tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46379779233754418392024-03-14T02:44:21.706-07:00Disputed IssuesControversies in legal writingStephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.comBlogger134125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-54615308992818895672017-06-28T21:11:00.000-07:002017-06-29T10:28:10.722-07:00A Model of Persuasion<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Despite our casual compartmentalization of many
diametrically opposed beliefs, humans are also sensitive to cognitive
dissonance that is merely mild. The theoretical resolution of this perplexity
is that abstract beliefs conflict only insofar as they <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2017/02/270-cognitive-dissonance-glue-of-mind.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">support</i> opposed concrete opinions</a>. This opens the question of the
psychological nature of this support. We can simplify explanation of persuasion
if we conceive of the influence of the abstracting mindset on the concretizing
mindset within an individual as being the same type of influence as that of an
outside persuader on another</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’s
(abstract) beliefs. All direct influence of belief (whether the belief belongs
to oneself or another) is suggestion, which in its purest form is hypnosis. The
mechanism by which belief influences opinion (primarily as it relates to
volition) is autosuggestion. The process by which concrete opinion directly
influences other concrete opinions is the ordinary sphere of learning from
experience. All this is shown in the <b>diagram below:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Notice that the diagram shows two routes to belief change: blue, from opinion to belief and using dissonance modulation (as well as
ordinary learning); and green, from belief to opinion and using suggestion. Only
the green route affords the possibility of rational belief change, and that is
only a possibility. This is because logic is approximated only in the
concretizing mindset.</span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The nature of ordinary learning isn</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’t itself my concern here, just the peculiar relationship
between the concretizing and abstracting mindsets. Governing this relationship
are two basic processes: suggestion and dissonance modulation. The main practical
relevance for writers is that what works for changing belief through suggestion
fails for change by dissonance modulation. For example, suggestion demands the
greatest simplicity because suggestion involves bypassing the critical faculty
(that is, the brain’s cingulate), and the easier a proposition is to
understand, the more it is accepted automatically, since acquiring disbelief necessitates
express rejection. On the other hand, effective dissonance modulation requires
univocality, since without it the recipient of the influence is likely to
achieve consonance through a different route than the persuader intends. The
difference is that the subject of suggestion submits to influence, whereas the
recipient of a communication using dissonance modulation will only accept the
writer’s ideas if they are actually dissonance reducing. Imprecision arouses
rather than resolves dissonance. As for suggestion, in hypnosis vague
suggestions work better than precise ones. (Thus, telling subjects that that
they are “going to sleep” can induce hypnosis even though hypnosis isn’t
actually much like sleep.)</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Conflation of suggestion and dissonance modulation runs
deep. It isn</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’t just a matter of a superficial
trend in writing pedagogy; it also afflicts those whose business it is to know
better, such as social psychologists and (remarkably) specialists in hypnosis.
The bias of social psychologists reflects the orientation to advertising.
Although the theories of cognitive dissonance and construal level come from
social psychology, the classic social psychological research on persuasion,
which provides the framework for general discussions of the persuasion process,
implicitly equates persuasion with suggestion. (An equation that is actually
worth retaining if its limits are understood, inasmuch as the act of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">persuading</i> others can be contrasted with
the act of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">convincing</i> them, the blue
route contrasting with the green.)</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The confusion is greatest within the dominant school of
professional hypnotists. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
font of clinical hypnosis (outside of hypnoanalysis), Eric Ericson, attributes
results he achieves through the artful modulation of cognitive dissonance to
some form of hypnotic suggestion.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Now, here</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’s
confusion enough to be funny. <i>Dilbert </i>cartoonist Scott Adams, who is a trained
hypnotist (apparently of the Ericsonian persuasion), concluded that Donald
J. Trump’s methods and results make him a “master persuader.” Perhaps
subliminally recognizing that cognitive dissonance is the key to deep rather
than superficial attitude change (which is to say, change of opinion rather
than belief), Adams took Trump’s ability to use suggestion on supporters, predisposed
to accept his influence, to prove Trump had mastered cognitive dissonance.
Adams predicted that Trump would win in a landslide because he could hypnotize
most anyone.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Lexicographers and usage experts expatiate on the
distinction between the verbs <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">persuade</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">convince</i>. The distinct meanings
may be on the verge of loss, but it marks an important psychological
difference. According to the lexicographers, persuasion is aimed at obtaining
action, as in persuading a judge to sustain a motion. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Persuasion</i> means change in belief, without any change in opinion
being necessary. But you will rarely change a judge</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’s belief without changing his opinion. (The effect of
suggestion is actually obtained primarily from respective law firms’ prestige.)
So, despite the aim being to persuade judges, advocates typically must convince
them—of something. For the same reason, when academics try to persuade editors
to publish a paper, in the usual they must convince them, at least in the best
journals. Even more than when a lawyer influences a judge, the academic must
use dissonance modulation, since the practice of blind review screens out many
indicia of status that are so influential in the use of suggestion.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">This is a general model of the persuasion process (more
precisely, of the processes of persuading and convincing) that highlights the
relationship between construal-level theory's abstracting and concretizing
mindsets. The two epistemic attitudes, belief and opinion, are subject to their
respective modes of influence, suggestion from belief to opinion and cognitive-dissonance
modulation, from opinion to belief. In the diagram the blue arrows represent
the path of cognitive dissonance modulation and the green arrows of suggestion.
Hypnosis is a short-cut to belief formation in that it bypasses opinion.
Post-hypnotic suggestions are incorporated into the subject</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’s belief system, whereas the justification is extemporized
when an explanation is requested.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> It may be easier to see the abstracting
character of hypnosis in terms of the corresponding time orientation. Although
hypnosis may be self-induced, the process for intentionally inducing hypnosis
is first learned in the process of being hypnotized by another person and being
given the post-hypnotic suggestion that the subject will be able to reproduce
the state. Thus the nature of the influence is interpersonally </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“far.” Dissonance modulation is near because it is perceived
as an internal process. It is concrete because it can be resolved into discrete
discrepancies. (Dissonance supplies a metric for overall coherence based on
discrete discrepancies, a topic to be visited in my <i>Juridical Coherence</i> blog.)</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-20468590455814783022017-04-30T22:46:00.000-07:002017-05-03T18:06:38.251-07:00The Role of Suggestion in Persuasive Writing: “What is Classic Prose?” Revisited<br />
<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-classic-prose-review-of-clear.html" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Thomas
and Turner (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clear and Simple as the
Truth: Writing Classic Prose</i>) describe classic prose as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nonargumentative</i></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, a characteristic
both paradoxical and central. Paradoxical because another characteristic of classic
prose is advocacy of a thesis, which is usually explicit. (Thomas and Turner conflate
introductory exercises involving presentation with full-blooded classic prose,
which is fundamentally a tool of argument.) Yet the “nonargumentative” quality
of classic prose, the absence of opinionation, pleading and pressure, is
unmistakeable. I contend most central in classic prose is its indifference to
suggestion: refusing either to wield it as a weapon or compulsively avoid it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Suggestion is
one of the two methods by which writers can influence readers’ far-mode beliefs, the other being <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2017/02/270-cognitive-dissonance-glue-of-mind.html">cognitive-dissonance</a> modulation.
Most of the popular advice about persuasion involves suggestion, my main
evidence concerning communication conducive to suggestion coming from the study
of hypnosis and of <a href="http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.com/2013/04/engines-of-sacrality-footnote-on.html">interaction
ritual chains</a>, both enhanced by authority, simplicity, brevity, ease,
repetition, and emotional involvement. The maxims of
plain-talk writing amount to a guide to the forms for persuading by suggestion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The mentioned
prototypes for suggestion also demonstrate the limitation of suggestion as a
tool for persuasion. Both hypnosis and interaction ritual chains require prior
commitment. Hypnosis doesn’t work against a subject’s will, and confidence in
the hypnotist is one of the most important determinants of trance induction. As
for interaction rituals, we see today how political rallies excite only the
party’s adherents.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The reason for
the limitations of communication based on suggestion is the phenomenon of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology)">reactance</a>.
Attempts at suggestion against a person’s will arouses an opposing resistance
often stronger than the suggestive effect, so that the target of the
communication moves, by “reverse psychology,” in the opposite direction. Today’s
political polarization is associated with reliance on suggestion in campaigns: how
many “We’re with her” buttons can nonsupporters see before they start hating
her?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Because of
reactance, writers attempting to persuade the unreceptive must forswear
suggestion. That includes not only avoiding the fallacies of suggestion, such
as appeals to authority, assurances of sincerity and credibility (“believe me!”),
and vagueness and ambiguity, but also the formal characteristics of suggestion
when embodied in prose, the plain-talk techniques developed by advertising specialists:
short sentences, common words, repetition (“tell them what you are going to
say, say it, and say what you’ve said”)—all of which characterize hypnotic
induction. By forswearing suggestion, classic prose attempts to be maximally
persuasive while avoiding reactance. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is another
stylistic approach to avoiding reactance actually more extreme than
forswearing intentional suggestion: striving to eliminate as much suggestion
as possible. The norms and practices of “academese” express this drive to avoid
suggestive content, being a systematic display of just those forms that would
be avoided in hypnotic induction: long sentences, obscure words, and passive
voice. (Contrast with classic prose, where sentence length varies to serve as a
tool for emphasis, words are chosen for precision, and active voice enjoys a
rebuttable presumption.) “Legalese” emerges as a conflicted style. The need to
prevent reactance by avoiding suggestion is expressed in the same way as in
academese. But the respectability of using suggestion is greater in law than in
science, with the consequence that hypnotic-like incantations obtrude, such as
doublets and triplets, and other routinized phrases.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To be sure, no
communication can banish all suggestion, but, unlike academese, classic prose
doesn’t actually try. In fact, a cynic might contend that classic prose makes
suggestion acceptable by hiding it under other stylistic effects. Classic prose
disdains emotional forcefulness, for example, but classic writing is in fact
forceful by virtue of its employment of emphasis through variation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If classic prose
is indifferent to suggestion, that doesn’t mean it is necessarily rational. <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2017/02/270-cognitive-dissonance-glue-of-mind.html">Cognitive-dissonance
modulation</a>, the other method for persuasion, is entirely compatible with
irrationality, but suggestion is incompatible with rationality. It is a form of
irrational influence, whereas dissonance modulation may be rational, depending
on the particularities of the <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2017/02/270-cognitive-dissonance-glue-of-mind.html">discrepancies</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Suggestion is irrational because its mechanism is the induced
refusal to make a critical evaluation of the communication. The uncriticized
belief is accepted as true because of the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/03/unity-of-comprehension-and-belief-and.html">unity
of comprehension and belief</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Applying the
maxim that to avoid reactance use dissonance modulation rather than suggestion
has an extra wrinkle for legal writing: attorneys are charged with presenting
their clients’ sides. Within these bounds, some tactics arousing excess
reactance are ill advised, such as obvious opinionation, exhortation, and
over-simplification. And while attorneys should say clearly what they want the
court to do, the phrasing “the court <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must</i>…”
should probably be avoided.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-3896860657671401592016-01-18T14:16:00.000-08:002016-01-27T19:31:13.281-08:00Breaking the knowledge barrier: Steven Pinker versus Albert Einstein on the “curse of knowledge”<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The “curse of knowledge”
concept and its limitations<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">When a professor, accomplished in his discipline, proves unable to explain it, someone is bound to
declare that the scholar has forgot what it’s like to be ignorant—that he
forgot <i>because</i> of his great learning.
But I doubt many who make this excuse are truly convinced that it’s true: who
regards mediocrity in their field, even at elementary levels of instruction, a <i>recommendation</i> for a teacher. Even introductory
students prefer the full professor to the graduate teaching assistant. Just
idolatry of status? Probably not, as we don’t seem to find even a minority
faction favoring the mediocre as their instructors. The canard’s initial
plausibility is due to the evidence, both scientific and casual, that known
information can be impossible to ignore. An example, familiar to lawyers, is
the futility of instructing jurors to ignore evidence. When we, like the
jurors, are called upon to imagine or recall its lack, the additional knowledge
can harm our performance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Steven Pinker
notices that writers face exactly this difficulty. (<i>The Sense of Style: the Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century</i> (2014)) This is the <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cause-of-bad-writing-1411660188">“curse
of knowledge,”</a> and writers with the greatest knowledge are especially
cursed. Pinker isn’t the first to decry failure to write from the readers’
point of view or even to conclude it’s the major impediment to good writing.
The “writing from the reader’s perspective” approach was pioneered by George D.
Gopen. Pinker’s “curse” takes the insight a half step too far by neglecting the
ways greater subject-matter knowledge is the <i>remedy</i> for the writer’s natural egocentrism. The remedial effect of
subject-matter knowledge explains why students prefer eminent professors and
why the greatest scientists are often the most effective expositors of basic
subject matter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Albert Einstein’s classic-prose
style<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">For insight into
the literary power bestowed by deep knowledge, consider Einstein’s writing
style, described by C. P. Snow:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">All of [the
three early papers] are written in a style unlike any other theoretical physicist’s.
They contain very little mathematics. There is a good deal of verbal
commentary. The conclusions, the bizarre conclusions, emerge as though with the
greatest of ease: the reasoning is unbreakable. It looks as though he had
reached the conclusions by pure thought unaided, without listening to the
opinions of others. To a surprisingly large extent, that is precisely what he
had done.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Einstein didn’t
betray the standard he expressed when he wrote that if you can’t explain something
simply, you don’t understand it. This is the precept Pinker fails to confront.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">A certain kind
of expert lends false credence to the curse-of-knowledge. Typically this sort
of expert has a prodigious memory without corresponding development of
reasoning powers. A prodigious memory is possibly an impediment to developing
reasoning powers (presidential candidate Ted Cruz provides an example); Einstein
complained of finding it <i>difficult</i> to
memorize facts and names.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Puzzle and resolution<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">We’re presented
a puzzle: how to reconcile superiority of experts as teachers of basic subject
matter with the demonstrated inferiority of the knowledgeable in predicting the
knowledge store of the unknowledgeable?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Favorably</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> countervailing effects must be stronger
than the detriment to explain why the professor is a better teacher than the
most talented graduate student – despite the graduate student’s better recollection
of his undergraduate struggles. Countervailing effects explain why Einstein and
Russell are better explainers of relativity theory than the college professors.
