The forms of public address

Preface

To Mr. R. L. Lyman, Instructor in Harvard University,. I owe invaluable aid in preparing the notes to this book. I wish to thank also Professor A. B. Hart for some details of these notes. To Professor H. B. Huntington, of Brown University, I owe helpful suggestion and comment when we used the material together at Harvard. In preparing copy for the press I have been greatly assisted by Miss Loraine P. Bucklin. Finally, I keenly appreciate the ready courtesy of the publishers and the authors without whose consent the greater part of this book could not have been reprinted.

G. P. B.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction ix

LETTERS PRIVATE AND OPEN.

Introduction

(AN OPEN LETTER TO TEACHERS.)

The very conditions of American life require that our educated youth shall be able to expound with clearness their business, financial, political, or even moral ideas or ideals. In nine cases out of ten, too, they will not merely print what they have to say, but first say it and then, perhaps, print it. Where, as compared with the numerous college courses in debating, oratory, or literary style, are the college courses in such public exposition ? There are some courses, it is true, especially in technical schools, which train their students to expound clearly a plan in engineering or some scientific discovery, but the courses in non-scientific and nonliterary exposition are almost confined to debating and so-called oratory. But even in these, study of public discussion is too often not, as it should be, an end in itself, but merely a means to the end — winning a victory in an intercollegiate contest. It is, indeed, inevitable that as long as the present vogue of intercollegiate debating persists, college courses in debate cannot be wholly for training in discussion for the sake of determining the truth about mooted questions, but must conform somewhat to the arbitrary rules of committees which have made of intercollegiate debating a kind of intellectual sport. Similarly, interstate committees have laid down rules to govern the contests in oratory. The efficiency of such courses in debating or in oratory, the undergraduate judges — does not the graduate too ? — by the number of successful contestants it produces.

ix

X Introduction.

Now, there is no denying that intercollegiate debating has been of very great assistance to those of us who are interested in teaching undergraduates to present their ideas orally to the general public with clearness and force, — to those of us who are interested in the forms of public discourse, — for intercollegiate debating offers just that idea of tussle, wrestle and fight which appeals to a youth's imagination. At first it is, more than an3^thing else, the fight, the spirit of contest, the desire to show one's supremacy over someone else which interests. Later, students come to appreciate that to fight with success intellectually is possible only through knowledge of certain principles and the intelligent application of those principles under varying conditions. Recognition of these ideas sends them to a course in debating enthusiastic for the work ; or, if they have already begun systematic study of debating, when these ideas come to them through some interclass or intercollegiate debate, the recognition quickens them to strenuous, persistent endeavor.

But the widespread interest in intercollegiate debating and proper gratitude for what it has done to stimulate a study of the different forms of public discourse, have led undergraduates, graduates, and even teachers, I think, greatly to misemphasize its importance. After all, intercollegiate debating does not mean every kind of discussion, nor even every kind of debating ; it signifies a special kind of debating, guided by rules as definite as those of football, and determined in the same way — by conference of the powers. It is becoming more and more a highly developed special form of debate — an intellectual sport. Because of the excitement of the contest, the prospective delight of a definite victory, the acclaim that greets the victors from undergraduates, graduates, and pictorial newspapers, and, worthiest reason of all, because the intercollegiate debate gives some students who love their alma mater their only opportunity to work publicly to increase

Introduction. xi

her honors, there seems to be a real danger that intercollegiate debating may become in many colleges the only form of public discourse seriously studied. Is not such an interest as this disproportionate, unsound, and unwise ?

I have read many compositions submitted in oratorical contests. Only rarely have they even a spark of individuality, of freshness, of simple strength. Instead, they are conventional, artificial, empty, cheap. Clearly the contestants have studied files of "orations" successful in the past, and as closely as possible, copied them. Begin with platitudes, no matter how remote from the subject ; continue either with sentences which, crackling like a fusillade of musketry, might have come from any biographical dictionary, or with sentences of no more originality, but heavy with gew-gaws of speech ; indulge in closing fireworks, and there you are ! What can that kind of writing do but harm ? Intelligent audiences may considerately put up with this from callow youth, but what if callow youth try this kind of speaking on the same people when it wishes to push them, not whither they are willingly and rapidly moving, but whither they do not wish to go ? Then will come a sharp awakening ! Grant that the state representatives selected for the final contest may have more than I think to say and may say it better, yet the conditions of these contests are not like any the speakers will meet after graduation. Then audiences will listen to them primarily for what they have to say on their subjects, not, as here, primarily for the way in which they speak. Grant, too, that debate may be taught without regard for the rules of intercollegiate debate, yet it is but a sub-division of a subdivision (oral discussion) of a large field for study (public address^). Surely other teachers must have had my experience,

