SOME RHETORICAL ASPECTS OF GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES
In an earlier part of this work we defined rhetoric as something which
creates an informed appetition for the good. Such definition must
recognize the rhetorical force of things existing outside the realm of
speech; but since our concern is primarily with spoken rhetoric, which
cannot be disengaged from certain patterns or regularities of language,
we now turn our attention to the pressure of these formal patterns.
All students of language concede to it a certain public character.
Insofar as it serves in communication, it is a publicly-agreed-upon
thing; and when one passes the outer limits of the agreement, one
abandons comprehensibility. Now rhetoric affects us primarily by setting
forth images which inform and attract. Yet because this setting forth is
accomplished through a public instrumentality, it is not free; it is tied
more or less closely to the formalizations of usage. The more general and
rigid of these formalizations we recognize as grammar, and we shall here
speak of grammar as a system of forms of public speech. In the larger
aspect, discourse is at once bound and free, and we are here interested
to discover how the bound character affects our ability to teach and to
persuade.
We soon realize that different ways of saying a thing denote different
interests in saying it, or to take this in reverse as we do when we
become conscious users of language, different interests in a matter will
dictate different patterns of expression. Rhetoric in its practice is a
matter of selection and arrangement, but conventional grammar imposes
restraints upon both of these. All this amounts to saying what every
sensitive user of language has sometimes felt; namely, that language
is not a purely passive instrument, but that, owing to this public
acceptance, while you are doing something with it, it is doing something
with you, or with your intention.[117] It does not exactly fight back;
rather it has a set of postures and balances which somehow modify your
thrusts and holds. The sentence form is certainly one of these. You pour
into it your meaning, and it deflects, and molds into certain shapes.
The user of language must know how this counterpressure can be turned
to the advantage of his general purpose. The failure of those who are
careless, or insensitive, to the rhetoric of grammar is that they allow
the counter force to impede their design, whereas a perspicacious use
of it will forward the design. One cannot, for example, employ just any
modifier to stand for a substantive or just any substantive to express a
quality, or change a stabilized pattern of arrangement without a change
in net effect, although some of these changes register but faintly. But
style shows through an accumulation of small particulars, and the artist
in language may ponder a long while, as Conrad is said to have done, over
whether to describe a character as “penniless” or “without a penny.”
In this approach, then, we are regarding language as a standard objective
reality, analyzable into categories which have inherent potentialities. A
knowledge of these objective potentialities can prevent a loss of force
through friction. The friction we refer to occurs whenever a given unit
of the system of grammar is tending to say one thing while the semantic
meaning and the general organization are tending to say another. A
language has certain abilities or even inclinations which the wise user
can draw into the service of his own rhetorical effort. Using a language
may be compared to riding a horse; much of one’s success depends upon an
understanding of what it _can_ and _will_ do. Or to employ a different
figure in illustration, there is a kind of use of language which goes
against the grain as that grain is constituted by the categories, and
there is a kind which facilitates the speaker’s projection by going with
it. Our task is an exploration of the congruence between well understood
rhetorical objectives and the inherent character of major elements in
modern English.
The problem of which category to begin with raises some questions. It
is arguable that the rhetoric of any piece is dependent upon its total
intention, and that consequently no single sentence can be appraised
apart from the tendency of the whole discourse. Our position does not
deny that, since we are assuming merely that within the greater effect
there are lesser effects, cooperating well or ill. Having accepted that
limitation, it seems permissible for us to begin with the largest unit of
grammar, which is the sentence. We shall take up first the sentence as
such and then discriminate between formal types of sentences.
Because a sentence form exists in most if not all languages, there
is some ground to suppose that it reflects a necessary operation of
the mind, and this means not simply of the mind as psychologically
constituted but also as logically constrained.
It is evident that when the mind frames a sentence, it performs the
basic intellectual operation of analysis and re-synthesis. In this
complete operation the mind is taking two or more classes and uniting
them at least to the extent at which they share in a formal unity. The
unity itself, built up through many such associations, comes to have an
existence all its own, as we shall see. It is the repeated congruence
in experience or in the imagination of such classes as “sun-heat,”
“snow-cold,” which establishes the pattern, but our point is that the
pattern once established can become disciplinary in itself and compel us
to look for meaning within the formal unity it imposes. So it is natural
for us to perceive through a primitive analysis the compresence of sun
and hot weather, and to combine these into the unity “the sun is hot”;
but the articulation represented by this joining now becomes a thing in
itself, which can be grasped before the meaning of its component parts
is evident. Accordingly, although sentences are supposed to grow out of
meanings, we can have sentences before meanings are apparent, and this
is indeed the central point of our rhetoric of grammar. When we thus
grasp the scope of the pattern before we interpret the meaning of the
components, we are being affected by grammatical system.
I should like to put this principle to a supreme sort of test by using a
few lines of highly modern verse. In Allen Tate’s poem “The Subway” we
find the following:
I am become geometries, and glut
Expansions like a blind astronomer
Dazed, while the wordless heavens bulge and reel
In the cold reverie of an idiot.
I do not propose to interpret this further than to say that the features
present of word classification and word position cause us to look for
meaning along certain lines. It seems highly probable that we shall have
to exercise much imagination to fit our classes together with meaning
as they are fitted by formal classification and sentence order (“I am
become geometries”); yet it remains true that we take in the first line
as a formal predication; and I do not think that this formal character
could ever be separated entirely from the substance in an interpretation.
