Mrs. Bennett/ Ms. Sniffin
AP English Language and Composition
AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING
The AP English Language and Composition course is designed to substitute for a college
composition course; therefore, you will be required to read complex texts with understanding as well as
to enrich your prose in order to communicate your ideas effectively to mature audiences. You will learn
how to analyze and interpret exemplary writing by discerning and explaining the author’s use of
rhetorical strategies and techniques, eventually applying many of these techniques to your own writing.
In order to prepare for our seminars, you are required to read, annotate and log a selection of texts over
the summer. You are expected to complete these assignments and submit them on the first day.
Otherwise, we will have a discussion assessing the prospects for your future in the AP program.
Required Texts:

Choose one of novels from the attached list.
PART 1 - NONFICTION SUMMER READING SELECTIONS:
Please read and annotate (do not log)
 Bitzer, Lloyd, “The Rhetorical Situation,” handout
Please read, annotate and log (see log expectation on “Close Reading” handout)
 McMurtry, John: “Kill ‘Em! Crush ‘Em! Eat ‘Em Raw!” handout
 Owen, David: “My Airline” handout
 Rauch, Jonathon: “In Defense of Prejudice” handout
NOTE: Before tackling the texts above, please read the handouts “Close Reading and Reader
Response”. These texts provide an introduction to rhetorical analysis as well as methods of annotation
and expectations for your log. You should read these texts efferently (to glean information). You should
read the remaining selections aesthetically (to analyze rhetorical strategies and arguments.
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You will respond to a prompt on one of the assigned essays on the first full day of the course.
If you lose a handout, visit http://frontier.kernhigh.org/
If you want to contact Mrs. Bennett or Ms. Sniffin please use this email address:
melissa_bennett@kernhigh.org, lara_sniffin@kernhigh.org
Mrs. Bennett/ Ms. Sniffin
AP English Language and Composition
PART TWO: Newspaper Reading Assignment
To create a foundation for the writing you will be asked to do throughout the school year, you need to
become familiar with state, national, and international current events. Please conform to the following
guidelines:
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Collect a minimum of 19 articles and 1 political cartoon.
No more than 5 from the LOCAL section of the Bakersfield Californian
Collect thematically, i.e. Iraq war, global warming; human rights; trade and economic issues,
crises and catastrophes, U.S. and other governmental policies, etc.
Arrange the articles thematically and provide a table of contents. At a minimum the table of
contents should include the title of each article, its source, and date. Write a one to two page
introduction to the collection in which you explain the criteria you employed in selecting the
articles and what you have learned. Place all articles, table of contents, and introductory essay
in a 9 X 12” manila envelope. Write your name and class period on the outside of the envelope.
Bring this with you to class on the first day of school.
What to do if you are going to be away for the summer or if you don’t subscribe to the Bakersfield
Californian or the Los Angeles Times:
1. Use the school or public library.
2. Ask a friend or family member for their papers.
3. Access online at http://www.bakersfield.com/news or http://www.latimes.com/
PART THREE: Fiction Reading Assignment
The books on the summer reading list are important books in literature. Do not let their reputation
intimidate you. They were not written for English students to study but for people to enjoy. To get these
books, either check them out from the public library or purchase them, new or used (some texts are
available online). It is possible to buy Cliff’s Notes for each of these works, but it is neither necessary nor
recommended. The author needs to speak to you directly, not through an interpreter. If you must
depend on Cliff’s notes for understanding, you probably will not do well in this class. A major part of your
fall semester grade will be based on your fiction reading binder.
Please conform to the following guidelines:
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Obtain a 1” three-ring binder with clear overlay cover.
The binder shall contain the following:
 Part 1: Synopsis of the book: a careful summary of the basic ideas of the work with limited
detail, reason, and/or examples. Include all of the following.
1.
2.
3.
Author’s background (include name, year of birth/death, date of publication, reasons
for writing the work).
Settings (time and place of major plot events)
Characters : Major & Minor
Mrs. Bennett/ Ms. Sniffin
AP English Language and Composition
4.
5.
6.
Plot Summary (four to five paragraphs maximum)
Themes
Unique literary devices (symbolism, allusions, irony, narrative structure, diction,
imagery, etc.)
 Part 2: Dialectical Journal: Include 20 quotes/responses that span the entirety of the text.
(see example below)
1. Twenty quotes/responses that span the entirety of the novel .
1. “An in his wisdom hastes our
marriage, to stop the inundation of her
tears.” (Page 67)
1. Paris wants to marry Juliet soon because
he thinks that it will help Juliet stop
thinking about her dead cousin, Tybalt.
 Part 3: Vocabulary. Choose 25 unfamiliar words. Write the word, the sentence and page
number where the word is found, and the correct definition.
For example, (from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
histrionic: “The duke said. Leave him alone for that; said he had played a deef and
dumb person on the histrionic boards.” pg. 161
1. of or pertaining to actors or acting
2. deliberately affected or self-consciously emotional; overly dramatic in behavior or
speech.
PART FOUR: Introduce Yourself
I would like all of you to contact us via email by July 1 so that we may create an email list of all
11AP Language and Composition students. This will allow us to communicate with you during
the summer and answer any questions you may have about your summer reading. We look
forward to seeing all of you in the fall.
Mrs. Bennett/ Ms. Sniffin
AP English Language and Composition
Close Reading and Reader Response
During the course of the year, we will focus on numerous essays and works of nonfiction. This literature
can be considered literary art because it invites analysis transcending simple literal interpretation. To derive the
greatest benefit from the literature, you will have to be alert and focused while you read. You must read these
texts closely; therefore, you will not want to put off your reading until the last minute. Many are short pieces, so
you should read them more than once. Because AP English Language and Composition is a college-level course,
you must annotate your texts and you should record your engagement with the literature in your log. Beginning at
the bottom of this page, you will find specific strategies for annotating texts as well as the expectations for the log.
 Pre-read each essay; develop an understanding of the text’s meaning and ascertain the author’s purpose.
Write a short summary of the text in your log.
 After you reread and annotate, write your impressions in your log. Include your dislikes and likes, any
questions that arise, points that you find difficult to understand and the reasons why, as well as any
revelations or reflections.
 Look for patterns and repetitions (motifs), recurring elements within the text including images, phrases,
and situations. Ask yourself why the author may have used these repetitions. How do they affect you as
the reader? How do they help accomplish the author’s purpose?
 Identify any passages and rhetorical devices that strike you as highly significant and explain why. How
does this use of language contribute to the overall meaning of the text? How does the language
contribute to the development of a concept? How does the language achieve the author’s purpose?
 Identify unusual syntax and specific diction that strike you as highly significant. What effect does the
author achieve by arranging the sentence that way? Why does he/she choose that specific word? Note
unfamiliar vocabulary in your log.
 Think about how elements of this text can relate to other texts that you have read.
 Read the text in context – consider the time period in which it was written and the social and political
atmosphere. How does the author reveal these contextual elements in the text? Does the author
effectively reveal a particular position on an issue? What word choices does the author make to
accomplish this?
 What other methods stand out to you as effective in the accomplishment of the author’s purpose?
Before annotating, pre-read the text to discover the themes, points, language and rhetorical strategies the
author uses in developing meaning in the text.