^ I shall use this term hereafter as meaning not only all work written for delivery, but also all writing at the public not literary or scientific in Eijim, for instance letters to the press or editorials, xii Introduction.

that when only a course in debating — or in oratory if you prefer — exists in a college, some of its best students, after a few years outside college walls, write as follows : I find little use now for the special training in formal debate : of course, I do find helpful, as an aid to clear thinking in general, the principles which I was taught underlie fair-minded discussion. But, after all, I was not given what I most need. I have once or twice had, as member of a committee, to submit a report. It needed to be clearly, simply, and at the same time persuasively drawn. I found much difficulty in adapting to this work the principles of strict argument. I have met similar difficulties with letters and editorials which I have written for newspapers. In both, formal argument was out of the question in my limited space. Mere statement of what seemed to me facts, was dry. How could I have written as I felt I should ? Or another says: I have been called upon repeatedly, as a man interested in the betterment of civic conditions, to speak at dinners. I find such speaking slow torture, for I am not a wit, and I do not know how to speak seriously yet interestingly. Yet I am unwilling to take refuge in the speech so often heard, — a patchwork of good stories that are trite and new stories that are poor, all, new and old, inappositely introduced, Still a third writes : In my native town I was called upon on an occasion of local importance to make my neighbors understand the significance of the life of a famous fellowtownsman of the past, but I was all at sea as to my task, and do not care to send you my speech. A fourth says : I am a college instructor. One of my classes is large, and I must contend against the languor that pervades it after it has come directly to my lecture from its luncheon. Sometimes students at the back of the room find the pictorial morning papers more absorbing than my instruction. There is even leakage, for unfortunately some of the class are nearer the exits than I. Must I "popularize" my lectures ? That is, these graduates

Introduction. xiii

are meeting difficulties inherent in writing committee reports and concisely effective editorials or communications to the press, in after-dinner speaking, commemorative addresses, and lecturing. Surely, with all the wealth of illustration which the past offers, w^e can give these men some aid, and as surely we should in our college courses. We can keep them from writing the average eulogy — a fulsomely phrased listing of the events of a man's life ; from writing the commemorative address so often heard — a mere compilation from current histories, phrased in language individual only in its tameness. We can help to train them to go back of facts, statistics, and conditions in order to find messages from the past to the present ; to reconcile seeming contradictions in lives of varied activities ; to try to make comprehensible men too often misunderstood. We can show them that even the after-dinner speech should have a central idea and plan, as well as freshness and individuality of presentation. We can, perhaps, prevent them from falling into the too common fallacy of thinking that to keep large bodies of students attentive the quality of the w^ork must be weakened, or extraneous attractions must be superimposed on good material. In all this a broad field opens out before us, ~a field of large consequence because, as I believe, for one man who applies from day to day the principles he learns especially for formal debating, five work in one or more of these other forms of public discourse. For these reasons I think that a course in the Forms of Public Address is for the larger number of undergraduates much more important than even the best course in formal debate, or in oratory as it is ordinarily understood. This book represents an effort during the past five years to develop in Harvard College a course which shall provide the training called for in these criticisms of old students of mine.

Moreover, I believe that for a long time we teachers of English composition have over-emphasized phrase as comxiv ^ Introduction.