Expertise has two opposed effects. 1) Experts become less able to predict what
the novice will learn. 2) Experts, once informed of what the novice believes, are
better at identifying what the novice lacks. A simple example: a lesson taught
to a young child by an older child and by a grammarian in use of “I” rather
than “me” in a compound subject. An older student will be less surprised by the
error than will a grammarian, but the grammarian will understand what the
younger child lacks, which is an understanding that the compounding of the
subject doesn’t change case. Although the young child won’t understand the
reasoning, tacit help may be fashioned through examples. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The
knowledgeable teacher is bad at predicting what the student knows, but knows what’s
<i>lacking</i> in the student’s knowledge. The
understanding the knowledgeable teacher <i>leverages</i>,
the expert who writes in his field must <i>impart</i>.
The expert must compensate for weak concrete grasp of readers’ information by strong
abstract grasp of what is <i>absent</i> in
the readers’ understanding. <b><span style="color: red;">Formally,
this is expressed in subordination of near-mode to far-mode</span><span style="color: red;">,</span> </b><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-classic-prose-review-of-clear.html">the
distinctive feature of classic prose</a>. Pinker’s version of the “curse of
knowledge” deprioritizes further research and thought in writing a clearer
legal brief. More research and more thought is often the route to a clearer
legal brief. Deeper understanding is often the <i>only</i> remedy for unclarity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Pinker in tension with the
classic-prose style<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Contrast with the
solution Pinker favors based on the curse of knowledge: feedback from
representative readers. Feedback is valuable for testing the soundness of
argument, but for this, the writer requires other experts, not typical readers,
and in legal brief writing, the writer rarely has the opportunity for feedback
from the target audience—a judge.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The classic-prose
style truly isn’t congenial to fiddling based on stylistic feedback. This style
isn’t ideally directed to a particular audience. It contains its own devices to
achieve universality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-5775161463601695942015-07-25T11:50:00.000-07:002015-09-26T11:04:29.224-07:00Euphony and the problem of authenticity<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Of the </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/01/effective-writing-big-picture.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Writing
Virtues</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> (Clarity, Concision, and Euphony), Euphony is the odd-man out. You
might even wonder why it belongs in this august group: is it not just a means
rather than an end? At first, only a vague intuition tells us that Euphony is
worthy of independent note, as Euphony will be misconstrued and underrated if
its attribution is based on word sounds. The reality is very different. What
sounds good to us expresses our personal vision of stylistic excellence, which
is to say, we perceive the quality of style— including our own style—aurally.
This isn’t to say that writers should write strictly according to what sounds
good. This would be a mistake: it would even preclude applying the writing
principles advocated—indeed, applying the principle that sound serves as a
guide to style. The point is rather that writers inevitably use Euphony as a
guide to style, and understanding that phenomenon might help correct biases
which accord insufficient or excessive weight to it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Euphony’s use as a guide to style is subject to two important
limitations. First, there will be tension between considered judgment and
Euphony, since the Euphonic sense is educable—and is educated—by that tension.
Second, the writer must avoid the common confusions between Euphony and Fluency.
The first caveat should be plainly clear, as ignoring it would obviate any
purpose for, say, this blog. The second limitation is more interesting, since the
over-valuation of fluency also </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2014/11/univocality-highest-stage-of-clarity.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">distorts</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
the common understanding of Clarity. Each of these confusions exaggerate the
weight of fluency—at the expense of cohesion and omission, in the case of
Clarity, or in the case of Euphony, at the expense of what might be termed </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">apt novelty</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Two arguments confirm introspection for the commanding
importance of Euphony in stylistic discretion: the more effective style sounds
better, but only to a writer with a developed sense of Euphony. One argument is
that style requires balancing various Virtues and skills, yet we are able to
make these choices for the most part pre-attentively. This rapid comparison
would be facilitated by a common measure, and this corresponds to the
introspection that what sounds best usually is. The other argument is that the
central role of Euphony can help explain a mystery that previously vexed us: </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/ineffable-voice-immutability-of-writers.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">writer’s
voice</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. What style “sounds good" (paralleling which words sound good) will be
somewhat idiosyncratic. We might say that authenticity with regard to style is
writing that sounds good to the particular writer. This isn’t a preference for
sound as such but for the sound of a style. An example is <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">style's </span>most <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">conspicuous</span> <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">feature</span>, <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/07/you-too-have-optimal-sentence-length.html">sentence length</a>. To some of us, Hemingway </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sounds</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> choppy.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-15436003469622331202015-04-14T14:30:00.001-07:002015-04-25T13:02:03.790-07:00Word selection: A new principle of emphasis in near-mode<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">”Never use a
long word where a short one will do,” is often repeated and seemingly
unobjectionable advice, whose failures reveal additional principles of
emphasis. Previous entries have treated far-mode emphasis, but there is also a
near-mode form: emphasis by word length. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Near-mode and
far-mode is shorthand for concrete and abstract construal processes in Trope
and Liberman’s <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/construal">construal-level theory</a>. To extend construal-level theory to
phenomena beyond those studied in the laboratory, the following distinction is
particularly useful: whereas near-mode adds components, far-mode averages them.
(Weaver, K., Garcia, S. M., & Schwarz, N., <i>The Presenter’s Paradox</i> (2012). Far-mode’s proportionality seeking is
the foundation of the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/12/emphasis-by-brevity-of-sentences.html">brevity
principle of emphasis</a>. A short word will emphasize each of its component
phonemes more than will a long word. This pertains to Euphony, but <i>words</i> are the most elementary <i>meaningful</i> units. Because of the
additive character of near-mode, readers expect longer words to contain more
information. This inference is supported by language evolution, which some <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110124/full/news.2011.40.html">researchers
conclude</a> enforces standards of communicative efficiency under which long
words are less predictable than short—by that measure, conveying more
information.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Readers will
expect more information from longer words. Short words typically have the merit
of fluency, but a judicious dispensation of long words will prepare readers for
informative words, which they might dwell on a few milliseconds longer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">An example of a word
choice based on its length in this entry occurred in writing this sentence: “Far-mode’s
proportionality seeking is the foundation of the brevity principle of emphasis.”
I considered this wording: “the brevity principle <i>governing</i> far-mode emphasis, but a common preposition's sufficiency shows that it doesn’t convey rich information.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A related
half-truth: “Short words are powerful.” The kernel of truth in this falsehood is
found in a <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2014/07/plain-talk-writing-countersignals-power.html">countersignaling
</a>process: when it is very obvious that a word is important, its importance
is further enhanced by omitting the signal (long word), its superfluousness
itself serving as a signal of heightened importance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Near-mode
emphasis also answers another question of editorial choice: when to use phrasal verbs
rather than simple verbs. Simple verbs are favored for Concision and fluency,
whereas phrasal verbs lend an air of <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/01/linguistic-register-or-what-is_21.html">informality</a>. But the phrasal verb
occasionally serves a legitimate purpose of emphasizing the predicate. Consider this
sentence: The visitor entered the office and <i>defenestrated</i> the occupant’s cat. The longer “threw the cat out of
the window” is an example of the minority of cases where the longer verb is
more fluent because it mirrors the term’s informativeness.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tight writing is generally better than loose writing. Why? The most obvious reason is
Concision, but the weightier factor is fluency—an aspect of Clarity. This
analysis of near-mode emphasis explains the greater fluency of tight writing, which
is due to omission of misleading cues about the informativeness of
particular words. This theory of near-mode emphasis clarifies the distinction
between emphases in the two modes. Near-mode emphasis concerns the amount of
information; far-mode emphasis, degree of relevance.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-49988287026009243162014-11-03T13:43:00.001-08:002014-11-04T09:22:02.866-08:00Univocality, the highest stage of clarity<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<b style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The conquest of ambiguity</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Language is
inherently ambiguous, but the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-classic-prose-review-of-clear.html">classic-prose writing style</a> entails minimizing
conceptual ambiguity. Because precluding foreseeable confusion is the essence
of communication, the highest form of clarity is univocality (unambiguousness).
This isn’t widely understood, as <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/against-disclai.html">this anecdote</a>
illustrates:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">In a Stanford
artificial intelligence theory class, while the prof tried to present
relatively precise claims, students constantly asked if he was really trying to
say distantly related claims X, Y, or Z. My exasperated friend cried "Why
can’t they just treat it like math – assume nothing you are not told you can
assume!" ("Against Disclaimers.")</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">To treat natural
language as if it were an artificial language, as the anecdotal lecturer demanded,
is an unhelpful suggestion because readers can comprehend only by drawing on
information that <i>seems</i> relevant, and apparent relevance depends on the reader’s background information and
intelligence. But it also depends on the writer’s univocal expression. Since more
able to detect them, the intelligent reader may be particularly confused by
ambiguous cues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The quest for
univocality isn’t confined to avoiding words with unwanted associations (and
issuing the necessary disclaimers if that isn't possible). It rests primarily
with emphasis, through means such as the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-new-topicstress-principle-topic-is.html">new
topic/stress principle</a>, the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/12/emphasis-by-brevity-of-sentences.html">brevity
principle</a>, and unobtrusive repetition. It also involves avoiding every
manner of self-contradiction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Varieties of clarity<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The great irony
in contemporary writing advice is that all extol “clarity” but none is <i>clear</i> on the term’s meaning. The
consequence of the nearly universal failure to appreciate the different varieties
of clarity causes writers to ignore some of them—particularly the most central,
univocality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">These are the
three varieties of clarity in writing and their definitions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Fluency:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> Understanding the argument’s detail with
minimal effort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Rigor:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> Understanding the argument’s detail with high effort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Univocality:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> Conceptually unambiguous understanding
at all effort levels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">These
distinctions are pragmatic rather than logical. They describe varieties of
clarity furthered by different strategic choices, which advance one variety of
clarity and often undermine another.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Clarity and construal level<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">You may be
struck more by the dissimilarities between the varieties of clarity, and you
will then wonder why anyone would use the same term for all of them. The common
element in all varieties of clarity is their reference to the amount of
relevant information conveyed, the distinctions between them concerning the
amount of effort required (low or high) or the kind of information (detail or
disambiguation). One obstacle is that we seem only to think of clarity as
meaning one or another of its varieties, the most common interpretation of “clarity”
being fluency: clear writing is understood with ease. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">An analogy might
help. A drawn picture will show clarity of the fluent variety when the details
can be taken in with a glance; of the rigorous variety to the extent it
contains all relevant information, leaving little to guesswork or intuition:
and of the univocal variety if it doesn’t
look like anything other than intended.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The varieties of
Clarity have a peculiar structure predictable from <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/02/construal-level-theory-and-matching.html">construal-level theory</a> (<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/06/last-word-on-procrastination.html">as
I’ve construed it</a>). The theory varieties of clarity can be generated by
crossing required effort with construal level:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8yU5_Mxr5JEUunfVHu2rlL_EAhX5mx5PV7B6V8V4eu-XYkY3Un5rYzTIKJOqc7Jy1noHV_6DSHdYr3_ajKqjHEZyOtWBZ-t6ZtidhubL5HJ1Gw0HLxG-tG6_fyWmbiYOzQaX9wjpBwzc/s1600/Effort+by+construal+level.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8yU5_Mxr5JEUunfVHu2rlL_EAhX5mx5PV7B6V8V4eu-XYkY3Un5rYzTIKJOqc7Jy1noHV_6DSHdYr3_ajKqjHEZyOtWBZ-t6ZtidhubL5HJ1Gw0HLxG-tG6_fyWmbiYOzQaX9wjpBwzc/s1600/Effort+by+construal+level.jpg" height="57" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: small;">Since effort—allocated
in near mode—doesn’t vary in far mode, univocality depends only on construal
level being abstract. The features of each variety of clarity point to how each
relates to effort level and construal level. Cognitive <i>fluency</i> is promoted by simplicity; I’ve previously discussed its <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/09/cognitive-disfluency-simpler-isnt.html">limitations</a>
and <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/04/dialectic-of-clarity-cognitive-fluency.html">offsets</a>.
<i>Rigor</i> must be applied selectively.
Readers use subjection to rigor as a guide to meaning, so being unnecessarily
rigorous about some point distorts. Rigor is governed by two of the philosopher
Paul Grice’s Maxims:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: small;">1. Be as
informative as required for the purpose of the communication.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: small;">2. Don’t be more
informative than is required.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Disclaimers reclaimed<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Univocality is
the highest stage of clarity which—its skills developed later—comes to govern
the other varieties. I’ll conclude with the starting topic, the disclaimer,
which has been the victim of some bad connotations due to its legalistic abuse.