Annotating
Annotating is essential for close and critical reading of texts in preparation for class discussions, writing
assignments, analyses, research, and text/exam responses. If you purchased your texts, you have the opportunity
to mark them. If you did not purchase your texts, and instead checked them out from Frontier High School, you
will not be able to mark the text, but instead will need to establish a form of annotating/note-taking that is clear to
you. All of the handouts can be marked. Establishing a structured method of annotating will assist you in college
and the business world, situations where close reading contributes to success. Furthermore, annotating helps you
dissect difficult texts and discern meaning from them. Many students have practiced a rather free-form method of
annotation and highlighting, making their texts look pretty, but providing little utility when it comes to
understanding the meaning. We tend to get lost in the muck or forget why we marked something. Here are some
common methods of annotating:
 Circle phrases you find pithy, represent repetitive themes or images (motifs), and/or reveal figurative
language
 Note shifts in pronoun usage/narrative point of view
Mrs. Bennett/ Ms. Sniffin
AP English Language and Composition
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Circle words the author uses for their connotative meaning
Circle words you need to define in the margin
Underline sentences that stand out, develop an argument, or make a point
Number related points
Bracket important sections of the text
Connect important ideas, words or phrases with arrows
In the margins:
 Summarize and number each paragraph (shorter pieces)
 Define unfamiliar terms
 Note any questions that come to mind
 Note possible connotative meanings of circled words
 Note any significant patterns or motifs
 Identify any outstanding language usage or writing strategies you discover
 Identify points or arguments
Don’t simply mark a passage without stating why in the margins. Never rely on your memory because when
referring back to your marks, you may not recall the context in which you first encountered the marked passage,
so it becomes meaningless unless you reread.
The Reading Log
You should log the texts you read aesthetically (for analysis/rhetorical strategies). For each text include:
 A summary of the text highlighting the major points the author makes
 Your ascertainment of the author’s rhetorical situation and purpose
 Who is the primary audience? What clues lead you to that conclusion?
 Your opinion of the effectiveness of the text. What rhetorical techniques employed by the author do you
find particularly effective in achieving his/her purpose?
 Three discussion questions
Developing Discussion Questions
If you maintain an adequate reader-response log and meticulously annotate your text, you should have little
trouble developing discussion questions and responding to analytical essay prompts. Pithy questions are the
backbone of a successful class.
 Raise questions that are ripe for discussion, questions you believe will spark a lively discussion
 Ask questions that may generate multiple interpretations of the text or that are debatable
 Ask questions for which you really want an answer. If there is something you are confused about, allow
the class to offer their insights as a bridge to understanding.
 Ask questions that lead to an understanding of the text – questions designed to help us all better
understand the text and its meanings. Help us all comprehend how the text works.
 Ask questions that focus on the author’s word choices and use of language, questions that consider the
connotations of words
 Ask questions that require more than a simple “yes or no” answer.
Remember: In rhetorical analysis, your job is to evaluate how authors use language to create arguments and
accomplish a purpose, not necessarily to evaluate the merits of their arguments. We do not focus on whether or
not we agree with the stands authors take, but how effectively they make them. You will have writing
opportunities to utilize rhetorical strategies in creating your own arguments responding to the points the authors
make in their essays.
Mrs. Bennett/ Ms. Sniffin
AP English Language and Composition
The Rhetorical Situation
Lloyd F. Bitzer
Lloyd F. Bitzer is Associate Professor of Speech, University of Wisconsin, Madison. This paper was presented as a public lecture at Cornell
University in November 1966 and at the University of Washington in April 1967. A short version was read at the April 1967 meeting of the
Central States Speech Association.
If someone says, “That is a dangerous situation,” his words suggest the presence of events, persons, or
objects which threaten him, someone else, or something of value. If someone remarks, I find myself in an
embarrassing situation, again the statement implies certain situational characteristics. If someone remarks that he
found himself in an ethical situation, we understand that he probably either contemplated or made some choice of
action from a sense of duty or obligation or with a view to the Good. In other words, there are circumstances of this
or that kind of structure which are recognized as ethical, dangerous, or embarrassing.
What characteristics, then, are implied when one refers to "the rhetorical situation" — the context in which speakers
or writers create rhetorical discourse? Perhaps this question is puzzling because "situation" is not a standard term in
the vocabulary of rhetorical theory. "Audience" is standard; so also are "speaker," "subject," "occasion," and
"speech." If I were to ask, "What is a rhetorical audience?" or "What is a rhetorical subject?" — the reader would
catch the meaning of my question.
When I ask, “What is a rhetorical situation?” I want to know the nature of those contexts in which speakers
or writers create rhetorical discourse: How should they be described? What are their characteristics? Why and how
do they result in the creation of rhetoric? By analogy, a theorist of science might well ask, “What are the
characteristics of situations which inspire scientific thought?” A philosopher might ask, “What is the nature of the
situation in which a philosopher ‘does philosophy’?" And a theorist of poetry might ask, “How shall we describe the
context in which poetry comes into existence?”
The presence of rhetorical discourse obviously indicates the presence of a rhetorical situation. The
Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Churchill's Address on Dunkirk, John F. Kennedy's
Inaugural Address — each is a clear instance of rhetoric and each indicates the presence of a situation. While the
existence of a rhetorical address is a reliable sign of the existence of situation, it does not follow that a situation
exists only when the discourse exists. Each reader probably can recall a specific time and place when there was
opportunity to speak on some urgent matter, and after the opportunity was gone he created in private thought the
speech he should have uttered earlier in the situation. It is clear that situations are not always accompanied by
discourse. Nor should we assume that a rhetorical address gives existence to the situation; on the contrary, it is the
situation which calls the discourse into existence. Clement Attlee once said that Winston Churchill went around
looking for "finest hours." The point to observe is that Churchill found them — the crisis situations — and spoke in
response to them.
No major theorist has treated rhetorical situation thoroughly as a distinct subject in rhetorical theory; many
ignore it. Those rhetoricians who discuss situation do so indirectly — as does Aristotle, for example, who is led to
consider situation when he treats types of discourse. None, to my knowledge, has asked the nature of rhetorical
situation. Instead rhetoricians have asked: What is the process by which the orator creates and presents discourse?
What IS the nature of rhetorical discourse? What sorts of interaction occur between speaker, audience, subject, and
occasion? Typically the questions which trigger theories of rhetoric focus upon the orator's method or upon the
discourse itself, rather than upon the situation which invites the orator's application of his method and the creation of
discourse. Thus rhetoricians distinguish among and characterize the types of speeches (forensic, deliberative,
epideictic;) they treat issues, types of proof, lines of argument, strategies of ethical and emotional persuasion, the
parts of a discourse and the functions of these parts, qualities of styles, figures of speech. They cover approximately
the same materials, the formal aspects of rhetorical method and discourse, whether focusing upon method, product
or process; while conceptions of situation are implicit in some theories of rhetoric, none explicitly treat the formal
aspects of situation.
I hope that enough has been said to show that the question — what is a rhetorical situation — is not an idle
one. In what follows to set forth part of a theory of situation. This essay, therefore, should be understood as an
attempt to revive the notion of rhetorical situation, to provide at least the outline of an adequate conception of it, and
to establish it as a controlling and fundamental concern of rhetorical theory.
Mrs. Bennett/ Ms. Sniffin
AP English Language and Composition
I
It seems clear that rhetoric is situational. In saying this, I do not mean merely that understanding a speech
hinges upon understanding the context of meaning in which the speech is located. Virtually no utterance is fully
intelligible unless meaning- context and utterance are understood; this is true of rhetorical and non-rhetorical
discourse. Meaning-context is a general condition of human communication and is not synonymous with rhetorical
situation. Nor do I mean merely that rhetoric occurs in a setting which involves interaction of speaker, audience,
subject, and communicative purpose. This is too general, since many types of utterances — philosophical, scientific,
poetic, and rhetorical — occurs in such settings. Nor would I equate rhetorical situation with persuasive situation,
which exists whenever an audience can be changed in belief or action by means of speech. Every audience at any
moment is capable of being changed in some way by speech; persuasive situation is altogether general.
