0:00

David, you know what everybody's problem is? What? Too

0:02

many words. If you're trying to say something

0:04

in public right now and you want to get

0:06

noticed and you want to get remembered and

0:08

you want people to say, wow, look at that.

0:10

It's so hard because there's a million other

0:12

people all trying to do it at the same

0:14

time. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

0:16

So my project is trying to see what we

0:18

can learn about how to deal with that

0:20

problem by looking at people historically who've said things

0:22

that work that way. Before, not because there

0:24

is an internet but because there is kind of

0:26

an internet of time that time is kind

0:29

of a tournament. And things that still sound great

0:31

after a long time after they were said,

0:33

you can say that's something that stood out. That's

0:35

something that was well said. That's something that

0:37

was notably eloquent. You think of all the billions

0:39

of utterances and a few have risen to

0:41

the surface and still we still look back at

0:43

those things and say, wow. Well, if you're

0:45

thinking about how to make people say wow now,

0:47

sometimes it helps, I think, to look at

0:49

how people have managed to say that over the

0:51

years. So let's talk about tools for the

0:53

purpose. That's what I want to do. Well, one

0:55

of the things you said to me is that

0:57

everyone who speaks language is basically bilingual.

0:59

Everyone who speaks the English language. Right,

1:01

exactly. So what do you mean

1:03

by that? What I mean by that

1:06

is in English, there's basically

1:08

almost always two words for everything. They're

1:10

sort of a bigger word, a fancier one,

1:12

and there's a smaller, humbler one. So

1:14

if I say a verb like create, that'd

1:16

be the fancier version of another verb.

1:18

What's the other verb? Make. Make, right. Or

1:20

if I say acquire. Get. To get,

1:23

right. Or if I say I'm going to

1:25

permit somebody to do something, what's that?

1:27

Yeah, you could let them do it. What

1:29

were you thinking? No, that was what

1:31

I was thinking. It's just what I was

1:33

thinking. But you could do it with

1:35

other kinds, with nouns. What's a fancier word

1:37

for light? Illumination.

1:40

Exactly. And a

1:42

fancier word for

1:44

something's last in order. The final.

1:46

The final one. Right. Exactly.

1:49

Right. Correct. Exactly. We got it.

1:51

David, you're rocking. So why

1:53

is this important? So this is

1:55

not just a coincidence. English

1:57

is made out of two languages.

2:00

that were sort of tributaries into it.

2:02

You've got languages from invaders from

2:04

what we would now think of

2:06

as Germany, who brought their language

2:08

with them. And then about 500

2:11

years later, you had the invasion

2:13

of the French, and they bring

2:15

their language with them. And they're

2:17

sort of, they're the language with

2:19

them. And they're sort of, they're

2:21

the invaders, they're the language with

2:24

them. And they're sort of, they're

2:26

the invaders, they're, they're the invaders,

2:28

and they're usually. a word that

2:30

derives from old German and a

2:32

word that derives from French and

2:34

before that from Latin. The Germanic

2:37

words we call Saxon, usually, and

2:39

the other ones we can call

2:41

romance words because they're from Latin,

2:43

which is the language of Rome,

2:45

so it's romance, or it's from

2:47

Latin, which is the language of

2:49

Rome, so it's romance, or Latin

2:51

eight words. But you've got these

2:53

two families, and as a writer,

2:55

you're always picking words. And once

2:57

you realize that. that there are all these

3:00

choices to make, you can start playing with

3:02

the choices and making them more deliberately to

3:04

get the effects you want. And great writers

3:06

have always understood this, and they've always done

3:08

it. For good writers, if you have to

3:11

have one rule, is prefer Saxon words to

3:13

romance words or Latinate words. Now, you don't

3:15

need to actually know the difference. Say, well,

3:17

I don't know. They don't see a dramatic

3:20

word in a second. Well, look. prefer

3:22

simple words to fancy ones. But you

3:24

can even fit, even if you don't

3:26

know anything about Latin or French, you

3:28

can figure out which words or which

3:30

without too much trouble. The words

3:33

that are from French or before

3:35

that Latin, they're usually words that

3:37

are easily turned into other parts

3:39

of speech and expanded. So acquire

3:41

is the verb, but it can

3:43

become acquisitive or acquisition. With a Latinate

3:45

word, you can often put a TIO

3:47

in it. You can't do that with

3:49

get. For a choir, you can say

3:52

acquisition. For get. The word get. I

3:54

mean, instead of acquiring it, you get it,

3:56

you can't. There's no way to put T.I.O. in

3:58

on that. You can say get it. or

4:00

gotten or something but you can't

4:02

do as much that's how Saxon

4:04

words work they just sound different

4:06

also Saxon words have usually are

4:08

they're shorter you know we think about our

4:10

four -letter words for expressing things colorfully those

4:12

are usually Saxon words because Saxon words

4:14

tend to be short and they've got hard

4:16

sounds in them like like CK think

4:19

about how many about how many of those

4:21

words we're thinking about have those sounds

4:23

in them and yeah that's because they're they're

4:25

basically Germanic and sharper and that's what

4:27

you want when you want to say something

4:29

with that tenor if you want to

4:31

say something politely you use the word from

4:33

from French they came in English from French

4:35

so if you want to say it bluntly

4:37

you say kill but if you want to be

4:39

polite about it you say execute or terminate

4:42

because executing terminate came in to

4:44

English from French and you can

4:46

tell that because they can become

4:48

words like execution termination but kill

4:50

doesn't do that yeah just

4:52

kill killing show me some examples

4:55

yeah let's do some examples

4:57

so if you want to say

4:59

something really important you say

5:01

it in Saxon so and

5:04

God said let there

5:06

be light and there was light

5:08

Genesis 1 3 one of

5:10

the most memorable things ever written

5:12

in English it's an amazing utterance in

5:14

part because what do we have here

5:16

let's see 11 Saxon words

5:18

and nothing but and

5:21

the King James Bible is very

5:23

famous for that for the tremendous

5:25

simplicity of the language it's all

5:27

one syllable words words that have

5:29

been in English for a very

5:31

long time and I think that

5:33

the authors of the King James

5:35

Bible the translators they understood instinctively

5:37

and probably more than instinctively why

5:39

that was so valuable because you're

5:41

compressing something so significant and profound

5:43

and important into words that are

5:45

so humble that it creates

5:47

this sense of of strength

5:49

and power that you just wouldn't

5:51

have with fancier words some people think you need fancier

5:54

Latin a words to create a sense of strength and

5:56

power in your writing they sometimes put you sometimes wonder

5:58

why do people say a choir when they could say get.

6:00

Why do they say create when they could

6:02

say make? Well even the drafters of

6:04

the Bible said in a couple verses

6:07

earlier, God created. They have it in

6:09

there if they thought about that too.

6:11

But it's always a choice. Which way

6:13

do you say it? They could have said God

6:16

made it. Well they decided not to

6:18

do that. Well they decided not to

6:20

do that. If you're the drafter, which

6:23

way do you say it? They could have

6:25

said God made it. Well they decided

6:27

not to. And often people will pick

6:29

the Latinate word because they think it

6:31

sounds a little more impressive. Because think

6:33

of the heritage of it. The Latinate

6:35

words go back to the original aristocracy

6:38

that came in from France. So they

6:40

still have that whiff of class or

6:42

sometimes of pomposity. And some people go

6:44

for them because they think it'll make

6:46

them sound smarter. And it turns out

6:48

that when you really know what you're

6:50

talking about, one way to know is

6:52

you can explain yourself in Saxon words.

6:55

That's how you really know when you

6:57

understand something well enough, it seems to

6:59

me. But in any event, it's just

7:01

an example of the tradition of heavily

7:03

Saxon English in the King James Bible,

7:05

which is a very interesting thing we

7:07

can come back to. Let me show you

7:09

a different example that I know is

7:11

dear to you, David, I know you'll

7:13

enjoy, everybody will enjoy this. Famous words

7:15

from Winston Churchill. Let me read it.

7:17

Yeah, you want to read it, you

7:19

do it. We shall fight on the

7:21

beaches. We shall fight on the landing

7:23

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

7:25

and in the streets. We shall fight in

7:28

the hills. We shall never

7:30

surrender. Winston Churchill 1940. House

7:32

of Commons. That's right. So

7:34

England's facing the prospect of

7:36

invasion. There's no actual recording

7:39

of this speech. Very much too

7:41

bad. There's a recording from saying

7:43

it later. But in any event,

7:45

what do you... There's a lot

7:47

of... This is one of the most famous...

