THE POWER OF SUASIVE DICTION

Giving a Touch of Authority to Our Prose 
By Jose A. Carillo 

“What a pair we make,” whispered the Prince of Wales to the pilloried presumptive royal knight William in the riotously charming 2001 film A Knight’s Tale, “both trying hard to hide who we are, both unable to do so.”

For those who have not seen the movie, the prince was constrained to shed off his disguise as a monk among the lynching mob to save the disgraced knight, who a few days earlier had spared him from the ignominy of certain defeat by refusing to joust with him in a tournament. The knight, through the machinations of a villainous duke, was thereafter unmasked as a lowly thatcher’s* son masquerading as a member of royalty, thus leading to his arrest and humiliation on the pillory.

This medieval morality tale gives a powerful insight into the crucial need to speak and act in keeping with who we think, presume, or pretend we are. When we write, in particular, we must use language that conveys our thoughts in ways that validate and support our own self-concept or projection of ourselves. The wife of the Caesar must not only be chaste but must look and sound chaste. The professor must really look and sound professorial. The presidentiable** must really look and sound presidentiable. To fail to do this in both civilized and uncivilized society—or not to have the wisdom or guile to at least sustain the charade—is to invite catastrophe, which is precisely what brought the presumptive knight to the pillory for public lynching.

Be that as it may, our most potent tool for becoming credible is what the linguists call suasive diction. This is using language to persuasively convey facts and the speaker’s feelings toward those facts. No instrument is more potent for doing that, of course, than the writer’s or speaker’s vocabulary. Our words define us. Whether armed with excellent research or dubious information, whether motivated by good or bad intentions, we can turn off the audience with awkward or leaden words, or hold it in thrall with engaging words and well-turned phrases. It is largely through word choice, in fact, that we establish our credibility and rapport with our audience. Short of coercion or the force of arms, rarely can persuasive communication take place without this credibility and rapport.

The most basic technique for suasive diction is the proper use of the pronouns of power, namely “we,” “us,” “our,” “they,” and “them.” These innocent-looking pronouns can confer a sense of authority—the illusion of authority, if you may—to our written or spoken statements far beyond what the first-person singular can give. The first-person “I” and “me” speak only for the solitary communicator; on the other hand, the collective “we” and “us” speak for an entire group or institution, which people normally take for granted as less fallible and less prone to vainglory than the individual—hence presumed to be more credible, more authoritative.

This, for instance, is why newspaper editorials routinely use the institutional “we” although they are usually crafted by a solitary writer not so high on the paper’s editorial totem pole; it’s also why tyrants and despots of every stripe and persuasion always invoke “the right vested in me by God/ law/ the sovereign people” to seize power or hold on to it, and why candidates of paltry qualification and virtue invariably invoke “the people’s great desire for change” or “divine signs in the sky” as their passport to public office.

Of course, “we,” “us,” “our,” “they,” and “them” work just as well as pronouns of solidarity. They foster a stronger sense of closeness and intimacy with the audience, and can more easily put audiences at ease with what the speaker has to say. In contrast, the first person “I” often comes across as too one-sided and self-serving, particularly in writing, while the second person “you” can sound too pedantic and intimidating. We stand a much greater chance of getting a fair hearing from those antagonistic to our position by making them think that we are actually on their side.

Even if we are good at using the pronouns of power and solidarity, however, we must not for a minute believe that they are all we need to achieve suasive diction. The facts supporting our contention must be substantial and accurate. Our opinions must be truly informed, not half-baked, and our logic must be sound and beyond reproach. Otherwise, we may have to put on an act like that of the seemingly enlightened prince in A Knight’s Tale, lying to the lynching mob about the parentage of William the thatcher’s son, then justifying that lie by nonchalantly invoking royal infallibility: “He may appear to be of humble origins, but my personal historians have discovered that he is descended from an ancient royal line. This is my word, and as such is beyond contestation.”

A big lie indeed, but said with the confidence of a true royal. (March 16, 2004)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, March 16, 2004 issue, © 2004 by The Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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*Thatcher – A thatch is a sheltering cover, as a house roof, made of straw, grass, or—in our domestic usage—nipa or buri. A thatcher would therefore be someone whose occupation is to install a thatch or that kind of roofing. Of course, the name “Thatcher” became a media mainstay for many years when the feisty Margaret Hilda Thatcher was Britain’s prime minister for 12 years from 1979 to 1990.