Finally, I do not mean that a rhetorical discourse must be embedded in historic context in the sense that a
living tree must be rooted in soil. A tree does not obtain its character-as tree from the soil, but rhetorical discourse, I
shall argue, does obtain its character-as-rhetorical from the situation which generates it. Rhetorical works belong to
the class of things which obtain their character from the circumstances of the historic context in which they occur. A
rhetorical work is analogous to a moral action rather than to a tree. An act is moral because it is an act performed in
a situation of a certain kind; similarly, a work is rhetorical because it is a response to a situation of a certain kind.
In order to clarify rhetoric as essentially related to situation, we should acknowledge a viewpoint that is
commonplace but fundamental: a work of rhetoric is pragmatic; it comes into existence for the sake of something
beyond itself; it functions ultimately to produce action or change in the world; it performs some task. In short,
rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of
discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action. The rhetor alters reality by bringing
into existence a discourse of such a character that the audience, in thought and action, is so engaged that it becomes
mediator of change. In this sense rhetoric is always persuasive.
To say that rhetorical discourse comes into being in order to effect change is altogether general. We need to
understand that a particular discourse comes into existence because of some specific condition or situation which
invites utterance. Bronislaw Malinowski refers to just this sort of situation in his discussion of primitive language,
which he finds to be essentially pragmatic and "embedded in situation." He describes a party of fishermen in the
Trobriand Islands whose functional speech occurs in a "context of situation."
The canoes glide slowly and noiselessly, punted by men especially good at this task and always used for it.
Other experts who know the bottom of the lagoon . . . are on the look-out for fish. . . . Customary signs, or
sounds or words are uttered. Sometimes a sentence full of technical references to the channels or patches on
the lagoon has to be spoken; sometimes . . . a conventional cry is uttered . . . Again, a word of command is
passed here and there, a technical expression or explanation which serves to harmonize their behavior
towards other men. . . .An animated scene, full of movement, follows, and now that the fish are in their
power the fishermen speak loudly, and give vent to their feelings. Short, telling exclamations fly about,
which might be rendered by such words as: "Pull in," "Let go," "Shift further," "Lift the net."
In this whole scene, "each utterance is essentially bound up with the context of situation and with the aim of the
pursuit. The structure of all this linguistic material is inextricably mixed up with, and dependent upon, the course of
the activity in which the utterances are embedded." Later the observer remarks: "In its primitive uses, language
functions as a link in concerted human activity, as a piece of human behaviour. It is a mode of action and not an
instrument of reflection."
These statements about primitive language and the "context of situation" provide for us a preliminary
model of rhetorical situation. Let us regard rhetorical situation as a natural context of persons, events, objects,
relations, and an exigence, which I strongly invites utterance; this invited utterance participates naturally in the
situation, is in many instances necessary to the completion of situational activity, and by means of its participation
with situation obtains its meaning and its rhetorical character. In Malinowski’s example, the situation is the fishing
expedition — consisting of objects, persons, events, and relations — and the ruling exigence, the success of the
hunt. The situation dictates the sorts of observations to be made; it dictates the significant physical and verbal
responses; and, we must admit, it constrains the words which are uttered in the same sense that it constrains the
physical acts of paddling the canoes and throwing the nets. The verbal responses to the demands imposed by this
situation are clearly as functional and necessary as the physical responses.
Traditional theories of rhetoric have dealt, of course, not with the sorts of primitive utterances described by
Malinowski — "stop here," "throw the nets," "move closer" — but with larger units of speech which come more
readily under the guidance of artistic principle and method. The difference between oratory and primitive utterance,
Mrs. Bennett/ Ms. Sniffin
AP English Language and Composition
however, is not a difference in function; the clear instances of rhetorical discourse and the fishermen's utterances are
similarly functional and similarly situational. Observing both the traditions of the expedition and the facts before
him, the leader of fishermen finds himself obliged to speak at a given moment — to command, to supply
information, to praise or blame — to respond appropriately to the situation. Clear in-, stances of artistic rhetoric
exhibit the same character: Cicero's' speeches against Cataline were called forth by a specific union of persons,
events, objects, and relations and by an exigence which amounted to an imperative stimulus; the speeches in the
Senate rotunda three days after the assassination of the President of the United States was actually required by the
situation. So controlling is situation that we should consider it the very ground of rhetorical activity, whether that
activity is primitive and productive of a simple utterance or artistic and productive of the Gettysburg Address.
Hence, to say that rhetoric is situational means: (1) rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response
to situation, in the same sense that an answer conies into existence in response to a question, or a solution in
response to a problem; (2) a speech is given rhetorical significance by the situation, just as a unit of discourse is
given significance as answer or as solution by the question or problem; (3) a rhetorical situation must exist as a
necessary condition of rhetorical discourse, just as a question must exist as a. .necessary condition of an answer; (4)
many questions go unanswered and many problems remain unsolved; similarly, many rhetorical situations mature
and decay without giving birth to rhetorical utterance; (5) a situation is rhetorical insofar as it needs and invites
discourse capable of participating with situation and thereby altering its reality; (6) discourse is rhetorical insofar as
it functions (or seeks to function) as a fitting response to a situation which needs and invites it. (7) Finally, the
situation controls the rhetorical response in the same sense that the question controls the answer and the problem
controls the solution. Not the rhetor and not persuasive intent, but the situation is the source and ground of rhetorical
activity — and, I should add, of rhetorical criticism.
II
Let us now amplify the nature of situation by providing a formal definition and examining constituents.
Rhetorical situation may be defined as a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or
potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so
constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence. Prior to the
creation and presentation of discourse there are three constituents of any rhetorical situation: the first is the exigence;
the second and third are elements of the complex, namely the audience to be constrained in decision and action, and
the constraints which influence the rhetor and can be brought to bear upon the audience.
Any exigence is an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be
done, a thing which is other than it should be. In almost any sort of context, there will be numerous exigences, but
not all are elements of a rhetorical situation — not all are rhetorical exigences. An exigence which cannot be
modified is not rhetorical; thus, whatever comes about of necessity and cannot be changed — death, winter, and
some natural disasters, for instance — are exigences to be sure, but they are not rhetorical. Further, an exigence
which can be modified only by means other than discourse is not rhetorical; thus, an exigence is not rhetorical when
its modification requires merely one's own action or the application of a tool, but neither requires nor invites the
assistance of discourse. An exigence is rhetorical when it is capable of positive modification and when positive
modification requires discourse or can be assisted by discourse. For example, suppose that a man's acts are injurious
to others and that the quality of his acts can be changed only if discourse is addressed to him; the exigence — his
injurious acts — is then unmistakably rhetorical. The pollution of our air is also a rhetorical exigence because it’s
positive modification — reduction of pollution —^^ strongly invites the assistance of discourse producing public
awareness, indignation, and action of the right kind. Frequently rhetors encounter exigencies which defy easy
classification because of the absence of information enabling precise analysis and certain judgment — they may or
may not be rhetorical. An attorney whose client has been convicted may strongly believe that a higher court would
reject his appeal to have the verdict overturned, but because the matter is uncertain — because the exigence might be
rhetorical — he elects to appeal. In this and similar instances of indeterminate exigences the rhetor's decision to
speak is based mainly upon the urgency of the exigence and the probability that the exigence is rhetorical.
In any rhetorical situation there will be at least one controlling exigence which functions as the organizing
principle: it specifies the audience to be addressed and the change to be effected. The exigence may or may not be
perceived clearly by the rhetor or other persons in the situation; it may be strong or weak depending upon the clarity
of their perception and the degree of their interest in it; it may be real or unreal depending on the facts of the case; it
may be important or trivial; it may be such that discourse can completely remove it, or it may persist in spite of
repeated modifications; it may be completely familiar — one of a type of exigences occurring frequently in our
Mrs. Bennett/ Ms. Sniffin
AP English Language and Composition
experience — or it may be totally new, unique. When it is perceived and when it is strong and important, then it
constrains the thought and action of the perceiver who may respond rhetorically if he is a position to do so.
