Chapter 13

The words you choose for an argument help define its style—and yours.
For most academic arguments, fairly formal language is appropriate. In an
article that urges every member of society to care about energy issues,
Chevron CEO Dave O’Reilly adopts a formal and serious tone: “We call
upon scientists and educators, politicians and policy-makers, environmentalists,
leaders of industry, and each one of you to be part of reshaping
the next era of energy.” Had he written “How ’bout we rally ’round and mix
us up a new energy plan?” the effect would have been quite different.
Slang and colloquial terms may enliven an argument, but they also can
bewilder readers. An article about arms-control negotiations that uses
terms like nukes and boomers to refer to nuclear weaponry might confuse
readers who assume that the shorthand portrays a flippant attitude toward
a serious subject. Be alert, too, to the use of jargon, the special vocabulary
of members of a profession, trade, or field. Although jargon
serves as shorthand for experts, it can alienate readers who don’t recognize
technical words or acronyms.
Another key to an argument’s style is its control of connotation, the
associations that surround many words. Note the differences among the
following three statements:
Students from the Labor Action Committee (LAC) carried out a hunger
strike to call attention to the below-minimum wages that are being
Sir Isaac Newton
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paid to campus temporary workers, saying, “The university must pay
a living wage to all its workers.”
Left-wing agitators and radicals tried to use self-induced starvation to
stampede the university into caving in to their demands.
Champions of human rights put their bodies on the line to protest the
university’s tightfisted policy of paying temporary workers scandalously
low wages.
The style of the first sentence is the most neutral, presenting facts and
offering a quotation from one of the students. The second sentence uses
loaded terms like agitators, radicals, and stampede to create a negative
image of this event, while the final sentence uses other loaded words to
create a positive view. As these examples demonstrate, words matter.
Finally, vivid concrete and specific words work better in arguments than
abstract and general ones. Responding to a claim that American students
are falling behind their counterparts in Asia and Europe, Jay
Mathews uses memorable language to depict the stereotype:
Most commentary on the subject leaves the impression that China
and India are going to bury the United States in an avalanche of new
technology. Consider, for example, a much-cited Fortune article that
included the claim that China turned out 600,000 engineers in the previous
year, India graduated 350,000, and poor, declining America
could manage only 70,000. The cover of Fortune showed a buff Chinese
beach bully looming over a skinny Uncle Sam. The headline said, “Is
the U.S. a 97-Pound Weakling?”
—Jay Mathews, “Bad Rap on the Schools”
Mathews’ concrete language (bury, avalanche, and buff Chinese beach bully
looming over a skinny Uncle Sam) creates a style that gets and keeps readers’
attention.
Sentence Structure and Argument
Writers of effective arguments know that “variety is the spice of life”
when it comes to stylish sentences. Varying sentence length can be especially
effective. Here’s Mary H. K. Choi introducing the twenty-third season
of The Simpsons:
Let’s make a pact. The next person who whines about how The
Simpsons sucks gets flung in a well. The rest of us can tailgate. Spare
us your blustery, pedantic indignation. There’s nothing to add. No
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312 style and presentation in arguments
petition long enough, no outcry loud enough. Winter is coming, and so
is the Fox series’ twenty-third season and 500th episode. If this really
upsets you . . . Just. Quit. Watching.
—Mary H. K. Choi
Choi opens with a dramatic first sentence, followed by one a little longer
and then a series of short, staccato statements that lead up to the compound
Winter is coming, and so is. . . . And note the special effects she creates
by dividing up the last sentence for emphasis: Just. Quit. Watching.
Variety in the way sentences open can also help create a subtly pleasing
style. Here is Lisa Miller writing about the spread of “Tiger Mom”
tactics in child raising:
Happy Rogers, age eight, stands among her classmates in the schoolyard
at dismissal time, immune, it seems, to the cacophonous din. A
poised and precocious blonde, Hilton Augusta Parker Rogers, nicknamed
Happy, would be at home in the schoolyard of any affluent
American suburb or big-city private school. But here, at the elite, bilingual
Nanyang Primary School in Singapore, Happy is in the minority,
her Dakota Fanning hair shimmering in a sea of darker heads. This is
what her parents have traveled halfway around the world for. While
her American peers are feasting on the idiocies fed to them by junk TV
and summer movies, Happy is navigating her friendships and doing
her homework entirely in Mandarin.