**I use the term “presidentiable” here with some strong misgivings, for it is not even recognized in any respectable dictionary. But during every national election season, it forms part of the Philippine journalistic and political vocabulary much too strongly and can't be completely ignored.

WRITE TO GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS CLEARLY, UNDERSTANDABLY

The sensible way to write 
By Jose A. Carillo

People ask me sometimes if there’s a quick formula for effective writing. My answer is yes, I know of one, but I can't guarantee how quick it will work for anyone aspiring to write better. In fact, like most people who make a living from writing and editing, I arrived at the formula not in just one burst of enlightenment but through years and years of practice. That formula, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 

Effective Writing = Good semantics + Good syntax + Sensibility

Before discussing the formula, I want to make it clear that by effective writing, I don’t necessarily mean great prose. I only mean writing that gets our message across clearly and understandably. If you have the natural gift or innate facility to write novels, plays, or movie scripts that can impress audiences, that will be great! But if you happen not to have it, don’t simply bewail your fate. It’s never too late to make yourself do much better with the written word. So long as you clearly understand how the formula’s three variables work, that goal should be well within your reach inyour early years.

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The first writing variable is, of course, our vocabulary. I use the term semantics rather loosely for this variable so it can cover not only the acquisition of words but also the understanding of their various meanings. This variable is actually the easiest to load in our favor. In English, by just learning 10 new words every day, we can enrich our vocabulary by 3,600 words a year; by the time we are 50 years old, there should be more than 200,000 words at our command. That would be about the same number as all of the basic words in the English language outside of archaic words, scientific terms, and jargon—more than what we will really ever need to write effectively.

The second variable is admittedly more difficult to master: syntax or grammar. We are all supposed to have started learning it since we were toddlers. But since English is only a second language for most us (here I’m referring to Filipinos in particular), we learned to speak the language only gradually and discovered the intricacies of its grammar much later. Gaps in our English syntax are therefore inevitable. Thus, even if we have a superior intellect, we may not necessarily be able to speak or write English as well as its native speakers do.

An excellent grasp of English semantics and syntax will be great, of course, but we all know that this in itself won’t be enough. It doesn’t guarantee the ability to write good prose. There are in fact many highly educated people whose spoken English is beyond reproach, but who can’t write a clear, understandable, and interesting sentence that goes longer than six words. Their problem is that when they sit down to write, alone and without the stimulus of a live listener, they can only write stilted, unfocused thoughts addressed to no one in particular. In short, their writing doesn’t communicate adequately.

This happens because peoplein general don’t know that effective writing actually needs a very important third variable. Some people call it “sensitivity” but I prefer to use the term sensibility for the variable in writing that creates sensation, feeling, and understanding in the reader through the written word. The “sensible” writer is one who can make his prose resonate or connect with the unseen reader. The ability to achieve this resonance is obviously a much more elusive factor than both semantics and syntax. But it is unfortunate that it’s not well recognized and formally taught in schools. What’s often learned as the principal goal of writing is self-expression, which is the opposite of sensibility.   

The obsession with self-expression is, I think, the single biggest reason why many people, although intelligent, cannot write effectively. They don't realize that writing actually must do the exact opposite of self-expression to work with a reader. They become so busy giving vent in writing to what they feel and think, what they know, and what they believe in. They are unable to grasp the fact that for the readers to understand and appreciate these things, they must write only with words, meanings, and mental images that are already in their readers’ heads. The reality is that these will often be not the words, meanings, and mental images that come naturally to us.

The sensible way to write, therefore, is to clearly understand that we are not writing for ourselves but for others. Writing is essentially speaking silently to an unseen listener. Our terms of reference when we write shouldn’t be our own intellect or accumulated knowledge; it should instead be our best estimate of the quality of mind and temperament of our readers. And it should be obvious by now that the only levels of vocabulary, grammar, and language that will work for this purpose are primarily those of our readers, not our own levels.

This brings us back to this formula that I offered at the very outset of this essay: 

Effective Writing = Good semantics + Good syntax + Sensibility 

Only by carefully balancing this equation can we really hope to make our writing truly clear, understandable, and interesting to our target readers.

This essay first appeared in my “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times on January 3, 2003.