Disclaimers serving only to comply with (supposed) legal requirements are <a href="http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2013/06/101st-installment-cases-as-secrets.html">deplorable</a>
from the standpoint of univocality: conceptually superfluous disclaimers are
not innocuous, as they distort the intended meaning.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Whether
due to skill limitations, audience resistance, or nuanced message, sometimes
univocality is furthered by disclaimers. Artificial intelligence, the anecdote’s
subject, exemplifies a topic subject to both resistance and preconception,
where conceptual disclaimers further univocality. An example of a disclaimer
occurs in the present entry under the subhead “Varieties of clarity”: “These
distinctions are pragmatic rather than logical.” Readers can judge whether it
was helpful.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-85261956381025187742014-07-29T13:43:00.002-07:002014-08-14T15:01:36.596-07:00Plain-talk writing countersignals power<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Since unexplained </span><a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2011/02/110-confusion-between-belief-and.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">consensus
is a form of evidence</a><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> an important
question is this: why have the opponents of legalese converged on </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/plain-talk-writing-new-literary.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">plain-talk writing</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">? (If you suspect I overstate the dominance of plain-talk, for
an example see a recent piece by legal-writing author </span><a href="http://abovethelaw.com/2014/06/expose-your-weakness-now/http:/abovethelaw.com/2014/06/expose-your-weakness-now/" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mark
Herrmann</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, who urges legal-brief writers to write like best-selling authors
and average at most 15 words per sentence: “Care to write in a style that
encourages people to read? You could do worse than to model your writing on the
work of bestselling authors, couldn’t you?”) The explanation I propose for the
dominant two camps is that legalese </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">signals</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
power and plain-talk writing </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">countersignals</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
greater power.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Signaling theory
was a </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/03/verbosity-affronts-court.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">previous
topic</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. Agents </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">signal</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> when they
demonstrate possession of a valued trait by incurring costs that would deter
those with lesser endowments; they </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">countersignal</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
when their audiences are informed through other sources that the agent is at
least middling on the valued trait, so abstaining-from-signaling signals not
needing to signal.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://zhongwe2.serverpros.com/cs/cs-final-rje.pdf" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Feltovich,Harbaugh, and To</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> list examples of signaling and
countersignaling:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The nouveau
riche flaunt their wealth, but the old rich scorn such gauche displays. Minor
officials prove their status with petty displays of authority, while the truly
powerful show their strength through gestures of magnanimity. People of average
education show off the studied regularity of their script, but the well-educated
often scribble illegibly. Mediocre students answer a teacher’s easy questions,
but the best students are embarrassed to prove their knowledge of trivial
points. Acquaintances show their good intentions by politely ignoring one’s
flaws, while close friends show intimacy by teasingly highlighting them. People
of moderate ability seek formal credentials to impress employers and society,
but the talented often downplay their credentials even if they have bothered to
obtain them. A person of average reputation defensively refutes accusations
against his character, while a highly respected person finds it demeaning to
dignify accusations with a response.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To clarify the
countersignaling concept still further, it will help to illustrate its
application. A political scientist footnotes: “I do not claim to have mastered
these highly technical papers. Their results, however, cannot be more robust
than their premises, and it is the latter which I criticized in the text.” (Jon
Elster, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The cement of society:</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A study in social order </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(1989).)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Elster’s comment
is slightly surprising because one common intellectual signal in academia is
mastery of an arcane formalism. To signal intellect this way, an author should
demonstrate understanding, not gratuitously admit partial incomprehension
attributable to the author’s insufficient learning. Elster does much to
demonstrate mastery of a huge amount of analysis, and because of that and the
typical reader’s knowledge of his research record, not only can afford to
honestly admit his lack of comprehension but actually comes off “looking
better” for his frank admission. (You might think an alternative explanation is
that Elster is intellectually honest; this I don’t doubt, but signaling theory
may reduce intellectual honesty to self-promotion by countersignaling—or
forming <a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2011/12/14-why-do-what-oughta-habit-theory-of.html">advantageous
countersignalling habits</a>.)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The signaling/countersignaling framework illuminates the opposition (and false
dilemma) between legalese and plain-talk writing: legalese is a form of
signaling, and plain-talk writing of countersignaling.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I’ve <a href="http://abovethelaw.com/2014/06/expose-your-weakness-now/http:/disputedissues.blogspot.com/2010/03/legalese-ritualized-pomposity.html">previously
contended</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"> that</span> using legalese signals power,
and a recent social-psychology study implicates the use of abstraction. (C.J.
Wakslak, P.K. Smith, and A. Han, <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><i>Using abstract language signals power</i>,</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JPSP</span>,
107(1) (July 2014) [“Abstract language use appears to affect perceived power
because it seems to reflect both a willingness to judge and a general style of
abstract thinking.”] (HT: <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/07/near-far-work-continues.html"><i>Overcoming Bias</i></a>.) Hyper-abstract (truly, pseudo-abstract) language is a defining
characteristic of legalese.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When an
attorney’s power is incontestable, whether due to the quality of work product
or extent of connections and affiliations, it not only becomes unnecessary to
incur the costs of an opaque writing style, but by writing plainly, some attorneys can signal
that they are above needing to, because avoiding the obtrusive signal of power
can, with additional information, come to signal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">greater</i> power.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Although the
costs of countersignaling are less than those of signaling, they’re still onerous. To maintain the clearest discriminability from the middle-status
legalese writers, plain writers will avoid useful abstraction (and its
paraphernalia, such as <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/12/emphasis-by-brevity-of-sentences.html">varied
sentence length</a>). The same signaling logic applies to other versions of
pseudo-abstract writing, such as bureaucratese and academese, in other realms
where signaling of power is important and a higher-status plain-talk-writing trend supervenes.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-71631430872941181832014-04-20T14:34:00.000-07:002014-07-29T16:35:52.410-07:00The polar forms of writing—formal and informal—and the poor prospects for intermediates<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Formal prose, I’ve
emphasized, is a writing </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">style</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, a
distinct </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">type</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> of writing, differing
from the informal in its ideals and aspirations: precise argument or
spontaneous conversation. Is compromise possible between these writing types? There
are exceptions, but mostly, the answer is no.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I’ve previously approached
this stylistic distinction through a construal-level-theory analysis; linguist
John McWhorter implies similar conclusions by his insights into the most
informal written forms, such as text messaging, through which he highlights the
distinctive character of conversation and from which derive many of the customs
of social media. With educated talkers using sentences of only 7 to 10 words,
the “grand old defining properties” of spoken language (due to talking being “largely
subconscious and rapid,” writing and reading “deliberate and slow”) are “brevity,
improvisation, and in-the-moment quality.” As McWhorter (<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/talking-with-your-fingers/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1">“Talking
with Your Fingers,”</a> (April 2012)) assesses the state of contemporary
language, “Two forms of language coexist in societies: choppy speech and
crafted prose.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Some
combinations of the two forms succeed. McWhorter mentions one example: the anthropological
novelists combined formal prose with dialog imitating speech. Another
intermediate form is of key interest to legal-brief writers: the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-classic-prose-review-of-clear.html">practical
style</a> adapts the formal-prose style to expressing belief rather than opinion.
These are careful exceptions to the general rule that combining informal and
formal styles is just bad writing. (The “formal-prose” style shouldn’t be
confused with the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/02/linguistic-register-or-what-is.html">“writing
formalities,”</a> which should be compromised.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/plain-talk-writing-new-literary.html">“plain-writing”
trend</a> advises writers to craft choppy prose! Trying to satisfy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simultaneously</i> the formal ideal of
far-mode clarity and the informal ideal of near-mode immediacy and spontaneity
is usually misguided, and perhaps it is also misguided to combine them <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">successively</i>—in different pieces. Can
you be a master of both styles, while using them at different times for
different purposes? Maybe, but probably not. Each style has its own habits, and
writers who practice a great deal of conversation (whether by talking or texting)
often seem to do so <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2008/12/writing-versus-speech-why-lawyers-write.html">to
their writing detriment</a>; and the reverse, formal writers may deteriorate as
conversationalists. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Improving at one
task (such as conversation) conflicts with improving at another (such as formal
writing) when they call for similar but different responses to the same or
similar situations. An example of tasks calling for different responses to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">same situation</i> is typing using Dvorak
and <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">QWERTY</span> layouts: if the task is
typing a comma, you must type what would be a ‘w’ on a <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">QWERTY</span> keyboard, and you will lose proficiency
in making one response by learning the other. An example calling for
different responses to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">similar situations</i>
is executing a forehand drive in tennis and table tennis: practicing one harms
the other. Learning a task <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">negatively
transfers</i> to the other when the latter requires inhibiting the response
first learned; the extra effort to inhibit the behavior previously practiced
makes it harder. If you practice Dvorak, you’ll have to inhibit the habit of
typing ‘w’ when you type a comma; if you practice tennis, you'll have to
inhibit your tendency to minimize wrist action when playing table tennis.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">McWhorter
explains, “Spoken language is fundamental, while written language is an
artifice.” The habits, even instincts, ingrained in talk are the primary
targets of inhibition in crafting formal prose; practicing talk, whether by
actually talking, texting, or writing in the plain-talk style, harms your formal writing. But,
just as some few may productively use different typing layouts, individuals
probably vary in the harm to their formal writing due to negative transfer from
conversation or informal writing.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-72419914199257910942014-02-25T15:05:00.002-08:002014-03-12T16:14:08.452-07:00The new topic/stress principle: Topic is concrete, stress abstract<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Recall the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2014/01/formal-and-informal-writing-differ-in.html">sequence</a>
(concrete to abstract, near to far):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><b>conversation – informal prose – <span style="color: red;">formal
prose</span> – poetry</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-classic-prose-review-of-clear.html">Formal prose</a> is
a style of writing that evolved—primarily to serve abstract matters, where
clarity is the central virtue—to exploit the specific virtues of written
discourse. It is <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/02/construal-level-theory-and-matching.html">far-mode</a> clarity that is most prized in this style; near-mode
is essential but subordinate. <span style="color: red;">To subordinate near to
far, formal prose uses a characteristic device at various structural levels:
new matter is introduced in far mode and developed in near mode.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">At the sentence
level, this is accomplished by an application of topic/stress segmentation: the
stress—which introduces important new information—is abstract; the topic—which
recapitulates old information—is concrete. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Definitions and principles<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">In <i>formal prose</i> (which includes the most
effective legal-brief writing), the <i>topic</i>
(usually the sentence subject) announces what the sentence is about, often through association with previous information. The <i>stress</i> position (I’ll continue using the term despite the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2014/02/stress-position-is-misnomer-explaining.html">technical
misnomer</a>) refers to the last word or words before a period, colon, semicolon,
and sometimes a dash; it contains important new information. (We know this
about topic and stress mainly due to the work of Joseph Williams and George Gopen.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/construal">Construal-level theory</a></span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> links concreteness to psychological
proximity and abstractness to psychological distance. In sentence processing,
the topic’s position is near and the stress’s position is far, and formal prose
not only honors the topic and stress positions, their contents are typically
concrete and abstract respectively, to correspond with their near and far
locations in the sentence. <span style="color: red;">New information is first
presented abstractly in the stress position and then developed concretely by
being recapitulated in a more specific form in the topics of subsequent
sentences.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">A counter-example?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The
reader expects the topic to be concrete and the stress abstract, and each
receives greatest emphasis when they satisfy the expectation.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> This observation answers a
counterexample offered by </span><a href="http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/wschiess/legalwriting/2007/02/stress-position-at-end.html"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Wayne Schiess</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">, purporting</span></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> to show that the topic is more important
than the stress:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">To me, </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="color: #0070c0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">number one </span> </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">emphasizes President Bush more.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"></span><span style="color: #0070c0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">(1)
President Bush made mistakes.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #00b050; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">(2)
Mistakes were made by President Bush.</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Addressing
Wayne’s argument fills a lacuna in topic/stress theory: what determines the
stress-position’s size? Although “President Bush” constitutes a terminal phrase
in <span style="color: #00b050;">number two</span>, that phrase—referencing a
near-mode concrete particular rather than a far-mode disposition—isn’t well
suited to receive stress. The reader expands the stress position to encompass a
suitable abstraction, which it finds in the sentence’s predicate, “</span><span style="color: #00b050; font-family: Georgia, serif;">were made</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">,”
which the sentence emphasizes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">(Generalizations
like this new topic/stress principle are often best used to sharpen intuition rather
than to replace it. I don’t think it would have occurred to me that </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="color: #00b050;">number two</span></span>
emphasizes the predicate without its aid, but once I’ve applied the principle,
the intuition perseveres.)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Rewriting the “writing
rules”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The new
topic/stress principle grounds, consolidates, and corrects several established
“writing rules.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Avoid nominalization</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> is one-sided over-reaction;
nominalization creates far-mode abstractions, commonly suitable in the stress
but not, such as to supplement an excessively abstract verb, in the topic’s
vicinity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Favor agents as subjects</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> is a simplistic rendition of formal-prose’s
preference for concrete topics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Concrete examples should precede new
abstractions</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> describes a
practice in the (informal, near-mode) <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/plain-talk-writing-new-literary.html">plain
style</a>, unsuited for formal prose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-17490720873910696072014-02-05T21:46:00.001-08:002014-06-07T12:52:14.972-07:00“Stress position” is a misnomer: Explaining structural emphasis<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The practice of locating
important new information at the end of a proposition (the “stress position”)
is <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2014/01/formal-and-informal-writing-differ-in.html">undervalued
and misunderstood</a> by most writing authorities, and in actual legal writing,
it is rare. The widespread ignorance of the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/11/constructing-sentences-for-precise.html">“fundamental principle of advanced
writing”</a> is illustrated
by a major <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/wschiess/legalwriting/2007/02/stress-position-at-end.html">legal-writing teacher’sremarkable comment</a>: “This is surely subjective, and some will disagree, but I
generally teach my students to use the beginnings of sentences (and of
paragraphs and of entire documents) as stress positions.” Locating what belongs
in the stress position at the beginning of a sentence (the “topic”) is the most
common way the stress position is ignored in professional writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Why hasn’t
topic/stress practice penetrated professional writing? One reason I’ve
suggested is that its exponents haven’t provided a compelling explanation for
why stress position is emphatic; the very term “stress position” is a misnomer
insofar as it is based on the stress patterns of English phonology. The most
obvious point to make against the phonological theory is that English
declarative sentences, in fact, don’t end in rising pitch—questions do. More
importantly, where in the sentence pitch rises and where it falls depends on
phonological vagaries, and for <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2014/01/formal-and-informal-writing-differ-in.html">previously mentioned reasons</a>, as well, it’s implausible that one of
the two principal structural means for creating emphasis in English (the other
being <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/12/emphasis-by-brevity-of-sentences.html">brevity</a>) depends on the language’s peculiarities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A more promising
explanation is provided by Thomas and Turner, who explain stress position as
deriving from an intellectual schema modeling discourse on a <i>journey </i>where
paramount, corresponding to the <i>stress</i>,
is destination; and a second prominent point, corresponding to the <i>topic</i>, is the origin. (<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-classic-prose-review-of-clear.html"><i>Clear
and simple as the truth</i></a>
(2<sup>nd</sup> ed. 2011), at p. 64.) In the Thomas and Turner view, respect
for the stress position is an aspect of formal prose. But as an explanation for
the role of the stress position in formal writing, it’s insufficient: it doesn’t
explain why formal writing pervasively uses a particular intellectual schema,
that of a journey. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thomas and
Turner have it right that the explanation for the stress position should be
found, not in the idiosyncrasies of specific languages, but in the logic of formal
prose. Stress position is part of the formal-writing strategy, and it
transcends specific languages. (Mystifyingly, Thomas and Turner describe the
“stress position” as a phenomenon specific to English.) “Stress position” isn’t
an outgrowth of phonological patterns in ordinary conversation, which predominantly
relies for emphasis on body language and <i>spontaneous</i>
modulation of pitch and rhythm. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Formal prose is
a specific style, one accentuating </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">far-mode</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">;
it is a style serving to evoke receptivity to abstraction, since formal prose
serves discourse about abstractions. “Far-mode” is a construct in </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/construal" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">construal-level theory</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, which correlates perceived physical and
logical distance with abstract conceptualization. Construal-level theory entails
that readers construe the beginning of a sentence concretely and its end
abstractly, since, at the point where they activate a schema for understanding
the sentence, its beginning (the topic) is near and the end (the stress) is
far. By locating it at the end, the writer fosters an abstract construal of
important new information. As a byproduct of this technique for fostering
abstraction, the formal writer </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">also </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">gains a structural signal for importance. </span>Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-29705116423814523112014-01-15T10:34:00.000-08:002014-01-18T15:54:36.183-08:00“Formal” and “informal” writing differ in word order<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Not incessantly
but at least occasionally, unobtrusively yet obviously—<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/02/construal-level-theory-and-matching.html">formal
writing</a> hovers on the edge of awkwardness. This is unremarked by the
authorities, as is the explanation: formal writing’s proclivity to violate
standard word order.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Standard word order in English<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Contemporary
English language is intermediate among languages in the rigidity of its word
order, neither strictly obligatory like Latin nor absent like Chinese. (Owen
Barfield, <i>Poetic Diction: A Study in
Meaning</i> (1984).) Perhaps this averageness conceals the pragmatic importance
of word order in English, but a hallmark of formal writing (<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-classic-prose-review-of-clear.html">“classic
prose”</a>) is that it <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/01/linguistic-register-or-what-is_21.html">sacrifices
“Naturalness” for “Succinctness,”</a> which is to say, <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/04/dialectic-of-clarity-cognitive-fluency.html">cognitive
fluency for cohesiveness and proportioned emphasis</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The standard English
word order is:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Subject – Verb –
Object – Adverbial modifiers</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">This standard
word order is obeyed more consistently in informal writing because writing that
takes conversation as its model is inspired by the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/11/constructing-sentences-for-precise.html">ideal
of spontaneity</a>, an impression contrived word order subverts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Here’s an
example of a sentence written for <span style="color: #00b050;">proportioned
emphasis</span> and rewritten for <span style="color: #00b0f0;">conversationality</span>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #00b050; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #00b050; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">California
may be unique in unconstitutionally allowing its attorney guild to enforce its
self-adjudicated costs as a judgment, but the universal state-bar practice of
charging costs to respondents (regardless of how the state bars can collect
them) derives from changes in the criminal law that</span><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">, despite their
legality,</span></b><span style="color: #00b050; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">
damage the system’s integrity<b>:</b> policies of victim restitution and social
restitution.<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #00b0f0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #00b0f0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">California
may be unique in unconstitutionally allowing its attorney guild to enforce its
self-adjudicated costs as a judgment, but the universal state-bar practice of charging
costs to respondents (regardless of how the state bars can collect them)
derives from changes in the criminal law that damage the system’s integrity </span><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">despite their legality</span></b><span style="color: #00b0f0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><b>:</b> policies of victim restitution and social restitution.<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">In the <span style="color: #00b050;">formal or “classic prose” version</span>, the adverbial
modifier “despite their legality” is placed after the subject and before the
verb of the subordinate <i>that</i> clause.