The second constituent is the audience. Since rhetorical discourse produces change by influencing the
decision and action of persons who function as mediators of change, it follows that rhetoric always requires an
audience — even in those cases when a person engages himself or ideal mind as audience.
It is clear also that a rhetorical audience must be distinguished from, a body of mere hearers or readers: properly
speaking, a rhetorical audience consists only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and
of being mediators of change.
Neither scientific nor poetic discourse requires an audience in the same sense. Indeed, neither requires an
audience in order to produce its end; the scientist can produce a discourse expressive or generative of knowledge
without engaging another mind and the poet's creative purpose is accomplished when the work is composed. It is
true, of course, that scientists and poets present their works to audiences, but their audiences are not necessarily
rhetorical. The scientific audience consists of persons capable of receiving knowledge, and the poetic audience, of
persons capable of participating in aesthetic experiences induced by the poetry. But the rhetorical audience must be
capable of serving as mediator of the change which the discourse functions to produce.
Besides exigence and audience, every rhetorical situation contains a set of constraints made up of persons,
events, objects, and relations which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and
action needed to modify the exigence. Standard sources of constraint include beliefs, attitudes, documents, facts,
traditions, images, interests, motives and the like; and when the orator enters the situation, his discourse not only
harnesses constraints given by situation but provides additional important constraints — for example his personal
character, his logical proofs, and his style. There are two main classes of constraints: (1) those originated or
managed by the rhetor and his method (Aristotle called these "artistic proofs"), and (2) those other constraints, in the
situation, which may be operative (Aristotle's "inartistic proofs"). Both, classes must be divided so as to separate
those constraints that are proper from those that are improper.
These three constituents — exigence, audience, constraints — comprise everything relevant in a rhetorical
situation. When the orator, invited by situation, enters it and creates and presents discourse, then both he and his
speech are additional constituents.
III
I have broadly sketched a conception of rhetorical situation and discussed constituents. The following are
general characteristics or features.
1. Rhetorical discourse is called into existence by situation; the situation which the rhetor perceives
amounts to an. Invitation to create and present discourse. The clearest instances of rhetorical speaking and writing
are strongly invited — often required. The situation generated by the assassination of President Kennedy was so
highly structured and compelling that one could predict with near certainty the types and themes of forthcoming
discourse. With the first reports of the assassination, there immediately developed a most urgent need for
information; in response, reporters created hundreds of messages. Later as the situation altered, other exigences
arose: the fantastic events in Dallas had to be explained; it was necessary to eulogize the dead President; the public
needed to be assured that the transfer of government to new hands would be orderly. These messages were not idle
performances. The historic situation was so compelling and clear that the responses were created almost out of
necessity. The responses — news reports, explanations, eulogies — participated with the situation and positively
modified the several exigences. Surely the power of situation is evident when one can predict that such discourse
will be uttered. How else explain the phenomenon? One cannot say that the situation is the function of the speaker's
intention, for in this case the speakers' intentions were determined by the situation. One cannot say that the rhetorical
transaction is simply a response of the speaker to the demands or expectations of an audience, for the expectations of
the audience were themselves keyed to a tragic historic fact. Also, we must recognize that there came into existence
countless eulogies to John F. Kennedy that never reached a public; they were filed, entered in diaries, or created in
thought
In contrast, imagine a person spending his time writing eulogies of men and women who never existed: his
speeches meet no rhetorical situations; they are summoned into existence not by real events, but by his own
Imagination. They may exhibit formal features which we consider rhetorical — such as ethical and emotional
appeals, and stylistic patterns; conceivably one of these fictive eulogies is even persuasive to someone; yet all
remain unrhetorical unless, through the oddest of circumstances, one of them by chance should fit a situation.
Neither the presence of formal features in the discourse nor persuasive effect in a reader or hearer can be regarded as
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reliable marks of rhetorical discourse: A speech will be rhetorical when it is a response to the kind of situation which
is rhetorical.
2. Although rhetorical situation invites response, it obviously does not invite just any response. Thus the
second characteristic of rhetorical situation is that it invites a fitting response, a response that fits the situation.
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was a most fitting response to the relevant features of the historic context which
invited its existence and gave it rhetorical significance. Imagine for a moment the Gettysburg Address entirely
separated from its situation and existing for us independent of any rhetorical context: as a discourse which does not
"fit" any rhetorical situation, it becomes either poetry or declamation, without rhetorical significance. In reality,
however, the address continues to have profound rhetorical value precisely because some features of the Gettysburg
situation persist; and the Gettysburg Address continues to participate with situation and to alter it.
Consider another instance. During one week of the 1964 presidential campaign, three events of national and
international significance all but obscured the campaign: Krushchev was suddenly deposed, China exploded an
atomic bomb, and in England the Conservative Party was defeated by Labour. Any student of rhetoric could have
given odds that President Johnson, in a major address, would speak to the significance of these events, and he did;
his response to the situation generated by the events was fitting. Suppose that the President had treated not these
events and their significance but the national budget, or imagine that he had reminisced about his childhood on a
Texas farm. The critic of rhetoric would have said rightly, "He missed the mark; his speech did not fit; he did not
speak to the pressing issues — the rhetorical situation shaped by the three crucial events of the week demanded a
response, and he failed to provide the proper one."
3. If it makes sense to say that situation invites a "fitting" response, then situation must somehow prescribe
the response which fits. To say that a rhetorical response fits a situation is to say that it meets the requirements
established by the situation. A situation which is strong and clear dictates the purpose, theme, matter, and style of
the response. Normally, the inauguration of a President of the United States demands an address which
speaks to the nation's purposes, the central national and international problems, the unity of contesting parties; it
demands speech style marked by dignity. What is evidenced on this occasion is the power of situation to constrain a
fitting response. One might say metaphorically that every situation prescribes its fitting response; the rhetor may or
may not read the prescription accurately.
4. The exigence and the complex of persons, objects, events and relations which generate rhetorical
discourse are located in reality, are objective and publicly observable historic facts in the world we experience, are
therefore available for scrutiny by an observer or critic who attends to them. To say the situation is objective,
publicly observable, and historic means that it is feat or genuine — that our critical examination will certify its
existence. Real situations are to be distinguished from sophistic ones in which, for example, a contrived exigence is
asserted to be real; from spurious situations in which the existence or alleged existence of constituents is the result of
error or ignorance; and from fantasy in which exigence, audience, and constraints may all be the imaginary objects
of a mind at play.
The rhetorical situation as real is to be distinguished also from a fictive rhetorical situation. The speech of a
character in a novel or play may be clearly required by a fictive .rhetorical situation — a situation established by the
story itself; but the speech is not genuinely rhetorical, even though, considered in itself, it looks exactly like a
courtroom address or a senate speech. It is realistic, made so by fictive context. But the situation is not real, not
grounded in history; neither the fictive situation nor the discourse generated by it is rhetorical. We should note,
however, that the fictive rhetorical discourse within a play or novel may become genuinely rhetorical outside fictive
context — if there is a real situation for which the discourse is a rhetorical response. Also, of course, the play or
novel itself may be understood as a rhetorical response having poetic form.
5. Rhetorical situations exhibit structures which are simple or complex, and more or less organized. A
situation's structure is simple when there are relatively few elements which must be made to interact; the fishing
expedition is a case in point — there is a clear and easy relationship among utterances, the audiences, constraints,
and exigence. Franklin D. Roosevelt's brief Declaration of War speech is another example: the message exists as a
response to one clear exigence easily perceived by one major audience, and the one overpowering constraint is the
necessity of war. On the other hand, the structure of a situation is complex when many elements must be made to
interact: practically any presidential political campaign provides numerous complex rhetorical situations.