Once we gain admission of that point with regard to a sentence, some
rhetorical status for grammar has been definitely secured.
In total rhetorical effect the sentence seems to be peculiarly “the thing
said,” whereas all other elements are “the things named.” And accordingly
the right to utter a sentence is one of the very greatest liberties; and
we are entitled to little wonder that freedom of utterance should be, in
every society, one of the most contentious and ill-defined rights. The
liberty to impose this formal unity is a liberty to handle the world, to
remake it, if only a little, and to hand it to others in a shape which
may influence their actions. It is interesting to speculate whether the
Greeks did not, for this very reason, describe the man clever at speech
as δεινός, an epithet meaning, in addition to “clever,” “fearful” and
“terrible.” The sentence through its office of assertion is a force
adding itself to the forces of the world, and therefore the man clever
with his sentences—which is to say with his combinations—was regarded
with that uneasiness which we feel in the presence of power. The changes
wrought by sentences are changes in the world rather than in the physical
earth, but it is to be remembered that changes in the world bring about
changes in the earth. Thus this practice of yoking together classes of
the world, of saying “Charles is King” or “My country is God’s country”
is a unique rhetorical fact which we have to take into account, although
it stands somewhat prior to our main discussion.
As we turn now to the different formal types of sentences, we shall
follow the traditional grammatical classification and discuss the
rhetorical inclination of each in turn.
Through its form, the simple sentence tends to emphasize the discreteness
of phenomena within the structural unity. To be more specific, its
pattern of subject-verb-object or complement, without major competing
elements, leaves our attention fixed upon the classes involved: “Charles
is King.” The effect remains when the simple sentence compounds its
subject and predicate: “Peaches and cantaloupes grew in abundance”; “Men
and boys hunted and fished.” The single subject-predicate frame has
the broad sense of listing or itemizing, and the list becomes what the
sentence is about semantically.
Sentences of this kind are often the unconscious style of one who sees
the world as a conglomerate of things, like the child; sometimes they
are the conscious style of one who seeks to present certain things as
eminent against a background of matter uniform or flat. One can imagine,
for example, the simple sentence “He never worked” coming after a long
and tedious recital which it is supposed to highlight. Or one can imagine
the sentence “The world is round” leaping out of a context with which it
contrasts in meaning, in brevity, or in sententiousness.
There is some descriptive value in saying that the simple sentence is
the most “logical” type of sentence because, like the simple categorical
proposition, it has this function of relating two classes. This fact,
combined with its usual brevity and its structural simplicity, makes it a
useful sentence for beginnings and endings (of important meaning-groups,
not so much of formal introductions and conclusions). It is a sentence
of unclouded perspective, so to speak. Nothing could be more beautifully
anticipatory than Burke’s “The proposition is peace.”
At the very minimum, we can affirm that the simple sentence tends to
throw subject and predicate classes into relief by the structure it
presents them in; that the two-part categorical form of its copulation
indicates a positive mood on the part of the user, and that its brevity
often induces a generality of approach, which is an aid to perspicuous
style. These opportunities are found out by the speaker or writer who
senses the need for some synoptic or dramatic spot in his discourse. Thus
when he selects the simple sentence, he is going “with the grain”; he is
putting the objective form to work for him.
The complex sentence has a different potentiality. Whereas the simple
sentence emphasizes through its form the co-existence of classes (and it
must be already apparent that we regard “things existing or occurring”
as a class where the predicate consists only of a verb), the complex
sentence emphasizes a more complex relationship; that is to say, it
reflects another kind of discriminating activity, which does not
stop with seeing discrete classes as co-existing, but distinguishes
them according to rank or value, or places them in an order of cause
and effect. “Rome fell because valor declined” is the utterance of a
reflective mind because the conjunction of parts depends on something
ascertainable by the intellect but not by simple perception. This is
evidence that the complex sentence does not appear until experience has
undergone some refinement by the mind. Then, because it goes beyond
simple observation and begins to perceive things like causal principle,
or begins to grade things according to a standard of interest, it brings
in the notion of dependence to supplement that of simple togetherness.
And consequently the complex sentence will be found nearly always to
express some sort of hierarchy, whether spatial, moral, or causal, with
its subordinate members describing the lower orders. In simple-sentence
style we would write: “Tragedy began in Greece. It is the highest form
of literary art.” There is no disputing that these sentences, in this
sequence, could have a place in mature expression. But they do not have
the same effect as “Tragedy, which is the highest form of literary art,
began in Greece” or “Tragedy, which began in Greece, is the highest
form of literary art.” What has occurred is the critical process of
subordination. The two ideas have been transferred from a conglomerate to
an articulated unity, and the very fact of subordination makes inevitable
the emergence of a focus of interest. Is our passage about the highest
form of literary art or about the cultural history of Greece? The form of
the complex sentence makes it unnecessary to waste any words in explicit
assertion of that. Here it is plain that grammatical form is capital upon
which we can draw, provided that other necessities have been taken care
of.
