts about my my other theses, for that matter, despite them all relating to each other in interesting ways.)

What I did was seemingly simple. I asked a straightforward question, and saw where it took me. The question was thus: what is Patreon, and what does being on it do to you?

As with all straightforward questions, the answer turns out to be everything but clear cut and easy to summarize. In order to answer it, we have to answer a couple of sub-questions first, just to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Seeing as this was a thesis in Rhetoric (Americans call it Composition and/or Speech; the discipline has different names depending on where you happen to be geographically), the first of these sub-questions is what we mean by "rhetoric". To summarize hundreds of years of back and forths, there are two main answers to this question. The first is the (neo-)Aristotelian answer that it is the art of finding the best possible means of convincing someone in a particular situation. In this case, rhetoric would be a set of strategies for maximizing Patreon donations, with varying degrees of excellence in execution. The other answer looks at the situation as a whole and asks what it implies for those who participate in it, and if things could be done differently. In this case, rhetoric consists of analyzing what it means to have a Patreon page, which implicit assumptions inform interactions on this page, and how these assumptions might lead to outcomes that were neither expected nor beneficial for the participants.

As you might have gleaned from the gist of things, my thesis fell firmly into the latter category. Hence the lack of simple, straightforward advice in list form.

We need to keep the different kinds of rhetoric in mind, as the difference between them tells us something about what goes on with regards to Patreon. Specifically, we shall look at the concept of "ethos" and how it plays out differently in the two paradigms.

In the (neo-)Aristotelian framework, ethos is a means of persuasion. The word "ethos" connotes everything that is related to the person doing the talking, and how these aspects of self are being used to convince the audience to do something. In this case, the "something" is donating. There are many possible means, depending on who is doing the asking for donations. For instance, various ailments or difficulties can be leveraged to generate sympathy, which creates a willingness to donate. Similarly, skills can be leveraged to show how donations go towards new projects (e.g. donate so I can afford to make a new movie or whatever). Or a common goal can be invoked, along with a more or less defined correlation between donating and achieving this goal (e.g. most fundraisers and charity drives). And so on and so forth. In short, ethos is a means to an end, and it is used as such.

In the more modern framework, "ethos" is more akin to "ethics", in that it connotes a way of being in the world. It is not as directly interested in solving the problem at hand, as it is in understanding the communicative process in a wider context. For instance, it does not see communication in terms of problems to solve (in this case, how to get people to donate), but rather as a series of interactions which generate certain expectations on future interactions. It also emphasizes the role of choice on the part of the person doing the communication - they can choose to present themselves this way or that, and they do so on the basis of available knowledge and ethical propensities. A person does not present themselves in a certain way only in order to solve a problem, but also as a way of being in the world. A Patreon page is not just an invitation to donate - it is also a declaration: this is who I am and what I do.

This might seem like a subtle difference, and it is. Thus, an example is in order, to put the two perspectives in perspective.

Let's say we have a rhetor without any particular political opinions one way or the other. One day, he (let's make it a he) stumbles upon an alt-right blog, and notices two things. First, that it gets a lot of donations. Second, that it is very formulaic and uncreative, and mostly posts the same things over and over and over again with minor variations. Based on these two observations, he decides to hack the process and start his own blog in a similar vein. Not because he agrees with the opinions expressed, but because it seems an easier way to get an income than doing more labor-intensive work. After a while, his low-effort blog gets noticed by the true believers, and the donation money starts to pour in. Seeing as it works, he puts a little more effort into it, and eventually finds himself being a part of this political ecology. Not because he believes in what he writes, but because the donation money keeps coming his way.

Seen through the (neo-)Aristotelian framework, he has solved the problem. By presenting himself as someone who holds these particular beliefs, he manages to persuade his audience to donate money. He has succeeded with what he set out to do, and his audience is happy to see him keep at it.

As you might imagine, the modern framework is less than sympathetic to this course of action. For one, he uses his powers of rhetoric to exploit those who are vulnerable to this kind of industrially produced propaganda, in a sense preying on the weak. For another, his participation in this political milieu reinforces its message and makes it a more prevalent presence in the online spaces he frequents; there is strength in numbers, and he now numbers among them. Moreover, this is not the best use of his rhetorical skills, and he could contribute better things to the world than a low-effort repetition of insincerely held opinions.

In the former case, our fictive rhetor makes good use of ethos, as he manages to present himself as a fellow extremist, thus getting his audience to donate. In the latter, he fails his ethical obligation to be a good person whose presence in the world makes a positive difference when all is said and done. He has not been good company.

If you have read this far, you might have thought that we have moved rather orthogonally with regards to what Patreon is and how being on it affects its users. But I reckon you also understand why simply asking what to do in order to make donations happen is insufficient in order to understand what is going on. It is more than merely a quest to maximize the monthly donations, and the analysis has to widen in order to take all the relevant aspects into account.

With this in mind, we can pose the question of what Patreon is. In the simplest terms possible, it is a web site that allows people to ask for money from other people. Patreon also provides an economic infrastructure for getting said donations from here to there. Anyone can create a Patreon page and ask for donations on it. Moreover, they can present themselves in whatever terms they like in order to make these donations happen. This is, in short, it.

(To be sure, there are certain limitations as to who is allowed on the site, mostly relating to contradictory US social values. In order to keep things brief, I'm going to gloss over this fact with the quickness.)

This presents us with an interesting rhetorical situation. On the one hand, Patreon users are free to define themselves however they like, applying every bit of autonomy and rhetorical prowess they can muster. On the other hand, the very act of being on Patreon is a message in and of itself. Patreon exists to facilitate donations, and anyone who has a page is asking for such donations - even if they do not write anything on their page at all. There is communication going on between the lines whether the user acknowledges it or not. At the end of the day, a Patreon page is a Patreon page.

During the course of my thesis writing, I identified three strategies (broadly defined) for writing a Patreon page. Here, I present them in falling order of popularity.

The most common strategy is to describe what happens when someone donates. This is heavily encouraged through the system of rewards and goals; if an individual donates x amount of dollars, they get a reward, and if the accumulated donations reach a certain level, some action which could not previously be performed will now be performed. In this way, the relationship between the parties involved is well defined: everyone knows what will happen, and donors can weigh their options before choosing a course of action.

Another common strategy is to not have rewards, but to frame donations as encouragements to keep whatever activity is at hand going. The donation becomes its own reward, as it were. There are still overall goals (e.g. at x amount of total donations there will be an upgrade of recording equipment) but individuals are not rewarded above and beyond knowing that the thing they enjoy can keep doing its thing.

A less common strategy is to flat out not reward donations at all, but accept them nevertheless. This might be done for tax reasons (some legislations exempt gifts from taxation, and explicitly not giving anything in return qualifies the exchange as a gift rather than a business transaction). They might also do it to avoid getting into a situation where gratitude is required (those who choose to donate even though they know they will receive nothing in return know that this is not a purchase). Or it might simply be because the user simply can't be bothered to think of something to write. There are no goals, no rewards, but the option to donate is open nevertheless.

It would seem at first glance that this last strategy is counter to the whole concept of having a donation page. But - as we saw earlier - simply having a Patreon page is a message in and of itself, and sometimes this is enough to get the point across.