7:49

speech is ever given in English. And,

7:51

you know, to what does it, oh, it's

7:53

immortality? I mean, it sounds amazing now,

7:56

it sounded amazing then. People read that

7:58

and they say, that's a speech. There's

8:00

a lot of reasons for it. One

8:02

of them is, of course, this device

8:04

that in ancient times in Greek

8:06

was called an aphora, which

8:08

is repeating the same beginning at

8:10

the start of different sentences or clauses. We

8:12

shall fight. We shall fight. We shall

8:14

fight. That's what most people think of when

8:16

they think of this. But there's more

8:18

going on there. And real quick, what does

8:21

the repetition do for us? Oh, let's

8:23

spend some more time on that. But the

8:25

repetition really captures the ear. It drives

8:27

home. The beginning and the end of a

8:29

sentence are the most important parts of

8:31

it. The parts that tend to ring in

8:33

the ear the strongest. And so starting

8:35

repetitive sentences repeatedly with these words, it leaves

8:37

those words hanging in the ear. It's

8:39

what you remember. And you remember some of

8:41

the details about where the fighting was going

8:43

to occur. You remember the beaches, you remember

8:45

the others. But what you remember is, we

8:47

shall fight. Well, real quick, I almost think

8:49

of it like a soccer game where the

8:51

game is normally at a certain volume and

8:53

then the announcers get really loud as you

8:55

get close to a goal. And I think

8:57

of this repetition as being the announcers getting

8:59

really loud. And the reason why I think

9:01

of that analogy is you don't want the

9:03

entire speech to be this kind of repetition.

9:06

He wants this to be

9:08

a main point to basically say

9:11

you, to basically get you to

9:13

a place where listening up to

9:15

say, this is important because those

9:17

words at the end are the

9:19

crucial moments. That's when the goal

9:21

is scored. But through repetition, he's

9:23

subliminally signaling to you, listen,

9:26

this is important. Man, I think that's a

9:28

fantastic point. I mean, another way to

9:30

put what you're saying, it seems to me

9:32

is that the ordering of words and

9:34

the uses of devices like repetition, it can

9:36

almost work like punctuation would, like an

9:38

exclamation point would, or like a rising tone

9:40

of voice would. I mean, this speech

9:43

must have been amazing to hear. It's amazing

9:45

to read. And one reason it's

9:47

amazing to read is that by

9:49

using the repetition of phrases, it creates

9:51

in the ear this thing you're

9:53

describing the same way that that's why

9:55

it reminds you of the announcer.

9:58

Because you're hearing that, not reading it,

10:00

but by reading this, it creates

10:02

some of that. same feeling that the intonation would if you

10:04

could hear it out loud. It's very interesting that way. So this is

10:06

a beautiful utterance for many reasons,

10:08

and it is surrounded by

10:10

additional beautiful language that we can't

10:13

all cover at once. But one thing

10:15

to notice about this is remarkable is

10:17

32 Saxon words in a row. That might not

10:19

sound like a lot, but you go try

10:21

to go write 32 Saxon words in a

10:23

row. It's not quite, and to say something

10:25

that worth saying. It's not as easy as

10:27

it sounds. In English, there's a natural.

10:29

I don't actually know the ratio, but there's

10:31

sort of a range of natural ratios between

10:34

Saxon, Latina, words, and ordinary speech. And to

10:36

go 32 words in row with no latinate

10:38

words, now you might think, oh, he wasn't

10:40

thinking about that. Oh, he almost certainly was.

10:42

Churchill wrote about this. He said, I mean,

10:44

he wrote about rhetoric, and he said, in

10:46

English. the oldest words, the Saxon words, are

10:49

the ones that strike deepest. And when you

10:51

really want to strike deep, you stay there.

10:53

He said, you don't use the recent entries

10:55

into the language that came here from French.

10:57

I mean, the funny part is the recent

10:59

entries came in, you know, only eight or

11:01

nine hundred years earlier, right? Way too recent for

11:04

us. But he knew all, he cared about that,

11:06

and he thought a lot about it. So when

11:08

he wrote this, I don't know if he was

11:10

saying they're thinking they're thinking their thinking, thinking, thinking,

11:13

thinking, thinking, gee, gee, gee, gee, gee, gee, gee,

11:15

gee, gee, gee, etymology, that's not the issue, but

11:17

he knew the sound he wanted, he knew the

11:19

force and strength he wanted, he went back to

11:21

the same well that the translators of the King

11:24

James Bible went back to, which is keep it

11:26

very simple and very sex and the more profound

11:28

the substances, and it really creates a

11:30

beautiful effect. The profundity of the

11:32

substance of what he's saying, packed

11:35

into this long series of extremely

11:37

simple, unpretentious, unimpressive words. It's like

11:39

the words burst at their seams, you

11:41

know, very beautiful, very beautiful.

11:43

As long as we're doing

11:45

church-o. How about this? Never

11:48

in the field of human

11:50

conflict was so much owed

11:52

by so many to so few. Set

11:54

in the House of Commons a

11:57

few months after the last

11:59

one. of those things. Anybody who's ever

12:01

read or heard this remembers it. This

12:04

is said during the Battle of

12:06

Britain where the few he's talking

12:08

about are pilots in the air

12:10

over Britain fighting off Nazi air raiders.

12:12

It's a great piece of English. For

12:14

many reasons there's a lot going on here. It's

12:16

just like the last one where there's a certain

12:18

amount of repetition so much, so many, so

12:21

few. That's part of

12:23

just as in the previous one we had an

12:25

afra with the repetition at the start of the

12:27

different sentences but there's also another drama going on

12:29

in here which is just between the kinds of

12:31

words he's using. Human conflict. Those

12:33

are Latinate French words. They

12:35

can become things like humanity

12:37

or... Conflictual. Yeah, right exactly.

12:39

Was so much owed by

12:41

so many to so few.

12:43

Everything after that, every word

12:45

is Saxon, right? And

12:47

it's mostly one syllable words. So he

12:50

starts out never in the field of

12:52

human conflict was so much owed by

12:54

so many to so few. This is

12:56

a technique that a lot of great

12:58

writers have used a tremendous effect which

13:00

is starting out with setting up the

13:02

run of very simple words that you

13:05

finish with with something a little fancier

13:07

at the start to create that contrast.

13:09

It's sort of like you said with

13:11

the football announcers. You don't want

13:13

everything to be the same in rhetoric.

13:15

You want to set up the

13:17

Saxon words with the non -Saxon words.

13:19

So the ear has been hearing other

13:21

things and it's primed to really

13:23

be struck by the contrast when those

13:25

words come in. Those little one

13:27

syllable stony Saxon words. There's

13:30

something else I wanted to mention about this as long as we're talking about

13:32

it. If anybody who's made it

13:34

with us this far probably cares about words

13:36

there. So I wanted

13:38

to point out of course the sentence

13:40

is in the passive voice, right?

13:43

It's a passive construction owed by

13:45

so many to so few.

13:47

You know something's passive when

13:49

it either says it's owed by

13:51

or you could add by to

13:53

the end of it. But in this

13:55

case it's passive and you're reading

13:57

so many books about English. Avoid the

13:59

passive voice. over again. Whatever you do,

14:01

don't use the passive voice. It's the

14:03

crutch of bad writers. Of course, sometimes

14:06

it is, but some of the most

14:08

beautiful things in English, even in

14:10

the passive voice, you know, all men

14:12

are created equal. Wow. Create it equal.

14:14

You could buy anything of that, couldn't

14:16

you? You could. They didn't want to

14:19

make it active. He didn't want to

14:21

make this active either. If you made

14:23

it active, what would he have said?

14:25

Never in the field. I mean, because

14:27

you could be imagined drafting. I think,

14:29

hmm, this is passive. My editor has

14:31

told me that I should never use

14:33

passive constructions. Perhaps I should change this.

14:35

You imagine the new Winston Churchill saying,

14:37

never in the field of human conflict

14:40

have so many owed so much to so

14:42

few. That would be non-passive. You could say

14:44

that. Wouldn't. Wouldn't be as good. with so

14:46

much owed by and that what's left

14:48

over is so many to so few

14:51

so you get that beautiful contrast and

14:53

the rhythms better and different. I'm not

14:55

here to say the passive voice is

14:57

this thing every people should use unthinkingly.

14:59

My view about the passive voice is

15:01

just my view about the passive voice is

15:03

just make sure you've got a good reason

15:05

for what you're doing as far as I'm

15:08

concerned. That's the master rule. I mean I

15:10

follow all rules of style and grammar and

15:12

encourage others to but if you need to

15:14

break a rule. Just make sure you

15:16

know why you're doing it. Yep.

15:19

All right. Ready for another? Bring

15:21

it on. Back to the

15:23

Bible. Let me read it. Go.