pared with thought. Probably there is not one of us who, after ten years or more of earnest teaching, has not felt baffled and humiliated at the relative barrenness of the results. It is not easy to be content with " leavening the lump," with mere increase in the accurate use of shall and will and with good sentence structure, nor even with the few skilled writers who are the result of our training. One and all we must have felt that the majority of these youths who study with us the principles of literary style as applied in essay writing or in fiction have nothing to say. With nothing to say they mistake the sign for the content, and become enthusiastic and often skillful phrase-makers. It is all ludicrously exemplified in the tale of a contestant for oratorical honors engaged in composing his magnum opus. From time to time he rushed into a room near his crying : " Say, I've got a new sentence, and it's a dandy, if only I can manage to work it in ! " Yet, though I have known a youth who had studied the rudiments of rhetoric to write wretchedly when forced, with no taste for literary composition, to narrate and describe, I have rarely found him writing wholly ill on a thesis subject from a course in history, economics or philosophy on which he had thought with pleasure, because it really interested him. There lies the clue : the fact is, much of our teaching in the higher courses in composition has been and always must be fitted to and beneficial to only the few with inborn literary desire or capacity. Between these and the great mass of undergraduates, for all of whom training in the rudiments of rhetoric is necessary, are a large number of youths not likely to be either scientific or literary men, but who in one way or another will probably be often called on to address their fellows. To these should be given at least the principles which will keep them from a pained sense of inadequate results after earnest labor.

For purposes of such instruction, I believe there is no bet-

Introduction. xv

ter definition of style than Cardinal Newman's, " style is a thinking out into language." That puts the emphasis where it belongs, and where the undergraduate usually fails to put it, — on the man behind the wn^xng, and particularly on the content of his mind on the subject he treats. Create in your students an interest in thinking on subjects which come daily in their way, not in this case for purposes of hterary description or narration, for essay writing, but that they may realize the chaotic condition of their own minds on current college topics, and grow increasingly unwilling to repeat parrot-like what they have heard others say or to make snap judgments. It is not really true that our students " have nothing to say ; " the trouble is that we have been trying to make of the most alert only literary men when they are intended for men of affairs, and that the rank and file in these days of manifold aids to thinking such as periodicals, compendia of all kinds, and tutors, have grown lazy and know nothing of the pleasure that lies in swift, accurate thinking. It is just here that study of the forms of address is helpful, for by practice in the public letter, the editorial for a college paper, the after-dinner speech on some college occasion, you may lead your nonliterary student to the discovery, to him startling and delightful, that he has only to formulate carefully what is floating in his mind to have something worth saying to his mates. But if it is worth saying, it is worth saying well. That means, however, not merely expressing it so that any literary critic who may read his words will declare it correctly and gracefully phrased, but what we teachers of composition too often forget, the greater part of persuasion, — the adjustment of the material to the probable moods, opinions, prejudices and principles of its audience. Wake the imagination of your students by training them to write not for themselves only or for the critical instructor, but for definitely described audiences to which they must adapt the presentation of their xvi Introduction.

subjects. I have found students who have had not only a Freshman course in EngUsh but even a second year of work wholly unable to carry out satisfactorily the second of the following exercises. Excfelse i. In a letter to some member of your family, explain your reasons for preferring to room in or out of the college yard, as the case may be with you. This was well done. Exercise 2. Write to some friend of yours, in the summer vacation, urging him to room with you during the coming year. Think over his characteristics before you write and try in your letter so to present your plan as to make it as attractive to him as possible. This was a complete failure : most students merely stated why they like their rooms, hardly one looked at the plan through the eyes of his friend. Yet in that simple effort at persuasion lies the whole secret of persuasive public address. Granted an interest in thinking and in presenting ideas to other people, and you will not have to urge on a student the importance of a rich, varied, and responsive vocabulary or the value of all that courses in purely literary composition can teach him. When thought presses for utterance there needs no other spur to acquirement of the best means of expression.

Now, if all this be admitted, the first difficulty is that even students who have been roused to an interest in thinking for themselves and who have had a course in the elements of rhetoric, do not think clearly, strongly, and in orderly fashion. They may be able to write reports investigating subjects which have but one side or to treat topics in which the preponderance of the evidence is heavily one way, but to steer their course steadily, fair-mindedly, weighing accurately the pros and cons, from the superficial, popular understanding of a college question to its real meaning • — that is utterly beyond their present powers. After some years of experimentation, I am convinced that students learn most