All of these strategies deal with the tension between freedom and autonomy. Freedom means doing what you want to do, while autonomy means defining your own laws (or, in this case, your own goals). The tension comes into being whenever you want to do something that requires more effort than simply doing it. For instance, reading a book requires that you keep reading until you've read all you decided to read. At any point you are free to stop reading, but if you want to finish the reading, you have to make the decision to limit your range of options until it is completed. If you set a goal for yourself, you also have to discipline yourself until the goal is achieved.

The tension here is that both freedom and autonomy are limitations of each other. The defining characteristic of autonomy is that you choose your own rules and goals. Once you set upon the path of realizing the chosen course of action, however, you must limit yourself to doing the things that lead to attaining the goal. Not because someone else tells you to, but because this is what you decided to do. Whether it happens to be reading a book, finishing an education, or performing some other feat, the dynamic remains the same: once your decision has been made, you have to stick to it. Even if you at times feel like doing something else.

An example of this (to stick with the literary theme) is writing a book. The only way to finish it is to sit down and write. It might be tempting to go outside to enjoy the nice weather, or binge watch all seasons of Buffy, or go hang out with friends. At all points in time, you are free to go do these things. But if you ever want to finish that book - the goal that you, by your own volition, set for yourself - you have to set these freedoms aside and focus upon the task of writing.

Looking back on the three strategies outlined above, we can see how the tension plays out in each of them. The third strategy - that of not rewarding patrons - maximizes the amount of freedom in the relationship between parties. No reward is given, no reward is expected, and donations keep happening in so far as the donors find it in their interest to continue. The creator, for their part, can choose whichever creative direction they desire, unburdened by expectations and obligations. What you see is 100% what you get, take it or leave it.

This can be contrasted with the first strategy, that of giving specific rewards to everyone who donates a particular amount of money. Here, autonomy is maximized, is as far as the creator can choose which rewards are awarded at which levels of donation. However, over time, this might lead to the creators finding themselves spending more time than initially expected making sure that donors get their just rewards. Making a donation is, in a sense, to enter into a contract, and it is up to the creators to live up to their part of the bargain. The freedom of the present is bound by autonomy expressed in the past. (Whether this is a productive relationship between creators and donors, or an inescapable iron cage where next month's rent depends on cranking out yet another unit, is always a contextual question.)

The middle strategy is, of course, a combination of the two. A degree of freedom is maintained, but if donations reach a certain level, something will happen. This something, while it is not a reward or contract in the same way as we saw above, is still a promise, and as such brings with it the obligation to fulfill it. (If nothing else, it looks - and sounds - bad if the audio recording equipment has not been upgraded for months and months after reaching the goal.)

I should stress that there is nothing inherently wrong with aiming for either autonomy or freedom in these matters. The point of this wall of text is not to say that you should do either instead of the other. Rather, the point - the thesis, as it were - is that you ought to make an informed choice when you create a Patreon page, and write it in such a way that you can live with who you potentially become. Giving lots of rewards is labor-intensive, but it is also an efficient strategy to get those donations to happen. Conversely, you might find that your creative efforts are hampered by the amount of extra effort you have accidentally committed yourself to. It all depends on who you are and what you are about.

Seen in this light, we are rapidly approaching an answer to the question of what Patreon is and how it affects its users. Moreover, we are able to ask new and interesting questions with regards to the ethos/ethics of online donation services. Given that Patreon users are free to define themselves and what they do (and for how much money this will be done), the tension between freedom and autonomy becomes front and center. Having a Patreon page becomes not only a way of asking for money, it also becomes an act of self-definition: this is who I am and what I do.

So. Donate to my Patreon, maybe?

In the mood for some discourse

Both the two most recent discursive anomalies share a theme. That theme is, somewhat unexpectedly, mood. Or, put another way: the way reading a particular text makes you feel, and how that feeling affects your thoughts.

In case you are reading in the future, the two anomalies in question are the ones about Hyde and Booth. Since texts are always retroactively present, you can sneak over to read them without missing a beat. Go on. These words will still be here.

Mood is an underrated concept. Sometimes it is dismissed outright, as part of the overall category of 'feelings'. At other times, it is seen as a distraction from the main point of interest, e.g. 'not being in the mood', 'being in a bad mood'. There is a tendency to see mood as something that happens beside the point, and that reality happens without you while you are distracted by these irrelevant moods of yours.

Besides being both rude and bordering on gaslighting, these takes have the additional drawback of being wrong.

Booth is perhaps most explicit in his discussion of moods. One of his premises is that the reason you keep reading a particular text - a romance novel, a cartoon, a crime novel - is that you want more of whatever it is you are reading. The point is not to see if the lovers stick together, what the punchline might be or whodunnit, but to extend the present experience of reading, whatever it might be. The act of reading the text puts you into a certain (albeit at times intangible) mood, and it is this mood that fiction provides. Far from being a side point, mood is for Booth the express purpose of reading. And, by extension, writing; to create an artifact in the world that conveys the kind of mood the author is interested in conveying, and thus creating an opportunity to explore this mood - both by experiencing it through reading, and by the creative act of criticism.

If you are a podcast listener, you might have experienced a peculiar kind of sensation: that of listening to people talk about something you are utterly uninterested in, but find the discussion itself fascinating and worthwhile. This is the mood Booth writes about; the state of mind the act of partaking of something puts you in, regardless of what the subject matter happens to be.

When Booth says that books are friends, this is what he means. You can pick them off the shelves and read for a while, and be comforted by their company; they raise your mood, as friends are wont to do. His approach to criticism is this: if what you have written can provide good company, then it has merit, and writing should strive to attain such merit. To be good company.

Hyde approaches the same theme from another angle, that of rhetoric and philosophy. Moods are not just something that happens while reading, but are the guiding principle behind our thoughts and actions. If we like the places we inhabit - dwell, in his word - we will act towards them in certain ways, presumably with the intention to preserve and decorate these places. If we do not like them, the mood will be different, and our actions will follow suit. Mood is what motivates us: thus understanding mood means understanding ourselves and our place in the world.

The punk aesthetic can be understood in this light. It defines itself against the status quo and seeks to rebel against it. The point is to be something different than what is on offer by the powers that be. The fact that it is seen as ugly and vulgar by those who are attuned to the mood of the times is one of punk's express aesthetic purposes, and only adds to the appeal of those who share the sentiment.

Hyde maintains that seeing mood as guiding principle places a certain ethical responsibility on us as discursive actors in the world. When we write something, we do not simply convey a certain number of facts in a certain order and with a certain degree of accuracy - we also convey a mood. More so when engaging in public speaking, as our presence defines the mood in the room with regard to the subject matter discussed. What we say and how we say it matters, and it falls upon us to think about our impact on those who listen.

Taken together, these two variations on the theme of mood gives us a foundation on which to build further thinking about critical reading and writing. At its most basic, it allows us to ask what mood a particular artifact puts us in or is written to foster. It also allows us to reflect on our own writing, and ask ourselves if we convey the appropriate mood alongside what we want to say. At its most simple, thinking about moods this way asks us to pay attention, and to act on what we see.

More indirectly, the notion of mood gives us an opening to understand why certain people like certain works or genres. There is no shortage of writers and podcasters who do little else but repackage things that have already been said elsewhere, but who add the element of mood. Being able to understand that it is this mood that draws their audience allows us to understand why they do what they do - 'they' being both audience and authors.

A benign example is why readers like the rapt wittiness of someone like Jane Austen; the way she depicts social interactions and relations is a very distinct kind of mood indeed. On a less pleasant note, many partake of racist media just for the sake of the mood therein: hearing someone else talk about the negroes and their decadent ways gives permission to maintain that mood and mode of thinking. Keeping mood in mind allows us to understand - and critique - these things in a more interesting way.