15:25

Every kingdom divided against

15:28

itself is brought to

15:30

desolation. And every city

15:33

or house divided against itself

15:35

shall not stand. One of

15:37

the things that the last

15:39

one had, that this one

15:42

has too, is a sense

15:44

of contrast. black and white,

15:46

light and dark throughout the

15:48

Bible as well. And there was

15:50

so many, so few, and here

15:52

we have against itself. Let's

15:55

see. Does this one have

15:57

the contrast in the same way

15:59

or no? Well, I think it does,

16:01

but I mean, let's put it this

16:03

way. Does anything strike you as Saxon

16:05

about this? Are there moments? Shall not

16:08

stand is what I see. Right. I

16:10

mean, so part of what you're, part of

16:12

what I'm trying to show here is, in

16:14

the last couple of examples I've showed this,

16:16

is that in English, I said, if you

16:18

have to have one rule, let it

16:21

be prefer Saxon words to Latin eight

16:23

words, but the great writers they

16:25

don't use Saxon, you know, old-fashioned

16:27

words and bigger ones, and they mix

16:29

them a little bit to create these

16:32

beautiful effects by contrast. So every kingdom

16:34

divided against itself is brought to desolation.

16:36

Why don't you tell you? That's Latinate.

16:38

It's got the TIO and right on

16:40

the end of it. Right. And same

16:42

with divide, it could be division, right?

16:44

This is a fancier passage. And every

16:47

city or house divided against itself shall

16:49

not stand. And this is also the

16:51

King James bottle. Right. All these Bible

16:53

examples are King James Bible, which has

16:55

had such a gigantic influence on the

16:57

language in such wonderful ways. And we'll

16:59

do an example right now. Next slide,

17:01

you're going to see. And the slides.

17:03

You don't use slides around. Here you

17:06

use something. This is at school, Lord. All

17:08

right. Just look at how the two halves

17:10

of this end. Every kingdom divided

17:12

against itself shall not stand.

17:14

and it comes down to this close. And

17:16

that's a very classic rhetorical pattern is to,

17:19

it's just like the previous one, we're talking

17:21

about the field of human conflict, is the

17:23

Latinate beginning, and then never has so much

17:25

been owed by so many to so few,

17:27

all sacks and sacks and sacks. Same general

17:29

idea here. First say it, notice how these

17:31

sort of restate each other a little bit,

17:33

just on a different scale. started out

17:35

Latinate, but bring the sentence to a

17:38

close. If you're trying to think about

17:40

advice for writing, the idea would be,

17:42

Saxon words tend to work better than

17:45

Latinate words to create forceful memorable prose

17:47

if they're properly arranged, but especially at

17:49

the end. Simple Saxon words are a

17:52

great way to end a sentence or

17:54

a paragraph, especially one that wasn't all

17:56

that Saxon beforehand. That finishing that way

17:58

really leaves that. stand out because of

18:01

the contrast and sound and style. It's a

18:03

very subtle thing. Nobody's going to pause

18:05

and think, oh, look at that. They finished

18:07

with sacks and words. What they might

18:09

just think is, that

18:11

was well said. Right. All

18:14

right. Now, I promised. Discussion

18:18

of the influence of the Bible. A great

18:20

example is the influence of the King James

18:22

Bible on Abraham Lincoln who read the Bible

18:25

or less upset, the King James Bible more or

18:27

less obsessively, that in Shakespeare. And Lincoln, if

18:29

you ask me, was the greatest master of prose

18:32

we've ever had in our public life. So

18:34

it's very interesting to think about how did he

18:36

get that way? Like how did Lincoln become

18:38

Lincoln? And the answer is, you know,

18:40

thousands of hours of immersion

18:42

in Shakespeare and the King James Bible.

18:44

How that? Which is not what you think

18:46

of presidents spending their time on, but that's what

18:48

he was spending his time on. Right. Isn't

18:51

that amazing? It's amazing to think about now. Think

18:53

about presidents who hold up with their Shakespeare

18:55

in the Bible. All right. But look what he

18:57

said. This is right

18:59

after Lincoln had received the Republican nomination

19:01

for Senate in Illinois. And slavery,

19:03

of course, was the topic

19:06

of the day. So this is before he's president, 1858.

19:08

Before he's even running for president. He's running for

19:10

Senate against Stephen Douglas. It's going to be, this race

19:12

is going to rivet the whole country. It's going

19:14

to set him up to run for president. And

19:17

he gets up at the beginning the

19:19

nomination and he says, I do not expect

19:21

the union to be dissolved. I do

19:23

not expect the house to fall, but I

19:26

do expect it will seize to be

19:28

divided. It will become all one thing or

19:30

all the other. Here, I mean, this

19:32

is a very obvious example. There are

19:34

a lot of interesting ones that are

19:36

less obvious of the influence of the

19:38

Bible in the way that Lincoln wrote

19:40

and spoke. There's all these cadences and

19:42

word choices and phrases that you can

19:44

hear in his writing and speech are

19:46

echoes of the King James Bible. He was

19:48

reading all the time. And sometimes Shakespeare

19:50

too. His attachment to the Bible is

19:52

better known, but the Shakespeare attachment is,

19:55

we can talk about it later or

19:57

another day. But here you can just

19:59

see he's basically the excerpt from Matthew

20:01

that we saw a minute ago, although there's

20:03

another passage just like it in Mark, but

20:05

it doesn't make any difference. Again, start at

20:07

the end. The most important part of

20:09

the sentence is typically the end. So you

20:12

want to work, if you think about impact

20:14

work backwards from the end of the sentence,

20:16

it will become or the passage. It will become

20:18

all one thing or all the other. Okay? The sac,

20:20

the classic Saxon finish. But it's more than

20:22

that. Notice how he's basically repeating what

20:24

he said. Lincoln loved to say things twice. We said

20:26

at the beginning, everybody in English speaks two languages. And he says

20:29

it, he says it first in, it's like he says it first in

20:31

this language, then in that language. Imagine a politician who says it

20:33

in Spanish and says it in English. Lincoln says it in Latinite,

20:35

then he says it in Saxon. Lincoln says it in Latinite, then

20:37

he says it in Saxon. Because he says it in Latinite, then

20:39

he says it in Saxon. He says it in Latinite, then he

20:41

says it in Latinite, and he says it in Latinite, and he

20:43

says it in Latinite, he says it in Latinite, he says in

20:45

Latinite, he says in Latinite, he says in Latinite, he says it,

20:47

he says in Latinite, he says in Latinite, he says it, he says

20:49

it, he says it, he says in English, he says in English, he says it

20:51

in English, he says in English, he says in English, he says in

20:54

English, he says You just sing the same thing twice, once more politically,

20:56

once more bibically. But I do expect it will cease to be

20:58

divided, Latinate. It will become all one thing or all the other.

21:00

It will cease to be divided is the same thing. It will

21:02

become all one thing or all the other. It will cease to be divided

21:04

is the same thing. It will become all one thing or all the other.

21:06

A modern editor would probably cross one out. Say I know I'm

21:08

repeating two languages, and I'm saying in Latin and I'm saying it

21:10

Latinate that I'm saying it again again again again again again again

21:12

in Latinate that I'm saying it again again again again in Saxon, and

21:14

I'm saying it again again again again in Saxon, and I'm saying it

21:16

again again in Saxon, and I'm saying it again, and I'm saying it

21:19

again, and I'm saying it, and I'm saying it, and I'm saying it,

21:21

and I'm saying it, and I'm saying it, and I'm saying it, and I'm

21:23

saying When you think of it, you say, you know, those

21:25

two sentences are almost saying the same

21:27

thing. This one's got the longer words

21:29

in it, and the other's more words

21:31

of one syllable, or it's more picturesque,

21:33

maybe it's a metaphor. But that's often

21:36

what these really memorable speakers and writers

21:38

do to create impact is. They don't

21:40

say it once, they say it twice,

21:43

say it differently, in different kinds of

21:45

words that appeal to different capacities of

21:47

readers and listeners. That's a very useful

21:49

idea when you're trying. So Latin

21:51

then Saxon and end with the Saxon. Yeah,

21:53

well just the alternation is powerful That's what

21:56

I'm trying to say is that if you

21:58

read simple books about how to write good English.

22:00

They'll just tell you, prefer simple words,

22:02

prefer Saxon words. And of course that's

22:04

true as a preference, but the really

22:06

great effects aren't created by just going

22:08

in one direction. They're created by contrast,

22:10

by by mixing elements. Like in music,

22:12

you know, music, chords aren't that interesting,

22:14

what's interesting, what's interesting, what's interesting, what's

22:16

interesting is the chord change in music.

22:18

And it's like that in English. I

22:21

mean you can just stick to simple

22:23

and you at least want to make

22:25

a fool like a foola-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a- you've got

22:27

to be a student of contrast, I

22:30

think, because that's what all the great

22:32

writers understand either instinctively or

22:34

through study or both, is that anything

22:36

that's great tends to be greater when

22:39

it's set off against what it isn't, because

22:41

that prepares the ear for it. It lets

22:43

you be struck by it. You know, we

22:45

only really detect differences. You know, we have

22:48

human creatures. So Lincoln was

22:50

a great artist with differences

22:52

and with writing language that

22:54

used those differences to really...

22:56

create memorable stuff. All right.

22:58

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

23:00

said this in one of his

23:02

opinions. If there's any principle

23:05

of the Constitution

23:07

that more imperatively calls for

23:09

attachment than any other, it

23:12

is the principle of free

23:14

thought, not free thought for those

23:16

who agree with us, but freedom

23:18

for the thought that we hate.