— Lisa Miller, “How to Raise a Global Kid”
R e s p o n d.
Work with a classmate to revise Miller’s paragraph, making sure that every
sentence begins the same way, with the subject first. Then read the passage
aloud and see if it sounds much less effective and memorable. It’s the
variety in sentence openings that does the trick!
Parallel structures in sentences also help create style. In a review of a
biography of writer Henry Roth, Jonathan Rosen includes the following
description:
His hands were warped by rheumatoid arthritis; the very touch of his
computer keyboard was excruciating. But he still put in five hours a
day, helped by Percocet, beer, a ferocious will, and the ministrations of
several young assistants.
—Jonathan Rosen, “Writer, Interrupted”
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In the first sentence, Rosen chooses parallel clauses, with the first one
about Roth’s arthritic hands balanced by the next one describing the results
of putting those hands on a keyboard. In the second sentence, Rosen
also uses a series of parallel specific nouns and noun phrases (Percocet, beer,
the ministrations) to build up a picture of Roth as extremely persistent.
R e s p o n d.
Turn to something you read frequently—a blog, a sports or news magazine,
or a friend’s page on Twitter—and look closely at the sentences.
What seems distinctive about them? Do they vary in terms of their length
and the way that they begin? If so, how? Do they use parallel structures
or other structural devices to good effect? How easy to read are they, and
what accounts for that ease?
Punctuation and Argument
In a memorable comment, actor and director Clint Eastwood said, “You
can show a lot with a look. . . . It’s punctuation.” Eastwood is right about
punctuation’s effect, and it is important that as you read and write
“You can show a lot with a look. . . . It’s punctuation.”
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314 style and presentation in arguments
arguments, you consider punctuation closely. Here are some ways in
which punctuation helps to enhance style.
The semicolon signals a pause that is stronger than a comma but not
as strong as a period. Semicolons often connect two independent clauses
that are linked by one idea. See how Romesh Ratnesar describes the results
of the infamous “Stanford Prison Experiment” in which students
were either “guards” or “prisoners”:
Some of [the “prisoners”] rebelled violently; others became hysterical
or withdrew into despair.
—Romesh Ratnesar, “The Menace Within”
Using a semicolon gives Ratnesar’s sentence an abrupt rhythmic shift, in
this case from rebellion to despair.
Writers also use end punctuation to create stylistic effects. Although
the exclamation point can be irritating if overused (think of those Facebook
status updates that bristle with them), it can be helpful for creating
tone if used sparingly. In an argument about the treatment of prisoners
at Guantanamo, consider how Jane Mayer evokes the sense of desperation
in some of the suspected terrorists:
As we reached the end of the cell-block, hysterical shouts, in broken
English, erupted from a caged exercise area nearby. “Come here!” a
man screamed. “See here! They are liars! . . . No sleep!” he yelled. “No
food! No medicine! No doctor! Everybody sick here!”
—Jane Mayer, “The Experiment”
While sometimes used interchangeably, the dash and the colon create
different stylistic effects. Dashes offer a great way to call attention to a
relevant detail that isn’t itself necessary information in the sentence
you’re writing. Here are dashes used to insert such information in the
opening of Philip Womack’s London Telegraph review of Harry Potter and
the Deathly Hallows, Part 2:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2—the eighth and final film
in the blockbusting series—begins with our teenage heroes fighting
for their lives, and for their entire world.
The review continues with a sentence that makes good use of a colon,
which often introduces explanations or examples:
The first scene of David Yates’s film picks up where his previous
installment left off: with a shot of the dark lord Voldemort’s noseless
face in triumph as he steals the most powerful magic wand in the
world from the tomb of Harry’s protector, Professor Dumbledore.
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And Womack concludes his review with a powerful question mark that
signals not only the evaluation of the entire film but a prediction for the
future:
This is not an end. How could it be?