MASTERING A BASIC BUT OFTEN BADLY POSITIONED ENGLISH WORD

Once and for all, let’s come to grips
with the proper use of “however”

Who can say right now that he or she has totally mastered the usage of “however,” that slippery word that can’t seem to stay put in just one place to make a sentence yield a desired meaning? I have this feeling that not very many can answer that question with an unqualified “Yes!” In my case, for instance, even after dealing with “however” for the umpteenth time in my writing and editing work, I still sometimes catch myself vacillating where to position it in certain sentence constructions. This is because experience has taught me, sometimes at great risk of social or professional embarrassment, that “however” can make subtle or profound changes in meaning and nuance—even in function—when it’s toggled across clauses and phrases or across sentences. And sometimes, “however” won’t do justice at all to the idea I want to express, so I need to discard and replace it with a more compliant conjunction or adverb.

To put some rough science to the usage of “however,” I wrote a two-part essay about how it works for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in November of 2005. I am now posting that essay once again in this week’s edition of Jose Carillo’s English Blogspot to give you a much surer footing when building sentences with this very useful but sometimes exasperatingly difficult-to-position word.

The use and misuse of “however” as a function word

One of the most misunderstood and misused words in English could very well be “however,” which works either as a conjunction or as an adverb. This is because many writers, no matter what their writing style may be and no matter how good their English may look, often tumble and fumble when using this very basic and very important function word.

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Consider these representative samples of “however” misuse that I have gathered (all italicizations of quoted text mine):

(1) From an online essay on legal matters: “Correctly, both decisions are cited as saying that conversations and correspondence between the President and public officials are privileged…Once a firm decision, however, has been reached, like who will pay for the Venable contract, the conclusion reached is a matter of public concern no longer covered by privilege.”

(2) From a state university’s admission prospectus: “If however, some graduation requirements are completed beyond the deadline, the student must register during the succeeding semester in order to be considered a candidate for graduation as of the end of that semester.”

(3) From an online update on international trade: “The proposal of the United States…has provided a big push to the negotiations. Trade analysts however are quick to point out that the US and EU proposals amount to nothing more than empty promises once again.”

(4) From a newspaper opinion column: “Anyway, the bill proposing the punitive tax has gone through committee deliberations and has been elevated to the plenary stage. Though this has more to do with legislators in customary fashion, humoring rather than indulging their colleague who is spearheading the bill, however, nonsensical its content and intent.”

The sentence in Item 1 shows the classic case of “however” misplacement. Here, “however” works as an adverb to mean “on the other hand” or “in contrast,” so it should logically be placed either at the beginning of the second sentence, where it can link this sentence firmly to its antecedent sentence, or right after the subordinate clause of the second sentence has been stated fully.

But the problem is that many writers habitually sneak “however” just anywhere in their sentences except up front, creating those abrupt interruptions of thought that needlessly bewilder readers. I think this is the result of being taught by English teachers who foist the grammatically, structurally, and semantically ruinous rule never to begin a sentence with “however,” and about this rule I have more to say later.

The quickest way to make cliffhanger “however” constructions smoother and clearer is to put “however” up front: “Correctly, both decisions are cited…However, once a firm decision has been reached, like [on] who will pay for the Venable contract, the conclusion reached is a matter of public concern no longer covered by privilege.” For even better rhythm, though, “however” can be deferred until the subordinate clause has been stated fully: “Correctly, both decisions are cited…Once a firm decision has been reached, however, like [on] who will pay for the Venable contract, the conclusion reached is a matter of public concern no longer covered by privilege.”

It’s likely that the strong resistance to using “however” to begin sentences has also led to the awkward “however” placements in Items 2 and 3. Note that in Item 2, even if the requisite comma after “if” is supplied to make the sentence structurally correct, the sentence would still sound stilted. But simply putting “however” up front fixes the problem, though: “However, if some graduation requirements are completed beyond the deadline, the student must register…”

In Item 3, on the other hand, the dysfunctional placement of “however” makes it difficult for readers to fathom what that word is supposed to be doing. Putting “however” up front clarifies the logic of the statement: “The proposal of the United States…has provided a big push to the negotiations. However, trade analysts are quick to point out that the US and EU proposals amount to nothing more than empty promises once again.”