23:20

Wow. So many people have

23:23

said things like this like

23:25

this. historically. But this is one of

23:27

the expressions of this idea that's really stood

23:29

the test at time. That's a heck of

23:31

a quote. Yeah. People quote this, they

23:33

remember it. But just think about how

23:35

many efforts there have been to express

23:38

this idea. Why does this one rise to

23:40

the top? And I think there's a lot

23:42

of reasons, but one of them is just

23:44

we've been discussing. Look at how it ends.

23:46

Remember, always start at the end. When

23:48

you think about impact. Freedom for

23:51

the thought that we hate that we hate that

23:53

we hate that we hate. Especially with that last

23:55

word freedom for the thought that we hate hate

23:57

last word is one that rings in your ear

24:00

He sets it up that way. Punch in the

24:02

face. Right, but then look what comes before that.

24:04

The beginning of this is pretty Latinate,

24:06

right? Principal, Constitution,

24:09

imperatively, right, attachment. That feels like the

24:11

kind of writing I read in school.

24:13

Right. So you're reading that and you're

24:15

thinking, I mean, maybe you're being uplifted

24:18

by it, but it's just like Lincoln.

24:20

He's starting out with this sort of

24:22

more Latinate wording that kind of appeals

24:25

to the mind. You really did. to

24:27

get this. Right. You got to think

24:29

about what he's saying because he's

24:31

using concepts and you got to

24:33

translate the concepts into things that matter

24:35

to you. But then, he restates it. It

24:37

is the principle of free thought. That

24:40

is the, he then restates. And then he said,

24:42

let me boil this down to you in

24:44

Saxon language. Okay? You don't want me to

24:46

put it in high pollutant ways? Let me

24:49

put it this way. Freedom for the thought

24:51

that we hate. Get it? That's the

24:53

principle I'm talking about. I'll say it

24:55

to you in Saxon words. And

24:57

here, you don't have to think

25:00

about it. It's not

25:02

conceptual. Everybody gets it

25:04

immediately. That's the thing about

25:07

Saxon words. It's like you

25:09

metabolize them instantly. You know,

25:11

you talk about hate and

25:13

you feel it. Yeah, you feel, you

25:15

feel, you feel that word. You know, whereas

25:18

you use a Latin word,

25:20

like the difference between hate

25:22

and hatred. And that's what Saxon

25:24

words tend to be like. So you

25:26

reserve them. And so obviously the starkest

25:29

word in the sentence is the last

25:31

word in the sentence. And so

25:33

I say again, why does this, why

25:35

does this utterance hold up over time?

25:37

Well, I'll run to Holmes, it was

25:39

a real craftsman. He was the son

25:41

of a very famous literary figure in

25:43

19th century America. And Holmes, I think

25:45

the best writer American law has ever

25:48

had. But he had the most beautiful

25:50

collection of. judicial

25:52

opinions, but also letters. If

25:54

you want to study varieties of

25:56

great English, you sort of want to

25:59

apprentice your... yourself to somebody

26:01

who's worth it. Abraham Lincoln's worth

26:03

it. You read Lincoln, and you really

26:06

think about how it sounds and why.

26:08

All over when to Holmes is like that too.

26:10

If you like law, he's somebody you

26:12

could apprentice yourself to. You could

26:14

think about why did he write it?

26:17

Why did he write a draft? He's

26:19

somebody you could apprentice yourself to. You

26:21

could think about why did he write

26:23

a lot of time on this? He

26:25

didn't need to. He just grew up

26:27

understanding it. of just extreme sensitivity.

26:29

And he knew by the time

26:32

he'd set all this, it was time to wrap

26:34

it up at the end, which is down to

26:36

earth, if you want to make your point.

26:38

Sure. Yeah. All right. Enough of that. How

26:40

about a change of subject? We've been

26:42

talking about Saxon and Latinate words,

26:44

but if you study rhetoric,

26:46

which is my bag, and this is,

26:48

if your readers enjoy this sort of

26:50

thing. They got a whole book they

26:52

can read. Let me just do an

26:54

unapologetic plug for your book. I never

26:56

do this, but I... If you insist.

26:58

No, I absolutely love your books. They're

27:00

so simple, they're so fun to flip

27:03

through, and everyone who's serious about writing

27:05

should have definitely rhetoric and style just

27:07

like lying over their house, and you

27:09

can flip through them. I just love

27:11

those books. But David, what about the

27:13

metaphor? I haven't read that one. I

27:15

just really like the other, too. I

27:17

appreciate your... putting in a good word for

27:19

the books. You said you could flip through them

27:21

and it's very true. I wrote these books to

27:23

try to make them what I would call

27:25

browsable reference books where you can pick it

27:27

up and open and learn from it and

27:30

enjoy it. So it's not like if you

27:32

get the book, you got the prospect of, I've

27:34

got to go read 300 pages to get

27:36

the point. You can spend 10 minutes

27:38

with it and you'll be 10 minutes

27:40

better off in your knowledge of rhetoric.

27:42

Okay, enough about the books. I want

27:44

to talk about a different rhetorical books.

27:47

And here we have an example from

27:49

Lincoln. So will you take it away? The

27:51

world will little note, nor long remember

27:53

what we say here, but it can

27:55

never forget what they did here.

27:57

So this is Lincoln, Gettysburg address.

28:00

So this is five years after the

28:02

ones that we were talking about earlier.

28:04

That's right. It's five years later. Now

28:06

we're not worried about how it's being

28:08

divided in a civil war. We're in

28:10

a civil war. And it's a few

28:12

months after the Battle of Gettysburg, which

28:14

is the bloodiest battle of the civil

28:16

war. About 7 ,000 people are killed and

28:18

tens of thousands of others are maimed.

28:21

So he comes and he makes this

28:23

extraordinary speech. And if we wanted

28:25

to look at the speech through the

28:27

lens of the last topic, we

28:29

could. It's a very Saxon piece of

28:31

English. We've already talked about Lincoln

28:33

and Saxon language. Let's just point out

28:35

another thing going on here. The

28:38

world will little note nor long remember

28:40

what we say here, but can ever

28:42

forget what they did here, ending

28:44

with here and here. That's a device

28:46

called epistrophe. Epistrophe means ending consecutive sentences

28:49

or clauses with the same word or

28:51

words, the same word or phrase. It's

28:53

sort of the opposite of anaphora. When

28:55

we talked about that, we shall fight

28:57

on the beaches speech that Churchill did.

28:59

That's a classic case of anaphora. That's

29:01

sort of that's starting with the same

29:03

words. We shall fight, we shall fight,

29:05

we shall fight. This is the opposite.

29:07

It's ending with the same word. Good

29:09

to have both tools. Because the start

29:11

and the end of a sentence are

29:13

the really the most important positions in

29:15

it for for rhetorical emphasis. Now,

29:18

the ending of anything is more important because

29:20

the last thing you hear when

29:22

you're for purposes of that sentence and therefore it can

29:24

ring in the year. So I think that's why I

29:26

always talk about starting at the end. But in any

29:28

event, Lincoln loved epistrophe. And if you read

29:30

him, you'll see that he often comes back to

29:32

this and that the King James Bible likes it

29:35

too. There are some famous examples there. But in

29:37

this case, combining the Saxon approach

29:39

with the here, here ending, it's

29:41

a very resonant and in this

29:43

case, a very somber thing to say. Of

29:46

course, there's this little irony in it because the

29:48

world has long remembered what he said there.

29:50

And I don't know if it's remembered as well,

29:52

what they did here. So he may have

29:54

had a backwards, but it was a beautiful thing

29:56

to say. Speaking

30:00

of apostrophe, I promise you that Lincoln

30:02

liked it and that he used it

30:05

elsewhere, he even used it in the

30:07

same speech. That this nation shall have

30:09

a new birth of freedom, and that

30:11

government of the people, by the

30:14

people, for the people, shall not

30:16

perish from the earth. Yeah, well, what's cool

30:18

about this is not only is it the

30:20

same speech, but by the people for the

30:22

people, and then of the people before

30:24

those. I hear that all the time in

30:27

government. I actually didn't know that it came

30:29

from this. Is this the original version of

30:31

that? More or less. So you can find

30:33

prior examples in this from Daniel Webster or

30:35

there are a couple of other examples that are

30:37

discussed in the book of predecessors to this.

30:39

He probably heard people say things a little

30:41

like this and then he tweaked it a

30:44

little. But the tweaks made a great

30:46

difference in making it sound perfect. And

30:48

then he added it at the end.

30:50

The version by Daniel Webster basically ended

30:52

with the government. with people. And then

30:54

he adds that shall not perish from

30:56

the earth. So there's several things going

30:58

on in this that make it great,

31:00

just like with everything, all the other

31:02

examples we've seen. One is just the

31:04

apostrophe, the repetition at the end of

31:06

the people, right? Government, of the people,

31:08

by the people, for the people. That's

31:10

apostrophe three times, follows the rule of

31:13

three. It makes it sound so beautiful.