—Philip Womack
As these examples suggest, punctuation is often key to creating the
rhythm of an argument. Take a look at how Maya Angelou uses a dash
along with another punctuation mark—ellipsis points—to indicate a
pause or hesitation, in this case one that builds anticipation:
Then the voice, husky and familiar, came to wash over us—“The winnah,
and still heavyweight champeen of the world . . . Joe Louis.”
—Maya Angelou, “Champion of the World”
Creating rhythms can be especially important in online communication
when writers are trying to invest their arguments with emotion or emphasis.
Some writers still use asterisks in online communication to convey
emphasis the way that italic or boldface type creates in print texts:
“You *must* respond to this message today!” Others use emoticons or
other new characters to establish a particular rhythm, tone, and style. In
an argument where the stakes are high, though, most writers use conventional
style. The use of asterisks and emoticons is so common in online
communication that many chat and comments programs automatically
convert type enclosed in asterisks to bold, or emoticons to graphics.
R e s p o n d.
Try writing a brief movie review for your campus newspaper, experimenting
with punctuation as one way to create an effective style. See if using a
series of questions might have a strong effect, whether exclamation points
would add or detract from the message you want to send, and so on. When
you’ve finished the review, compare it to one written by a classmate, and
look for similarities and differences in your choices of punctuation.
Special Effects: Figurative Language and Argument
Any magazine or Web site will show how figurative language works in
arguments. When a reviewer of new software that promises complete
filtering of ads on the Web refers to the product as “a weedwhacker for
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the Web,” he’s using figurative language (in this case, metaphor) to advance
an argument about the nature and function of that product. When
a writer calls Disney World a “smile factory,” she begins a stinging critique
of the way pleasure is “manufactured” there.
Figurative language, which is indispensable to writers, brings two
major strengths to arguments. First, it helps us understand things by
drawing parallels between an unknown and a known. For example, to
describe DNA, scientists Watson and Crick used the figures of a helix
(spiral) and a zipper to help people understand this new concept.
Figures of speech are usually classified into two main types: tropes involve
a change in the ordinary meaning of a word or phrase, and schemes
involve a special arrangement of words. Here is a brief listing—with
examples—of some of the most familiar kinds.
Tropes
METAPHOR
A bedrock of our language, metaphor implies a comparison between two
things and thereby clarifies and enlivens many arguments. Columnist
David Brooks depends on metaphors in an essay arguing that such figures
are “at the very heart of how we think”:
Even the hardest of sciences depend on a foundation of metaphors. To
be aware of metaphors is to be humbled by the complexity of the
world, to realize that deep in the undercurrents of thought there are
thousands of lenses popping up between us and the world, and that
we’re surrounded at all times by what Steven Pinker of Harvard once
called “pedestrian poetry.”
— David Brooks, “Poetry for Everyday Life”
In the following passage, novelist and poet Benjamin Sáenz uses several
metaphors to describe his relationship to the southern border of the
United States:
It seems obvious to me now that I remained always a son of the border,
a boy never quite comfortable in an American skin, and certainly
not comfortable in a Mexican one. My entire life, I have lived in a liminal
space, and that space has both defined and confined me. That
liminal space wrote and invented me. It has been my prison, and it
has also been my only piece of sky.
—Benjamin Sáenz, “Notes from Another Country”
Marjorie Agosín acknowledges the
power of metaphor by replacing the
proverbial phrase “translators are
traitors” with the metaphor of
translators as “splendid friends” in the
last sentence of her essay. What other
metaphors can you find in her essay?
link to p. 599
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In another example from Andrew Sullivan’s blog, he quotes an 1896 issue
of Munsey’s Magazine that uses a metaphor to explain what, at that time,
the bicycle meant to women and to clarify the new freedom it gave women
who weren’t accustomed to being able to ride around on their own:
To men, the bicycle in the beginning was merely a new toy, another
machine added to the long list of devices they knew in their work
and play. To women, it was a steed upon which they rode into a new
world.