Introduction. xvii

quickly and lastingly the processes of analysis and structure necessary to good thinking in study of the principles of argumentation as applied in written work. I say " in written work " because that permits the closest and most accurate scrutiny by an instructor, and is free from the nervous conditions of speaking. In a semester, or three months, the principles of analysis, structure and evidence can be so drilled into students that the best will have a trained analytical sense and a permanent feeling for structure, and all of the class will have gained something of both. While the' class is acquiring these ideas, it should, for simplicity, write without thought of any other audience than the instructor, that is, it should aim only to convince. The difficult art of persuasion may best be taken up when the fundamental principles just named have been mastered. I believe, too, that at the outset students should be urged to write on subjects depending on research rather than on personal experience, for the first provide them with the material which they always insist they lack if set at once to writing on subjects drawn from their own experience. Moreover, the large mass of material easily to be collected on matters of research permits a wider training in evidence, and raises more complicated questions of structure and analysis. But the moment one is sure that the students understand these fundamental matters they should be pressed into consideration of topics from college or outside life with which they are familiar. Then, too, they are ready for study of the broader principles of persuasion, — first as applied to argument only. It is often helpful to let a student rewrite for a definitely described audience an argument at first composed only to convince the instructor of the truth of the position taken in it. These principles of analysis, structure, evidence, and persuasion grasped, a student is prepared to examine the non-forensic forms of address, those which I have tried to illustrate in xviii Introduction.

this book. Personally I have found that the necessary analysis, structure, and evidence, can be taught between the first of October and Christmas, and persuasion in its broader aspects in three to four weeks after the second date. That makes it possible to devote the second half-year to study of the forms of address. As these are examined by a student, it must become clear that the principles of analysis and structure first learned by him in written argument lie back of all these forms, that, indeed, good speaking cannot exist without, for analysis goes to the heart of the question and structure presents it most compactly and clearly. Just, too, as analysis of an opponent's case gave in argumentation one or more central ideas as special issues, analysis of one of these addresses, even the longest, will develop one or more main ideas about which the whole speech is built up. Even as the student drew briefs for his arguments, he can draw outUnes of these addresses, and the outline will reveal that good structure with an eye to the audience in question had as much to do with the success of the address as of the argument. As to persuasion, — not only the mere excitation for which solely it too commonly stands in the public mind, but also every means by which the speaker has adapted his material to his particular audience, — that is illustrated at every turn in these other forms of address. In brief, the chief difference between the forensic and the non-forensic forms of public address is that structure in the latter is less rigid and persuasion preponderates over conviction. Surely, as study of these other forms is finished, a student must see that debating is but a highly specialized form of the subdivision, the forensic address, and that consequently it should end, not begin, as it too often does, his training in public discourse.

Throughout all this examination of the forms of address the purpose should of course be, not to point out graces of style, bursts of eloquence, vivid narration and description.

Introduction. xlx

but the conditions which gave rise to the speech, the possible subjects the speaker might have chosen, his probable reasons for selecting his topic, his plan in treating it, and the extent to which his audience affected his presentation. Indeed, the audience addressed must always be carefully considered, for it will probably reveal not only why the speaker presented his subject as he did, but also his reason for selecting his topic, for his plan, and for his direct attempts at persuasion. Granted this work done, let us study graces of style, excitation, fine passages to our hearts' content, but let us not in studying these skim the surface, losing the real significance and contribution of the address. Critical study of the specimens in this book under wise guidance should make a student see that his motto in composition should be, not Phrase, not Phrasi?ig 7ny TJiought, but Thought adequately phrased. That is what I wish this book most to emphasize : that the public address which not only produces results at the moment but has permanent value rests primarily on thought ; commanding and holding attention, not for external graces given it by the speaker's manner or phrasing, but because it has something new to say, or, more often, because, though it says nothing absolutely new, it shows the reaction of an individual mind on the material. Given thought, a speech must be very badly delivered not to have some effect ; given only excitation, or only persuasive presentation of trite ideas, or no ideas at all, and only those who follow the speaker in blind enthusiasm for him, or those who are unwilling to believe other ideas than his will be lastingly affected. Ideal public address means, then, significant thought presented with all the clearness that perfect structure can give, all the force that skillful sifting of the material can produce, all the persuasiveness that perfect understanding of the relation of the audience to speaker and subject can give, with vivid narration and description, a graceful style, and an attractive personality.

XX Introduction.

Too often public speakers, moving from the last of these qualities toward the first, stop much short of that first one. Yet to stop short is to stand the pyramid on its apex, for in the busy world of affairs in which most of our students will live they, even more than the orators, will be judged by what they have to contribute, not by the manner in which they contribute.