31:15

Yeah, it's rhetorically perfect. And then

31:17

notice that after the apostrophe,

31:19

it ends shall not perish from the earth.

31:21

which the earlier version by the

31:23

similar statement by Daniel Webster had

31:26

not done. That perished from the earth.

31:28

That is a lifting from the book of

31:30

Job. I think there's also a usage

31:32

of that phrase in Jeremiah, but I

31:34

think he probably took it from

31:36

Job. But it's just an example

31:39

of seeing the King James constantly

31:41

work its way into Lincoln's expressions.

31:43

Even four score and seven years

31:45

ago is an adaptation from biblical

31:47

language. I want to tell you about

31:49

the only app that I used to

31:51

read articles, and it's called Reader. So

31:53

tell me if this sounds familiar. You

31:55

read something brilliant, like an amazing quote,

31:57

the perfect article, but then one day...

32:00

you go back you're looking to find

32:02

it and it's just gone you

32:04

can't find the thing that used to

32:06

drive me crazy but then I

32:08

found this app called the reader and

32:10

it's become the backup system for

32:12

my brain here's how it works so

32:14

whenever I'm on my phone on

32:16

my computer I'll come across a new

32:18

article and what I do is

32:20

I just toss it into reader and

32:22

then whenever I'm ready to read

32:24

I can find all the articles pre

32:26

-downloaded with no ads and no clutter

32:28

but here's the kicker every time I

32:30

highlight something reader automatically saves it

32:32

for me so then if I'm writing

32:34

and I need that perfect quote

32:36

that perfect example it's just right there

32:38

waiting for me and because that

32:40

I don't have to dig through old

32:43

notes or endless browser tabs anymore

32:45

and that means that I can focus

32:47

on writing readers the sponsor of

32:49

today's episode and look I gotta love

32:51

a product in order to promote

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it and I can tell you that

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I use reader every single day

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a link in the description below

33:14

all right back to the

33:16

episode I missed I mentioned people

33:18

you can apprentice yourself to Winston

33:20

Churchill just like Lincoln as

33:22

a claim to being the the

33:24

greatest user of the English

33:27

language and the history of English

33:29

-speaking public life not American but

33:31

English -speaking and Churchill

33:33

is somebody whose speeches as well

33:35

as his other writings really repays study

33:37

he had a beautiful feel for

33:39

the language and he earned it by

33:41

reading a lot of really extraordinary

33:43

English when he was young. But all

33:45

depends now upon the whole life

33:47

strength of the British race in every

33:50

part of the world and of

33:52

all our associated peoples and of

33:54

all our well -wishers in every

33:56

land doing their utmost night

33:58

and day giving all day

34:00

all, enduring all, to the

34:02

utmost, to the end. So

34:05

it's 1940 and

34:07

the British are facing down the

34:09

Nazis and he's trying to inspire

34:11

his friends, including his friends in this

34:13

country, to step up and

34:15

help them stave off the threat. And I

34:17

just want to point out in this

34:19

that in

34:21

the beginning there's

34:24

some different techniques we

34:26

could look at but I really want

34:28

to focus on the epistrophe and the aphor

34:30

at the end, because that's what sticks

34:32

in the ears. You probably don't remember very

34:34

well with the first half of that,

34:36

but the very ending is very dramatic. It's

34:38

like the football announcers. The rhetoric is

34:40

always in the second half of the sentence.

34:42

Not always in the English language, but

34:44

basically in all the examples that you've given

34:46

us. There's a lot to that. There

34:48

are some examples of the other way around

34:50

and those who can't get enough of

34:53

the examples can find them in the book.

34:55

But you're right, it's a very classic

34:57

pattern. It's not the only one, but

34:59

it's very classic. So giving all,

35:01

daring all, enduring all, the classic repetition

35:03

thrice of something using epistrophe to

35:05

the utmost, to the end. See, he

35:07

reverses from epistrophe to an aphor.

35:09

He goes from repeating at the end

35:11

of each clause to a couple

35:13

of rounds of repeating at the beginning.

35:16

It's a great effect and it's just another

35:18

example. It's like moving between Latinate and Saxon

35:20

words. Moving between repetition at the end to

35:22

repetition the beginning. Changing with repetition

35:24

occurs. That kind of contrast really

35:26

brings the device to life. That's

35:29

really what I'm trying to emphasize. There

35:31

are a lot of principles in English

35:33

like prefer Saxon words. But the power

35:35

behind those principles is really at its

35:37

best when it's combined with contrast. Which

35:39

is prefer Saxon words, but set them

35:41

up. Repeat at the end, but then repeat

35:43

at the beginning. Because it's

35:45

the mix, it's the chord change that really

35:47

grabs the ear. The ear is really

35:49

grabbed by difference. And these are different

35:52

ways to beautifully create difference. Alright, here's

35:55

a more modern example. We're

35:57

doing a lot of Lincoln and

35:59

Churchill. Well, how about Lloyd

36:01

Benson? So he was, he was

36:03

the, this is just for

36:05

fun, but he was a senator

36:07

from Texas and he was on

36:09

the Democratic ticket in 1988. And

36:11

the vice, he was the

36:13

vice presidential nominee with

36:16

when Michael Dukakis was the presidential nominee.

36:18

And vice presidential debates are so boring

36:20

and nobody ever remembers them. This may

36:22

be the only memorable thing I can

36:25

remember from any vice presidential debate. We'll

36:27

still talk about it later. Dan Quayle

36:29

was the Republican candidate and toward Dan

36:31

Quayle, because he got him, he got

36:33

posterized by Lloyd Benson, but he had

36:35

been saying that although he'd been criticized

36:37

for not having enough experience in as

36:39

a legislator to be in this position,

36:42

he said, well, I have about as

36:44

much as John Kennedy did when he

36:46

got elected. And so Lloyd Benson says

36:48

goes, Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy.

36:50

I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was

36:52

a friend of mine. Senator, you're

36:55

no Jack Kennedy. Yeah, and so the

36:57

house erupts and now this ends up

36:59

being the only thing anybody remembers from

37:01

the debate, which may show, I mean,

37:03

you compare this to the kinds of

37:05

debates that Lincoln and Douglas had. I'd

37:07

rather be in Lincoln Douglas land. But

37:09

still, you can see some rhetorical skill

37:11

here. And it's basically an epistrophe. I

37:13

mean, this is a very memorable insult.

37:16

If you wanna give a memorable insult,

37:18

well, ancient Greek rhetorical devices can be

37:20

very useful in that way. In this

37:22

case, it means ending successively with Jack

37:24

Kennedy, but it's not even just that.

37:26

It's a little better than that. I

37:28

served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack

37:30

Kennedy, then he reverses it. Jack Kennedy

37:32

was a friend of mine, right? And,

37:34

and, beginning, and, it's much better that

37:36

way than just having relentless epistrophe, epistrophe,

37:38

then relief, then back to it. Cause

37:40

the ear wants it. It wants that

37:42

repetition back, right? It got used to

37:44

it here. And then you started here

37:46

and now you return to it and

37:48

it creates that satisfaction, which is why

37:50

everybody who ever saw that could still

37:52

remember it. It's not just because it

37:54

was harsh and sort of funny. It's

37:56

because it was constructed in a way

37:59

that really satisfies the ear. It feels

38:01

like a rap battle. Yeah. a little

38:03

bit like that between two late 1980s

38:05

politicians. Anyways, I just wanted to show

38:07

that this example is a little more

38:09

modern, a little more accessible. It's all

38:11

the same basic rhetorical tools used for

38:13

different reasons, maybe to inspire people, maybe

38:15

to move them to tears, maybe to

38:17

make them laugh. Or knock somebody else

38:19

down. Yeah, or indeed embarrass somebody and

38:21

make them hard to elect. But it's

38:23

a game of which both sides can

38:25

play. But in any event, OK.

38:29

David, I think we spent enough time on a history, don't

38:31

you? Let's move on. Let's

38:33

move on. I've got another tool

38:35

that's very practical, very interesting, very useful.

38:37

This one's known as the chiasmus. Now,

38:40

I know you've talked about this before. The classic

38:42

chiasmus. Yeah. I know you've talked about this before

38:44

with other guests. But

38:47

let's see if we can say something about

38:49

it that might be useful and that

38:51

you haven't yet covered. Ask not what your

38:53

country can do for you. Ask what

38:55

you can do for your country. The most

38:57

famous example of chiasmus, probably in English,

38:59

is from Kennedy's inaugural speech in 1961. The

39:01

issue to me is it's easy to

39:03

admire a chiasmus and say, isn't that pretty?

39:05

Very memorable. But how do you make

39:07

one? I mean, because how do you

39:10

know when it's time to make one? I mean, you

39:12

can't make one out of anything. It's not like

39:14

everything you say. If I said, David, when do you

39:16

talk to me in chiasmus for the next five

39:18

minutes? It's not going to work. Only certain kinds of

39:20

sentiments or things you'd want to say lend themselves

39:22

to this rhetorical trick. What is the trick? It's reversal.