SIMILE
A simile uses like or as to compare two things. Here’s a simile from an
essay on cosmology from the New York Times:
Through his general theory of relativity, Einstein found that space, and
time too, can bend, twist, and warp, responding much as a trampoline
does to a jumping child.
—Brian Greene, “Darkness on the Edge of the Universe”
And here is a series of similes, from an excerpt of a Wired magazine review
of a new magazine for women:
Women’s magazines occupy a special niche in the cluttered infoscape
of modern media. Ask any Vogue junkie: no girl-themed Web site or
CNN segment on women’s health can replace the guilty pleasure of
slipping a glossy fashion rag into your shopping cart. Smooth as a pint
of chocolate Häagen-Dazs, feckless as a thousand-dollar slip dress,
women’s magazines wrap culture, trends, health, and trash in a single,
decadent package. But like the diet dessert recipes they print,
these slick publications can leave a bad taste in your mouth.
—Tiffany Lee Brown, “En Vogue”
Here, three similes—smooth as a pint of chocolate Häagen-Dazs and feckless
as a thousand-dollar slip dress in the third sentence and like the diet dessert
recipes in the fourth — add to the image of women’s magazines as a
mishmash of “trash” and “trends.”
ANALOGY
Analogies compare two things, often point by point, either to show similarity
or to argue that if two things are alike in one way, they are probably
alike in other ways as well. Often extended in length, analogies can
On Michael Krasny’s radio program,
guests discuss whether an “Increase
Diversity Bake Sale” is a sound
analogy for criticizing college
affirmative action admissions policies.
link to p. 743
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318 style and presentation in arguments
clarify and emphasize points of comparison. In an argument about the
failures of the aircraft industry, a writer uses an analogy for potent
contrast:
If the aircraft industry had evolved as spectacularly as the computer
industry over the past twenty-five years, a Boeing 767 would cost five
hundred dollars today, and it would circle the globe in twenty minutes
on five gallons of fuel.
—Scientific American
To be effective, analogies have to hold up to scrutiny. In reflecting on the
congressional debacle of July 2011 that took the United States close to
default, columnist Joe Nocera draws an analogy:
You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only
encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has
watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on
the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending
cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of
America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly
irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was
worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took.
—Joe Nocera
This cartoon mocks the Republican presidential nominating
process by using a familiar analogy.
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Nocera’s comparison between Tea Partiers and terrorists offended many,
who wrote to condemn the tone of the piece and to note that the analogy
doesn’t hold. Here’s Michael from New York City, who says:
I am not a tea partier, or a Republican, but I just have to comment on
the tone of this article. Comparing tea partiers to terrorists now . . .
interesting. They are not terrorists, they are citizens who banded
together to push for what they believe in.
OTHER TROPES
Signifying, in which a speaker or writer cleverly and often humorously
needles another person, is a distinctive trope found extensively in African
American English. In the following passage, two African American
CULTURAL CONTEXTS FOR ARGUMENT
Levels of Formality and Other Issues of Style
At least one important style question needs to be asked when arguing
across cultures: what level of formality is most appropriate? In the
United States, a fairly informal style is often acceptable and even
appreciated. Many cultures, however, tend to value formality. If in
doubt, err on the side of formality:
• Take care to use proper titles as appropriate (Ms., Mr., Dr., and so on).
• Don’t use first names unless you’ve been invited to do so.
• Steer clear of slang and jargon. When you’re communicating with
members of other cultures, slang may not be understood, or it may
be seen as disrespectful.
• Avoid potentially puzzling pop cultural allusions, such as sports
analogies or musical references.
When arguing across cultures or languages, another stylistic issue might
be clarity. When communicating with people whose native languages
are different from your own, analogies and similes almost always aid in
understanding. Likening something unknown to something familiar can
help make your argument forceful—and understandable.
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320 style and presentation in arguments
men (Grave Digger and Coffin Ed) signify on their white supervisor (Anderson),
who has ordered them to discover the originators of a riot:
“I take it you’ve discovered who started the riot,” Anderson said.
“We knew who he was all along,” Grave Digger said.
“It’s just nothing we can do to him,” Coffin Ed echoed.