To see how a writer of consummate sensibility toward expression-forms
proceeded, let us take a fairly typical sentence from Henry James:
Merton Densher, who passed the best hours of each night at the
office of his newspaper, had at times, during the day, a sense,
or at least an appearance, of leisure, in accordance with
which he was not infrequently to be met, in different parts of
the town, at moments when men of business were hidden from the
public eye.[118]
Leaving aside the phrases, which are employed by James in extension and
refinement of the same effect, we see here three dependent clauses used
to explain the contingencies of “Merton Densher had an appearance of
leisure.” These clauses have the function of surrounding the central
statement in such a fashion that we have an intricate design of thought
characterized by involution, or the emergence of one detail out of
another. James’ famous practice of using the dependent clause not only
for qualification, but for the qualification of qualification, and in
some cases for the qualification of qualification of qualification,
indicates a persistent sorting out of experience expressive of the
highly civilized mind. Perhaps the leading quality of the civilized
mind is that it is sophisticated as to causes and effects (also as to
other contiguities); and the complex sentence, required to give these a
scrupulous ordering, is its natural vehicle.
At the same time the spatial form of ordering to which the complex
sentence lends itself makes it a useful tool in scientific analysis, and
one can find brilliant examples of it in the work of scientists who have
been skillful in communication. When T. H. Huxley, for instance, explains
a piece of anatomy, the complex sentence is the frame of explanation. In
almost every sentence it will be observed that he is focussing interest
upon one part while keeping its relationship—spatial or causal—clear with
reference to surrounding parts. In Huxley’s expository prose, therefore,
one finds the dominant sentence type to consist of a main clause at the
beginning followed by a series of dependent clauses which fill in these
facts of relationship. We may follow the pattern of the sentences in his
account of the protoplasm of the common nettle:
Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender
summit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such
microscopic fineness that it readily penetrates, and breaks off
in, the skin. The whole hair consists of a very delicate outer
case of wood, closely applied to the inner surface of which
is a layer of semi-fluid matter full of innumerable granules
of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm,
which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of limpid liquid,
and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the hair
which it fills.[119]
This is, of course, the “loose” sentence of traditional rhetorical
analysis, and it has no dramatic force; yet it is for this very reason
adapted to the scientist’s purpose.[120] The rhetorical adaptation shows
in the accommodation of a little hierarchy of details.
This appears to be the sentence of a developed mentality also, because it
is created through a patient, disciplined observation, and not through
impression, as the simple sentence can be. To the infant’s mind, as
William James observed in a now famous passage, the world is a “buzzing,
blooming confusion,” and to the immature mind much older it often appears
something done in broad, uniform strokes. But to the mind of a trained
scientist it has to appear a cosmos—else, no science. So in Huxley the
objective world is presented as a series of details, each of which has
its own cluster of satellites in the form of minor clauses. This is the
way the world has to be reported when our objective is maximum perception
and minimum desire to obtrude or influence.
Henry James was explaining with a somewhat comparable interest a
different kind of world, in which all sorts of human and non-material
forces are at work, and he tried with extreme conscientiousness to
measure them. In that process of quantification and qualification the
complex sentence was often brought by him to an extraordinary height of
ramification.
In summation, then, the complex sentence is the branching sentence, or
the sentence with parts growing off other parts. Those who have used
it most properly have performed a second act of analysis, in which the
objects of perception, after being seen discretely, are put into a ranked
structure. This type of sentence imposes the greatest demand upon the
reader because it carries him farthest into the reality existing outside
self. This point will take on importance as we turn to the compound
sentence.
The structure of the compound sentence often reflects a simple
artlessness—the uncritical pouring together of simple sentences, as in
the speech of Huckleberry Finn. The child who is relating an adventure
is likely to make it a flat recital of conjoined simple predications,
because to him the important fact is that the things were, not that
they can be read to signify this or that. His even juxtapositions
are therefore sometimes amusing, for now and then he will produce a
coordination that unintentionally illuminates. This would, of course, be
a result of lack of control over the rhetoric of grammar.
On the other hand, the compound sentence can be a very “mature” sentence
when its structure conforms with a settled view of the world. The latter
possibility will be seen as we think of the balance it presents. When
a sentence consists of two main clauses we have two predications of
similar structure bidding for our attention. Our first supposal is that
this produces a sentence of unusual tension, with two equal parts (and
of course sometimes more than two equal parts) in a sort of competition.
Yet it appears on fuller acquaintance that this tension is a tension of
stasis, and that the compound sentence has, in practice, been markedly
favored by periods of repose like that of the Eighteenth century. There
is congeniality between its internal balance and a concept of the
world as an equilibrium of forces. As a general rule, it appears that
whereas the complex sentence favors the presentation of the world as
a system of facts or as a dynamism, the compound sentence favors the
presentation of it in a more or less philosophical picture. This world as
a philosophical cosmos will have to be a sort of compensatory system. We
know from other evidences that the Eighteenth century loved to see things
in balance; in fact, it required the idea of balance as a foundation
for its institutions. Quite naturally then, since motives of this kind
reach into expression-forms, this was the age of masters of the balanced
sentence—Dryden, Johnson, Gibbon, and others, the _genre_ of whose style
derives largely from this practice of compounding. Often the balance
which they achieved was more intricate than simple conjunction of main
clauses because they balanced lesser elements too, but the informing
impulse was the same. That impulse was the desire for counterpoise, which
was one of the powerful motives of their culture.
In this pattern of balance, various elements are used in the offsettings.