39:24

It's basically, think of it as an A, B,

39:26

B, A structure. So you've got A elements on the

39:28

outside and B on the inside. So it's going

39:30

to be not what your country can do for you,

39:32

what you can do for your country. So the

39:34

A part would be country that's on the outside. The

39:37

inside the chiasmus would be you, right?

39:40

These are the B elements. So it's country, you,

39:42

you, country. A, B, B, A.

39:45

Okay, that's the basic structure of a

39:47

chiasmus. What kinds of things that you

39:49

might ever want to say would

39:52

be clues to you that, you know, maybe

39:54

I could frame this as a chiasmus, but

39:56

there are certain occasions, this shows one of them,

39:58

which is you're trying to tell somebody. you've got

40:00

it backwards, you've got the wrong end of

40:02

the stick, it's the other way around. Any

40:04

time you're thinking those thoughts, you can think,

40:06

aha, this is the kind of

40:08

rhetorical soil in which a chiasmus might grow.

40:10

So you can think, how can I express

40:12

how they have it backwards by framing the

40:14

elements in terms of, you say it's got

40:16

it done, but it's actually done. You can

40:18

try it that way. And you can try

40:20

other rhetorical methods. A lot of these chiasmus

40:22

could be expressed with epistrophe if you wanted

40:24

to rephrase them. But I'm just saying that's

40:26

a clue. I think when you're trying to

40:28

get the hang of using rhetorical devices, it's

40:30

very helpful to learn about the different occasions, like

40:33

for different kinds of things you might want to

40:35

say. They tend to lend themselves to these kinds

40:37

of patterns. And then

40:39

you can smell it. You can say, oh, okay, I get

40:41

it. I'm trying to say this kind of thing. That's the

40:44

kind of thing you can use this for. If you don't

40:46

have any of those patterns in mind, it's easy to admire

40:48

these devices, but it's hard to figure out when to or

40:50

how to ever put them to work. Once you have a

40:52

sense of what the right kind of thing is, they'll

40:54

lend themselves to this much easier. So with that one, the

40:57

lesson is I'm trying to

40:59

communicate opposites. I'm trying to show

41:01

that most people think A, but

41:03

I want you to think B. Most

41:06

people have the relationship backwards. It's not just

41:08

they think one thing they should think another. It's

41:10

they think it's A to B, but it's

41:12

actually B to A. It's the other way around

41:14

from what they think. They think the country

41:16

owes them something. It's not like that. They

41:18

owe the country something. They've got it backwards. You're mistaking

41:20

who owes what to whom. You think I owe you

41:22

money, you owe me money. That's

41:26

using epistrophe. Do I owe you

41:28

money, you owe me money. If you want to make

41:30

a chiasmus, how would you say it? You

41:32

think the money is owed from me to you. It's

41:35

owed from you to me. That'd

41:37

be the chiasmic way to express the same thing,

41:40

but I'm just pointing out, you can translate

41:42

the wrong way around. You can translate that with

41:44

these different patterns that are all attractive if

41:46

you care. If you're writing a screenplay or you're

41:48

writing a situation where you want somebody to

41:50

have dialogue that really crackles, what you'll find is

41:52

it's got a lot of these patterns woven

41:54

into it, so got to be sensitive to when

41:56

you're trying to say something that will lend

41:58

itself to a pattern. How about that? I

42:01

think it's been too long since we had a line from Lincoln, probably

42:05

10 minutes. I claim not to

42:07

have controlled events, but confess plainly that

42:09

events have controlled me. So this

42:11

chiasmus again, huh? Don't you

42:13

think? Yeah. So I'm just trying to figure

42:15

out why this one, this JFK one,

42:17

is more memorable to me than that one.

42:19

Like this, I can hear once and

42:22

boom, remember, that one would take a little

42:24

bit of effort. And JFK, he says,

42:26

ask not what your country can do for

42:28

you. Ask what you can

42:30

do for your country. So what makes

42:32

this one more memorable than that one?

42:34

Well, it might be the context

42:36

or the substance of what's being said.

42:38

But if we're just focusing on

42:40

the English, I would just point out

42:42

that is a pure chiasmus. It's

42:44

country, you, you and country. This

42:46

one's not a literal chiasmus. It's I

42:48

events, events, me. It's sort of a

42:51

conceptual chiasmus. It's got the elements going

42:53

from I to events to events to

42:55

me. And I and me are the same

42:57

person. So it's a chiasmus in

42:59

that sense and it has that same nice

43:01

ring. But it's kind of a half chiasmus,

43:03

you might say, whereas that is a very

43:05

literal one. So it's easier for the ear

43:07

to be delighted by that, although I think

43:09

it's both pretty delightful actually. But that's, that's

43:11

even more striking and of course it's, it's

43:13

very short. And it's saying

43:16

something that at the time was considered a

43:18

very meaningful thing to say. So all

43:20

of these things chip into the fame of

43:22

that utterance. And that utterance is sort

43:24

of like Lincoln talking about government of the

43:26

people by the people for the people.

43:28

That's the, the, the, this example from

43:30

Kennedy, too, had antecedents before he ever

43:32

said it. Oliver Wendell Holmes had said

43:34

something like it and so had Kennedy's

43:36

boarding schoolhead master. But anyway, there's nothing

43:38

new under the sun. Here's

43:42

another chiasmus. I want, oh, I

43:44

wanted to just keep talking about

43:46

occasions for a chiasmus. Here's an example.

43:48

It's as possible for a man

43:50

to know something without having been at

43:52

school as it is to have

43:54

been at school and to know nothing

43:56

from this beautiful novel called Tom

43:58

Jones by Henry Fielding. I just

44:00

bring this out, it's

44:03

an attractive piece of English,

44:05

but partly to say there's

44:07

more than one occasion for a chiasmus. I

44:09

said earlier that if somebody has it backwards,

44:11

they got it the wrong way around, your

44:13

country doesn't know anything to you, you have

44:15

something to your country, then that might lend itself

44:17

to a rhetorical device, maybe a

44:19

chiasmus. There are others too. For example,

44:22

anytime you've got give and take, I do this for

44:24

you, you do this for me, you could have it.

44:26

Anytime you've got to mix up, where you've got things

44:28

mis or out of alignment, you can recite

44:30

the elements in a way that can lend itself

44:32

to a chiasmus, where you can say as possible

44:34

to know something without having it at school as

44:36

it is to have been at school and to

44:38

know nothing. Notice again, not a pure chiasmus, right?

44:40

What are the inside elements of the chiasmus? Let's

44:42

see. It's possible

44:44

to know something without having it at

44:47

school as it is to have been at school and

44:49

to know nothing. So school is the

44:51

interior part of the chiasmus, the B, the

44:53

outside of it is something and nothing. Not

44:55

the same word but the same, you're

44:58

referring to the same thing, which is how

45:00

much you know and they both have thing

45:02

in them. It's some thing, no thing. Maybe

45:04

it's three quarters of a chiasmus, but you

45:06

see what I mean? You can have

45:08

a chiasmus that's structural rather than literal and you

45:10

can still get some of the benefits in the ear

45:13

or in the mind from having the pattern line

45:15

up that way. It can be pleasing. The literal is

45:17

often the nicest but it's not always possible just

45:19

because the way English works. You can't put I in

45:21

meat, you can't put I in both places, it's

45:23

got to be I in meat because that's how we

45:25

speak English but it can still resonate in the

45:27

ear and that's the point of the

45:30

technique. Okay. And now our last

45:32

example. Back

45:34

to where we started, okay? The

45:37

Bible. Oh yeah. The Lord's Prayer.

45:39

Okay. And lead us not into

45:41

temptation but deliver us from evil. Now

45:44

you might never have thought of this

45:46

as a chiasmus but

45:48

it kind of is. That's

45:50

why I wanted to show this to

45:52

you. Because it's not a classic chiasmus

45:54

where you've got the same words. We've

45:56

got an A, B, B, A and the A and the

45:58

A are the same word in the B. be of the

46:00

same word. But look, but watch, right? And

46:02

lead us not into temptation, but deliver

46:04

us from evil. Where

46:07

could the chiasmus be? Look

46:09

at the simple words on the outside. What do

46:11

we have in the middle? Latinate

46:13

words. It's a combination of our

46:15

first lesson and this new theme.

46:17

In the middle, you've got temptation

46:19

and deliver, which are the

46:21

fancier words. On the outside, you've

46:23

got and

46:26

lead us not into, but deliver us from

46:28

evil. So it starts and ends with these

46:30

very simple words. And in the middle, you've

46:32

got the longer ones. And notice how it

46:34

kind of retraces the substance, which is you're

46:36

not lead in temptation, but deliver from evil.