“Why not, for God’s sake?”
“He’s dead,” Coffin Ed said.
“Who?”
“Lincoln,” Grave Digger said.
“He hadn’t ought to have freed us if he didn’t want to make provisions
to feed us,” Coffin Ed said. “Anyone could have told him that.”
—Chester Himes, Hot Day, Hot Night
Coffin Ed and Grave Digger demonstrate the major characteristics of effective
signifying—indirection, ironic humor, fluid rhythm, and a surprising
twist at the end. Rather than insulting Anderson directly by
pointing out that he’s asked a dumb question, they criticize the question
indirectly by ultimately blaming a white man (and not just any white
In these Boondocks strips, Huey signifies on Jazmine, using indirection,
ironic humor, and two surprising twists.
© 1999 Aaron McGruder. Reprinted by permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
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man, but one they’re supposed to revere). This twist leaves the supervisor
speechless, teaching him something and giving Grave Digger and
Coffin Ed the last word—and the last laugh.
Take a look at the example of signifying from a Boondocks cartoon (see
opposite page). Note how Huey seems to be sympathizing with Jazmine
and then, in two surprising twists, reveals that he has been needling her
all along.
Hyperbole is the use of overstatement for special effect, a kind of fireworks
in prose. The tabloid gossip magazines that scream at you in the
checkout line are champions of hyperbole. Everyone has seen these
overstated arguments and perhaps marveled at the way they sell.
Hyperbole is also the trademark of serious writers. In a column arguing
that men’s magazines fuel the same kind of neurotic anxieties about
appearance that have long plagued women, Michelle Cottle uses hyperbole
and humor to make her point:
My affection for Men’s Health is driven by pure gender politics. . . .
With page after page of bulging biceps and Gillette jaws, robust
hairlines and silken skin, Men’s Health is peddling a standard of
male beauty as unforgiving and unrealistic as the female version
sold by those dewy-eyed pre-teen waifs draped across covers of
Glamour and Elle.
—Michelle Cottle, “Turning Boys into Girls”
How does this cartoon make light of the frequent use of hyperbole in sports
broadcasting?
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As you might imagine, hyperbole can easily backfire. Blogging on the
Robinson Post, Matthew Robinson deplores the use of hyperbole on both
the right and the left:
Glenn Beck, in a discussion on his show about some Americans’ distaste
for the recent healthcare overhaul, compared the U.S. government
to pedophilic rapist Roman Polanski, and the American people to
a thirteen-year-old girl. . . . Maureen Dowd compared her own experience
as a Catholic woman to that of the subjugated women of Saudi
Arabia, calling the Catholic Church, “an inbred and wealthy men’s
club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity . . . an autocratic
society that repress[es] women and ignore[s] their progress in
the secular world.”
—Matthew Robinson, “Sticks and Stones:
How Hyperbole Is Hurting America”
Understatement uses a quiet message to make its point. In her memoir,
Rosa Parks—the civil rights activist who made history in 1955 by refusing
to give up her bus seat to a white passenger—uses understatement so
often that it becomes a hallmark of her style. She refers to Martin Luther
King Jr. simply as “a true leader,” to Malcolm X as a person of “strong conviction,”
and to her own lifelong efforts as just a small way of “carrying on.”
Understatement can be particularly effective in arguments that might
seem to call for its opposite. When Watson and Crick published their first
article on the structure of DNA, they felt that they had discovered the secret
of life. (Imagine what a Fox News or MSNBC headline might have
been for this story!) Yet in an atmosphere of extreme scientific competitiveness,
they closed their article with a vast understatement: “It has not
escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately
suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.” A
half century later, considering the profound developments in genetics, the
power of this understatement still resonates strongly.
Rhetorical questions, which we use frequently, don’t really require
answers. When you say “Who cares?” or “How should I know?” you’re
using such questions. Rhetorical questions also show up in arguments.