In the <span style="color: #00b0f0;">conversational rendition</span>, the
modifier occurs in the stress position preceding the colon, the standard English
word order. The <span style="color: #6aa84f;">classic-prose version</span> is clearer because “damage the system’s
integrity,” which occupies the stress position, adds the most important new
information. But because breaching standard English word order is disfluent, the
<span style="color: #00b050;">classic-prose version</span> is slightly awkward. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Recouping fluency with the comma<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Formal writing
is awkward in the manner of poetry. One reason (not the only reason) poetry is harder to read
than prose is that it takes liberties with the standard English word order. In
its sacrifice of fluency for emphasis, formal writing is intermediate between
oral conversation and poetry:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Oral
conversation – Informal writing – Formal writing – Poetry</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Offsetting its often
novel word order, poetry has means of recouping some measure of cognitive
fluency: verse and rhyme. Classic prose’s palliative is the lowly comma. In the
<span style="color: #00b050;">classic-prose version</span>, the displaced
modifying phrase is set off by commas despite its <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/05/logical-grammar-restrictive-and.html">restrictive
character</a>. Glimpses of this important use of the comma can be seen in rules
concerning “<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/06/comma-logic-parenthetical-or.html">interruptive phrases</a>,” but in the <span style="color: #00b0f0;">conversational
example</span>, the <i>despite</i> phrase
isn’t interruptive. It’s just out of order. Another partial application of the
principle that violations of standard word order call for commas is the rule to
set off a periodic sentence’s introductory modifiers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Remaining issues<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Allowing the
nature of contemporary English, occupying a middle ground between structured
and unstructured language, it remains odd that the standard authorities have
failed to notice this distinguishing difference between formal and informal
writing, but some responsibility may fall to certain gaps in Joseph M. Williams
and George D. Gapon’s topic/stress theory of sentence organization: 1) the stress position is said to be unique
to English; and 2) it originated in conversation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">These two facts raise
theoretical problems. If stress position is critically important for emphasis
in English, do other languages each have their own idiosyncratic means of
emphasis? This seems dubious: if language were inherently inclined to developing
syntactic cues to emphasis, it’s unlikely that only English would have seized
on stress position and topic/stress structure, whose congruence with general
primacy/recency effects is unlikely to be coincidental. The other fact, the
origin of stress position in oral communication, is in tension with the
observation that formal writing accentuates use of the stress position: why was
the <i>limited</i> usefulness of stress
position in oral communication, which is aided immeasurably by nonverbal
communication, sufficient to secure that position’s role?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">I leave these
issues for future treatment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-19627869248278301202013-12-06T19:37:00.000-08:002014-03-26T22:04:50.327-07:00Psychological roots of writers’ resistance to clarity<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Most lawyers disregard the </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/11/constructing-sentences-for-precise.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">most
useful principle of advanced writing</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">: put new important matter at the sentence
end (the stress position). This neglect itself provides insight into the nature
of the resistances to clear professional and intellectual writing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We should first
be exact about the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">degree</i> to which
writing authorities ignore the stress position. Bryan Garner represents the mainstream,
and he cites six other authorities for this advice: “To write forcefully, end
sentences with a punch.” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Winning
Brief</i>, Tip 36.) Garner concretizes his advice in an injunction against ending
sentences with a date, citation, client’s name, or qualifying phrase. (Garner,
perplexingly, also suggests the test of exaggerating the last word in each
sentence while reading aloud. “If the reading sounds foolish then the sentence
probably needs to be recast.” Garner’s emphasis on how the sentence <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sounds</i> will prove instructive, but even
anticipating that Garner’s test will misidentify many bad sentences as good, it
will <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">also</i> misidentify good sentences
as bad—simply because the stress position is more extensive than the final
word.)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Garner understates
the importance of emphasis by limiting stress-position errors to missed
opportunities; he ignores the more important errors of misdirection—as do his
six supporting authorities. Emphasis is underappreciated (unemphasized) by most
authorities; distinguishing the important from the unimportant is central to
grasping meaning, never itself exact but capable only of approximation. Why is
it hard to understand that misleading emphasis compromises not just “forcefulness”
but clarity?</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Since clarity
arises from emphasis, forcefulness <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>
clarity. Here may lay the problem: the quest for clarity is inevitably imbued
with the human ambivalence toward exercise of power—of which influence is a kind.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Writing aspiring
to clarity and to apportioned emphasis—regardless of whether it succeeds in
either—is often termed “formal”; yet defining formality has proven elusive. One
recent attempt is found in James W. Pennebaker’s book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Secret Life of Pronouns</i>, which distinguishes from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">analytic</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">narrative</i> writing styles a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">formal</i>
style. But Pennebaker is able to characterize formality only pejoratively: humorless,
pompous, and stiff; Pennebaker finds formal style correlated with aspirations
to social status. The associations in Pennebaker’s work between clarity and
power are striking: influence, status, emphasis, forcefulness, pomposity, even “stiffness.”
Pennebaker expresses human ambivalence to power by defining “formal” writing by
its failures. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Expressing this
same ambivalence, writers who seek that variety of power called intellectual
influence confront emotional impediments to mastering formal writing (<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-classic-prose-review-of-clear.html">“classic
prose”</a>). Resistance to recognizing the stress-position’s importance—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stress</i> or emphasis equaling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">force</i> or power—epitomizes this internal
conflict. Imprecision stimulates the affiliative appetite for conversation, a
taste writers seeking legal persuasiveness or intellectual influence must
forgo. </span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-13366413712071557182013-11-14T14:31:00.000-08:002014-03-07T17:56:40.074-08:00Constructing sentences for precise emphasis: The fundamental principle of advanced writing<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">A legal-writing
authority advises:</span></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> View your
reader as a companionable friend—someone with a warm sense of humor and a love
of simple directness. Write like you're actually talking to that friend, but
talking with enough leisure to frame your thoughts concisely and
interestingly. John R. Trimble, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Writing
with Style</i> 73 (2d ed. 2000). (HT: Bryan Garner, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Usage Tip of the Day</i>, November 12, 2013.)</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Some writers
hail Trimble’s advice as profound, while others ignore it as meaningless, but I
hold it is quite wrong. Legal-brief writing (like other efforts at exerting intellectual
influence) differs from conversation not just in degree: influential
intellectual writing differs from conversation in its guiding formal virtue. <b>Whereas
good <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conversation</i> is (or seems)
spontaneous, good <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">writing</i> is clear.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">One way the difference
manifests is that competent writers force important new ideas to the sentence’s
end. The last word or tight phrase preceding the point of syntactic closure
(period, semicolon, or colon) is termed by Joseph M. Williams (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Style: Toward Clarity and Grace</i>) the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stress position</i>; and according to another
student of sentence structure, George D. Gopen (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanbar.org%2Fcontent%2Fdam%2Faba%2Fadministrative%2Flitigation%2Fmaterials%2Fsac_2012%2F40-1_a_new_approach_to_legal_writing.authcheckdam.pdf&ei=dB2FUpOEBKb9iQKEpYDYBQ&usg=AFQjCNGaCL-_tbcpg8fBCrY0gRuYEknjTw&sig2=8UXGS-nQxUf_N7SsWgwjXg&bvm=bv.56643336,d.cGE">A
new approach to legal writing</a></i>), failure to exploit the stress position
is legal-writers’ single greatest formal weakness: out of hundreds of lawyers Gopen
has trained, the stress position was properly used by a handful. Proper use of
the stress position is at the threshold of competent writing, but misuse of the stress position doesn’t always <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sound</i>
bad. Locating trivia in the stress position produces <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">limp</i> sentences, but often lawyers fill the stress position with <i>misleading
</i>substantive language. <b>When a document contains sentences with misleading
emphases, readers—due to conflicting cues about what’s important—find the
document’s meaning hazy. </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The stress
position isn’t unique to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">written</i>
English; spoken English sentences end in higher pitch, but in spoken English,
stress position is subordinate to nonverbal cues. It is also subordinate to
standard word order, which <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/05/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html">conversation</a>
usually follows because reorganized sentences sound contrived, violating the conversational
norm favoring spontaneity. Take as an example the previous paragraph’s final
sentence, which <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/04/dialectic-of-clarity-cognitive-fluency.html">trades
moderate disfluency for high clarity</a>:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">When a
document contains sentences with misleading emphases, readers—due to
conflicting cues about what’s important—find its meaning hazy.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">This is too
contrived for good conversation; without the engineered word order, we might
say:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4f81bd; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-themecolor: accent1;">Readers find a document’s meaning hazy, due to
conflicting cues about what’s important, when it contains sentences with
misleading emphases.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The <span style="color: #4f81bd; mso-themecolor: accent1;">talk version</span> beats the <span style="color: red;">clear version</span> in cognitive fluency (and in apparent
spontaneity), but it loses in clarity (partly) because of its misuse of the stress
position. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hazy meaning</i> is the
sentence’s key contribution, whereas the <span style="color: #4f81bd; mso-themecolor: accent1;">talk version</span> stresses <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">misleading
emphases</i>, an idea previously introduced. Stress position isn’t the
only way <span style="color: red;">reorganized sentence structure</span> departs
from <span style="color: #4f81bd; mso-themecolor: accent1;">talk</span>, but Gopen’s
experience indicates that, in legal writing, it’s the most ignored. <b>Exploiting
the stress position requires sentences differing from <span style="color: #4f81bd; mso-themecolor: accent1;">talk</span>.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><b>Haziness takes a
toll on all argumentative writing; in abstract endeavors, it detracts from
thought itself.</b> With clarity being much about emphasis, reorganizing sentence
structure is a medium through which <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/03/can-bad-writers-be-good-thinkers-part-1.html">clear
writing deepens thought</a>. (<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/plain-talk-writing-new-literary.html">“Plain-talk
writing”</a> is inherently inimical to clear thought.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">In the next
entries, I’ll discuss how and why the importance of Williams and Gopen’s
discovery of the stress position is almost invariably missed by writing
authorities. Resistance to exploiting the stress position will be seen rooted in a misguided attachment to the pragmatics of </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="color: #4f81bd; mso-themecolor: accent1;">talk</span></span>. We will also see
that clear writing’s difference from talk has implications for … you guessed
it, <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/comma">the comma</a>. It supplies the last big piece to the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2008/11/underestimated-comma.html">comma puzzle</a>. </span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-67170843243340946792013-10-07T14:59:00.001-07:002013-11-08T15:08:58.286-08:00Writers should exploit all punctuation marks: Reflections on misguided campaigns to reduce punctuation types<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Omissive
punctuation practices on <i>Twitter </i>convince some observers the apostrophe is
superfluous, but a <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114922/foolish-malicious-war-apostrophes?b&utm_campaign=tnr-daily-newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=10436697">recent
essay</a> in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Republic</i> news magazine
dismissed the rumors of imminent apostrophe extinction. The author, however,
wasn’t exactly happy about the apostrophe’s endurance, cautioning only that leaving
it out will continue to “look funny” in formal writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Considering the absence of consensus about which to exterminate, the impulse to kill some
disliked punctuation is surprisingly strong. George Orwell thought the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search?q=semicolon">semicolon</a>
unnecessary and resolved to avoid it; some writers <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/08/crusade-against-dash.html">demand
abolition of the dash</a>; competent legal writers have <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/08/crusade-against-dash.html">opposed
hyphenation of many compound adjectives</a>, claiming they’re unsightly and
often unnecessary; it’s been claimed that the comma was invented or perpetuated
because publishers benefit from their supposedly unnecessary consumption of
space; and I’ve <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2010/02/andor-and-unlawyerly-practice-of.html">condemned
the virgule</a>. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: red;">This
false economy of punctuation types isn’t rational, since an abundance of types
for marking syntactic distinctions means </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/09/introduction-commas-serve-thefollowing.html">greater
ease</a><span style="color: red;"> for readers.</span> We have few punctuation types
not because of the uselessness of marking additional syntactic distinctions but
because of the difficulties of socially coordinating on a new punctuation type,
which must be commonly understood and highly practiced. Contrived punctuation
doesn’t stick: it requires too great an adoption rate before it gathers
momentum. Emoticons (like the smiley) may seem an exception, but they prove the
rule: they augment <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lexicon</i> rather
than representing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">syntax</i>. Lexicon accrues
more rapidly than punctuation types not only because we need many more semantic
distinctions but also because we more readily learn the meaning of new semantic
than syntactic signs. (Acquiring words is in the genes, but writing and its
punctuation are parts of culture.)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Why do some
writers wish for fewer types of punctuation? One reason is that overuse and
misuse often turn them against the whole type. I formed a prejudice against the
virgule (/) when enduring an employer who expressed any conjoined or disjoined
legal claims with a weaseling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and/or</i>.