Closer to home, it also opens the door to understanding home decoration. The point is not just simply to look good, but also to suggest a certain mood. A sidenote, to be sure, but I want to imply the general applicability of these things.

I suspect that both works discussed above might be slightly obscure to the general reader. Booth published the Company We Keep in 1988, and Hyde's anthology about the Ethos of Rhetoric came out in 2004. I also suspect that, should you have stumbled upon these books in the wild, you might not have found them particularly interesting - they are both, in a way, intended for specialized audiences. While the point of writing discursive anomalies about a particular thing is to encourage readers to pick up these things and read for themselves, in this case the point is more to convey the general mood of these two books. To introduce you to a concept you might otherwise miss.

But, then again: that is the point of most writing about writing. -

When rhetoricians and pedagogues clash

I operate by the rule of three. If I see something referenced three times, I look it up. If three persons, independently of each other, ask me to do something, I give this something serious consideration. It's a simple rule that leads to interesting new avenues, and if you ever find yourself bored, try it out.

The reason you're reading this is that three persons, independently of each other, asked about the BA thesis in education (Swedish: pedagogik) I outlined in passing the other day. So here goes. The most technical document you're likely to encounter on this here blog. If you're not an educator or a rhetorician, you might find this somewhat orthogonal to your interests. It would be quite alright to skim this one.

(If you're entering from Twitter and lived through the Thesis Livetweetage, be aware that this is not the memetic fanfic online literacy MA thesis of awesome you've heard so much about. That one is still under evaluation, and will hopefully pass soon.)

My writing partner (bless 'em) and I wanted to analyze an ancient series of rhetorical exercises, the progymnasmata, and how these relate to modern educational practices. Our reasoning was that there seemed to be some very tangible skillsets taught by this series, and that it would be enlightening to see if and where these same skillsets were taught today. And, subsequently, if any insights could be brought to bear from knowing these ifs and wheres.

Which, as you might imagine, is a very broad question, in need of being brought down to earth in terms of scope and analytic feasibility. Specifically, two things needed to be operationalized: the skillsets taught by the progymnasmata, and those skillsets taught in schools today. Only by breaking these skillsets down to their basic elements (the skills that make up the set, as it were) could we compare and contrast them with sufficient detail to say anything interesting about them.

At first, we thought that simply looking at the various exercises outlined in the progymnasmata would be sufficient to get a handle on what they're supposed to teach. However, we soon found that while they certainly built up to something, this something was underarticulated. After being frustrated by lack of context, we realized we'd better get some context. This we found in the form of Quintilian, the famous Roman rhetorician and educator, who both used the progymnasmata and had a whole philosophy regarding what they're supposed to teach.

(A technical rhetorical note: it is both possible and common to apply the progymnasmata [or variants thereof] as a kind of vocational training, where those who undergo the exercises emerge afterwards with newfound abilities to give presentations and suchlike. If all you want to do is to make sure your employees/students are able to give interesting talks, then it works well towards that end. However, this is somewhat barren in terms of comparative educational insights. Thus, we brought in bad boy Quintilian.)

I'm going to skip the tedious details about how we settled upon the five key skills taught by Quintilian's version of these exercises, and get straight to them. These are as follows: critical thinking, the ability to actualize oneself as a social subject, the fast organization of information, to have a good orientation in literature, and to establish good and enduring habits early on. The first three follow from the exercises, and the last two are emphasized by Quintilian. They all point towards the same goal: to become a good orator. Or, to quote: "we are to form, then, the perfect orator, who cannot exist unless he is above all a good man".

Being able to think critically means to not take things at face value, and to see things from multiple points of view. The ability to actualize oneself as a social subject is a complex matter, but it can be summarized as knowing what to say to whom in order to get results (especially in matters of state and law, the traditional arenas of rhetoric). The fast organization of information relates to being creative in finding things to say (topoi). Having a good orientation in literature means both to have read the classics, and to constantly be on the lookout for new nuggets of insight (or turns of phrases) to use when the rhetorical need arise. The good habits - the virtues, if you will - are rather straightforward.

Together, these five skills form what Quintilian named a hexis. This is more than just the ability to do something - it's more akin to having your whole way of thinking based on or shaped by an ability to do something. Learning something - in this case rhetoric and speaking in public - is not just a "learn and forget" kind of thing. You emerge a different person from the experience of learning, and by virtue of this you apply your new insights automatically to all aspects of your life. The knowledge is integrated into your character, and thus you know it intimately.

When Quintilian says that a good rhetor must also be a good person, this is part of what he means. Simply learning some detail or aspect is not sufficient. The art of rhetoric has to become an integrated, instinctive response to new situations - only then has the educational process been effective. You are not just someone who knows rhetoric - you are a rhetor. Your whole being as a person is involved.

(Another technical rhetorical note: the other part of this - the good part - has to do with the conditions of persuasion. If you are not a good person, and use your rhetorical powers to evil ends, those you try to convince will remember this in the future, and so become less inclined to listen to you. Conversely, if you at every point try to do what's good, this too will be remembered. Being a good person means you're in good standing with your peers, and your words thus carry more weight. The counterexample, of course, being Donald Trump.)

If you've followed so far, you have probably gathered why we sought to find if anything of this remained in contemporary educational practices. Both in terms of the explicit aim of educating good/virtuous persons, and in terms of the deep kind of knowing emphasized throughout. Regardless of the subject to be taught, there might be potential advantages to this line of thinking when applied to contemporary educational institutions.

Fortunately for my writing partner and me, we didn't have to ponder the morass of actually implementing or changing anything (at least not within the context of the thesis). Instead, we moved on to the second part of our analysis: the state of our current educational institutions.

Of course, this could stand with some narrowing and specification. Examining the entirety of a school system isn't very expedient, so we had to settle for some part of some aspect of it. We chose the time honored strategy of reading the manual, so to speak: curriculum analysis. Specifically, we read those parts that relate to the subject of Swedish. (The subject is very similar to English in English-speaking contexts. However, since English is also a subject in Swedish schools, calling it "English" would confuse things.)

Since the Swedish school system recently got a brand new curriculum, we decided to compare the old version with the new version, using the framework built from reading Quintilian. I'll spare you the tedious details of how we went about this, and get right to the interesting parts.

The curriculum of '94 (aka the old version) focused on the acquisition of "skills" or "abilities" [the term "förmågor"can go either way]. The curriculum of '11 (aka the new version) focused on the successful internalization and application of strategies. This might seem a subtle difference, but it has dramatic effects when applied in educational practice. For example, the ability to utilize a library and its resources is different from applying a strategy of utilizing the library. The former implies some sort of familiarity and affinity with the library as an institution; the latter implies that libraries are one strategically viable option among many equally viable options.

Now, this is not to say that abilities are better than strategies, educationally speaking. But depending on which framework you use, you end up emphasizing different aspects of the problem at hand, and different solutions to solving it. Being aware of the strengths and weaknesses of your framework gives you the option to compensate for the weaknesses and play into the strengths.

One of the strengths of Quintilian's hexis approach is that it's comprehensive. It teaches, and it teaches well, and brings with it the potential of further deep learning based on the learner's own interests. It has a corresponding drawback of being time-intensive, and requiring a not insignificant amount of dedication from both teacher and learner. You end up immersed in the subject matter, but it takes a while to get there; being oriented in literature only happens one book at a time. (This approach also brings with it the risk of alienating you from your peers, but that's another thesis.)