A situation, whether simple or complex, will be highly structured or loosely structured. It is highly
structured when all of its elements are located and readied for the task to be performed. Malinowski’s example, the
fishing expedition, is a situation which is relatively simple and highly structured; everything is ordered to the task to
be performed. The usual courtroom case is a good example of situation which is complex and highly structured. The
jury is not a random and scattered audience but a selected and concentrated one; it knows its relation to judge, law,
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defendant, counsels; it is instructed in what to observe and what to disregard. The judge is located and prepared; he
knows exactly his relation to jury, law, counsels, defendant. The counsels know the ultimate object of their case;
they know what they must prove; they know the audience and can easily reach it. This situation will be even more
highly structured if the issue of the case is sharp, the evidence decisive, and the law clear. On the '• other hand,
consider a complex but loosely structured situation, William Lloyd Garrison preaching abolition from town to town.
He is actually looking for an audience and for constraints; even when he finds an audience, he does not know that it
is a genuinely rhetorical audience — one able to be mediator of change. Or consider the plight of many
contemporary civil rights advocates who, failing to locate compelling constraints and rhetorical I audiences,
abandon rhetorical discourse in favor of physical action.
Situations may become weakened in structure due to complexity or disconnectedness. A list of causes
includes these: (a) a single situation may involve numerous exigences; (b) exigencies in the same situation may be
incompatible; (c) two or more simultaneous rhetorical situations may compete for our attention, as in some
parliamentary debates; (d) at a given moment, persons comprising the audience of situation A may also be the
audience of situations B, C, and D; (a) the rhetorical audience may be scattered, uneducated regarding its duties and
powers, or it may dissipate; (f) constraints may be limited in number and force, and they may be incompatible. This
is enough to suggest the sorts of things which weaken the structure of situations.
6. Finally, rhetorical situations come into existence, then either mature or decay or mature and persist —
conceivably some persist indefinitely. In any case, situations grow and come to maturity; they evolve to just the time
when a rhetorical discourse would be most fitting. In Malinowski’s example, there comes a time in the situation
when the leader of the fisherman should say, "Throw the nets." In the situation generated by the assassination of the
President, there was a time for giving descriptive accounts of the scene in Dallas, later a time for giving eulogies. In
a political campaign, there is a time for generating an issue and a time for answering a charge. Every rhetorical
situation in principle evolves to a propitious moment for the fitting rhetorical response. After this moment, most
situations decay; we all have the experience of creating a rhetorical response when it is too late to make it public.
Some situations, on the other hand, persist; this is why it is possible to have a body of truly rhetorical
literature. The Gettysburg Address, Burke's Speech to the Electors of Bristol, Socrates' Apology — these are more
than historical documents, more than specimens for stylistic or logical analysis. They exist as rhetorical responses
for us precisely because they speak to situations which persist — which are in some measure universal.
Due to either the nature of things or convention, or both, some situations recur. The courtroom is the locus
for several kinds of situations generating the speech of accusation, the speech of defense, the charge to the jury.
From day to day, year to year, comparable situations occur, prompting comparable responses; hence rhetorical forms
are born and a special vocabulary, grammar, and style are established. This is true also of the situation which invites
the inaugural address of a President. The situation recurs and, because we experience situations and the rhetorical
responses to them, a form of discourse is not only established but comes to have a power of its own — the tradition
itself tends to function as a constraint upon any new response in the form.
IV
In the best of all possible worlds, there would be communication perhaps, but no rhetoric — since
exigences would not arise. In our real world, however, rhetorical exigences abound; the world I really invites change
— change conceived and effected by human agents who quite properly address a mediating audience. The practical
justification of rhetoric is analogous to that of scientific inquiry: the world presents objects to be known, puzzles to
be resolved, complexities to be understood — hence the practical need for scientific inquiry and discourse; similarly,
the world presents imperfections to be modified by means of discourse — hence the practical need for rhetorical
investigation and discourse. As a discipline, scientific method is justified philosophically insofar as it provides
principles, concepts, and procedures by which we come to know reality; similarly, rhetoric as a discipline is justified
philosophically insofar as it provides principles, concepts, and procedures by which we effect valuable changes in
reality. Thus rhetoric is distinguished from the mere craft of persuasion which, although it is a legitimate object of
scientific investigation, lacks philosophical warrant as a practical discipline.
“The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages," sections III and IV. This essay appears as a supplement in. Ogden and Richards' The
Meaning of Meaning.
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AP English Language and Composition
Kill 'Em! Crush 'Em! Eat 'Em Raw!
JOHN MCMURTRY
Born in Toronto in 1939, John McMurtry has worked as a professional football player, a print and
television journalist, and an English teacher. He claims he became a philosopher "as a last resort." His writing on
higher education and business criticizes the application of the global manufacturing model to social institutions.
The following essay first appeared in 1971 in MacLean’s. In it, McMurtry draws on his experience as a football
player to argue that society accepts the brutality of football because it mirrors the competitive economic practices
that we blindly accept. This was originally published in Maclean’s (October 1971), one of Canada’s most prominent
weekly magazines.
A few months ago my neck got a hard crick in it. I couldn't turn my head; to look left or right I'd have to
turn my whole body. But I'd had cricks in my neck since I started playing grade school football and hockey, so I just
ignored it. Then I began to notice that when I reached for any sort of large book (which I do pretty often as a
philosophy teacher at the University of Guelph) I had trouble lifting it with one hand. I was losing the strength in my
left arm, and I had such a steady pain in my back I often had to stretch out on the floor of the room I was in to
relieve the pressure.
A few weeks later I mentioned to my brother, an orthopedic surgeon, that I'd lost the power in my arm
since my neck began to hurt. Twenty-four hours later I was in a Toronto hospital not sure whether I might end up
with a wasted upper limb. Apparently the steady pounding I had received playing college and professional football
in the late Fifties and early Sixties had driven my head into my backbone so that the discs had crumpled together at
the neck — "acute herniation" — and had cut the nerves to my left arm like a pinched telephone wire (without nerve
stimulation, of course, the muscles atrophy, leaving the arm crippled). So I spent my Christmas holidays in the
hospital in heavy traction and much of the next three months with my neck in a brace. Today most of the pain has
gone, and I've recovered most of the strength in my arm. But from time to time I still have to don the brace, and
surgery remains a possibility.
Not much of this will surprise anyone who knows football. It is a sport in which body wreckage is one of
the leading conventions. A few days after I went into hospital for that crick in my neck, another brother, an
outstanding football player in college, was undergoing spinal surgery in the same hospital two floors above me. In
his case it was a lower, more massive herniation, which every now and again buckled him so that he was unable to
lift himself off his back for days at a time. By the time he entered the hospital for surgery he had already spent
several months in bed. The operation was successful, but, as in all such cases, it will take him a year to recover fully.