Exposure to some bad freestyle blogging incites people against the dash, and the
irritating misuse of the apostrophe to create plurals of names could be enough to
alienate some writers.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Another source
of animus against punctuation variety is that writers often don’t understand
how punctuation helps readers. On discovering that they can understand text
without a certain punctuation type, they conclude that it’s unnecessary (the
main argument against the apostrophe in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
Republic</i> piece), but punctuation serves primarily to enhance <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-new-is-cognitive-fluency.html">cognitive
fluency</a>, not to render text intelligible or disambiguate expressions.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Finally, <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/05/grammar-and-judges.html">pedagogy’s
emphasis on signaling literacy</a> and competence through correct grammar and
mechanics leads some writers to view punctuation marks as occasions for error
rather than as promoters of cognitive ease. Fewer distinctions mean less embarrassment.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: red;">Using
all the available punctuation marks is part of exploiting the </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/plain-talk-writing-new-literary.html">full
expressive power</a><span style="color: red;"> of written language.</span> But
keep in mind what does not follow: if variety (in punctuation types) is a spice
of life, heaviness (of punctuation tokens) is a drag.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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<![endif]-->Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-18949961965271759012013-09-02T18:47:00.000-07:002013-11-18T19:13:48.125-08:00Comma usage in the context of construal-level theory<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Introduction<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Commas serve the
following functions, in order of their importance for legal writing:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. Increasing <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-new-is-cognitive-fluency.html">cognitive fluency</a></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. Inducing far-mode (as defined in <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/02/construal-level-theory-and-matching.html">construal-level theory</a>)</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3. Disambiguating expressions</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4. Signaling competence</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">No one else seems
to have applied construal-level theory to comma usage, and while writing
authorities pay attention to the other three, the less important are typically
emphasized over the more important.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Recognized comma functions<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/03/verbosity-affronts-court.html">signaling</a> of competence includes avoiding grammatical errors that lower a lawyer’s
credibility by making him look uneducated. Although sometimes emphasized even for
legal writing, the importance of signaling competence is minimal because a
judge is unlikely to notice the comma errors that infect lawyerly writing and lawyers
are unlikely to commit gross errors, such as placing a single comma between
subject and its verb or omitting a comma after a long introductory clause.
Signaling might be the reason most people study punctuation mechanics, but most
legal writers would do better to ignore signaling considerations when
punctuating. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Disambiguation
is the most emphasized function in writing advice for legal writers, and it
probably is the most important function for <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/02/may-even-contracts-be-euphonious.html">transactional
drafting</a>. But comma usage only rarely is necessary for disambiguation, and
the importance for transactional work arises from the huge potential cost of a
single error. Some authorities may regale us with the legal catastrophes due to
a single comma error, but in brief writing, context will usually make the
distinction clear. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are really only two scenarios accounting for the bulk
of the cases where the comma disambiguates: <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/05/logical-grammar-restrictive-and.html">distinguishing restrictive from descriptive clauses and phrases</a> and setting off a modifying phrase at a sentence’s end when
the word it modifies is nonadjacent. Neither is usually truly ambiguous when
you consider context. The primary role of context in drawing the
restrictive-descriptive distinction can be highlighted by orthography’s <i>not</i> distinguishing between these types
of modifiers when they occur before
the word modified. In the sentence, “I love all the beautiful Russian girls,” you can’t tell from the bare sentence whether the
writer means “Russian girls<b><span style="color: red;">,</span></b> who are beautiful”
or “Russian girls who are beautiful.” (<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/05/logical-grammar-restrictive-and.html?showComment=1310709249417#c8394894569485770018">HT</a>
to commenter harassmenko.) Yet writers don’t shrink from using the <i>grammatically</i> ambiguous expression "beautiful Russian girls." The need for setting off terminal modifiers of distant
terms also rarely arises. When it does, the expressions are seldom truly ambiguous.
An example is “Prosecutor Howes bribed inmate witnesses to appear, by illegally
dispersing witness-voucher funds,” where the <i>by</i> clause modifies “to appear,” not “bribed”: nobody thinks the
witnesses <i>appeared</i> by bribing,
although that’s what the words state without the comma before <i>by</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rather than
creating real ambiguity, the technical ambiguity instead detracts from fluency.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Increasing the matter’s
<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/fluency">cognitive fluency</a> is really the strongest reason for good comma usage. <i><a href="http://grammar.wikia.com/wiki/Oxford_comma">Oxford Comma</a></i> argues
cogently that the importance of punctuation for fluency can be seen from punctuation
other than the comma—in particular, spaces between words—because all punctuation
functions for fluency. If you delete the spaces between words, it’s still quite
possible, with more effort, to read it correctly. But cognitive fluency suffers
greatly. The same is true, if less obviously, if you delete all commas in long
sentences. Overlooking the effect of comma usage on fluency probably explains the
over-statements on the comma’s disambiguation function. The comma's effect on fluency is underestimated because the comma’s effects are complex. In fact, the most salient effect of
commas is that they slow readers down, a <i>sacrifice </i>of fluency. Too many commas
as well as too few make writing <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2008/05/what-makes-some-writing-difficult.html">unnecessarily disfluent</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Comma use to induce abstract construal<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In addition to
these usual functions of the comma, another is unrecognized: activating an abstract
construal level (or far mode). (Construal-level theory is treated in <i><a href="file:///C:/Users/srd/Documents/Construal-level%20theory:%20Matching%20linguistic%20register%20to%20the%20case%27s%20granularity">Construal-level
theory: Matching linguistic register to the case's granularity</a></i> and in
its <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/construal">series</a>.)
In legal writing and other writing intended to <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-classic-prose-review-of-clear.html">influence opinion</a> about serious
matters, it’s desirable to induce the reader to think more deeply rather than
focus on the superficial. Since writing is largely a near-mode activity, skill
in writing requires overcoming the tendency to induce the same mental set in
the reader. Consider again the omission of spaces between words, as in this
example (used for other purposes in <i><a href="http://grammar.wikia.com/wiki/Oxford_comma">Oxford Comma</a></i>):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ofcourseitispossibletounderstandwhatismeantwithoutpunctuationitisntobligatoryinthatsensehoweveritisclearlyhelpfultore</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">aderstopunctuate</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In decoding this
string, you’re forced to read in near-mode, one word at a time. Spaces group
letters into words; commas group words into meaningful segments based on
principles of grammar, which describe how we aggregate words in comprehending
sentences. Commas, like spaces, help the reader parse the sentence into
comprehensible chunks, contributing not only to fluency but also to an abstract
view of the subject matter. Reading in a more molar way by focusing on groups
of words activates far-mode.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The prediction,
based on construal-level theory, that good comma usage not only improves
cognitive fluency but also induces far-mode can be tested against writers’
intuitions about comma usage. Test cases occur where comma usage disregards
grammatical structure yet is more fluent. The philosopher Tyler Burge (<i>Origins
of Objectivity</i>) is an exceptionally lucid writer, but an over-punctuation quirk in his comma usage breaks syntactic
structure, although it increases fluency:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">An example of
empirical representation that is itself perception is a perception of<b><span style="color: red;">,</span></b> and as
of<b><span style="color: red;">,</span></b> a moving silver sphere. </span></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Burge commits
the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-comma-puzzle-false-interjection-error.html">false-interjection
error</a>, but some excellent writers will agree with Burge’s version: it is
more cognitively fluent than without the commas. This <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/01/theories-of-comma.html">school of thought</a>, ably defended
in <i><a href="http://grammar.wikia.com/wiki/Oxford_comma">Oxford Comma</a></i>, argues
for a greater role for intuition in comma usage than my prescription affords.
The intuition is based on cognitive fluency. Although the expression set off by
commas isn’t an interjection, the sentence is easier to understand if the
reader treats it as an interjection. The meaning is distorted because the
punctuation treats “perception as of” as incidental compared to “perception of,”
impeding a correct understanding of “perception as of,” which is grammatically
and semantically coordinate to “perception of.” (If it's not semantically
coordinate, the writer should use a noncoordinate grammatical form.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Intuitive
punctuation has its distinguished advocates, such as Richard A. Posner, who
advises legal writers to punctuate pragmatically. Construal-level theory supports
the counter-argument for syntactic punctuation. </span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-32578088589145337312013-06-06T16:11:00.002-07:002013-06-14T19:40:07.304-07:00Self-inducing far-mode: Approaches to preliminary outlining<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Since writing is an
inherently <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/construal">near-mode</a>
activity compared to reading, the effective author will self-induce a far-mode mindset,
and since you can outline in different modes, one approach is far-mode outlining.
The outlining methods corresponding to modes are constructing <i>logical</i> hierarchies and <i>abstraction</i> hierarchies, and while many
outlines use both methods, to self-induce a far-mode mindset you should stress abstraction
level.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In a logical
hierarchy, child topics imply parent topics (or the reverse) by strict deductive logic; the
relationship between mathematical concepts (polygon: square) or between causes
of action and their elements (defendant is liable for contract breach:
defendant formed a contract) form logical hierarchies. Despite the generality
of parent topics, logical relationships are near-mode: high construal (alternately, <i>far-mode</i> or <i>abstract construal</i>) denotes abstraction,
not necessarily logical generality. (The distinction is a common obstacle when
critics complain of construal-level-theory’s ambiguity.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">An abstraction
hierarchy runs from abstract parents to concrete children, where concepts that
are more abstract are those achieved by greater cognitive elaboration. (See Ulric
Neisser (1967) <i>Cognitive psychology</i>
[analysis-by-synthesis].) Abstract concepts are further removed from direct perception
than concrete concepts, and it takes more intuition to apply abstract concepts
than to apply concrete concepts. As the <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/02/construal-level-theory-and-matching.html">root
entry on construal-level theory</a> discussed, the death of Julius Caesar can
be described at different levels of abstractness: an outline depicting them
would run <i>kill</i>: <i>stab</i>: <i>knife</i> [verb sense].