The abilities approach gives you the understanding you need to act in certain situations, such as in the library example above. It gives you what you need to move along, should interest motivate you. However, if such interest doesn't motivate, you end up with a partial understanding of a particular situation, without the appropriate context to act on this understanding. Such as, say, having a library card and a mechanical understanding of how to use it, but not really knowing or caring as to why you'd want to use it. Or, indeed, why libraries exist.

The strategies approach has the advantage of being fast and efficient. It identifies the desired outcome and the way(s) to get there, and it's easy to control if the educational goal has been achieved. Particularly when the situation only requires that you teach one particular thing. It does, however, run the risk of becoming fragmentary. Clever learners can game the system by quickly identifying the desired strategies, perform them sufficiently enough to pass muster, and then forget all about it. (Interestingly, both studying AND teaching for the test follows this pattern. But, again, another thesis.)

Rhetorically speaking, this would be the place to write that we ended up advocating a particular approach over all others. But, being an exploratory thesis, we didn't arrive at fire and brimstone clear-cut solutions or conclusions. The point was to be able to think about these things in clearer and more nuanced terms. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach, and each are used in different settings depending on which learning outcome is sought. Some of them within traditional educational institutions, some without.

By sharing these findings with you (all three of you who asked), I hope you'll be able to ask better questions about education in the future. More so, I hope that it has become clearer that education isn't just one standardized thing that can be performed better or worse, and that the goal of educational policy isn't to choose the option that performs better (by any arbitrary definition of better) than the others. There are nuances to these things, and perhaps - just perhaps - bad boy Quintilian still has a thing or two to teach us.

Thank you for reading.

A paragraph

If we were to paint this as a picture, we would get a diagram of alienated subjects. Which, to be blunt, is the opposite of the actualized subjects our syllabi talk about. Modernity is present, and we are far from the idyllic democratic world the Ancients are depicted as living in. It's a fractal picture of the present, and it contains the opposite of the traditional dot that proclaims "you are here". We are not there, but are nevertheless expected to be.

A philosophical point

Texts can be organized in two ways. The first way gradually builds up to a conclusion, each step leading to the next in a logical progression. As an argument is made, the text points back to it and says “thus”. The next argument is then made, and the text points back to it and says “thus”.

This is a way of pointing at the logic of things. The text works if and only if it is internally coherent, and the appointed arguments follow from each other. If a, then b, then c. Tendency is discouraged.

The second way is what we might call externally coherent. It points first to this thing, then to that thing, then to a third thing, and then to some sort of conclusion or imperative. The difference being that these things can be anything, without apparent connections to each other. The argument is not made by the things themselves, but in the order and way of their presentation.

This might seem counterintuitive, but an example should clear up any confusion: look at the nice weather outside (point one), remember that time we went on a picnic and had a wonderful time (point two), you always bury yourself in words this time of year and need to be cheered up (point three), let's go picnic (argument/imperative).

As philosophers are wont to point out, most actual arguments found in the world follow the second path. Whilst pointing this out, they usually make sure to also point out that the philosophical way of explicating each step of the way is better than to wantonly go on picnics. You never know what you might get yourself into otherwise, and then you're none the wiser.

Thing is. There's an economy to human communication, and humans can only summon so much mental effort before they deem something incomprehensible. No matter how logical the progression. This makes it imperative to know the most expedient route from point a to point b, and how to mobilize someone's imagination into a shared understanding of this route. That is to say, what to point at in order to mobilize the inherent understanding already present in those reading.

A blunt example would be someone shouting FIRE in a crowded building. Whilst the inherent premise of the danger of a fire spreading in a crowded space remains unstated, it is nevertheless effective in mobilizing the knowledge of such dangers. It moves about, rhizomatically enthymemic.

The proper lesson here is to listen carefully to those talking about fire safety procedures.

As a writer, what you want to take away from this is that most things do not need to be explained in order to be understood. You can safely assume that they know that the sky is blue, and that you can point to it in order to ground what you are saying. You can also safely assume that they know the general correlation of water and wetness, and that the specifics doesn't matter when you point out that it's a rainy day. You know, they know, and this mutual understanding is a firm basis for future communication. It is up to your text to act on it.

Let the philosophers play their word games. They know too well that the things we understand need to be explained, rather than the other way around. -

If rhetoric is wrong, I don't wanna be right

When I say I've studied rhetoric, I'm frequently asked this question:

What is rhetoric?

Which is a fair question. In fact, it is the yardstick of fair questions - it's straight to the point, no beating around the bush, no hidden assumptions. Especially since I've just claimed something, and am ever so directly being asked to clarify this claim.

Answers to this question differ.

When I'm in memetic mode, I answer along the lines of this here enormous picture you've no doubt seen long before you actually got to reading this part. It's point and click, basically - you point at something, say something related to it, then point at another thing, say something related to that, and so on.

I rarely use this answer, though, since the notion that such things as "truth" and "justice" and "a proper taste in culture" are pointable is hard to convey in everyday settings. Which is the opposite of effective, given the everyday setting I've recently pointed at. Thus, another answer is called upon:

Rhetoric is the art of making things up.

This is both easy to understand, and fun to demonstrate. It's easy to understand since it's what most people already think anyway, and thus comes as no surprise. It's fun to demonstrate, because it's true: as a rhetor, you are good at making things up. And since the most recent pointage happened to be at this very fact, you now have a proper and sufficient kairos to simply make anything up. Anything at all.

Even if these things are totally wrong. Especially if they are totally wrong.

Some think rhetoric is all about finding the proper thing to say. This is true to a point. In the process of finding this right thing, you have to discard many improper things. And most of these things are unexpectedly funny, seeing as they are both improper and wrong.

This, too, builds on preexisting doxa: most people have an intuitive sense of propriety and genre, and know what to expect from people in general. Public officials speak a certain way, doctors another, presidents a third, and so on. This is known. Thus, it can be worked with. Like, say, pointing out that it would be funny if Obama began a speech with the immortal words:

Dear fellow anime lovers of America!

This gives ample opportunity to goof around, and to get to the point: that your rhetorical superpowers consist mostly of making things up until you find something that sticks. Most of these things will never see the light of day, but those that do will be better because you've seen how much worse they could be. There is gold in them hills, among all the mud and lost irrelevant relics and animes.

It's all about making things up. And it's all about speeding up the process in such a way that it can be done on the fly.

...and about making sure you don't make too much an ass out of yourself whilst doing it.

Most of the time, it works. Then you fall in love, and all bets, definitions and pointers are off. -

Read this, and then you'll know better

One of the most difficult things about being ethical is knowing what you are doing, and then proceeding to do it anyway. It is one thing to not know what you're doing; there's divine forgiveness for such things. But knowing what you're doing is another thing altogether. Especially in cases where you know better.

There are three ways to read a text. They are as follow:

A neutral reading. The reading begins at the start all through to the end, and the reader tries to take the text for what it is.

Benevolent reading. The reader tries to understand what the text wants to say, and forgives those cases when the argument is weaker than it ought to be. If there are passages that can be interpreted in different ways, the most charitable interpretation is chosen.