These aren't isolated experiences. Just about anybody who has ever played football for any length of time,
in high school, college or one of the professional leagues, has suffered for it later physically. Indeed, it is arguable
that body shattering is the very point of football, as killing and maiming are of war. (In the United States, for
example, the game results in 15 to 20 deaths a year and about 30,000 major operations on knees alone.) To grasp
some of the more conspicuous similarities between football and war, it is instructive to listen to the imperatives most
frequently issued to the players by their coaches, teammates and fans. "Hurt 'em!" "Level 'em!" "Kill 'em!" "Take
'em apart!" Or watch for the plays that are most enthusiastically applauded by the fans. Where someone is
"smeared," "knocked silly," "creamed," "nailed," “broken in two," or even "crucified." (One of my coaches when I
played corner linebacker with the Calgary Stampeders in 1961 elaborated, often very inventively, on this language
of destruction: admonishing us to "unjoin" the opponent, "make 'im remember you" and "stomp 'im like a bug. ")
Just as in hockey, where a fight will bring fans to their feet more often than a skillful play, so in football the mouth
waters most of all for the really crippling block or tackle. For the kill. Thus the good teams are "hungry," the best
players are "mean," and "casualties" are as much a part of the game as they are of a war. The family resemblance
between football and war is, indeed, striking. Their languages are similar: "field general," "long bomb," "blitz,"
"take a shot;' "front line," "pursuit," "good hit," "the draft" and so on. Their principles and practices are alike: mass
hysteria, the art of intimidation, absolute command and total obedience, territorial aggression, censorship, inflated
insignia and propaganda, blackboard maneuvers and strategies, drills, uniforms, formations, marching bands and
training camps. And the virtues they celebrate are almost identical: hyper- aggressiveness, coolness under fire and
suicidal bravery. All this has been implicitly recognized by such jock-loving Americans as media stars General
[George] Patton and President [Richard] Nixon, who have talked about war as a football game. Patton wanted to
make his Second World War tank men look like football players. And Nixon, as we know, was fond of comparing
attacks on Vietnam to football plays and drawing coachly diagrams on a blackboard for TV war fans.
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AP English Language and Composition
One difference between war and football, though, is that there is little or no protest against football.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the game is that the systematic infliction of injuries excites in people not
concern, as would be the case if they were sustained at, say, a rock festival, but a collective rejoicing and euphoria.
Players and fans alike revel in the spectacle of a combatant felled into semi-consciousness, "blindsided,"
"clotheslined" or decapitated." I can remember, in fact, being chided by a coach in pro ball for not "getting my hat"
injuriously into a player who was already lying helpless on the ground. (On another occasion, after the Stampeders
had traded the celebrated Joe Kapp to BC, we were playing the Lions in Vancouver and Kapp was forced on one
play to run with the ball. He was coming "down the chute," his bad knee wobbling uncertainly, so I simply dropped
on him like a blanket. After I returned to the bench I was reproved for not exploiting the opportunity to unhinge his
bad knee.) After every game, of course, the papers are full of reports on the day's injuries, a sort of post-battle "body
count," and the respective teams go to work with doctors and trainers, tape, whirlpool baths, cortisone and morphine
to patch and deaden the wounds before the next game. Then the whole drama is reenacted — injured athletes held
together by adhesive, braces and drugs — and the days following it are filled with even more feverish activity to put
on the show yet again at the end of the next week. (I remember being so taped up in college that I earned the
nickname "Mummy.") The team that survives this merry-go-round spectacle of skilled masochism with the fewest
incapacitating injuries usually wins. It is a sort of victory by ordeal: We hurt them more than they hurt us."
My own initiation into this brutal circus was typical. I loved the game from the moment I could run with a
ball. Played shoeless on a green open field with no one keeping score and in a spirit of reckless abandon and
laughter, it's a very different sport. Almost no one gets hurt and it's rugged, open and exciting (it still is for me). But
then, like everything else, it starts to be regulated and institutionalized by adult authorities. And the fun is over. So it
was as I began the long march through organized football. Now there was a coach and elders to make it clear by
their behavior that beating other people was the only thing to celebrate and that trying to shake someone up every
play was the only thing to be really proud of. Now there were severe rule enforcers, audiences, formally recorded
victors and losers, and heavy equipment to permit crippling bodily moves and collisions (according to one American
survey, more than 80% of all football injuries occur to fully equipped players). And now there was the official
"given" that the only way to keep playing was to wear suffocating armor, to play to defeat, to follow orders silently
and to renounce spontaneity for joyless drill. The game had been, in short, ruined. But because I loved to play and
play skillfully, I stayed. And progressively and inexorably, as I moved through high school, college and pro leagues,
my body was dismantled. Piece by piece.
I started off with torn ligaments in my knee at 13. Then, as the organization and the competition increased,
the injuries came faster and harder. Broken nose (three times), broken jaw (fractured in the first half and dismissed
as a "bad wisdom tooth," so I played with it for the rest of the game), ripped knee ligaments again. Torn ligaments in
one ankle and a fracture in the other (which I remember feeling relieved about because it meant I could honorably
stop drill-blocking a 270-pound defensive end). Repeated rib fractures and cartilage tears (usually carried, again,
through the remainder of the game). More dislocations of the left shoulder than I can remember (the last one I
played with because, as the Calgary Stampedes doctor said, it "couldn't be damaged any more"). Occasional broken
or dislocated fingers and toes. Chronically hurt lower back (I still can't lift with it or change a tire without worrying
about folding). Separated right shoulder (as with many other injuries, like badly bruised hips and legs, needled with
morphine for the games). And so on. The last pro game I played — against Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Western
finals in 1961 — I had a recently dislocated left shoulder, a more recently wrenched right shoulder and a chronic
pain center in one leg. I was so tied up with soreness I couldn't drive my car to the airport. But it never occurred to
me or anyone else that I miss a play as a corner linebacker.
By the end of my football career, I had learned that physical injury — giving it and taking it — is the real currency
of the sport. And that in the final analysis the "winner" is the man who can hit to kill even if only half his limbs are
working. In brief, a warrior game with a warrior ethos into which (like almost everyone else I played with) my
original boyish enthusiasm had been relentlessly taunted and conditioned.
In thinking back on how all this happened, though, I can pick out no villains. As with the social system as a
whole, the game has a life of its own. Everyone grows up inside it, accepts it and fulfills its dictates as obediently as
helots.' Far from ever questioning the principles of the activity, people simply concentrate on executing these
principles more aggressively than anybody around them. The result is a group of people who, as the leagues become
of a higher and higher class, are progressively insensitive to the possibility that things could be otherwise. Thus, in
football, anyone who might question the wisdom or enjoyment of putting on heavy equipment on a hot day and
running full speed at someone else with the intention of knocking him senseless would be regarded simply as not
really a devoted athlete and probably "chicken." The choice is made straightforward. Either you, too, do your very
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utmost to efficiently smash and be smashed, or you admit incompetence or cowardice and quit. Since neither of
these admissions is very pleasant, people generally keep any doubts they have to themselves and carry on.
Of course, it would be a mistake to suppose that there is more blind acceptance of brutal practices in
organized football than elsewhere. On the contrary, a recent Harvard study has approvingly argued that football's
characteristics of "impersonal acceptance of inflicted injury," an overriding "organization goal," the "ability to turn
oneself on and off" and being, above all, "out to win" are of "inestimable value" to big corporations. Clearly, our
sort of football is no sicker than the rest of our society. Even its organized destruction of physical well-being is not
anomalous. A very large part of our wealth, work and time is, after all, spent in systematically destroying and
harming human life. Manufacturing, selling and using weapons that tear opponents to pieces. Making ever bigger
and faster predator-named cars with which to kill and injure one another by the million every year. And devoting our
very lives to outgunning one another for power in an ever more destructive rat race. Yet all these practices are
accepted without question by most people, even zealously defended and honored. Competitive, organized injuring is
integral to our way of life, and football is simply one of the more intelligible mirrors of the whole process: a sort of
colorful morality play showing us how exciting and rewarding it is to Smash Thy Neighbor.
Now it is fashionable to rationalize our collaboration in all this by arguing that, 15 well, man likes to fight
and injure his fellows and such games as football should be encouraged to discharge this original-sin urge into less
harmful channels than, say, war. Public-show football, this line goes, plays the same sort of cathartic role as
Aristotle said stage tragedy does: without real blood (or not much), it releases players and audience from unhealthy
feelings stored up inside them.
