[lbo-talk] Prose Style -- A Sample for Discussion

knowknot at mindspring.com knowknot at mindspring.com
Mon Jan 1 15:40:04 PST 2007


On 1/1/07, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> said:

> Prose Sample. I would like to know from some

> of the adherents of "clear prose" how clear or

> unclear the following sample is?

Shouldn't the question be more whether "logorrheic" in the "compulsively talkitive" and "wearisomely and trivaially voluble" rather than "incoherent" sense?

Obviously, all De Man is here saying is that context affects meaning and that part of context is supplied by the reader (as he then ends with a not so funny nor even especially droll wisecrack about "Archie Bunker" who is a fictional character)?

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* quoted sample:

These remarks should indicate at least the existence and the difficulty of the question, a difficulty which puts its concise theoretical exposition beyond my powers. I must retreat therefore into a pragmatic discourse and try to illustrate the tension between grammar and rhetoric in a few specific textual examples. Let me begin by considering what is perhaps the most commonly known instance of an apparent symbiosis between a grammatical and a rhetorical structure, the so-called rhetorical question, in which the figure is conveyed directly by means of a syntactical device. I take the first example from the sub-literature of the mass media: asked by his wife whether he wants to have his bowling shoes laced over or laced under, Archie Bunker answers with a question: "What's the difference?" Being a reader of sublime simplicity, his wife replies by patiently explaining the difference between lacing over and lacing under, whatever this may be, but provokes only ire. "What's the difference" did not ask for difference but means instead "I don't give a damn what the difference is." The same grammatical pattern engenders two meanings that are mutually exclusive: the literal meaning asks for the concept (difference) whose existence is denied by the figurative meaning. As long as we are talking about bowling shoes, the consequences are relatively trivial; Archie Bunker, who is a great believer in the authority of origins (as long, of course, as they are the right origins) muddles along in a world where literal and figurative meanings get in each other's way, though not without discomforts. ********** ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



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