Thus when one attends closely to the meanings of the balanced parts,
one finds these compounds recurring: an abstract statement is balanced
(in a second independent clause) by a more concrete expression of the
same thing; a fact is balanced by its causal explanation; a statement of
positive mode is balanced by one of negative mode; a clause of praise
is balanced by a clause of qualified censure; a description of one part
is balanced by a description of a contrasting part, and so on through
a good many conventional pairings. Now in these collocations cause and
effect and other relationships are presented, yet the attempt seems not
so much to explore reality as to clothe it in decent form. Culture is a
delicate reconciliation of opposites, and consequently a man who sees
the world through the eyes of a culture makes effort in this direction.
We know that the world of Eighteenth century culture was a rationalist
world, and in a rationalist world everything must be “accounted for.”
The virtue of the compound sentence is that its second part gives “the
other half,” so to speak. As the pattern works out, every fact has its
cause; every virtue is compensated for by a vice; every excursion into
generality must be made up for by attention to concrete circumstances
and vice versa. The perfection of this art form is found in Johnson and
Gibbon, where such pairings occur with a frequency which has given rise
to the phrase “the balanced style.” When Gibbon, for example, writes of
religion in the Age of the Antonines: “The superstition of the people was
not embittered by any mixture of theological rancour; nor was it confined
by the chains of any speculative system,”[121] we have almost the feeling
that the case of religion has been settled by this neat artifice of
expression. This is a “just” view of affairs, which sees both sides and
leaves a kind of balanced account. It looks somewhat subjective, or
at least humanized; it gives us the gross world a little tidied up by
thought. Often, moreover, this balance of structure together with the
act of saying a thing equivocally—in the narrower etymological sense of
that word—suggests the finality of art. This will be found true of many
of the poetical passages of the King James Bible, although these come
from an earlier date. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the
firmament sheweth his handiwork”; “Man cometh forth as a flower and is
cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not.” By thus stating
the matter in two ways, through balanced clauses, the sentence achieves a
degree of formal completeness missing in sentences where the interest is
in mere assertion. Generally speaking the balanced compound sentence, by
the very contrivedness of its structure, suggests something formed above
the welter of experience, and this form, as we have by now substantially
said, transfers something of itself to the meaning. In declaring that
the compound sentence may seem subjective, we are not saying that it is
arbitrary, its correspondence being with the philosophical interpretation
rather than with the factual reality. Thus if the complex sentence is
about the world, the compound sentence is about our idea about the world,
into which some notion of compensation forces itself. One notices that
even Huxley, when he draws away from his simple expositions of fact and
seeks play for his great powers of persuasion, begins to compound his
sentences. On the whole, the compound sentence conveys that completeness
and symmetry which the world _ought_ to have, and which we manage to
get, in some measure, into our most satisfactory explanations of it.
It is most agreeable to those ages and those individuals who feel that
they have come to terms with the world, and are masters in a domain. But
understandably enough, in a world which has come to be centrifugal and
infinite, as ours has become since the great revolutions, it tends to
seem artificial and mechanical in its containment.
Since the difference between sentence and clause is negligible as far as
the issues of this subject are concerned, we shall next look at the word,
and conclude with a few remarks on some lesser combinations. This brings
up at once the convention of parts of speech. Here again I shall follow
the traditional classification, on the supposition that categories to
which usage is referred for correction have accumulated some rhetorical
force, whatever may be said for the merits of some other and more
scientific classification.
_The Noun_
It is difficult not to feel that both usage and speculation agree on the
rhetorical quality of nouns. The noun derives its special dignity from
being a _name_ word, and names persist, in spite of all the cautions of
modern semanticists, in being thought of as words for substances. We
apprehend the significance of that when we realize that in the ancient
philosophical regimen to which the West is heir, and which influences
our thought far more than we are aware at any one moment, substances
are assigned a higher degree of being than actions or qualities.
Substance is that which primordially _is_, and one may doubt whether
recent attempts to revolutionize both ontology and grammar have made any
impression at all against this feeling. For that reason a substantive
comes to us as something that is peculiarly fulfilled;[122] or it is like
a piece in a game which has superior powers of movement and capture. The
fact that a substantive is the word in a sentence which the other words
are “about” in various relationships gives it a superior status.[123]
Nouns then express things whose being is completed, not whose being
is in process, or whose being depends upon some other being. And that
no doubt accounts for the feeling that when one is using nouns, one
is manipulating the symbols of a self-subsistent reality.[124] There
seems little doubt that an ancient metaphysical system, grown to be an
_habitus_ of the mind through long acceptance, gives the substantive word
a prime status, and this fact has importance when we come to compare the
noun with the adjective in power to convince by making real. Suffice it
to say here that the noun, whether it be a pointer to things that one
can touch and see, as _apple_, _bird_, _sky_, or to the more or less
hypothetical substances such as _fairness_, _spook_, _nothingness_, by
rule stands at the head of things and is ministered to by the other parts
of speech and by combinations.
_The Adjective_
The adjective is, by the principle of determination just reviewed, a word
of secondary status and force. Its burden is an attribute, or something
added. In the order of being to which reference has been made, the noun
can exist without the adjective, but not the adjective without the noun.