As an ex-player in the seasonal coast-to-coast drama, I see little to recommend such a view. What
organized football did to me was make me suppress my natural urges and re-express them in an alienating, vicious
form. Spontaneous desires for free bodily exuberance and fraternization with competitors were shamed and forced
under ("If it ain't hurtin' it ain't helpin"') and in their place were demanded armored mechanical moves and cool
hatred of all opposition. Endless authoritarian drill and dressing-room harangues (ever wonder why competing teams
can't prepare for a game in the same dressing room?) were the kinds of mechanisms employed to reconstruct joyful
energies into mean and alien shapes. I am quite certain that everyone else around me was being similarly forced into
this heavily equipped military precision and angry antagonism, because there was always a mutinous attitude about
full-dress practices, and everybody (the pros included) had to concentrate incredibly hard for days to whip
themselves into just one hour's hostility a week against another club. The players never speak of these things, of
course, because everyone is so anxious to appear tough.
The claim that men like seriously to battle one another to some sort of finish is a myth. It only endures
because it wears one of the oldest and most propagandized of masks — the romantic combatant. I sometimes
wonder whether the violence all around us doesn't depend for its survival on the existence and preservation of this
tough-guy disguise.
As for the effect of organized football on the spectator, the fan is not released from supposed feelings of
violent aggression by watching his athletic heroes per-form it so much as encouraged in the view that peoplesmashing is an admirable mode of self-expression. The most savage attackers, after all, are, by general agreement,
the most efficient and worthy players of all (the biggest applause I ever received as a football player occurred when I
ran over people or slammed them so hard they couldn't get up). Such circumstances can hardly be said to lessen the
spectators' martial tendencies. Indeed it seems likely that the whole show just further develops and titillates the
North American addiction for violent self-assertion.... Perhaps, as well, it helps explain why the greater the zeal of
U.S. political leaders as football fans (Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew), the more enthusiastic the
commitment to hard-line politics. At any rate there seems to be a strong correlation between people who relish tough
football and people who relish intimidating and beating the hell out of commies, hippies, protest marchers and other
opposition groups. Watching well-advertised strong men knock other people round, make them hurt, is in the end
like other tastes. It does not weaken with feeding and variation in form. It grows.
I got out of football in 1962. I had asked to be traded after Calgary had 20 offered me a $25-a-week-pluscommissions off-season job as a clothing-store salesman. ("Dear Mr. Finks:" I wrote. [Jim Finks was then the
Stampeders' general manager.] "Somehow I do not think the dialectical subtleties of Hegel, Marx and Plato would
be suitably oriented amidst the environmental stimuli of jockey shorts and herringbone suits. I hope you make a
profitable sale or trade of my contract to the East.") So the Stampeders traded me to Montreal. In a preseason
intersquad game with the Alouettes I ripped the cartilages in my ribs on the hardest block I'd ever thrown. I had
trouble breathing and I had to shuffle-walk with my torso on a tilt. The doctor in the local hospital said three weeks'
rest, the coach said scrimmage in two days. Three days later I was back home reading philosophy.
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AP English Language and Composition
My Airline
by David Owen July 7, 2008, The New Yorker
Luggage surcharges are old news at my airline. I’ve had them for years: for second bags that don’t contain
golf clubs, for cardboard boxes held together with twine or duct tape, for long, rolled-up things that you bring into
the cabin, and for any carry-on item that I have to help you stow or retrieve, or that you jam into the overhead
compartment sideways, so that it crushes my sports coat, which I have folded using the time-tested inside-out
method, or whose size forces me to place my briefcase in a compartment other than one directly over my row. The
charge is fifty dollars, exact change only. From now on, I will also be charging fifty dollars for any piece of luggage
on which you have written your name and address in gigantic letters.
Previously, at check-in, I have visually estimated your weight. From now on, you may be required to step
onto the luggage scale. You must also certify, before boarding, that no part of your arm or torso will extend over
your armrest and touch me or cause my arm or side to get hot at any time during the flight. If the test calipers at the
boarding gate cannot be passed freely over your entire body, you will be required to purchase an additional ticket
and to sit in the exact center of your two seats. Furthermore, you must keep your feet stowed directly in front of you
at all times in such a way that your legs do not touch my legs or penetrate any part of the imaginary vertical plane
separating your seating space from mine. Fifty dollars.
Staring blankly at the seat back in front of you for the entire flight is no longer permitted on my airline. If
you have brought nothing to read, a book will be provided for your use, at a charge of fifty dollars. Flipping through
the airline magazine or the duty-free catalogue in your seat pocket is allowed only while the aircraft is on the ground
and other reading matter is temporarily inaccessible. You may no longer hum or do any form of beadwork. If you
wish to attempt a Sudoku puzzle during the flight, you must demonstrate to my satisfaction that you realize that the
nine spaces in every row and column must each contain a unique digit, and that the nine squares that make up the
over-all Sudoku square cannot be completed without consideration for how they fit into the entire puzzle. Do you
understand this? No? Fifty dollars.
Laughing out loud at anything in any movie, whether it is playing on the cabin system or on your own
DVD player, is fifty dollars per incident. Asking me to turn off my reading light so that you can see the screen
better: also fifty dollars.
If you and your spouse are dressed almost identically, or if you are carrying your passport in a thing around
your neck, or if you are wearing any form of footwear or pants that you clearly purchased specifically to wear on
airplanes, or if you make it obvious (by repeatedly turning around and talking to passengers in seats not adjacent to
yours) that you are travelling with a group, the charge is fifty dollars.
As always, tipping back in your seat is fifty dollars, payable to the person sitting behind you, unless you are
sitting in front of me, in which case the charge begins at a hundred dollars and my permission is required. Ask
nicely, and if we can agree on a figure I will ask a flight attendant to unlock your seat.
I don’t serve meals on my airline anymore. Get over it! What’s the matter— you can’t last two hours
without chicken parmigiana? Why are you even going to Indianapolis? If you don’t like waiting in the terminal
while your aging aircraft is being repaired, I suggest that you go to the Hertz counter, rent a Hummer, and spend the
next five days driving to San Diego. Are you aware that it took Ben Franklin more than a month to travel from
Philadelphia to Paris? No, you may not have the entire can.
I realize that you have a choice of airlines, and I encourage you to exercise it. In the meantime, please enjoy
the flight. ♦
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AP English Language and Composition
In Defense of Prejudice:
Why Incendiary Speech Must Be Protected
by Jonathan Rauch
The war on prejudice is now, in all likelihood, the most uncontroversial social movement in America.
Opposition to "hate speech," formerly identified with the liberal left, has become a bipartisan piety. In the past year,
groups and factions that agree on nothing else have agreed that the public expression of any and all prejudices must
be forbidden. On the left, protesters and editorialists have insisted that Francis L. Lawrence resign as president of
Rutgers University for describing blacks as, “Quote censored.” On the other side of the ideological divide, Ralph
Reed, the executive director of the Christian Coalition, responded to criticism of the religious right by calling a press
conference to denounce a supposed outbreak of "name-calling, scapegoating, and religious bigotry." Craig Rogers,
an evangelical Christian student at California State University, recently filed a $2.5 million sexual harassment suit
against a lesbian professor of psychology, claiming that anti-male bias in one of her lectures violated campus rules
and left him feeling "raped and trapped."
In universities and on Capitol Hill, in workplaces and newsrooms, authorities are declaring that there is no
place for racism, sexism, homophobia, Christian-bashing, and other forms of prejudice in public debate or even in
private thought. "Only when racism and other forms of prejudice are expunged," say the crusaders for sweetness and
light, "can minorities be safe and society be fair." So sweet, this dream of a world without prejudice. But the very
last thing society should do is seek to utterly eradicate racism and other forms of prejudice. Indeed, "eradicating
prejudice" is so vague a proposition as to be meaningless. Distinguishing prejudice reliably and nonpolitically from
non- prejudice, or even defining it crisply, is quite hopeless. We all feel we know prejudice when we see it. But do
we? At the University of Michigan, a student said in a classroom discussion that he considered homosexuality a
disease treatable with therapy.