Hostile reading. The reader begins with an intent to find flaws and weaknesses. If anything is less than 100% irrefutable, it will be refuted. If there are passages that can be interpreted in different ways, the least charitable interpretation is chosen.

It goes without saying that a text changes depending on how it is read. That which according to a benevolent reading is a minor mistake, is an active act of ill intent according to a hostile reading. The reader provides as much information as the text itself, and depending on how the reader reads, the text can be either this or that. The fact that we can choose which reading to employ does not change this.

Thus. There are three ways to read a text, and we can choose which reading to employ.

Remember that first paragraph? The one about ethical dimensions in knowing what you are doing, and the inescapable ethical weight of knowing what you are doing yet proceeding to do it anyway?

From this point on, you will always know if you choose to read something in a particular fashion. Especially if you choose to read someone in particular in a hostile fashion. You will never again be able to claim that you do not know what you're doing, because you from now on explicitly know exactly what you are doing. Because you are choosing to do it.

Welcome to your new, more ethical life.

Originally published April 23, 2015

Truth is trivial

The following is a true statement:

Some people learn better while on drugs.

We can determine that this is true based purely on grammar and statistics. It is a trivial move, yet it has nontrivial social consequences.

One of these consequences being that you probably don't agree with it, and have objections.

Thing is, the truth value is trivial in this case. All we need to do is to remember that humans are different from each other, that there are some seven-odd billion people in the world, and that there's bound to be a non-zero amount of humans who learn better while on drugs.

If this non-zero amount is also greater than one, then we have the grammatical minimum required to use "some". Which is all we need to get truth: some people learn better while on drugs.

There's bound to be objections at and to this point. Which is the point.

Truth is overrated. It isn't even the main point of our everyday communication.

When you read the sentence "some people learn better while on drugs", what you read wasn't that there's three or four persons in the world who do just that. What you read is more along the lines of social, political and ethical implications of such a statement. You tap into a vast, complicated and relentlessly interconnected web of assumptions, positions and opinions, contextualizing this one sentence into something much larger than the question of whether it is true or not.

Which, to be sure, makes uttering such a sentence something else entirely.

Social interaction is very seldom about truth.

Truth is trivial. The rest of it isn't.

The blog post the trolls don't want you to read

You have met them. The trolls. The persistent trolls. The trolls that absolutely just have to talk. With you. Constantly. A lot. About everything.

They come in waves. Sometimes they are very active, and want to say a great many things as fast as possible. Sometimes, they seem to have forgotten all about you. But, like so many tax-related issues, their return is preordained.

They are also wavelike. As in, they say just about the same things every time they wash over you, in the same manner, with the same underlying patterns. Which is good, since we during their downtime can describe and predict how their next wave is going to turn out. As in, say, a blog post such as this.

This is not an attempt to out those who suffer from the condition of being trolls. It aims at being useful for them and those in their close vicinity. Partly as a kind of self-test - are any of these things applicable to things I'm doing? And as a kind of manual to those who are at the receiving end of a troll wave - how can it be contextualized and understood? And, lastly, as a kind of reference point - it is always good to be able to point somewhere and exclaim "look, you are so predictable that there's even a blog post written about you and what you're doing, read it!".

But enough ado. Let's roll.

1. They are functionally illiterate when it comes to things they don't agree with

It might seem mean to call them functionally illiterate. But the alternative - that they are literate but actively choose not to understand even the simplest of texts -would be even meaner. Let's exemplify this: feminism.

The Wikipedia article about feminism has this to say: "Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women." Which seems straightforward enough - an umbrella term for various movements that strive for equality in various ways. Not one thing, but many things, united by a general tendency to strive in the same overall direction.

Show this to a troll, and what they read is this: "Feminism is a unified movement whose enslaved and hive-minded minions want to kill all men and mankind as we know it, and establish a matriarchy where the Ur-Mother has absolute authority."

Should you attempt to kindly point out that the text does not support such a reading, you'll wish you didn't. One might assume that a quick look at the table of contents, with its explicit mention of all the various kinds of feminisms, would be sufficient for the task. It should be sufficient to everyone with a modicum of literacy - but, alas, the troll will only get mad for being talked back at. And thus commences the troll rage.

Whereby feminism (or, indeed, any other phenomenon whatsoever) continues to be regarded as a unified object. Even though basic literacy would suggest otherwise.

2. Those who happen to be literate don't know about libraries, or how they work

It's one of the strangest things about libraries. They are free, they are loaded with books, and anyone can use them. Literally. If you're interested in something, you can just stroll over there and peruse the books to your heart's content. It is as strange as it is marvelous.

Yet, for these people, it would seem that even the most accessible library is situated on the top of a large mountain. Figuratively. The trolls can walk around for years and years and say the most outrageous things, things they would stop saying if they took the time to read just one singular book on the subject. Whatever the subject.

Now, you might object that they are not interested enough to do such a thing. Thing is, in order to become the subject of this post, they'll have to be trolls, which must be said to be interested in the things they are trolling about. They are interested, but they are not able to combine their interest with the notion of a library.

This, sadly enough, makes literary and academic references meaningless to them. The mountain is insurmountable. The libraries are free and open, yet impossible to reach.

Which is a shame. One book would have sufficed. And the libraries are legion.

3. They know that you are wrong. About everything

Quite literally everything. There is no room for compromise. There is no common ground. You are wrong, and they will neither cease nor desist until you have confessed this. In public. Repeatedly.

It goes without saying that it is hard to dialogue your way to a mutual understanding and a sharing of common ground between you and them. No matter how receptive, conciliatory and understanding you try to be, they won't reciprocate. Their only tactic is aptly named "scorched earth". And the only ground good enough to scorch is yours.

According to them, you are always wrong. You are never right. About anything. Ever.

4. Details are always more important than context

As a result of 3, you will be wrong ever when you're right. An ordinary way to assure this outcome is to zoom in on some detail you might not be absolutely 100% confident about, and exploit this lack of completeness to the fullest extent. They will at length point out how wrong you are about this one minor detail, and then force you to admit that you were wrong about it (with or without your participation). They will then zoom out and apply this admission to your whole argument, and/or your whole person. Without mercy.

5. They have acute difficulties with rhetorical figures, such as synecdoches, exemplifications and enumerations

A synecdoche is an expression where the part gets to represent the whole. Such as when "the crown" is used to represent a monarchy and its institutions. One might assume that a reader would understand such shorthands. but alas - you are wrong! Either literally, in such a way that a monarch has other regalia (spires and suchlike), or even more literally, in such a way to suggest that the crown as a physical object does not have any authority in and of itself, and that you are both foolish and wrong to say such a thing.

Trying to provide examples of general phenomena is received the same way. Whatever example you provide is not read as an example, but as all examples, the entirety of the phenomena (and, indeed, of discussion). Which immediately proceeds into a fine-grained discussion about cases where the things you mentioned are in fact not examples of the phenomena in question. Or that it is a bad example (see 4).

One might think that mentioning a whole host of examples might disarm this tactic. But no, you are still wrong, and your examples are either incomplete (as in, you forgot something, and must now explain why), or one of the things you mentioned was wrong in some other way, and you must now explain why you were wrong in this regard. No further discussion will be allowed until this wrongness is resolved.

The common theme for all these examples is the inability or unwillingness to assume anything for the sake of argument. That would be giving you the benefit of the doubt, and that won't do, since you are undoubtedly wrong about everything. Whatever you say, however you say it.

To exemplify: the sky is not blue. It's azure.