Thus we can have “men” without having “excellent men”; but we cannot have
“excellent” without having something (if only something understood) to
receive the attribution. There are very practical rhetorical lessons to
be drawn from this truth. Since adjectives express attributes which are
conceptually dispensable to the substances wherein they are present, the
adjective tends to be a supernumerary. Long before we are aware of this
fact through analysis, we sense it through our resentment of any attempt
to gain maximum effect through the adjective. Our intuition of speech
seems to tell us that the adjective is question-begging; that is to
say, if the thing to be expressed is real, it will be expressed through
a substantive; if it is expressed mainly through adjectives, there is
something defective in its reality, since it has gone for secondary
support.[125] If someone should say to us, “Have some white milk,” we
must suppose either that the situation is curious, other kinds of milk
being available, or that the speaker is trying to impose upon us by a
piece of persiflage. Again, a mountain is a mountain without being called
“huge”; if we have to call it huge, there is some defect in the original
image which is being made up. Of course there are speech situations in
which such modifiers do make a useful contribution, but as a general
rule, to be applied with discretion, a style is stronger when it depends
mainly upon substantives sharp enough to convey their own attributes.
Furthermore, because the class of the adjective contains so many
terms of dialectical import, such as _good_, _evil_, _noble_, _base_,
_useful_, _useless_, there is bound to exist an initial suspicion of
all adjectives. (Even when they are the positive kind, as is true with
most limiting adjectives, there lurk the questions “Who made up the
statistics?” and “How were they gathered?”) The dialectical adjective
is too often a “fighting word” to be used casually. Because in its very
origin it is the product of disputation, one is far from being certain in
advance of assent to it. How would you wish to characterize the world?
If you wish to characterize it as “round,” you will win a very general
assent, although not a universal one. But if you wish, with the poet, to
characterize it as “sorry,” you take a position in respect to which there
are all sorts of contrary positions. In strictest thought one might say
that every noun contains its own analysis, but an adjective applied to
a noun is apparatus brought in from the outside; and the result is the
object slightly “fictionized.” Since adjectives thus initiate changes in
the more widely received substantive words, one has to have permission
of his audience to talk in adjectives. Karl Shapiro seems to have had
something like this in mind in the following passage from his _Essay on
Rime_:
for the tyrannical epithet
Relies upon the adjective to produce
The image; and no serious construction
In rime can build upon the modifier.[126]
One of the common mistakes of the inexperienced writer, in prose as
well as poetry, is to suppose that the adjective can set the key of a
discourse. Later he learns what Shapiro indicates, that nearly always
the adjective has to have the way prepared for it. Otherwise, the
adjective introduced before its noun collapses for want of support.
There is a perceptible difference between “the irresponsible conduct of
the opposition with regard to the Smith bill” and “the conduct of the
opposition with regard to the Smith bill has been irresponsible,” which
is accounted for in part by the fact that the adjective comes after the
substantive has made its firm impression. In like manner we are prepared
to receive Henley’s
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
because “night” has preceded “black.” I submit that if the poem had begun
“Black as ...” it would have lost a great deal of its rhetorical force
because of the inherent character of the opening word. The adjective
would have been felt presumptuous, as it were, and probably no amount of
supplementation could have overcome this unfortunate effect.
I shall offer one more example to show that costly mistakes in emphasis
may result from supposing that the adjective can compete with the
noun. This one came under my observation, and has remained with me as
a classical instance of rhetorical ineptitude. On a certain university
campus “Peace Week” was being observed, and a prominent part of the
program was a series of talks. The object of these talks was to draw
attention to those forces which seemed to be leading mankind toward a
third world war. One of the speakers undertook to point out the extent
to which the Western nations, and especially the United States, were
at fault. He declared that a chief source of the bellicose tendency of
the United States was its “proud rectitude,” and it is this expression
which I wish to examine critically. The fault of the phrase is that it
makes “rectitude” the villain of the piece, whereas sense calls for
making “pride.” If we are correct in assigning the substantive a greater
intrinsic weight, then it follows that “rectitude” exerts the greater
force here. But rectitude is not an inciter of wars; it is rather that
rectitude which is made rigid or unreasonable by pride which may be a
factor in the starting of wars, and pride is really the provoking agent.
For the most fortunate effect, then, the grammatical relationship should
be reversed, and we should have “rectitude” modifying “pride.” But since
the accident of linguistic development has not provided it with an
adjective form of equivalent meaning, let us try “pride of rectitude.”
This is not the best expression imaginable, but it is somewhat better
since it turns “proud” into a substantive and demotes “rectitude” to
a place in a prepositional phrase. The weightings are now more in
accordance with meaning: what grammar had anomalously made the chief word
is now properly tributary, and we have a closer delineation of reality.
As it was, the audience went away confused and uninspired, and I have
thought of this ever since as a situation in which a little awareness
of the rhetoric of grammar—there were other instances of imperceptive
usage—could have turned a merely well-intentioned speech into an
effective one.
Having laid down this relationship between adjective and substantive
as a principle, we must not ignore the real or seeming exceptions. For
the alert reader will likely ask, what about such combinations as “new
potatoes,” “drunk men,” “a warlike nation”? Are we prepared to say that
in each of these the substantive gets the major attention, that we are
more interested in “potatoes” than in their being “new,” in “men” than
their being “drunk,” and so forth? Is that not too complacent a rule
about the priority of the substantive over the adjective?