46:38

So you go into the mix of the

46:40

long word and then you come out at

46:42

the end with the simple word. It's

46:45

a very beautiful passage. And I'm

46:47

just trying to point out that a

46:49

chiasmus, as I say, can be

46:51

something that works more conceptually than literally.

46:53

It's a subtler thing, but it's part

46:55

of the reason why everybody remembers this.

46:57

There's a lot going on. But that's part of

46:59

the lessons. You take memorable things and you

47:01

slow down long enough to really take them apart

47:03

or x -ray them and think, what are the

47:05

elements? What are the patterns under the surface

47:07

of this that make it sound so great? People

47:10

don't sit around thinking about how impressed they are by your

47:12

use of a technique. If they notice the

47:14

technique, it's bad technique. What they

47:16

might do, though, is be struck, that's

47:18

well said. I mean, once that's said that way, who

47:20

wants to try saying any better than that? Why do

47:22

people say that? Why

47:25

most of the examples I've given you are things people

47:27

have said that about for a long time. And

47:29

if you slow down and look at them, you can see

47:31

there are patterns and usually more than one that these

47:33

sentences follow. And that's one

47:35

reason why they stand out from the

47:37

crowd. And then people still talk about them

47:39

and admire them and are impressed by

47:41

them a century or two after they're said.

47:43

So can you do this for me?

47:45

Can you just give me a quick rundown

47:47

of the three techniques that we've spoken

47:49

about? We started with Anglo -Saxon. We spoke

47:52

on epistrophe. We talked a little bit about

47:54

Anaphora. And then we got to the

47:56

end and we talked about Chiasma. So just

47:58

give me the post -game debrief. Sure.

48:00

So in English, there's

48:02

usually two kinds of words for anything

48:04

that the fancy one and the simple

48:06

one. The fancy one we call derived

48:08

from Latin or French and the simple

48:10

one we call Saxon. And lesson one

48:12

is generally prefer Saxon words. You want

48:14

to make your prose stronger, go through

48:16

it, look for words that are fancy,

48:18

change them to Saxon. It often makes

48:20

a big difference. But you can do

48:23

better. If you want great rhetorical effects,

48:25

you got to think about your choice of

48:27

words and how the choice over here affects

48:29

the choice over there. How the use of

48:31

fancier words over here means it's time for

48:33

simpler ones because your reader's ears are going

48:35

to get tired of the bigger ones. Or

48:37

you can use the bigger ones to set

48:39

up that finale where you've got the run

48:41

of short words that are very simple, very

48:43

easy to picture that get you in the

48:45

gut and you end with those and they

48:47

ring in the ear. That's the rhetorical technique

48:49

that a lot of the greatest masters of

48:51

English have used extensively. So that was one

48:53

tool. Another is

48:55

an afra or epistrophe, which

48:57

are fancy old Greek words

48:59

for very simple ideas, which is

49:01

repeating a word or a phrase

49:03

at the beginning of several sentences

49:05

in a row or more than one

49:08

or phrases. But at the start of

49:10

several things you say, epistrophe is repeating

49:12

at the end. So Martin Luther

49:14

King's I Have a Dream speech, very

49:16

famous use of an afra. I

49:18

Have a Dream. I Have a Dream.

49:20

Just like we shall fight, we shall

49:23

fight. Starting the speech with these repeating

49:25

ideas or finishing with it of

49:27

the people by the people for the people. Same

49:30

idea, but just at the end of

49:32

the sentence. And the last tool we

49:34

talked about is chiasmus, which is basically

49:36

taking the sentence, the structure of a

49:38

sentence and reversing it. So you've got

49:40

A, B, but then B, A. And

49:42

you've got these A elements on the outside and

49:44

these B elements on the inside. And we saw

49:47

those can be literally words. Like the A elements

49:49

could be an identical word and B and that's

49:51

like your country, you, you in your country. But

49:53

we saw a bunch of other ways you can

49:55

take those elements and use them to express. It's

49:57

very helpful to be sensitive to the

49:59

kinds of occasions or substance of things you

50:01

might want to say that the call

50:03

for a certain rhetorical pattern so in

50:05

the case of a chiasmus there's several that

50:07

I mentioned including somebody has something backwards

50:09

they've got the other way around the

50:11

idea of and vice versa anytime you're any

50:14

time what you mean to say is and vice

50:16

versa you probably could write that as a chiasmus

50:18

if you if you stare at the situation

50:20

long enough it would come to you in that

50:22

way or that there's a mismatch it's like

50:24

I think mark twain once said

50:26

the problem with life is that first

50:29

we have the capacity to

50:31

enjoy it without the chance and then we

50:33

have the chance without the capacity oh wow great

50:35

thing to say that's a beautiful chiasmus that's

50:37

a literal one whenever I hear

50:39

something structured that simply it

50:42

also sounds more wise it's not just

50:44

memorable it's more wise it the very

50:46

fact of it being memorable and so beautifully

50:50

compressed in like a nice little jingle

50:52

makes it have the hue or something so

50:54

so this is a good thing to

50:56

know from the standpointable sword and shield I

50:58

think right because right it's very true

51:00

that when you when you when you state

51:03

something very eloquently or in a chiasmus

51:05

where it seems like a closed loop it's

51:07

very tidy it admits of it admits

51:09

of no interruption or objection it can really

51:11

make what you say sound more true

51:13

the shield part is beware

51:15

because things that are beautifully said sound

51:17

more true no reason to believe they are

51:20

and I think part of the reason you

51:22

study rhetoric is to inoculate yourself against the charms

51:24

of people who put things beautifully and you

51:26

don't want to be fooled into thinking that means

51:28

they're right then again they might be but

51:30

but they're two different issues what we seen a

51:32

lot of these examples is people using beautiful

51:34

rhetoric to advance beautiful causes you know

51:36

you've got you've got a Lincoln in

51:39

the Civil War Churchill World War two

51:41

the translators the Bible attempting to express

51:43

the word of God in all of these

51:45

cases you've got rhetoric being put

51:47

to work to inspire people in certain ways

51:49

and the combination of that substance with the rhetoric

51:51

is it is a beautiful thing it heightens it

51:53

but of course you can use these tools for

51:55

other ends including bad ones and so

51:57

I think the study of rhetoric in part is to make more

52:00

conscious and aware of the choices they make when they

52:02

write and how they can by really

52:04

taking a close technical patient interest and

52:06

how they construct a sentence or a

52:08

paragraph make it more memorable more striking

52:10

to the ear more sound more persuasive

52:12

but also to be aware of the fact the other

52:14

people are doing that people on the other side are

52:16

doing that too and you got to be very careful

52:18

about letting rhetoric trick you into thinking that the

52:20

more beautiful the sounds more true it

52:22

is it ain't necessarily so. So

52:25

we're talking about Churchill speaking to

52:27

the Brits the Gettysburg address these

52:29

grand big topics of course we

52:31

need rhetoric oh my goodness the

52:33

people my nation my great nation

52:35

they need to be inspired they

52:37

need to listen up but how

52:40

about just very practically in my

52:42

work in a love letter letter

52:44

to a friend maybe love letters

52:46

aren't that practical but in just

52:48

day -to -day life how should we

52:50

be thinking about using these rhetorical

52:52

techniques. Well first of all sparingly

52:54

I think it's it these patterns are as

52:56

you said it's like an announcer getting

52:58

excited it's like an exclamation point these

53:01

patterns call a lot of attention to

53:03

the pros that they that they structure

53:05

and so if you use them a

53:07

lot it can sound like you're trying too

53:09

hard to sound impressive it's that that's sort

53:11

of a staple of bad political speeches is

53:13

the relentless use of too much repetition where

53:15

you feel like lay off so I think

53:17

a sort of subtle or gentle use usually

53:19

is the the best way to use these

53:21

devices and also not even I've talked about

53:23

how a chiasmus might sort of be suggested

53:25

by certain kinds of situations but a lot

53:27

of this I think is if you just

53:30

immerse yourself in these examples I mean part

53:32

of the reason I write these books probably

53:34

is to collect beautiful examples that you can

53:36

read internalized study think about but you don't

53:38

imitate them I mean anybody imitates anybody sounds

53:40

like a fool I and I don't think

53:42

that's how this ever works think a lot

53:44

to Lincoln Lincoln learned how to write like

53:46

Lincoln by reading the Bible about reading

53:49

Shakespeare I we

53:51

this this is what we know but you

53:53

never imitated them you never read them and

53:55

think oh look at Abe Lincoln trying to sound like the Bible look

53:57

at a blink and try to sound like Shakespeare that never happens Because

54:00

he would never imitate. He had to write like

54:02

somebody from his times, just like we have to

54:04

write like people in our times. If you read

54:06

good stuff, it can sort of gently influence what

54:08

your ear thinks is an attractive way to say

54:10

something. That's where Lincoln learned. We can do some

54:12

of the same by reading Lincoln, not

54:14

to imitate Lincoln, but just to sort of

54:16

soak in his

54:18

instincts. Because another reason Lincoln's so important

54:20

for this is I think studying old

54:23

examples is great. I think the best

54:25

writing of the 19th century is beautiful

54:27

stuff. A lot of people, and maybe

54:29

including a lot of viewers, might think

54:31

that stuff seems very boring. They use

54:33

too many endless sentences. Arcane. Arcane language.