6. They will read everything you say in the absolutely most belligerent way anyone can ever read anything

Let us say you write something about kittens. It includes cute pictures of kittens. It is all about how cute these kittens are. You mention at one point that you want a kitten, due to cuteness.

One might assume it impossible to read this belligerently. But in their eyes, it becomes a declaration of war. Something evil. The evilest thing they have seen in years. A declaration of war against the many things that are hunted and eaten by cats. You have just told the world how much you hate cute small mice that never hurt anyone. And you have additionally told them that you plan to use your own home to breed and train predators whose only reason for being is the extermination of cute small mice. And every other innocent being that cats are wont to hunt.

You are a threat to the ecosystem, and if you had your way you would flood your surroundings with cats. You are evil and must be stopped. Without delay.

This might seem far-fetched, but all this follows from 3. You are never right, ever. Not even about kittens. No matter how cute.

7. They will have no qualms ascribing you attributes and intentions as it suits them

Did you know that you had full knowledge of the situation and knew exactly what you did before you did what you did? Did you also know that you did it with full knowledge of exactly what would happen, and intended things to happen just as they happened? Did you know that you, unlike the rest of humanity, have an uncannily complete knowledge of how complicated systems interact in order to accomplish maximal harm to everyone involved, and actively strives to accomplish this very harm?

Probably not. But the trolls know. And whenever something goes wrong in your vicinity, this wrongness can easily be expanded according to 6. Suddenly, you have superhuman superpowers, but abuse them. Because you are wrong. In every way.

Should things go your way, on the other hand, these superpowers are nowhere to be seen. Strangely enough. Things went your way despite of you, not because of you. And things would have gone even better had you not been there. Because you are wrong even when you're right, no ifs or buts.

8. They will point out that you abuse your position

It doesn't really matter what position it is. Or if it is a formal or informal one. If formal, then there's always something. If informal, then you're a bad role model. It doesn't really matter what you actually do - it becomes wrong, regardless. Whoever you are, this will be used against you.

9. They think you focus on the wrong things

But why are you not writing about this? Or this? Or this? And why nothing about this? But what about this?

That the answer is that you are a human being with limited amounts of time, energy and possibility to communicate coherently doesn't matter. The world is huge, and there's always lots and lots of other things than the one that you are actually doing that is both important and in need of doing. It doesn't help that no matter how thoroughly you do something, there will always be something you missed, some elaboration you didn't do.

There's always more. And the trolls will ever always remind you that it's your fault that you didn't manage to save the entire world all by yourself.

10. They think you have more important things to do

A variation of 9. If you ever do something that is not completely focused on the most important goal - something like, say, having fun - the trolls will immediately complain that you have more important things to do. You are after all a human being with limited amounts of time, energy and possibility to communicate coherently, and should prioritize accordingly. As in, doing what's important rather what isn't.

The words "vacation" or "rest" or "recuperation" means nothing. There are more important things to do.

11. They will forget the good things you've done.

See 3. If it can't be ignored, see 7.

12. Nothing from your past is too old to be resurrected, as long as it is bad. Which it is

A popular pastime among trolls is to dig up dirt on you from times long long ago. So long ago that it is wholeheartedly behind you, either by process of forgetting or convalescence. So long ago that it really doesn't matter any more, other than when someone actively remind you of it.

Guess which troll will actively remind you of it. Do not guess whether they will add their own spin to it or not. They will.

13.  They think you were better back in the olden days, before you deteriorated

If you've been around for a while, then people have known you for a while. And since people grow and change, you grow and change. You learn things, realize your mistakes, and generally get better at what you do. Such is the human condition.

Change can also be read as deterioration. And when someone wants to read you in a belligerent manner, the words change and deterioration become synonymous. You haven't learnt anything, you've only gotten worse. You could become a better person if you turned back time and became your own self again. Maybe. Unless it's too late for that.

The people saying this are your biggest fans. They never tire of reminding you of it.

14. They agree, but

But they don't. Since you're wrong. They won't put it in those terms, though. They will instead put it in such a way that they agree with some minor thing, and they proceed to but everything else into a discursive pulp. Without any possibility of a common ground. It might seem like an indirect approach, but you'll know it when you see it. Such as when republicans agree with democrats, and then proceed to say they should become republicans instead.

15. They think you do too much

Congratulations, you made it all the way to the end! May the trolls fear to tread under the bridges you frequent!

Originally published May 1, 2014

Boombox politics

Politics is a game of possibilities. It's more about what someone might say or is likely to have said, than what they're actually saying. Even more so, it's about what people can say without losing face.

As the ancient saying goes: it is very possible to paint oneself into a corner.

This might all sound fancy and highbrow, but it works like this: a politician can't say that it would be a good idea to slaughter every existing baby seals and burn their baby fat in enormous bonfires. Somewhere between these bonfires and the statement that kittens are cute, there's a boundary between proper and improper. It's all about keeping oneself on the right side of this boundary.

Another limit to what one can say is what has been said before. If your position for a hundred years has been that lowered taxes are the best thing since politics was invented, it's a hard sell to suddenly propose higher taxes. There are expectations to fulfill. Being true to your (public) self is one of them.

Between what is proper to say and what is expected to be said, there's what's possible to say. You gotta be true to your public self, and you gotta avoid slaughtering baby seals.

This range of possibilities is rather limited. It is, to a certain extent, possible to predict what's going to be said, and it takes considerable time to widen the scope of possibilities. Which is good for voters (since they know, to a certain extent, what they can expect), and for the working environment of those doing the communicating (being creative at all times takes its toll, and that cheat sheet works wonders). Continuity is predictability.

But.

This range of possibilities also contains things that one would rather prefer not to say. They conform to what has been said before, they are not about baby seals, but they are uncomfortable. Since they are things one very well might say, and are thus very hard to backpedal. (There's that famous corner again.)

The Yes Men are experts at exploiting these possibilities. They act as if they speak for organizations with reputations of being less than saintly in their actions, and say things that these organizations would never say on their own. But very well could say, and thus cannot easily backpedal from.

Such as when they pretended to be Dow Chemical (of Bhopal chemical spill fame), and proclaimed that the company would provide substantial aid to the hundreds of thousands of people afflicted by the accident. Which was cause for rejoice when the word got out, and cause for anger when the real Dow backpedaled by saying that they were, in fact, not going to provide any aid at all.

Politics is more about what's possible to say, than about what's actually said.

Which takes us to the real subject of this post. The latest, mostest and everest bid from the (Swedish) Moderate party. They pulled no punches and spared no efforts when it came to this one. They went all in, with a big

BOOM

It's a stroke of genius. They have expanded their range of possibilities enormously. There's almost nothing they can't say after this. All they ever have to do is say

BOOM

followed by whatever. Whatever the subject, wherever they are, whenever something needs to be said.

But they can't say everything. They will, for example, have a hard time time insisting that they are more fit to rule than the opposition, and that they are the Serious Alternative. Because boom. [The picture says: BOOM! Our opponents will actively seek to sabotage our defensive capabilities if they win. We rule.] And it's hard to backpedal from this, just like it was hard for Dow to backpedal with a rhetorical "eh, guys, we were just kidding."

But. Being a pirate, I cannot but offer to help them along. Thus, you are very likely watching this very large, very inspired picture, which was made possible only because of their boomboxing politics:

Originally published August 14, 2014

Rhetoric. How does it work?