We have to admit that there are certain examples in which the adjective
may eclipse the substantive. This may occur (1) when one’s intonation (or
italics) directs attention to the modifier: “_white_ horses”; “_five_
dollars, not four.” (2) when there is a striking clash of meaning between
the adjective and the substantive, such that one gives a second thought
to the modifier: “a murderous smile”; “a gentleman gambler.” (3) when the
adjective is naturally of such exciting associations that it has become a
sort of traditional introduction to matter of moment: “a warlike nation”;
“a desperate deed”; etc. Having admitted these possibilities of departure
from the rule, we still feel right in saying that the rule has some
force. It will be found useful in cases which are doubtful, which are the
cases where no strong semantic or phonetic considerations override the
grammatical pattern. In brief, when the immediate act of our mind does
not tell us whether an expression should be in this form or the other,
the principle of the relationship of adjective and substantive may settle
the matter with an insight which the particular instance has not called
forth.
_The Adverb_
The adverb is distinguished from the other parts of speech by its
superior mobility; roughly speaking, it can locate itself anywhere in
the sentence, and this affords a clue to its character. “Certainly the
day is warm”; “The day certainly is warm”; “The day is certainly warm”;
“The day is warm certainly” are all “normal” utterances. This superior
mobility, amounting to a kind of detachment, makes the adverb peculiarly
a word of judgment. Here the distinction between the adverb and the
adjective seems to be that the latter depends more upon public agreement
and less upon private intention in its applications. It is a matter of
common observation that the adverb is used frequently to express an
attitude which is the speaker’s projection of himself. “Surely the war
will end soon” is not, for example, a piece of objective reporting but
an expression of subjective feeling. We of course recognize degrees of
difference in the personal or subjective element. Thomas Carlyle is
much given to the use of the adverb, and when we study his adverbs in
context, we discover that they are often little more than explosions of
feeling. They are employed to make more positive, abrupt, sensational,
or intense whatever his sentence is otherwise saying. Indeed, take from
Carlyle his adverbs and one robs him of that great hortatory sweep which
makes him one of the great preachers in English literature. On the other
hand Henry James, although given to this use to comparable extent, gets
a different effect from his adverbs. With him they are the exponents
of scrupulous or meticulous feeling; they are often in fact words of
definite measure. When James says “fully” or “quickly” or “bravely” he
is usually expressing a definite perception, and sometimes the adverb
will have its own phrasal modifier to give it the proper direction or
limitation of sense. Therefore James’ adverbs, instead of having a merely
expletive force, as do many of Carlyle’s, tend to integrate themselves
with his more objective description. All this amounts to saying that
adverbial “judgments” can be differently based; and the use of the adverb
will affect a style accordingly.
The caution against presumptuous use of the adjective can be repeated
with somewhat greater force for the adverb. It is the most tempting
of all the parts of speech to question-beg with. It costs little, for
instance, to say “certainly,” “surely,” or even “terribly,” “awfully,”
“undoubtedly”; but it often costs a great deal to create the picture
upon which these words are a justifiable verdict. Asking the reader
to accept them upon the strength of simple assertion is obviously a
form of taking without earning. We realize that a significant part of
every speech situation is the character of the speaker; and there are
characters who can risk an unproved “certainly” or “undoubtedly.” They
bring to the speech situation a kind of ethical proof which accentuates
their language. Carlyle’s reflective life was so intense, as we know from
_Sartor Resartus_ and other sources, that it wins for him a certain right
to this asseverative style. As a general rule, though, it will be found
that those who are most entitled to this credit use it least, which is to
say, they prefer to make their demonstrations. We point out in summary
that the adverb is frequently dependent upon the character of its user,
and that, since it is often the qualifier of a qualifier, it may stand
at one more remove from what we have defined as the primary symbol. This
is why beginners should use it least—should use it only after they have
demonstrated that they can get their results by other means.
_The Verb_
The verb is regularly ranked with the noun in force, and it seems
that these two parts of speech express the two aspects under which we
habitually see phenomena, that of determinate things and that of actions
or states of being. Between them the two divide up the world at a pretty
fundamental depth; and it is a commonplace of rhetorical instruction
that a style made up predominantly of nouns and verbs will be a vigorous
style. These are the symbols of the prime entities, words of stasis and
words of movement (even when the verb is said to express a “state of
being,” we accept that as a kind of modal action, a process of going on,
or having existential quality), which set forth the broad circumstances
of any subject of discussion. This truth is supported by the facts that
the substantive is the heart of a grammatical subject and the verb of a
grammatical predicate.