The use of this book must vary much as it makes part of a course based chiefly on the lecture or the recitation method. Whichever method is used, however, the private letter should, I think, be taken as the norm for instruction in the non- argumentative forms of public address, for it is aimed directly at one distinct person. It may be shown that even its force depends on the principles of analysis, structure, evidence and persuasion explained first in connection with argumentation ; that it has infinite variety, and may lead easily into all the other forms. Of course, the public letter naturally comes next, differing only in being addressed to many people, whose characteristics are not so easily ascertainable as with the one reader of the private letter. The public letter, too, easily runs into the other forms, as for instance with the Memorandum of President Roosevelt on the Schley case, which is also an argument. Supposed editorial comment on one of these public letters readily takes a student into the editorial ; and the memorial leader with its biographical detail carries him into the eulogy. Beyond this, I think the order used in examining the forms should rest with the teacher, for all except the private and the public letter and the editorial are not so much distinct forms as differentiations of the address for a special occasion, the audience and the occasion determining the differentiation. As each section of the book is taken up, the chief characteristics of the form illustrated should be put before the class : the notes in fine type on the reverse of each half-title are intended as hints

Introduction. xxi

for the teacher in this treatment of each section, but it has seemed to me wholly unwise to try completely to anticipate his work at this point. Doubtless the lecture is the easiest way of placing such information before a class, but I much doubt if skillful quizzing of its members, summed up in the last fifteen minutes of the hour, will not impress the ideas more firmly. In brief, make the students discover in their reading as much as you can : keep them not merely listening but thinking. Where an occasional lecture may do much is in amplifying the necessarily brief prefatory matter which precedes each selection. It has seemed to me that each teacher would prefer to decide for himself how much detail as to the life of the speaker he wished his class to have, and whatever he may need is in these days of many biographical dictionaries easily accessible. The class should be required to read the selections carefully, and should be examined on their reading either by a quiz or by written exercises such as those suggested in the Appendix. It should be given an opportunity in or out of the class-room to try its hand at as many of the forms as circumstances will permit. Time has forced me to confine work in the two kinds of letters, the editorial, and the after-dinner speech to the class-room, to require a eulogy written outside, and to allow the class for its last long MS. to write at will on any of the forms it has not already tried. I believe in this emphasis on the forms treated in the class-room because in them the principles to be carried out in the other forms may be conveniently illustrated, but especially because these forms seem most real to the under-graduate, most likely to play some part in his immediate experience. Indeed, in all this study of the non-argumentative forms, the student should be induced as far as possible to choose such topics as he may be called on as an under-graduate or in his home conditions to discuss. Above all, the aim is not to train students to write like any of the men whose work is xxii Introduction.

illustrated in this book, but to think well on subjects which interest them and which may also have public interest if well presented. The exercises in the Appendix give some hints as to possible subjects.^

The secret of public address to-day is then : Have something to say ; something you wish to say ; something you wish to say so that those who hear you shall understand, and act as you desire. Of course, it would be folly to expect from collegians special addresses of real contributiveness ; that may, however, come later when years have given ample opportunity to apply the principles which they have learned in such a course. But these collegians can be given right standards ; they can, too, be taught to select from their own experience or wide reading that aspect of a current topic which will most interest the audience they have in mind or which they are best fitted to present to that audience ; to plan the presentation of it well ; and even to make the product reflect in thought or phrase the individual behind it. Departments of English in our colleges must wake to the fact that m their too frequent neglect of the oral word as con-

^ It may be suggestive to give the order and the nature of the work in the course at Harvard in which the material of this book has been used, though different conditions must necessarily affect both. The class meets three times a week throughout the college year. Besides the class-room work, each stxident draws at least two briefs and writes five manuscripts of 1,000-1,500 words. Two of these are arguments. For the third manuscript the second argument is re-written for a definitely described audience. In the choice of topics for the other two manuscripts and in the treatment of them students are allowed considerable freedom, but they are expected to give themselves practice in the eulogy, and the address for a special occasion. Between October and Christmas TJie Principles of Argumentation (Revised edition, 1904, Ginn & Co.) is used with, for illustrative material. Specimens of Argumentation (Modern, 1893, H. Holt & Co.). For persuasion, between Christmas and February both these books and The Forms of Address are used, during the second half-year only the last book is needed.