<i>Kill</i> is the most abstract because
sensory information about the event is removed and a conceptual framework of
organisms (which can live or die) introduced; <i>knife</i> is the most concrete because it includes the implement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another contrast
between a logical and abstraction hierarchies is the strict directionality the
logical hierarchy alone exhibits, making it simply false to say <i>square</i> is <i>polygon</i>’s parent. Although abstraction hierarchies often have an
inherent direction, purpose or context can reverse it. <i>Stab</i> could be made the parent of <i>kill</i> and <i>wound</i> (alternative
results of stabbing), imposing a far-mode perspective on your thinking about <i>stab</i>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In legal briefs, imposing far-mode
can be illustrated by the relationship between issues and cases. An
abstraction-level outline might include the name of an important case as the
child of a parent stating an issue, but if your task were to analyze the case,
the issue could be a child. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Cases are
inherently more near-mode than legal issues, since they’re impregnated with
incidental facts, and lawyers focus excessively on cases compared to issues
when they emerge from their research stuck in near-mode due to temptation by logical
hierarchies. Logical hierarchies include the case-analysis protocols taught for
law-school exams: holding, parties, procedural posture, facts, issues, result—lawyers
stuck in near-mode overparticularize. To impose far-mode on your thinking about
a concrete case, persevere in abstraction-level outlining, and treat abstract
concepts pertaining to the case—such as analogies to the matter you’re briefing—as
more concrete than the case itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Other choices influence
the kind of hierarchies constructed; one is the distinction between a “mindmap”
and a linear outline, and the other between topic and full-sentence outlines. A
mindmap is a graphical outline radiating from a center point: the visual cues
de-emphasize both hierarchy and sequence, making mindmaps more conducive to abstraction-level
outlining; topic outlines are also more conducive to abstraction-level outlining, since
full-sentence outlines make logical entailment more prominent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>To induce
far-mode by preliminary outlining:</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1. Favor
abstraction-level hierarchies over logical hierarchies.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2. Impose far-mode
if your subject matter is concrete.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3. Try "mindmapping" software.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">4. Favor topic outlines over full-sentence outlines.</span></blockquote>
<ol>
</ol>
<br />Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-54912657546448671072013-05-06T10:49:00.000-07:002013-08-07T11:25:22.926-07:00Three senses of "conversational" writing<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">[Builds on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-classic-prose-review-of-clear.html">What
is classic prose?: "Clear and Simple as the Truth” reinterpreted through
construal-level theory</a></i>]</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Writing advice confuses
when it extols ambiguous virtues such as being “conversational,” a term that
might identify a manner of writing by any of three characteristics: stylistic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">similarity</i> to conversation, stylistic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">suitability</i> for conversation, and conversational <i>aim</i>. Whether a writer ought to strive for conversationality
depends on the term’s intended sense and the writer’s purpose.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">1. Similarity to ideal conversation: <span style="color: red;">Ideal conversation is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i>
ideal writing.</span> </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Conversation fundamentally
differs from writing in its reliance on nonverbal cues. Ideal conversation is
more <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/04/dialectic-of-clarity-cognitive-fluency.html">fluent</a> than ideal writing because of conversation’s reliance on the
nonverbal: where less needs be explicit, its cognitive load should be smaller. Ideal
classic or practical writing will lack the fluency of ideal conversation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">2. Suitability as conversation: <span style="color: red;">Ideal written sentences <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">might</i>
be ideal conversation.</span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Sentences
utterly unsuitable for conversation because they can’t be parsed in one hearing
do not conform to any established contemporary style. Although most writers
should avoid sentences that require rereading due to their structural and
semantic complexity, even this advice is conditional. Past styles have been
influential where the sentences demand rereading, for example, Samuel Johnson’s
(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Preface to Shakespeare</i>):</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">That praises are
without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honors due only to excellence
are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those,
who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of
paradox: or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory
expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses,
and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at
last bestowed by time. (From Thomas and Turner, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"Clear and Simple as the Truth"</i> at p. 15.)</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">3. Conversational aim: <span style="color: red;">Only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">some</i> writings
should have conversational aims.</span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Writing styles
taking a far-mode stance—styles which are “deeply” formal—can nonetheless seem
conversational if they deal with opinion rather than belief by working
through the intellectual issues and then presenting the results from a detached
perspective. This form of conversationality is correctly prized, but it isn’t
universally applicable. The practical style, ideal for a brief’s argument
section, generally won’t sound conversational, even in this sense, because the
legal-practical style typically requires describing the main results found in
judicial opinions, not working through intellectual issues.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-36170821547711566032013-04-19T18:13:00.001-07:002013-06-09T13:26:23.288-07:00What is classic prose?: "Clear and Simple as the Truth” reinterpreted through construal-level theory<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>The book</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Writing is only
good or bad relative to the author's tacit stance on deep questions
like whether truth is knowable, according to Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner in their
contrarian book, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(2nd ed. 2011).</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> While no style is in an absolute sense
better than another, they propose to explain and teach the style “classic
prose,” which they recommend for its perpetual reinvention as the instrument of
choice for broad influence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although written
mostly in classic style, the book itself is in ways disappointingly
unclassic. Rather than creating an elegantly seamless work as the classic
style encourages, the book is divided into three unequal parts: the Essay
(captivating), the Museum (repetitious), and the Studio (painfully dull; for starter,
describe a visual scene orally to a friend). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>My reinterpretation</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Fortunately,
construal-level theory affords insight into the mental states of writer and
reader that can bypass the Studio's tedious exercises. </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/02/construal-level-theory-and-matching.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">From
construal-level theory, I’ve adapted the distinction</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> between writing that
is self-contained, nuanced, and impartial (far-mode and “deeply formal”) and
writing that is context dependent, simplified, and overt (near-mode and “deeply”
informal). That distinction pertains to the author’s stance; another distinction
pertains to the objective: influential writing might <i>present</i> the author’s independent
thinking and seek to change the reader’s </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">opinion</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
or </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">describe</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> his considered </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">belief</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, dependent on what others opine.
</span><a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2013/04/115-why-do-we-confuse-belief-and.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Opinion
is near-mode and is related to the words agents say to themselves in
self-justification; belief is far-mode and is applied more often to others than
to oneself.</a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The relevant
styles for legal writing that Thomas and Turner present are those that respect the
<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/01/effective-writing-big-picture.html">Writing Virtues</a>, Clarity and Concision. The </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">chart below</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">depicts</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> the relevant
styles—plain, practical, and classic—each derived from a combination of the
level at which the author construes the message (STANCE) and its aim (TARGET).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNedmb3Upedg1u_Tind6XqKv3BxVi3zd1OimxsjI_r-eMx4ikNBMK1gtagA2uopXfOMW8Xm4VIOZ6edYNqQ6ko9EKUZuFGDBB6E5AMHKtahbjVfe9Uq5fXYAihMWpQOlhmRnA3S_hoTq8/s1600/Stance+and+Target.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="72" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNedmb3Upedg1u_Tind6XqKv3BxVi3zd1OimxsjI_r-eMx4ikNBMK1gtagA2uopXfOMW8Xm4VIOZ6edYNqQ6ko9EKUZuFGDBB6E5AMHKtahbjVfe9Uq5fXYAihMWpQOlhmRnA3S_hoTq8/s320/Stance+and+Target.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The difference
between practical style and classic style is that practical style addresses </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">belief</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and it aims, accordingly, to </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">persuade</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">; whereas the classic style
addresses </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">opinion</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and aims to </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">convince</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. Thomas and Turner consider the
in-house legal memorandum addressed to a superior prototypical practical style,
and legal briefs, too, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">are</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">mainly written in that style. The practical style
in legal application doesn’t hesitate to be explicitly argumentative because
the legal advocate can’t hide his partiality, as required by the classic style.
Yet the more classical a brief can be made, the better; the classic style is
the most effective for changing opinion. A brief must address the judge’s
beliefs by citing authorities, but it will accomplish the most reliable results
by reaching further to the judge’s personal impressions. Often, the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">facts</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> section can be written in
classic style.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Where the
practical style and the classic style differ from the plain style is their
self-contained </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/02/construal-level-theory-and-matching.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">deep
formality</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. This detachment and distance is key to writing intending to be
influential—whether convincing or merely persuasive—and the progressively
duller second and third parts of the book attempt to teach it by having the
reader master and extend the “classic visual scene,” which consists of equal conversationalists
viewing the same surroundings with reciprocal knowledge of their common perceptions.
The presentation of this scene, without the unarticulated gaps that pervade near-mode communication, amounts to approaching composition in far-mode. The <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/plain-talk-writing-new-literary.html">plain style, often purveyed as the model for contemporary writers</a>, imitates near-mode
communication and lacks the detached explicitness and nuance of far-mode
communication.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>My advice</b></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If you can move
your legal writing toward classic prose, you will improve it, but classic prose
is difficult to produce because it adapts a far-mode stance to the representation of
near-mode thought, allowing its dispassionate exploration. This is unnatural to
perform because in relating our </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">opinions</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
we naturally assume a rich, shared context. But for influential writing, classic
prose ranks highest on the Writing Virtues, </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">as this chart depicts</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiopiTrdqrqBcyyo6Vjvo2yKh_hBGuJzlJwXPUpkPVpST0AdHf31uv4D_iEKZDfflJWqBmjx2ooxr49oN7rNc_-R789jK8WdMRsI1gM5C18J1g-_RsKk_o0AfaHSbFGRr1JfddNFWlmdTM/s1600/Skills+and+Virtues.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiopiTrdqrqBcyyo6Vjvo2yKh_hBGuJzlJwXPUpkPVpST0AdHf31uv4D_iEKZDfflJWqBmjx2ooxr49oN7rNc_-R789jK8WdMRsI1gM5C18J1g-_RsKk_o0AfaHSbFGRr1JfddNFWlmdTM/s320/Skills+and+Virtues.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The pattern above
is that as the style comes to invoke an increasingly far-mode stance the writing
becomes less fluent but more cohesive and selectively omissive. Near-mode thought
is capable of superior articulation into parts, but far-mode affords the
superior sense of a cohesive whole and inattention to the incidental. The plain
to classic dimension </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/04/dialectic-of-clarity-cognitive-fluency.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">trades
off fluency for cohesion and omission</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, and for influential writing addressed
to serious, interested readers this advances both Writing Virtues.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>My conclusion</b></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/deceptive-writing-styles.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some
commentators</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> lay great stress on the deceptiveness of the classic style,
which conveys false tacit assumptions, such as the flattering appraisal that
the reader is truly interested in finding truth. Construal-level theory implies
these conventions are idealizations, employed by far-mode to grasp the
essential and exclude the distracting. Idealization is emblematic of far-mode
cognition. Thomas and Turner contend that all styles have characteristic epistemological
stands, but construal-level theory implies that that idealizations aren’t as
prominent in near-mode writing styles.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2013/05/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[Developed further in <i>Three senses of "conversational" writing</i>.] </span></a></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-58846815501864937272013-03-02T10:29:00.001-08:002013-04-03T21:29:22.970-07:00Verbosity affronts the court<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">An attorney’s pomposity
affronts the court, transgressing a </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/01/linguistic-register-or-what-is.html">status
formality</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. Since verbosity is a </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">signal</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
for pompous arrogance, it damages attorneys’ credibility—and their cases—more than
the profession recognizes.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 433.2pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The social function of pomposity<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To identify and understand
the phenomenon of pomposity, one must know its social function, which I find no
one has addressed. <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory">Signaling theory</a></i>,
a hybrid of economics, game theory, and evolutionary psychology, is the
analytic tool of choice for discerning what people are really trying to
accomplish when they’re pompous. People <i>signal</i>
to demonstrate possession of an otherwise invisible high-status trait, using
behavior that would be too costly to display if they lacked the trait. A
classic example is conspicuous consumption. Owning a huge house confers status
because it signals that the owner is rich enough to afford it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Its link to evolutionary
psychology takes signaling beyond <a href="http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/projects/centcat/centcats/fac/facch09_01.html">Thorstein
Veblen’s </a>conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. What makes
signals (like owning a big house) effective is not so much their present
correlation with status but the correlation in humankind’s evolutionary
history. Evolutionary psychology proposes that status is conferred by traits
that would make an individual a <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/caveman-politics/201111/do-we-really-prefer-taller-leaders">powerful
ally</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: red;">Under
the signaling framework, pomposity is a <i>costly
signal</i> because self-important displays by one unimportant discredits
the signaler as a liar. </span>One’s fellows in the primal human environment of
bands and tribes could easily discover such exaggeration. Today, the barriers
to ascertaining reputation make pomposity both harder to discredit and less
convincing. These limitations render pomposity a somewhat desperate gamble by
persons who feel <a href="http://www.reocities.com/grossmanpsych/Personality/Pompous.html">undervalued</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 433.2pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Verbosity and pomposity<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If the link between
pomposity and power is instinctual, so must be the means of expressing pompous
arrogance. <span style="color: red;">Verbosity, I contend, signals arrogance
because of a deep connection between claims to power and consumption of time
and space.</span> The connection can be seen in body language: adolescents
wanting to suggest they have the power to resist adult coercion, for example,
will assume a posture that occupies as much space as possible, sprawling over
their chairs. More controversially, you may also notice that the severely obese
are apt to be narcissistic and power-oriented. Analogously, the pompous will <a href="http://moreintelligentlife.com/print/1130">consume</a> ten minutes to
make a banal ten-second point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Verbosity, to be sure, isn’t
always or even usually caused by pomposity. More often, it’s the result of poor
writing skills or <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2008/03/prolixity.html">lack of grasp</a> of the subject matter, but a strong correlation
isn’t necessary when the impressions rest on an instinctual basis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 433.2pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Succinct writing avoids affront<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Adverse repercussions follow
for the verbose legal-brief writer. Verbosity is an implied challenge to the
court’s status because 1) it signals a claim to power and importance and 2) it
does so at the expense of the court’s time. Recall that <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/02/proofreading-credibility.html">burdening
the court</a> to the attorney’s personal advantage breaches a status formality.