When we pass beyond the matter of broad categorization to look at the
verb’s possibilities, we find the greatest need of instruction to lie
in the verb epithet. It may be needless to impress any literate person
with the verb’s relative importance, but it is necessary to point out,
even to some practiced writers, that the verb itself can modify the
action it asserts, or, so to put it, can carry its own epithet. Looking
at the copious supply of verbs in English, we often find it possible to
choose one so selective in meaning that no adverb is needed to accompany
it. If we wish to assert that “the man moves _quickly_,” we can say,
depending on the tone of our passage and the general signification,
that he hastens, _rushes_, _flies_, _scrambles_, _speeds_, _tears_,
_races_, _bolts_, to name only a few. If we wish to assert that a man
is not telling the truth, we have the choice of _lies_, _prevaricates_,
_falsifies_, _distorts_, _exaggerates_, and some others. As this may seem
to treat the matter at too didactic a level, let us generalize by saying
that there is such a thing as the characterizing verb, and that there is
no telling how many words could have been saved, how many passages could
have dispensed with a lumbering and perhaps inaccurate adverb, if this
simple truth about the verb were better appreciated. The best writers
of description and narration know it. Mark Twain’s most vivid passages
are created largely through a frequent and perceptive use of the verb
epithet. Turn to almost any page of _Life on the Mississippi_:
Ship channels are buoyed and lighted, and therefore it is
a comparatively easy undertaking to learn to run them;
clear-water rivers, with gravel bottoms, change their channels
very gradually, and therefore one needs to learn them but once;
but piloting becomes another matter when you apply it to vast
streams like the Mississippi and the Missouri, whose alluvial
banks cave and change constantly, whose snags are always
hunting up new quarters, whose sand-bars are never at rest,
whose channels are forever dodging and shirking, and whose
obstructions must be confronted in all nights and all weathers
without the aid of a single lighthouse or a single buoy, for
there is neither light nor buoy to be found anywhere in all
this three or four thousand miles of villainous river.[127]
Here there occurs not just action, but expressive action, to which
something is contributed by Twain’s subtle appreciation of modal
variations in the verb.
There is a rough parallelism between the use of the complex sentence,
with its detail put away in subordinate constructions, and the use of
the verb epithet. In both instances the user has learned to dispense
with a second member of equal or nearly equal weight in order to get an
effect. As the adverbial qualification is fused with the verb, so in
lesser degree, of course, is the detail of the complex sentence fused
with its principal assertion. These devices of economy and compression,
although they may be carried to a point at which the style seems forced
and unnatural, are among the most important means of rhetoric.
_The Conjunction_
The conjunction, in its simple role as joiner, seems not to have much
character, yet its use expresses of relatedness of things, which is bound
to have signification. As either coordinator or subordinator of entities,
it puts the world into a condition of mutual relationship through which
a large variety of ideas may be suggested. From the different ways in
which this relationship is expressed, the reader will consciously and
even unconsciously infer different things. Sometimes the simple “and
... and” coordination is the expression of childlike mentality, as we
saw in our discussion of the compound sentence. On the other hand, in
a different speech situation it can produce a quite different effect:
readers of the King James version of the Bible are aware of how the “and”
which joins long sequences of verses sets up a kind of expectancy which
is peculiarly in keeping with sacred text. One gets the feeling from the
reiteration of “and” that the story is confirmed and inevitable; there
are no contingencies, and everything happens with the double assurance of
something foretold. When this pattern is dropped, as it is in a recent
“American” version of the Bible, the text collapses into a kind of news
story.
The frequent use of “but” to join the parts of a compound sentence seems
to indicate a habit of mind. It is found congenial by those who take a
“balanced view,” or who are uneasy over an assertion until it has been
qualified or until some recognition has been made of its negative. Its
influence is in the direction of the cautious or pedantic style because
it makes this sort of disjunction, whereas “and” generously joins
everything up.
Since conjunctions are usually interpreted as giving the plot of one’s
thought, it is essential to realize that they have implicit meanings.
They usually come at points where a pause is natural, and there is a
temptation, if one may judge by indulgence in the habit, to lean upon
the first one that comes to mind without reflecting critically upon its
significance, so that although the conjunction may formally connect at
this point, its semantic meaning does not aid in making the connection
precise. A common instance of this fault is the casual interchange of
“therefore” and “thus.” “Therefore” means “in consequence of,” but “thus”
means “in this manner” and so indicates that some manner has already
been described. “Hence” may take the place of “therefore” but “thus” may
not. “Also” is a connective used with unimaginative regularity by poor
speakers and writers, for whom it seems to signalize the next thought
coming. Yet in precise meaning “also” signifies only a mechanical sort of
addition such as we have in listing one item after another. To signalize
the extension of an idea, “moreover” is usually more appropriate than
“also.” Although “while” is often used in place of “whereas” to mean “on
the other hand,” it has its other duty of signifying “at the same time.”
“Whereas,” despite its pedantic or legalistic overtone, will be preferred
in passages where precise relationship is the governing consideration.
On the whole it would seem that the average writer suffers, in the
department, from nothing more than poverty of vocabulary. What he does
(what every writer does to some extent) is to keep on hand a small set
of conjunctions and to use them in a sort of rotation without giving
attention to how their distinctive meanings could further his purpose.
_The Preposition_
The preposition too is a word expressing relationships, but this
definition gives only a faint idea of its great resources. When the false
rules about the preposition have been set aside, it is seen that this
is a tremendously inventive word. Like the adverb, it is a free rover,
standing almost anywhere; it is constantly entering into combinations
with verbs and nouns, in which it may direct, qualify, intensify, or even
add something quite new to the meaning; at other times it combines with
some other preposition to produce an indispensable idiom. It has given us
“get out,” “put over,” “come across,” “eat up,” “butt in,” “off of,” “in
between,” and many other expressions without which English, especially
on the vital colloquial level, would be poorer indeed. Thornton Wilder
maintains that it is in this extremely free use of the preposition that
modern American English shows its superiority over British English.