In reviewing a book on power in the Disney dynasty, Linda Watts uses a
series of rhetorical questions to introduce part of her argument:
If you have ever visited one of the Disney theme parks, though, you
have likely wondered at the labor—both seen and unseen—necessary
to maintain these fanciful environments. How and when are the
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grounds tended so painstakingly? How are the signs of high traffic
erased from public facilities? What keeps employees so poised, meticulously
groomed, and endlessly cheerful?
— Linda S. Watts, review of Inside the Mouse
And Erin Biba asks a potent rhetorical question in her analysis of Facebook
“friending”:
So if we’re spending most of our time online talking to people we don’t
even know, how deep can the conversation ever get?
— Erin Biba, “Friendship Has Its Limits”
Antonomasia is probably most familiar to you from sports coverage:
“His Airness” still means Michael Jordan, “The Great One,” Wayne
Gretzky. But it’s also used in fields like politics, sometimes neutrally (Arnold
Schwarzenegger as “The Governator”), sometimes as a compliment
(Ronald Reagan as “The Great Communicator”), and sometimes as a
crude and sexist put-down (Sarah Palin as “Caribou Barbie”) or in the
entertainment industry (as in calling Owen Wilson “The Butterscotch
Stallion”). Such nicknames can pack arguments into just one phrase.
What does calling Jordan “His Airness” argue about him?
Irony uses words to convey a meaning in tension with or opposite to
their literal meanings to create special effects in argument. One of the
most famous sustained uses of irony in literature occurs in Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar as Antony punctuates his condemnation of Brutus
with the repeated ironic phrase, “But Brutus is an honourable man.” Publications
such as the Onion and the online Ironic Times are noted for their
satiric treatment of politics and popular culture, scoring points while
provoking a chuckle.
R e s p o n d.
Use online sources (such as American Rhetoric’s Top 100 Speeches at http://
www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html) to find the text of an
essay or a speech by someone who uses figures of speech liberally. Pick
a paragraph that is rich in figures and rewrite it, eliminating every bit of
figurative language. Then read the original and your revised version aloud
to your class. Can you imagine a rhetorical situation in which your pareddown
version would be appropriate?
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Schemes
Schemes, figures that depend on word order, can add stylistic “zing” to
arguments. Here are ones that you’re likely to see most often.
Parallelism involves the use of grammatically similar phrases or
clauses for special effect:
For African Americans, the progress toward racial equality over the
last half century was summed up in a widely quoted sequence: “Rosa
sat so that Martin could walk. Martin walked so that Obama could run.
Obama ran so that our children could fly.”
Antithesis is the use of parallel structures to mark contrast or opposition:
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
— Samuel Johnson
Those who kill people are called murderers; those who kill animals,
sportsmen.
Inverted word order, in which the parts of a sentence or clause are not in
the usual subject-verb-object order, can help make arguments particularly
memorable:
Into this grey lake plopped the thought, I know this man, don’t I?
— Doris Lessing
Hard to see, the dark side is.
— Yoda
Anaphora, or effective repetition, can act like a drumbeat in an argument,
bringing the point home. In an argument about the future of Chicago,
Lerone Bennett Jr. uses repetition to link Chicago to innovation and
creativity:
[Chicago]’s the place where organized Black history was born, where
gospel music was born, where jazz and the blues were reborn, where
the Beatles and the Rolling Stones went up to the mountaintop to get
the new musical commandments from Chuck Berry and the rock’n’roll
apostles.
— Lerone Bennett Jr., “Blacks in Chicago”
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And speaking of the Rolling Stones, here’s Dave Barry using repetition
comically in his comments on their 2002 tour:
Recently I attended a Rolling Stones concert. This is something I do
every two decades. I saw the Stones in the 1960s, and then again in
the 1980s. I plan to see them next in the 2020s, then the 2040s, then
the 2060s, at their 100th anniversary concert.
— Dave Barry, “OK, What Will Stones Do for 100th Anniversary?”
Reversed structures for special effect have been used widely in political
argumentation.
Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for
your country.
—President John F. Kennedy, 1961 Inaugural Address
The Democrats won’t get elected unless things get worse, and things
won’t get worse until the Democrats get elected.
—Jeane Kirkpatrick
Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is
not original, and the part that is original is not good.
— Samuel Johnson