One of the questions I've yet to receive is "why does rhetoric work?". Which is a good question, and should I ever receive it, I will be in good company.

But why does it work?

If you are a philosopher, your thoughts might travel along the lines of some things being more true than others, and as such more likely to be understood. Humans are rational beings, and the capacity to understand things is a shared universal, and thus some things are more easily understood by the many. Logos speaks.

If you are a psychologist, you might revert this by pointing out that it is not the thing being understood, but the understander being. And that the speaker, by being in such a way that is understandable, makes and scores points. Ethos speaks.

If you are a poet, you might do a dance by putting pleasing phrases in our ears. Knowing how words feel and how to feel words, the speaker may move the soul by selecting syllables that delect and delight. Pathos speaks.

If if if. But if you are a rhetor, you don't need reasons. They might come in handy, but you don't need them. What you do need, though, is an index finger. The point being at the end, and the end of the finger being point.

Rhetoric works like this: you point at things, and by doing it in a certain order, you create a chain of thought that is conducive to the thing you want or need to say. There's nothing mystical or magical about it - you just point, first at the one thing, then at the other, until you are done.

But why does it work?

I'm sure all those people I've pointed at will have plenty to say about it. Do send my regards. -

Communicating change

Today, I ate at a burger joint. Today was, apparently, also the first day that they served fancy coffee. Not just regular old coffee, mind, but fancy coffee, with faux Italian names and whatnot  Which, to be sure, is a change, and a change that needs to be communicated to the customers. For many reasons - the least not being to sell those coffees to these customers.

So. Communication happened. In the form of an explanatory folder strategically placed on the tables, containing an explanatory text. Which began talking about coffee, and then transitioned into talking about burgers.

This, at first, confused me. Then the gears started ticking. What was the aim of this communication? What fictional sender needed to be discursively constructed in order to make this communication work? What's the main theme of this place?

Burgers. The whole place was about burgers. Burger joints do burgers. The central theme is burgers.

Burgers.

It makes sense for them to talk about burgers. Especially when communicating change. They have a core value, and they're sticking to it. And they're now doing fancy coffee, too, in addition to this.

It is, in one word, brilliant. There is change, and there is a firm understanding that nothing will change. Those in favor will nod in favor, and those in unfavor will get the message that they're safe in ignoring the new fad.

There is, to be sure, rhetoric in all things. Even when things change.

Rhetoric in all things: laundry edition

There is a sticker on one of the machines that adorn our laundry room. It says "minors are prohibited to use this machine".

If you do any kind of digging on this prohibition, though, you'll soon find that the reason for this prohibition isn't any given law, rule or ordinance. You'll also find that there are plenty of minors who, despite the sticker, use the machine to their laundried content, without anyone giving it a second thought.

What gives?

In order to understand this, we must look at this prohibition as a speech act rather than as a regulation. It is not there to say "minors are not allowed to use this thing". Rather, it is there to say "hey, look, we told everyone that minors can't use this thing, and yet they did it anyway. It's out of our hands."

So what is on the surface a prohibition, is actually the opposite: a legal disclaimer.

Rhetoric in all things.

Frank Klepacki is a genius

In my perpetual attempt to educate the world, there's an awful lot of room for play. Because of this, I'm able to write a blog post titled "Frank Klepacki is a genius", and then proceed with using this title to make visible a certain point of view. Just because.

There are many ways to react to the statement that the venerable Frank is a genius. One of the less obvious ways is to ask what it means that the one making such a statement makes such a statement at this very moment. Of all the possible things this person could say - of all the things this person might be expected to say - zhe says this one particular thing at this particular time. Of all the thousands of dormant modalities that exists latently in their discursive subjective position - pardon. Why this particular thing, why in this space, why at this time?

If this was a dialogue, we might be experiencing one of those uncomfortable silences, or an attempt to take the conversation in another direction, or an attempt to not say anything at all, or maybe even an answer to the unvoiced question of what we're (at least one of us) thinking about. Alas, this is a blog post, and it doesn't seem to be an answer to just about anything, so it would seem that there's no particular reason for this to be said at this particular moment. Frank hasn't been mentioned anywhere before in this space, isn't exactly the kind of celebrity that can be mentioned without a particular reason, and is on the whole a very unexpected name to drop. Foucault, Derrida, even Cixous would be more expected at this juncture, but - Klepacki?

Why? What's the motive of this statement, and what's the situation for this rhetorics?

And how come the author chose just the fourth of February as the date for this statementing? Why not the third or the fifth? Of all the dates and times - in the middle of the night, mind! - available for stating, why this one? What made the author spot this spot with this x factor?

Why did the author pick this one moment among the literally millions of other moments? Why is now better than any other time that ever was and will be?

And what is said? That Frank Klepacki is a genius? Why is this important to say, of all the things that could have been said? Is Frank's status as a genius under attack? Is it well established, but on its way to be forgotten? Is it what potential readers wants to read? Is there some sort of informal Sword of Damocles in the air, punishing the author should this not be said?

What is the real motive behind stating that Frank is a genius?

-----

After this wordy verbal bombardment of questions, you might be wondering what the point of it all might be. Assuming that you just read the wordy verbal bombardment of questions you just read, I can safely say this: just because. Just because these are the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself before reading something someone else writes. There's always an infinite amount of other things they could have written instead of what they actually wrote, and there's thus ample reasons to think about the reasons they chose to write that instead of everything/anything else. Important reasons.

It's given by the situation that people write what they write - and thus, we'll have to take it upon ourselves to try to understand the situation in question before answering it.  And, indeed, before answering anything about the writ, not in the least the writ itself. If the writ is in itself a response to someone else, then we'd want to know who this person is, what this person is (that subtle distinction), why they are in communication - what is this situation, and why are they saying things at all?

Given time, it's also given that people write what they write when they write it - and thus, we'll have to take it upon ourselves to understand the zeitgeist when our time comes. If it's, for examples, an anniversary, a communal mourning for a recently departed, a competition, or simply many people talking about the same thing at the same time - then it follows that people tag along. They may or may not know what they're doing, but they sure do think long and hard about what to write when they write, and it's seldom a mere coincidence that people write the things they write at the time they write them.

And, at last: what is written? Mayhaps a seemingly banal question after all this, but - well. Zhe could have written literally anything else that is possible to write. Something in the author's mind made what was actually written more important than all other possible writings, and whatever this is, it's important to mind it.

This may or may not go without saying, but people don't just say things at random. At least not when they put intent into it. With intent comes reasons - reasons for writing, for the timing of the writing and the writing of the writing. And if we mind these reasons, the intent for writing will become clearer to us - even if the words won't tell us.

-----

I have now committed the sin of writing the same blog post twice. In the same post. One might ask why I bothered to do it twice, when once would have done the trick. -

Apparently, I didn't think once was enough. And should you now ask the question of intent, I'd say that this whole endeavor is an attempt to make your relating (not your relationship, mind - you're the subject of this reading) to the written word that much more subtle than it was before reading. When you read it the first time, you might have nodded in noncommittal agreement; when you read it the second time, you probably wondered why we weren't making any progress; and now, this third time, I'm suspecting you'll want to hit me with something in retaliation for hitting you upon the head with the same thing over and over again.

Such are the ways of sophist teaching.

If you are in any communication at all with other people, you're using rhetoric. At all times. And thus, I thought that this time would be the best of all times to teach you about that which is rhetorical analysis - without bothering with all the words and definitions and stuffs.