Such bold use of prepositional combinations gives to American English
a certain flavor of the grand style, which British English has not had
since the seventeenth century. Melville, an author working peculiarly
on his own, is characterized in style by this imaginative use of the
preposition.
Considered with reference to principle, the preposition seems to do
what the adverb does, but to do it with a kind of substantive force.
“Groundward,” for example, seems weak beside “toward the ground,”
“lengthwise” beside “along the length of,” or “centrally” beside “in
the center of.” The explanation may well lie in the preposition’s
characteristic position; as a regular orderer of nouns and of verbs, it
takes upon itself something of their solidity of meaning. “What is that
for?” and “Where did you send it to?” lose none of their force through
being terminated by these brief words of relationship.
_The Phrase_
It will not be necessary to say much about the phrase because its
possibilities have been fairly well covered by our discussion of the noun
and adjective. One qualifying remark about the force of the prepositional
phrase, however, deserves making. The strength normally found in the
preposition can be greatly diminished by connection with an abstract
noun. That is to say, when the terminus of the preposition is lacking in
vigor or concreteness, the whole expression may succumb to vagueness,
in which cases the single adjective or adverb will be stronger by
comparison. Thus the idea conveyed by “lazy” is largely frustrated by “of
a lazy disposition”; that of “mercenary” by “of a mercenary character”;
that of “deep” by “of depth,” and so on.
After the prepositional phrase, the most important phrasal combination
to examine, from the standpoint of rhetorical usages, is the participial
phrase. We could infer this truth from the fact alone that the Greeks
made a very extensive use of the participle, as every student of that
marvellous language knows. Greek will frequently use a participle where
English employs a dependent clause or even a full sentence, so that the
English expression “the man who is carrying a spear” would be in Greek
“the spear carrying man”; “the one who spoke” would be “the one having
spoken” and further accordingly, with even more economy of language
than these examples indicate. I am disposed to think that the Greeks
developed this habit because they were very quick to see opportunities of
subordination. The clarity and subtlety of the Greek language derives in
no small part from this highly “organized” character, in which auxiliary
thoughts are compactly placed in auxiliary structures, where they permit
the central thought to emerge more readily. In English the auxiliary
status of the participle (recognized formally through its classification
as an adjective) is not always used to like advantage.
One consequence of this is that although English intonation and normal
word order tend to make the last part of a sentence the most emphatic,
unskillful writers sometimes lose this emphasis by concluding a sentence
with a participial phrase. We may take as examples “He returned home
in September, having been gone for a year”; and “Having been gone for
a year, he returned home in September.” The second of these puts the
weightier construction in the emphatic position. Of course the matter
of their relative merit cannot be separated from their purpose; there
are sentences whose total meanings are best served by a _retardo_ or
_diminuendo_ effect at the end, and for such closes the participial
phrase is well suited for reasons already given. But in the majority of
utterances it contributes best by modifying at some internal position,
or by expressing some detail or some condition at the beginning of the
sentence. The latter use may be quite effective in climactic orderings,
and it will be found that journalists have virtually stereotyped this
opening for their “lead” sentences: “Threatened with an exhausted food
supply by the strike, hospitals today made special arrangements for the
delivery of essentials”; “Reaching a new high for seven weeks, the stock
market yesterday pushed into new territory.” This form is a successful if
often crude result of effort toward compact and dramatic presentation.
But to summarize our observations on the participial phrase in English:
It is formally a weak member of the grammatical family; but it is useful
for economy, for shaded effects, and sometimes the phrase will contain
words whose semantic force makes us forget that they are in a secondary
construction. Perhaps it is enough to say that the mature writer has
learned more things that can be done with the participle, but has also
learned to respect its limitations.
_In Conclusion_
I can imagine being told that this chapter is nothing more than an
exposition of prejudices, and that every principle discussed here can
be defied. I would not be surprised if that were proved through single
examples, or small sets of examples. But I would still hazard that if
these show certain tendencies, my examples show stronger ones, and
we have to remember that there is such a thing as a vector of forces
in language too. Even though an effect may sometimes be obtained by
crowding or even breaking a rule, the lines of force are still there,
to be used by the skillful writer scientifically, and grammar is a kind
of scientific nomenclature. Beyond this, of course, he will use them
according to art, where he will be guided by his artistic intuition, and
by the residual cautions of his experience.
In the long view a due respect for the canons of grammar seems a part
of one’s citizenship? One does not remain uncritical; but one does “go
along.” It has proved impossible to show that grammar is determined
by the “best people,” or by the pedants, or by any other presumptive
authority, and this is more reason for saying that it incorporates the
people as a whole. Therefore the attitude of unthinking adoption and
the attitude of personal defiance are both dubious, because they look
away from the point where issues, whenever they appear, will be decided.
That point seems to be some communal sense about the fitness of a word
or a construction for what has communal importance, and this indicates
at least some suprapersonal basis. Much evidence could be offered to
show that language is something which is born psychological but is ever
striving to become logical. At this task of making it more logical
everybody works more or less. Like the political citizenship defined by
Aristotle, language citizenship makes one a potential magistrate, or one
empowered to decide. The work is best carried on, however, by those who
are aware that language must have some connection with the intelligential
world, and that is why one must think about the rhetorical nature even of
grammatical categories.