<span style="color: red;">The court will perceive verbosity as self-promotion
achieved at the court’s expense—in time and, ultimately, in status.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Most
criticism of verbosity concerns its shortcomings as communication, but the unconsciously
experienced violation of a status formality represents a still greater
threat to a brief’s favorable reception. </span>Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-41989327098187826012012-12-22T10:41:00.001-08:002012-12-23T21:14:43.299-08:00A comma puzzle: The false-interjection error<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">If you enjoy puzzles about the comma—and who
doesn’t?—here’s an elegant but very difficult one, courtesy of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><a href="http://www.dailywritingtips.com/">Daily
Writing Tips</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> where Mark Nichol proved it’s difficult indeed by getting
it wrong, as did my wife, a short-story author with a postgraduate degree in
English. But it’s not impossibly hard, since the first commenter on Mark’s blog got
it exactly right. (I’ll delay the link so you can try it.)</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">In the form I’ll
use, the puzzle requires you to choose the <b>two</b>
correct versions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: #0070c0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="color: #0070c0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Version 1.</span></b><span style="color: #0070c0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> Residents decide driving</span><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">,</span></b><span style="color: #0070c0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">
and shorter trips to places like Canada are safer options.<br /><o:p></o:p></span><b><span style="color: #00b050; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Version 2.</span></b><span style="color: #00b050; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> Residents decide driving
and shorter trips</span><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">,</span></b><span style="color: #00b050; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> to places like Canada</span><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">, </span></b><span style="color: #00b050; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">are
safer options.<br /><o:p></o:p></span><b><span style="color: #7030a0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Version 3.</span></b><span style="color: #7030a0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> Residents decide driving</span><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">,</span></b><span style="color: #7030a0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">
and shorter trips to places like Canada</span><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">,</span></b><span style="color: #7030a0; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> are safer options.<br /><o:p></o:p></span><b><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #7F6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent4; mso-themecolor: accent4; mso-themeshade: 128;">Version 4.</span></b><span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #7F6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent4; mso-themecolor: accent4; mso-themeshade: 128;"> Residents decide
driving and shorter trips to places like Canada are safer options.<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">My wife chose <b><span style="color: #7f6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #7F6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent4; mso-themecolor: accent4; mso-themeshade: 128;">Version 4</span></b> alone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Mark Nichol chose
<b><span style="color: #7030a0;">Version 3</span></b>
and <b><span style="color: #7f6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #7F6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent4; mso-themecolor: accent4; mso-themeshade: 128;">Version 4</span></b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The correct answer
is <b><span style="color: #00b050;">Version 2</span></b>
and <b><span style="color: #7f6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #7F6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent4; mso-themecolor: accent4; mso-themeshade: 128;">Version 4</span></b> (with <b><span style="color: #00b050;">Version 2</span></b>
the more likely intended meaning).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Everyone agrees
that <b><span style="color: #7f6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #7F6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent4; mso-themecolor: accent4; mso-themeshade: 128;">Version 4</span></b> is
correct; the questions are why does Mark erroneously think <b><span style="color: #7030a0;">Version 3</span></b> is also correct and
why does my wife fail to recognize that <b><span style="color: #00b050;">Version 2</span></b> is correct? Mark’s explanation supports
<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/misconstruing-compound-as-elliptical.html">my previous claim</a> that among grammatically literate writers the most important
comma errors derive from or at least implicate grammar errors. My grander claim
is that comma errors create useless <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/fluency">cognitive
disfluencies</a>, since they affect the reader’s grammatical parsing. <b><span style="color: red;">In fields like
brief writing, where the highest levels of clarity are advantageous, repeated
comma errors—even if they’re subtle or controversial—summate to undermine <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/01/effective-writing-big-picture.html">Clarity</a>.</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Mark’s reasoning
expresses a more straightforward error in grammatical analysis than the error I
analyzed in <i><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/misconstruing-compound-as-elliptical.html">The fundamental error of comma usage</a></i>, as Mark claims that the string, <i><span style="color: #7030a0;">and shorter
trips to places like Canada,</span></i><span style="color: #7030a0;"> </span>in <b><span style="color: #7030a0;">Version 3</span></b>,<b><span style="color: #7030a0;"> </span></b>is
an interjection, but an interjection (like Oh!) is grammatically isolated from
the rest of the sentence. If the string were an interjection, the clause’s verb,
<i>are safer options</i>, should be singular
rather than plural. Since there’s no way to punctuate the sentence to make the
verb singular, the italicized string, which must form part of its clause’s
subject, can’t be an interjection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">But <b><span style="color: #00b050;">Version 2 </span></b>is
the correct answer if you’re allowed only one choice. The difference from <b><span style="color: #7f6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #7F6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent4; mso-themecolor: accent4; mso-themeshade: 128;">Version 4</span></b> is that
<i>to places like Canada</i><span style="color: #00b050;"> </span>is a <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/05/logical-grammar-restrictive-and.html">restrictive
modifier</a> in <b><span style="color: #7f6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #7F6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent4; mso-themecolor: accent4; mso-themeshade: 128;">Version 4</span></b> and a <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/05/logical-grammar-restrictive-and.html">descriptive
modifier</a> in <b><span style="color: #00b050;">Version
2</span></b>, and the descriptive meaning is more probable. Read closely, <b><span style="color: #7f6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #7F6000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: accent4; mso-themecolor: accent4; mso-themeshade: 128;">Version 4</span></b> advises shorter Canadian trips, whereas the
writer almost surely intended to advise limiting the length not just of trips
to Canada (and similar places) but trips in general. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-1759532725640953972012-12-05T16:15:00.000-08:002013-05-17T13:34:44.675-07:00Emphasis by brevity of sentences, paragraphs, and sections<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To emphasize an idea,
put it in a short sentence. To emphasize a sentence, put it in a short
paragraph. To emphasize a paragraph, put it in a short section. In general,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoQuote">
<b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Readers will give information relative emphasis in inverse
proportion to its density.</span></b></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I haven’t seen this
principle articulated, and it only became apparent to me through the lens of <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/construal">construal-level
theory</a>; although the tip to use very short sentences for occasional emphasis
is a commonplace, to use long sentences for de-emphasis isn’t. That the
principle hasn’t been generalized might be because the effect is often subtle:
it is only one of at least <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/06/emphasis-prosody-or-grammar.html">five
means of emphasis</a>, but a more interesting reason that the effect has gone unnoticed
will emerge, in that the construal processes explaining emphasis by brevity
also explain why writers aren’t apt to notice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ll begin with an example
at the sentence level. <b>Compare this very
long sentence to the constituent propositions:</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #00b0f0; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With capitalism’s evolution, a decreasing
proportion of the value produced is constituted of labor directly employed, an
increasing proportion from labor already concretized in capital goods, since
mechanization of production is the fundamental means to increasing economic
efficiency, where capital goods contribute to the value of a product to the
extent they are consumed in its production. </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2012/12/180-capitalism-and-socialism-express.html">Context</a></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">:
<i>Juridical Coherence</i>.)<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The simple ideas the
sentence contains, such as that mechanization of production is the fundamental
means to increasing economic efficiency, are commonplace ideas others have
expounded at length. To subordinate their importance to the ideas I deemed
novel, I demoted them by including them in one complex sentence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Construal-level
theory explains why emphasis by brevity works, by the low granularity of
far-mode. The theory predicts and experiments find that reading occurs in
far-mode, whereas writing occurs in near-mode (I conclude that the latter is <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/10/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html">lamentable</a>),
where far-mode apprehends in global units as we see from afar. In far-mode,
each sentence has equal value; the more thoughts occurring in a sentence, the
less the relative value of each. The theory also explains why emphasis by
relative brevity isn’t common knowledge. Even while writing in far-mode, the
writer is <i>nearer</i> his work than the
reader because the self-other axis is a major dimension of construal level, and
in near-mode, the longer sentence is more important than the shorter, rather
than the reverse—<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/10/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html">near-mode
adds when far-mode averages</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The phenomenon of
emphasis by brevity confirms some standard writing advice and rebuts other
standard advice. Commentators have expressed surprise at the degree to which
variation in sentence length improves comprehension, suggesting more is at work
than maintaining interest by variety. <span style="color: red;">Varying sentence length
makes writing clear by informing the reader how important the writer regards
each component idea.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The misguided advice
includes limiting sentences to one idea, implying writers should avoid compound
sentences (and <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/06/under-utilized-semicolon.html">semicolons</a>).
Compound sentences serve to de-emphasize the ideas they contain, so their avoidance sacrifices emphatic contrast. Other misguided advice concerns
paragraphs. <span style="color: red;">Consistently <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/03/shortened-paragraphs-undaunting-but_28.html">short paragraphs</a> have the same
leveling effect on importance as consistently short sentences</span>. And routine use of separate paragraphs for transitions between paragraphs is bad practice because
the merely transitional usually doesn’t merit emphasis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For a document’s sections,
one all-too-common practice gravely offends against construal-level theory. A <i>conclusion</i> is almost mandatory in legal
briefs and is necessarily short, but nonetheless, the emphasis it receives is often bestowed
on a platitude with an initial “whereas,” in all caps no less. <span style="color: red;">The better practice is to reserve a memorable idea for the
short concluding section.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-21691151542897583102012-11-21T14:52:00.000-08:002013-03-23T22:47:09.519-07:00Emphasis by typography<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Attorneys often
use boldface (and italics) to emphasize arguments, an overdone practice if it should be done
at all. Yet typographical emphasis seems effective in blog writing. Exploring
the reason for the difference might help refine the usage of typographical
emphasis in briefs—or preclude it.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Bloggers use typographical
emphasis effectively to highlight key <i>claims</i>,
but claims are rarely <i>key</i> in a legal
brief. Blog writing is an exercise in originality of conception, so it’s
incumbent on the blogger to draw attention to those original conclusions,
whereas legal briefing should seek to minimize the appearance of being
original. What warrants emphasis in briefs is argument, not conclusion.
Succinct conclusions are easily emphasized. But every part of an <i>argument</i> is equally important
objectively, and which part is most important subjectively depends on the
reader, so emphasizing part of an argument typographically creates a sense of
non sequitur, since the bolded argument doesn't pull its weight. Various parts
of the argument are more important for different readers, the emphasized
passage or words miscuing them. Typography is too crude a technique for
emphasizing parts of an argument, which must display the precise relationships among
its parts in nuanced fashion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Legal writers usefully
emphasize <i>headings</i> typographically,
but bolded headings must function <i>as</i>
headings if they are to avoid the heavy-handedness of bolding parts of
arguments. Rather than state part of the following argument, they should summarize or
describe the section of text they govern.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There’s also a
more speculative reason why bolding body text might always be a bad idea for
legal briefs: it may subtly offend the judge by violating a <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/01/linguistic-register-or-what-is.html">status
formality</a>, an informal rule designed to protect the judge’s status. One of
the common demands of rules of status formality in courtrooms is that lawyers
must always <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/02/proofreading-credibility.html">avoid
making their own work easier</a> at the expense of making the judge’s work
harder. Since it is actually a bit harder to read boldface than roman text, this
status formality might apply, the author having other means of emphasis that
don’t burden the judge. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-64027903218549326912012-10-23T12:58:00.001-07:002012-12-07T14:15:17.417-08:00Avoiding irrelevance and dilution: Construal-level theory, the endowment effect, and the art of omission<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Deciding what to
omit (</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">omission</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">) is one of </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/04/dialectic-of-clarity-cognitive-fluency.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">three
fundamental writing skills</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">—besides fluency and cohesiveness—supporting the
two major </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/01/effective-writing-big-picture.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Writing
Virtues</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">: Clarity and Concision. Although omission is a sophisticated skill
not acquirable through </span><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2008/04/rare-shortcut-to-better-writing.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">panaceas</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">,
it is unique among the three fundamental skills because a single roadblock
causes most of the congestion. The roadblock is the writer’s innate aversion to
deletion; the aversion derives from a universal cognitive bias called </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">loss aversion</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">, meaning we’d rather
maintain the status quo than bet a significant amount on the flip of a coin.
(See D. Kahneman, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Thinking, fast and slow</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">
(2011).) The most dramatic expression of loss aversion is the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">endowment effect</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">: owners will sell property
only at a much higher price than they would pay to acquire it. Loss aversion
explains an impressive part of wordy or <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2008/03/prolixity.html">irrelevant writing</a> because it makes adding matter easier than deleting it.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/02/construal-level-theory-and-matching.html">Construal-level
theory</a> is a theory about decision and judgment that explains loss
aversion and teaches us how to avoid it in writing. Construal-level theory
deals with the biases the distinction between practice and theory introduces
into our thinking. When our objectives are immediate, the information available
rich, and time bountiful, we analyze in a way of thinking called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i>,
which uses high-grain, concrete concepts and attends to incidental features.
When our objectives are long-term and the information or time scant, we analyze
in a way of thinking called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>, which uses low-grain, abstract
concepts and focuses on the essential. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Construal-level
theory furnishes an explanation of loss aversion and the endowment effect. (D.
Kahneman, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">supra</i>.) Consider a standard
example of the endowment effect: a holder of concert tickets costing $50, the
most the concert-goer would have paid, refuses to sell for $300. More usually,
we value property about twice as much just because we happen to own it already.
Construal-level theory explains loss aversion by the tendency to give greater
importance to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">near</i> than the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">far</i>. Analogously, we over-value what
we’ve written because it’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">near</i>, and
we’re loathe to part with it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Construal-level
theory has unearthed another source of our reluctance to cut inferior matter:
the audience reads in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>, which is global, but legal writers
often compose it in </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i></span>, which is sequential. The
consequence is that the audience averages the quality of the documents’ parts,
whereas the writer is apt to add their quality, meaning that,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for the audience, subpar arguments detract
from overall quality but, to the writer, they may seem to increase the quality.
(K. Weaver et al., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The presenter's
paradox</i> (Oct. 2012) 39 Journal of Consumer Research 445 [<a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/10/we-add-near-average-far.html">Hat Tip:
Overcoming Bias]</a>.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Construal-level
theory provides insights to help writers overcome the biases implicated in
writing i<span style="color: lime;"><span style="color: black;">n</span> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="color: lime;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i></span></span> for an audience reading in <i><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>.