If I succeeded? Now there's an open question, which requires its own analysis to be answered. I will, though, end with this one short statement:

Frank Klepacki is a genius.

Originally published June 24, 2010

Your simple rhetorical guide to complexity

One can read the guide to rhetorical self defence as a negative guide to how to write. One would end up with a group of very generic (and somewhat unhelpful) tips on how to write. As in "don't write unclearly", "avoid being self-contradictory" and so on. Which is all well and good - follow these advices whenever you can. But.

There's always a but. And that's the whole point of this post.

You can write the most straightforward, least misunderstandable, straight from the mouth of God text the world has ever seen, and people will still be able to "but" it. This is not a fault on your part - it's how discourse works in relation to humans.

Humans like it simple. Humans do not like it unsimple. They especially don't like it when they have to put effort into something to determine whether something is simple or unsimple. They are much more likely to not put in that effort then to do it, and this is rhetorically important.

Most importantly in cases where you'd think the case is so obvious that there'd be no need for additional wordage. Especially when there's more additional wordage added to that case than any sane person would ever want to look at.

The sheer wordage is a rhetorical strategy.

People like it simple. If you can point to the volume of things said and written about something, that's a rather compelling argument that something is unsimple. And so, people retreat from the issue at hand.

Simple as that.

Fortunately, this is easily turned into a useful analytical and rhetorical tool. Whenever someone starts to be more obfuscating than they should be, simply restate whatever your initial point was in a simpler manner. Do not fall in to the temptation of making things harder than they are - that's what they want. In order to then turn around and say "well, look at how complicated this turned out to be, we'd better leave it open until we can get some clear answers".

Defenders of status quo loves this strategy. Postponing things is the best defence of status quo there is.

But is it really that simple?

Yes it is.

Don't preform me, bro! Perform, me!

Whenever someone mentions grammar, there is a tendency for eyes to glaze over. Or, equally likely, a general hostility on the basis of perceived imminent snobbery. Which is interesting, as there are few things in the world that are equally likely to cause indifference and hostility - this in and of itself tells us something.

It does not however go without saying. That would be the opposite of grammar.

Grammar never goes without saying. It is the saying.

The most common way to think about grammar is to think about rules, rules and more rules. A comprehensive set of rules that are imposed willy-nilly on you, mostly in an educational setting, where you are more often than not found to be in the wrong. Wrong in the sense of a red marker pointing out just how unruly you are, in an unequivocal display of the relationship between ruler and ruled.

This is what the education system drills into its pupils. It is also, quite ironically, wrong.

Grammar is not a system of rules. It is an applied skill, a mastery, a competence. A call to action, an agency. A way of navigating the world.

An art.

The art of knowing how to string words together in a way that makes social sense. When it makes social sense. Even and especially when the rules of formal grammar are broken.

Maybe it is better to say it in a slogan. The most brute force of all the grammatical maneuvers:

Grammar is a gateway drug to poetry.

Something else that doesn't go without saying.

Know, now!

August has just ended, and we have entered into the venerable month of September. Summer is slowly fading away, and Autumn is gracefully flowing into the lives of those so fortunate as to breathe the outside air.

This is fortunate, as it means that August is over, and I can focus on something that is not written exams.

It is a strange feature that emerges from the bureaucracy of universities. There's a lot of exams going on, and there's a lot of people not quite getting it right the first time. Or the second time. Which gives rise to the occasion of third times, and thus to the need to administrate all these times all the time. A need fulfilled by the month of August, wherein every and all accumulated third times are discharged all at once. One after the other, in something akin to an academic orgy. All the answers are given to all the questions, and as the Autumn gracefully flows in, the administrators can put to rest the ghosts of Spring.

Written exams are strange that way.

The strangest thing about them is that you pass or fail them by how you answer them. Not by what is in your answer, or if that is in fact the correct answer, but by how that answer is.

Discourse is a performance, and the way to pass an exam is to perform adequately. Which sometimes leads you to the strange situation where you know what the answer is, but not how to perform it. You know that the answer is x, but you will not pass if you simply write x - you have to make the right noises, invoke the right authorities and nudge the right nudges. Otherwise, it won't count.


In the end, it comes down to this: do you fit in with the community of discourse?

Whenever someone says that knowledge is socially constructed, this is what they mean. Just knowing something in and of itself won't cut it - you have to perform it, knowingly. Otherwise, it won't count.

As in the case of the gay refugee that had to prove his homosexuality by naming five songs by Madonna.

As you might imagine, this is not a local issue. It is not specific to the month of August, it is not specific to the life of the university, and it is not specific to any one discourse. It is a feature of discourse as such. Of what it means to be a person who knows something, someone who can be said to know something.

It is something that makes itself known every day to those who go about life knowing things without knowing how to perform. Those who will never be privy to the obscure inner workings of the university as an institution, or indeed the often illuminated interior decor of the university as a building.

They don't count. In any number of ways.

This is not the Winter of our discontent. We're still a few short months away from that.

A possible response to an implied interlocutor

Dear sir, the biggest flaw in your argument is that it is based on the premise that you are a moron. I cannot in good conscience accept this premise, not even for the sake of argument, and I am in all honesty shocked that you choose to debase yourself this way. It is very much beneath you to behave this way, and it pains me to say that there are very few possible discourses wherein what you say does not assume that the sayer is not right in the head. That you would willingly perform such a speech act flabbergasts me, and therefore I shall give you this additional chance to restate your case in a way that is less embarrassing to the both of us.

Should you find this response offensive, then please refrain from voicing this. Some things are after all better left unsaid.

What to consider when writing

There are two kinds of writing. The familiar kind is when you want to express something - a feeling, an experience, a fascination with a brand new concept that seems to be universally applicable, an opinion on a current event, etc. There's something inside that wants to get out, and it will only get out through the words put to print.

To write what one wants to write. Because that is what one wants.

The other, maybe slightly less familiar, kind is the writing that wants to finish something. To accomplish something. To have been written. To be able to say that there is writing about it. To be able to give to someone and say: this is what you need to read in order to understand.

To write what others need to read. Because they need it.

These two kinds are not the same. They differ. In just about any way you could care to mention, except maybe in the purely physical sense.

When thinking about writing, it is important to consider why. Not just why anything in particular, but why in general - why writing? Is it writing for the sake of writing, or writing for the sake of reading? For the sake of affecting some kind of change?

The key way to understand this difference is to ask the question: what difference does it make if this text makes it to its readers?

If it makes the biggest of all differences - has the potential to - you tend to write differently than when it doesn't. In general, you tend to become less and less personal the more difference hangs in the balance. And, in a sudden reversal, the words tend to become all the more indifferent. They are not you, they are just dead lead, words on a page.

Because you are no longer the author. The difference you want to make is.

Take, for instance, the period of time before an important vote is taken in assembly. There's still time to change the votes of individual members of this assembly, and giving these members a piece of text might change it. What to write?

If it is important enough, you just want them to vote your way. The reason for this is indifferent, only that they do. So, what to write?

The text that will make them vote differently. The text that, when they read it, makes them make up their minds.

This is not the same kind of text that begins with "hello, my name is [name], and I think that...".

The expression of one's own feelings, thoughts and impressions is no small challenge, to be sure. But it requires a different set of frames of reference than the production of the impersonal piece of discourse that will produce the change you want.

This is the difference between poetics and rhetoric.

You are somewhere in the middle.

Hi.