54:36

Well, Lincoln's a really good counterweight to

54:38

that, because if you read Lincoln, he's

54:40

not like that at all. Nobody thinks

54:42

of Lincoln as being pompous, writing purple

54:44

prose, trying to impress anybody, being rhetorically

54:46

seeming fancy. Lincoln has a reputation of being

54:48

very plain. But he

54:50

was also rhetorically very sophisticated, because as we've seen,

54:53

yes, he was very plain, but look at

54:55

all the patterns and artfulness and the way that

54:57

he would deploy his words. So he's a

54:59

great example in that way. He shows you that

55:01

there's a way to be a beautiful writer

55:03

of very important things. Even in private life, I

55:05

mean, a lot of the examples in the

55:07

book from Lincoln's letters, he said, what about a

55:10

letter? I've got lots of letters in the

55:12

book of people using it just to express themselves

55:14

what they personally mean about something, in

55:16

a way that's memorable to their immediate audience. You

55:19

asked, where does this get used in

55:21

life now? So I think understanding the Gettysburg

55:23

address is important and valuable, even if

55:25

you never plan to be writing or delivering

55:27

a Gettysburg address, because it's just a

55:29

lesson. It's a lot of lessons in how

55:32

to arrange words so they're striking. So

55:34

they're memorable. Everybody wants to write words that are

55:36

striking and memorable. If you're writing on Twitter or writing

55:38

a blog, you're competing against millions

55:40

of people who are doing the exact same

55:42

thing. And the question is, and you might

55:44

even be expressing a lot of the same

55:46

ideas they are, how can you express whatever

55:48

worthy idea you have in a way that's

55:50

worthy of it? Hey, look, a little cask. It

55:54

gets a half cask. I'll take a

55:56

drink to that. It's just water. But

55:58

I got to do a toe. that was

56:00

pretty good. Cheers. Is

56:04

that the end of your answer? I think that's the end of my answer. Okay

56:08

so you're a

56:10

professor and if you

56:12

were teaching next semester

56:14

at UT a class on writing

56:16

and you said these are the things that

56:19

people need to focus on these are the main

56:21

lessons I want to teach besides what we've spoken

56:23

about today how would you structure the curriculum what

56:25

are the main things that you would teach? Well

56:27

look if you're trying to learn how to

56:29

write lesson one is just learning to

56:31

do it efficiently it's got to be extremely

56:33

concise you've got to have an allergy to

56:35

wasted words and really know how to scrutinize

56:37

a sentence to make it as clear and

56:40

easy for the reader as it could possibly be it's

56:42

like learning how to draw before you try

56:44

to become a painter you've got to be

56:46

able to do that and so all the

56:48

books that tell you about omitting needless words

56:50

and and how to structure a paragraph that

56:52

stuff's crucial my interest is in lesson two

56:54

because I think for a lot of people their

56:56

education and writing basically ends after lesson one

56:58

good writing is the most efficient writing end

57:01

of story that's what I think is the sort

57:03

of ethos behind most books on writing your

57:05

goal is to be clear and concise that's the

57:07

end well of course those are everybody's

57:09

first goals but you can be

57:11

clear and concise and mesmerizing inspiring

57:13

and memorable or clear and concise and tedious

57:15

and boring and nobody cares many people

57:17

are clear Lincoln was clear and concise but

57:19

many people are clear and concise and

57:21

few of most of them aren't Lincoln so

57:23

what did he know beyond that he must

57:26

have known something else because he

57:28

was more than clear and concise and

57:30

the questions what else did he

57:32

know so for my class and I've

57:34

taught you know rhetoric classes and

57:36

part of what I like to do

57:38

is after we've gone over the

57:40

basics have students actually imitate have them

57:42

rewrite sometimes modern Supreme Court opinions as

57:44

Oliver Wendell Holmes would have written

57:46

them that's a very interesting exercise it's

57:49

not because you want to go around imitating Holmes

57:51

because you sound like again you sound like

57:53

a fool but if you have to imitate you've

57:55

really got to get in there and listen if you want to

57:57

imitate somebody's writing you really got to understand it yeah you

57:59

got it you to listen to it very carefully. You're

58:01

not going to sound right. So you've really got

58:03

to get in there and understand what made Holmes

58:05

sound like Holmes. What were the signatures of his

58:07

style that made him so amazing? So you read

58:09

this, think about it, and then eventually your imitations

58:11

get better. And then you throw away the imitations.

58:13

You don't imitate anymore. But look at what you've

58:15

learned by having to do that. So

58:17

imitations actually are a very useful thing. Memorization,

58:19

imitation, these things are underrated. We've talked a lot

58:22

about my writing examples project. And whenever I

58:24

write one of those, I always write out the

58:26

quote. I never do copy and paste because

58:28

as you write out the quote, you begin to

58:30

see what's going on in the writing in

58:32

a way that you can't just by reading. Yeah,

58:34

I agree. I mean, anybody can look at

58:36

a piece of good writing and say, wow, that's

58:38

impressive. Okay, but the question is, can you

58:41

understand why? And then learn something from that

58:43

about how to write yourself? To me, that's

58:45

the great question when you study good writing or it ought

58:47

to be. It seems like it rarely actually is when people

58:49

take courses on this. But that's how I would do it.

58:51

And that's why I try to do it in the books

58:53

I've written. When you talk about imitation

58:55

there, but then you said earlier

58:57

that you don't want to be

58:59

imitating other people's styles, how do

59:01

you divorce those two ideas? I try

59:03

to separate imitation from influence. That's what

59:05

I meant when I was talking about how

59:08

Lincoln read the Bible and Shakespeare. He wasn't

59:10

imitating anybody, but it still affected him. And

59:12

that's what I'd say is, say as though

59:14

it's natural to you. Nobody's writing sounds

59:16

right unless it's based, in my view, writing

59:18

sounds best when you're basically speaking the words

59:20

onto the page. When writing has voice in

59:22

it and it sounds like a real person

59:24

saying something and talking to you. That's

59:26

the first thing. It's got to sound natural. So

59:28

if you force your writing to follow some other

59:30

rhetorical idea or somebody else's writing style, it's never

59:32

going to sound right. It's got to sound like

59:35

you. So how do you make you and the

59:37

way you speak your authentic way of expressing yourself

59:39

more eloquent and impressive? And then

59:41

the answer is you just gently immerse

59:43

yourself in good examples of people who

59:45

are constantly talking that way. I

59:47

think that's the idea. You eventually you write and

59:49

speak what you read to some extent. You also write

59:51

and speak the way your peers write and speak.

59:53

And that's a counter -influenced. And right now, by the

59:55

way, it's often a very bad one. That's the issue,

59:57

I think, is that one reason you study rhetoric in

1:00:00

good English is to give yourself a break

1:00:02

from the lousy rhetoric in English that you're surrounded

1:00:04

by in social media. I mean social media

1:00:06

is like a campus where rhetoric is taught. It's

1:00:08

not taught well. My opinion. Yeah.

1:00:11

In other words, it's taught by

1:00:13

bad example. Yeah. Thanks, Ward.

1:00:15

That was, that was really fun. You know

1:00:17

what I liked about it? It was a

1:00:19

lot like our breakfast conversations. The only thing we're

1:00:21

missing was the crappy diner coffee. I want

1:00:23

that next time. I wish I'd had that

1:00:25

like the little white mugs who are sitting

1:00:27

there at the same table. You know the

1:00:29

waitress. We're just back there, you know, nerden

1:00:32

out on riding. I listen. I like that

1:00:34

coffee, but I'm gonna let it go. You

1:00:36

really care about coffee. You're from the West

1:00:38

Coast, right? Yeah. People out there care about

1:00:40

coffee. I like a good cup of coffee.

1:00:42

know. I'm gonna use your rhetorical techniques to

1:00:44

tell a good cup of coffee. So I

1:00:46

totally enjoyed this. I'm really honored that you

1:00:48

decided that I was worth it. And I also

1:00:50

gotta say I'm so impressed by the quality

1:00:52

commitment of this. This is high end. And I

1:00:54

think God bless you for trying to take

1:00:56

this topic that we both love, which is words

1:00:58

and give it the classy treatment it deserves.

1:01:00

It's just, it's just a great thing you're

1:01:02

doing. And I'm so, I feel like it's

1:01:05

a real, real honor to have anything to

1:01:07

do with it. Thanks, man. Thank you. Well,

1:01:09

for anyone who listens to this and is

1:01:11

like, I want more of that, you know,

1:01:13

we only focused on three techniques and these books,

1:01:15

rhetoric and style, classical English style, classical

1:01:17

English rhetoric, they're part of a series

1:01:19

these