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

[knowknot at mindspring.com]

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)?

----------------------------
  * 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. **********
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