In Item 4, “however” also functions as an adverb, this time to mean “no matter how” modifying the adjective “nonsensical.” But setting it off between commas has turned the second sentence into gibberish, no matter if the second comma might have been placed there not by the writer but by the proofreader. For the sentence to make sense, though, that second comma has to be dropped so that “however” can logically form part of the phrase that modifies the word “bill”: “Though this has more to do with legislators in customary fashion, humoring rather than indulging their colleague who is spearheading the bill, however nonsensical its content and intent.”

Now let’s examine the awkward consequences of forcing “however” to do a job that’s better performed by the conjunction “but.”

Take a look at the dysfunctional placements of “however” in the following passages:

(1) From a religious website: “To this, we agree. However in recent years, certain details about the Days have become ‘common knowledge’ to friends and family members of Dazers.”

(2) From a civil society website: “Steiner’s ideas found widespread acceptance in a Europe devastated by the First World War. However the hyperinflation of post World War I Germany demolished practical attempts by Steiner and his colleagues to make the threefold society with an active and independent cultural sphere a reality.”

(3) From an online Philippine festival backgrounder: “(Magellan) died in the encounter. That was on April 27, 1521. The remnants of Magellan’s men were however able to return to Spain to report the incident and the possibility of conquest.”

In Item 1, “however” is supposed to mean “on the other hand,” but without the requisite comma to set it off from the contrasting clause, so it erroneously gives the sense of “no matter if” and makes the sentence nonsensical. Adding the comma makes the correct sense emerge: “To this, we agree. However, in recent years, certain details about the Days have become ‘common knowledge’ to friends and family members of Dazers.” The rhythm of the statement gets even better when “however” is made to follow “in recent years” instead: “To this, we agree. In recent years, however, certain details about the Days…”

But there’s actually a much more efficient way of constructing such “however” statements. The problem, though, is that many people are afraid to use it because of this other dubious grammar rule taught by some English teachers: Never use “but” to begin a sentence. This rule, which is meant to discourage incomplete sentences, isn’t of much practical value. On the contrary, using “but” instead of “however” to begin sentences makes their construction more forthright and their meaning clearer, as in this reconstruction of the sentence in Item 1: “To this, we agree. But in recent years, certain details about the Days have become common knowledge…”

In Item 2, “but” can also do a much better job than “however” in delivering the contrastive idea. Take a look: “Steiner’s ideas found widespread acceptance in a Europe devastated by the First World War. But the hyperinflation of post World War I Germany demolished practical attempts by Steiner and his colleagues to make the threefold society…” Similarly, the historical vignette in Item 3 flows much better when “but” is used to begin the third sentence: “(Magellan) died in the encounter. That was on April 27, 1521. But the remnants of Magellan's men were able to return to Spain to report the incident and the possibility of conquest.”

Indeed, unless we want a very strong contrast, “but” is often a better choice than “however” in setting two ideas in opposition. And we need not worry about the claim of some grammarians that “but” is not dignified enough to begin sentences in formal writing. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, for one, assures us that “‘but’ may be used to begin a sentence at all levels of style.”

Now we can perhaps already agree on these more sensible ground rules for using “however” and “but”:

(1) Ignore the misguided caveats against beginning a sentence with “however” or “but.” Those rules only impede clear expression and the logical development of ideas. Up front, both “however” and “but” work just fine when used to mean “on the other hand” or “in contrast.” When “however” is used to mean “nevertheless,” though, the best position for it may not be up front in the sentence, and putting it within the sentence may sometimes also be inappropriate. Using “but” instead can usually fix the problem: “The trip is long and costly. But the destination is worth the trouble.”

(2) Although beginning a sentence with “however” is perfectly acceptable, we must minimize doing it. “However” is an extremely emphatic conjunctive adverb, one that tends to sound more important than the contrastive or opposing idea that it introduces. Functionally, “however” serves best as a conjunctive adverb in compound sentences where two independent clauses are strongly set in opposition: “They want the house; however, their money simply is not enough.”

When we use “however” primarily for such compound constructions, we also get the bonus of not being forced to use it much too often to begin sentences, which admittedly can make our sentences sound too irritatingly legalistic.

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This essay combines and condenses an original two-part version I wrote for my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” for the November 14 and 21, 2005 issues of The Manila Times. The original two-part version, in essentially the same form, later appeared as Chapters 109 and 110 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.