Writing systems involving different roles for the author, such as the roles of
writer and editor, serve to vary the author’s mode. Specifically for brief
writing, Bryan Garner has advanced a more elaborate system of roles, which are distinctively
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">near</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">far</i>. (B. Garner, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The winning
brief</i> (1999) at p. 3) The <b>chart below</b> displays the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flowers</i> roles, their typical activities, and the mode mainly
engaged.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center">
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: currentColor; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext 2.25pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td style="border-color: currentColor currentColor windowtext; border-style: solid solid double; border-width: 2.25pt 1.5pt 1.5pt 2.25pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Flowers-paradigm role</b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-color: windowtext windowtext windowtext currentColor; border-style: solid solid double none; border-width: 2.25pt 1.5pt 1.5pt medium; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Typical activities</b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-color: windowtext windowtext windowtext currentColor; border-style: solid solid double none; border-width: 2.25pt 2.25pt 1.5pt medium; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Mode from construal-level theory</b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext; border-style: none solid solid; border-width: medium 1.5pt 1pt 2.25pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid .5pt; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: solid 2.25pt; mso-border-right-alt: solid 1.5pt; mso-border-top-alt: double windowtext 1.5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">Madman</span><span style="color: #44546a; mso-themecolor: text2;"></span></i></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext currentColor; border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: medium 1.5pt 1pt medium; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid .5pt; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-border-right-alt: solid 1.5pt; mso-border-top-alt: double windowtext 1.5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #0070c0;">Brainstorming, <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-irreversibility-of-writing_27.html">“Deep thought,”</a> background research</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext currentColor; border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: medium 2.25pt 1pt medium; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid .5pt; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-border-right-alt: solid 2.25pt; mso-border-top-alt: double windowtext 1.5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">Far</span><span style="color: #44546a; mso-themecolor: text2;"></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext; border-style: none solid solid; border-width: medium 1.5pt 1pt 2.25pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: .5pt; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: 2.25pt; mso-border-right-alt: 1.5pt; mso-border-style-alt: solid; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">Architect</span></i></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext currentColor; border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: medium 1.5pt 1pt medium; mso-border-bottom-alt: .5pt; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-border-right-alt: 1.5pt; mso-border-style-alt: solid; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #00b050;"><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2009/05/essential-outline.html">Outlining</a>, planning, detailed research</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext currentColor; border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: medium 2.25pt 1pt medium; mso-border-bottom-alt: .5pt; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-border-right-alt: 2.25pt; mso-border-style-alt: solid; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">Near</span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3;">
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext; border-style: none solid solid; border-width: medium 1.5pt 1pt 2.25pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: .5pt; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: 2.25pt; mso-border-right-alt: 1.5pt; mso-border-style-alt: solid; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">Carpenter</span></i></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext currentColor; border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: medium 1.5pt 1pt medium; mso-border-bottom-alt: .5pt; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-border-right-alt: 1.5pt; mso-border-style-alt: solid; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #0070c0;">Primary writing</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext currentColor; border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: medium 2.25pt 1pt medium; mso-border-bottom-alt: .5pt; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-border-right-alt: 2.25pt; mso-border-style-alt: solid; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">Far</span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 4; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext; border-style: none solid solid; border-width: medium 1.5pt 2.25pt 2.25pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">Judge</span></i></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext currentColor; border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: medium 1.5pt 2.25pt medium; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #00b050;">Editing, proofreading</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-color: currentColor windowtext windowtext currentColor; border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: medium 2.25pt 2.25pt medium; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 159.6pt;" valign="top" width="266"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">Near</span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Madman</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> is </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far </span></i></span>because it encourages intuition, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>
product. (See G. Gigerenzer, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gut
feelings: The Intelligence of the unconscious</i> (2008).) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Architect</i> is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i> because it accentuates logical
relationships, which depend heavily on sequencing, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i> activity. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Carpenter</i> is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i> because it attempts to
make ideas intelligible to others. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Judge</i>
is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i>
because it involves close reading for error.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The alternation
of phases is powerfully effective in engaging both modes without causing the
mutual interference to which they are prone when combined simultaneously. It is
so effective that the modes can be seen to alternate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">within</i> roles. Although <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madman</i>
is predominantly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>,
it includes periods of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i> activity, such as close reading of
selected cases. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Judge</i>, although
mostly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i>,
may include <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>
phases, such as hearing the document read aloud. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Carpenter</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Architect</i>
usually alternate more than once, because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/07/you-too-have-optimal-sentence-length.html">Carpenter<span style="font-style: normal;"> excels at abstraction and </span>Architect<span style="font-style: normal;"> at sequencing.</span></a></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Construal-level
theory offers <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>
as the remedy for excess. Because of the relationship between the endowment
effect and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i>,
cutting excess is performed most effectively in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>, and typical problems
in legal writing occur when lawyers compose their briefs in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i>,
often because they write their briefs while they read cases closely. The result
is not only the absence of the big picture but also an accumulation of excess.
To avoid much of this excess, learn to write in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>, and master the research
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i>
in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Architect</i> phase.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Some common
advice is misguided because it contributes to excess. Writers are often
instructed to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madmen</i> in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Carpenter</i> role, but although both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madman</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Carpenter</i> are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Carpenter</i>
provides the opportunity to pare down irrelevant matter generated in the Madman
phase, and the advice to suspend the critic when doing primary writing
sacrifices the main opportunity to trim excess. This shouldn’t be left to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Judge</i>, as editing is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i>
activity, and among the errors the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Judge</i>
isn’t good at correcting is excess. The erroneous advice comes from seeing an
alternation between writer and critic rather than between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i> and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0070c0;">far-mode</span></i>
phases are good for trimming excess, as the writer can take steps to stem
excess in the <i>Madman </i>role despite heeding the advice to suspend the
critic. Although this advice applies to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madman</i>,
not to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Carpenter</i>, when applied to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madman</i> it admits critical comments. To
take advantage of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madman</i> to
combat excess, treat critical ideas related to scope and breadth just as you
would any other ideas. If you’re brainstorming, if you think you’ve come up
with an idea of doubtful relevance, you should note that thought alongside the
idea itself. Having added exclusion as an idea, you will later be unable to
avoid discarding one idea or the other, the marginal thought itself and the
imperative to disregard it. Therefore, <i><span style="color: #00b050;">near-mode</span></i>’s
reluctance to part with sentences will resist rejecting the idea to discard as
much as it resists rejecting the idea itself.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-53343549882487784672012-10-01T17:41:00.001-07:002012-10-05T21:07:06.471-07:00Uncomfortable ideas and disfluent expression affect us similarly<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Cognitive fluency</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Integrating the
research on cognitive fluency and cognitive dissonance can enrich our understanding
of the cognitive strain (or excessive disfluency) produced by convoluted
expression. I’ve <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/fluency">extensively
discussed</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>research on cognitive
fluency-disfluency, whose basic lesson is that when a message is understood
effortlessly it is more believable. Daniel Kahneman in his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1349149139&sr=8-1">landmark work</a> in
cognitive psychology, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thinking, Fast and
Slow</i> (2011) at pp. 62 – 64, provides the following advice on minimizing cognitive strain in persuasive writing:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<ul><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
<li>Maximize
<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2008/10/fonts-arent-frivolous.html">legibility</a>.</li>
<li>Do not use
<a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2010/03/legalese-ritualized-pomposity.html">complex language</a> when simpler language will do.</li>
<li>Make the message
memorable.</li>
<li>Choose sources
with names that are <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/10/richard-posner-versus-bryan-garner-on.html">easy to pronounce</a>.</li>
</span></ul>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span>
<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Cognitive dissonance</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The term now part of the vernacular,</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> cognitive dissonance</i>, a social-psychology research program started
by Leon Festinger in 1956, refers to our
aversion to disharmonious ideas, but there’s unfortunately no quick way to understand what disharmonizes ideas. You have to grasp the concept from key experiments. I
present two, displaying the breadth of the cognitive-dissonance concept:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the “$1 and
$20 experiment,” subjects performed a boring task, which they understood as the
experiment’s real purpose, and they then sought to persuade another subject to
participate on the ground that the experience was interesting. One group was
offered $1 and the other $20 for their persuasive efforts (today’s values would
be inflated by a factor of 7.5). Both groups subsequently evaluated the boring
task’s enjoyability. The then-surprising result, as Festinger predicted, was
that the subjects receiving $1 rated the boring task more interesting than did
the subjects receiving $20. The counter-intuitiveness of the results is what
made cognitive dissonance the most popular research program in social
psychology in the 1960s: under the reigning reinforcement theory, the subjects
in the $20 condition should have rated the task more interesting, since they were
reinforced (rewarded) more for claiming it was interesting. Festinger had predicted
the results by reasoning that the subjects in the $1 condition would experience
more cognitive dissonance due to the disharmoniousness <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>between the two beliefs: 1) they had misrepresented
a boring task and 2) they had done it for a mere dollar. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In another study, Festinger observed a group of fanatics who believed the end of
the world was nigh and sought to prepare for it. When the world didn’t end,
rather than relinquish their belief, they elaborated and deepened it by
explaining away the disconfirmation and becoming yet more fanatical. To make
their beliefs more harmonious, they construed the apparent disconfirmation as
confirmation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">While my concern
is to apply cognitive-dissonance research to cognitive strain, which is
directly relevant to writing persuasively, cognitive fluency also clarifies
cognitive dissonance, needing clarification because defining the
<i>harmoniousness</i> that reduces dissonance is elusive. Social psychologist Eliot
Aronson had proposed that cognitive dissonance comes from conflicts with
self-concept, but recent research hasn’t supported this interpretation: choices
affect beliefs even when the earlier beliefs are forgotten. (See Coppin et. al,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I'm No Longer Torn after Choice: How
Explicit Choices Implicitly Shape Preferences for Odors</i> (2010) Psychological
Science 21(4) 489 ‒ 493.) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Cognitive-fluency theory suggests that disharmonious
(<i>dissonant</i>) beliefs are beliefs whose understanding takes effort. They are
<i>disfluent </i>beliefs</span></b><span style="color: black;">, although the disfluency arises not from the
manner of expression, as in cognitive-fluency research, but from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">content</i> of the beliefs.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Just as
cognitive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disfluency</i> is useful in
persuasion, so is cognitive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dissonance</i>,
although the uses of dissonance, like <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/09/cognitive-disfluency-simpler-isnt.html">those of disfluency</a>, have been largely overlooked.
To discourage the error of ignoring dissonance’s uses, I’ll offer a few obvious
examples supporting the position that just as there’s an optimal level of
fluency, so there’s an optimal level of dissonance needed to maintain a reader’s
interest. It’s well known that skilled readers of fiction prefer complex to
simple characters; paradox can be useful in exposition; and implausible beliefs
and even logical contradiction have helped make religions popular—as with the Trinity
doctrine.</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Lessons for persuasive
writing</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Now for what
cognitive dissonance research implies about cognitive fluency. The research on
cognitive dissonance conceives it as a drive to reduce an unpleasant arousal
state: we’re motivated to reduce dissonance. (Kiesler and Pallak, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Arousal properties of dissonance
manipulations</i> (1976) Psychological Bulletin, 83(6), 1014 ‒ 1025.) Cognitive-fluency researchers haven’t considered the
motivation behind the preference for cognitive ease, but if cognitive-dissonance reduction is due to the motive that also enhances the believability of fluent messages, that has lessons for writers. The difference
is that cognitive strain's unpleasantness motivates the reader to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reject</i> the disfluent expression, not only to find the
fluent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">credible</i>. The analogy to cognitive
dissonance suggests that when we <i>disbelieve </i>the disfluent, it’s because <i>believing
</i>the disfluent is uncomfortable. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Since we <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/03/unity-of-comprehension-and-belief-and.html">must
believe to understand</a>,</span> unpleasant affect associated with the effort to
understand prejudices the reade</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">r </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">against the proposition
itself even when it’s later expressed clearly. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">The implication is that
persuasive writers should avoid unwarranted disfluencies even when they're immediately clarified.</span></b> If a concept is hard to understand without examples, prematurely presented conceptualizations <i>undermine</i> subsequent
understanding. It's
better to introduce the examples <i>before </i>the proposition they support. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Cognitive strain's unpleasantness </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">supports using the method of
successive approximations for introducing complex ideas. To use successive
approximation, the writer presents a simplified concept that is subsequently
elaborated in a series of changes, each simple enough
to avoid cognitive strain.</span></div>
Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-9603058206993108892012-07-16T16:18:00.000-07:002012-10-02T16:05:35.930-07:00You, too, have an optimal sentence length<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Plain-writing
proponents advise you to check your documents’ average sentence lengths to
guarantee against excess: Bryan Garner recommends an
average of 20 words per sentence, and some plain writers recommend 15. <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/ineffable-voice-immutability-of-writers.html">Since every writer has an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">optimal</i> average
sentence length</a>, <b>the better advice is to use your own optimum rather than
an arbitrary standard</b>. I find, in fact, that when the average sentence length departs
from my average, the document needs more work. Nobody has previously explained why writers
consistently prefer a certain average sentence length, but inasmuch as <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/search/label/voice">“writer’s voice”</a>
is mostly sentence length, an explanation could help writers find their “true
voice.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
I assume excellent writers prefer their strengths to their
weaknesses, and I hypothesize that <b>optimal sentence length is a trade-off between
two abilities integral to writing: abstraction and </b><b>sequencing</b>. Typically, we
construct sentences by abstraction and paragraphs by sequencing. Constructing a
coherent sentence requires abstracting a suitably deep idea, but linking
sentences to form cohesive paragraphs requires attending to their sequential
relations. Long sentences capitalize on the writer’s ability to entertain
a complex abstraction to be stated in words. Short sentences capitalize on the
writer’s ability to link ideas in successive sentences. To make the most of
their ability to entertain complex abstractions, writers strong on abstraction
compared to sequencing will write long sentences, and to make the most of their
ability to sequence thought, writers strong on sequencing compared to
abstraction will write short sentences.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The distinction between abstraction and sequencing sounds
somewhat like right and left hemisphere, but it isn’t. Here, we’re not talking
about whether the internal processing<i> </i>is simultaneous or serial but whether the
output is a unified abstraction or a sequence. <b>The dimension of
relative strength in abstraction compared to sequencing most resembles <a href="http://disputedissues.blogspot.com/2012/02/construal-level-theory-and-matching.html">construal
level</a>:</b> abstraction being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">far</i> (resulting
from abstract construal) and sequencing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">near</i> (resulting from concrete construal). Personal
consistencies in tendency to think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">far</i>
or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">near</i> are shown, as in the finding that people who wake up
late and prefer to work at night (“night owls”) tend to think <i>far</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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<a href="http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html">One
educator’s questionnaire</a> estimates your position on what amounts to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">far</i> versus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">near</i> thinking, conceived as Global-versus-Sequential learning
style. (Hat tip: <a href="http://wordsideasandthings.blogspot.com/2012/06/learning-styles-questionnaire.html">Words, Ideas, and Things</a>.) <span style="color: black;">I’d be interested in anyone’s
results measuring their sentence lengths and testing their Global-Sequential
position.</span> My average sentence length is 25 and Global-Sequential learning-style score is
7 (moderately high Global). </div>
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If you apply this test, bear in mind these caveats:
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1. Short documents will diverge from your average due to random statistical fluctuation. <br />
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2. Some documents should diverge from your optimum when the need to write in a particular voice outweighs achieving your highest literary quality. <br />
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3. Any document will not only be more interesting but also clearer if you vary the sentences' length. </div>
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Stephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.com4