He was summoned to a formal disciplinary hearing for violating the school's policy against speech that
"victimizes" people based on "sexual orientation." Now, the evidence is abundant that this particular hypothesis is
wrong, and any American homosexual can attest to the harm that this student's hypothesis has inflicted on many real
people. But was it a statement of prejudice or of misguided belief? Hate speech or hypothesis? Many Americans
who do not regard themselves as bigots or haters believe that homosexuality is a treatable disease. They may be
wrong, but are they all bigots? I am unwilling to say so, and if you are willing, beware. The line between a
prejudiced belief and a merely controversial one is elusive, and the harder you look the more elusive it becomes.
"God hates homosexuals" is a statement of fact, not of bias to those who believe it; "American criminals are
disproportionately black" is statement of bias, not of fact, to those who disbelieve it.
Pluralism is the principle that protects and makes a place in human company for that loneliest and most
vulnerable of all minorities, the minority who is hounded and despised among blacks and whites, gays and straights,
who is suspect or criminal among every tribe and in every nation of the world, and yet on whom progress depends:
the dissident. I am not saying that dissent is always or even usually enlightened. Most of the time it is foolish and
self-serving. No dissident has the right to be taken seriously, and the fact that Aryan Nation racists or Nation of
Islam anti-Semites are unorthodox does not entitle them to respect. But what goes around comes around. As a
supporter of gay marriage, for example, I reject the majority's view of family, and as a Jew I reject its view of God. I
try to be civil, but the fact is that most Americans regard my views of marriage as a reckless assault on the most
fundamental of all institutions, and many people are more than a little discomforted by the statement "Jesus Christ
was no more divine than anybody else" (which is why so few people ever say it). Trap the racists and anti-Semites,
and you lay a trap for me too. Hunt for them with eradication in your mind, and you have brought dissent itself
within your sights.
The new crusade against prejudice waves aside such warnings. Like early crusades against antisocial ideas,
the mission is fueled by good (if cocksure) intentions and a genuine sense of urgency. Some kinds of error are held
to be intolerable, like pollutants that even in small traces poison the water for a whole town. Some errors are so
pernicious as to damage real people's lives, so wrong-headed that no person of right mind or goodwill could support
them. Like the forebears of other stripe - the Church in its campaigns against heretics, the McCarthyites in their
campaigns against Communists - the modern anti-racist and anti-sexist and anti-homophobic campaigners are
totalists, demanding not the misguided ideas and ugly expressions be corrected or criticized but that they be
eradicated. They make war not on errors but on error, and like other totalists they act in the name of public safety the safety, especially, of minorities.
The sweeping implications of this challenge to pluralism are not, I think, well enough understood by the
public at large. Indeed, the new brand of totalisism has yet even to be properly named. "Multiculturalism," for
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instance, is much too broad. "Political correctness" comes closer but is too trendy and snide. For lack of anything
else, I will call the new anti-pluralism "purism," since its major tenet is that society cannot be just until the last
traces of invidious prejudice have been scrubbed away. Whatever you call it, the purists' way of seeing things has
spread through. American intellectual life with remarkable speed, so much so that many people will blink at you
uncomprehendingly or even call you a racist (or sexist or homophobe, etc.) if you suggest that expressions of racism
should be tolerated or that prejudice has its part to play.
What is especially dismaying is that the purists pursue prejudice in the name of protecting minorities. In
order to protect people like me (homosexual), they must pursue people like me (dissident). In order to bolster
minority self-esteem, they suppress minority opinion. There are, of course, all kinds of practical and legal problems
with the purists' campaign: the incursions against the First Amendment; the inevitable abuses by prosecutors and
activists who define as "hateful" or "violent" whatever speech they dislike or can score points off of; the lack of any
evidence that repressing prejudice eliminates rather than inflames it. But minorities, of all people, ought to
remember that by definition we cannot prevail by numbers, and we generally cannot prevail by force. Against the
power of ignorant mass opinion and group prejudice and superstition, we have only our voices. If you doubt that
minorities' voices are powerful weapons, think of the lengths to which Southern officials went to silence the
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Think of how much gay people have improved their lot over twenty-five years
simply by refusing to remain silent. Recall the Michigan student who was prosecuted for saying that homosexuality
is a treatable disease, and notice that he was black. Under that Michigan speech code, more than twenty blacks were
charged with racist speech, while no instance of racist speech by whites was punished. In Florida, the hate speech
law was invoked against a black man who called a policeman a "white cracker"; not so surprisingly, in the first hatecrimes case to reach the Supreme Court, the victim was white and the defendant black. In the escalating war against
"prejudice," the right is already learning to play by the rules that were pioneered by the purist activists of the left.
Last year leading Democrats, including the President, criticized the Republican Party for being increasingly in the
thrall of the Christian right.
Some of the rhetoric was harsh ("fire-breathing Christian radical right"), but it wasn't vicious or even
clearly wrong. Never mind: when Democratic representative Vic Fazio said Republicans were "being forced to the
fringes by the aggressive political tactics of the religious right," the chairman of the Republican National
Committee, Haley Barbour, said, "Christian-bashing" was the "left's preferred form of religious bigotry." Bigotry!
Prejudice! "Christians active in politics are now on the receiving end of an extraordinary campaign of bias and
prejudice," said the conservative leader William J. Bennett. One discerns, here, where the new purism leads.
Eventually, any criticism of any group will be "prejudice."
Here is the ultimate irony of the new purism: words, which pluralists hope can be substituted for violence,
are redefined by purists as violence. "The experience of being called 'nigger,' 'spic,' 'Jap,' or 'kike' is like receiving a
slap in the face," Charles Lawrence wrote in 1990. "Psychic injury is no less an injury than being struck in the face,
and it often is far more severe." This kind of talk is commonplace today. Epithets, insults, often even polite
expressions of what's taken to be prejudice are called by purists "assaultive speech," "words that wound," "verbal
violence." "To me, racial epithets are not speech," one University of Michigan law professor said. "They are
bullets." In her speech accepting the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm, Sweden, the author Toni
Morrison said this: "Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence."
It is not violence. I am thinking back to a moment on the subway in Washington, a little thing. I was riding
home late one night and a squad of noisy kids, maybe seventeen or eighteen years old, noisily piled into the car.
They yelled across the car and a girl said, "Where do we get off?"
A boy said, "Farragut North."
The girl: "Faggot North!"
The boy: "Yeah! Faggot North!"
General hilarity.
First, before the intellect resumes control, there is a moment of fear, an animal moment. Who are they?
How many of them? How dangerous? Where is the way out? All of these things are noted preverbally and assessed
by the gut. Then the brain begins an assessment: they are sober, this is probably too public a place for them to do it,
there are more girls than boys, they were just talking, it is probably nothing. They didn't notice me and there was no
incident. The teenage babble flowed on, leaving me to think. I became interested in my own reaction: the jump of
fear out of nowhere like an alert animal, the sense for a brief time that one is naked and alone and should hide or run
away.
For a time, one ceases to be a human being and becomes instead a faggot.
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The fear engendered by these words is real. The remedy is as clear and as imperfect as ever to protect
citizens against violence. This, I grant, is something that American society has never done very well and now does
quite poorly. It is no solution to define words as violence or prejudice as oppression, and then by cracking down on
words or thoughts pretend that we are doing something about violence and oppression. No doubt it is easier to pass a
speech code or hate-crimes law and proclaim the streets safer than actually to make the streets safer, but the one
must never be confused with the other. Every cop or prosecutor chasing words is one fewer chasing criminals. In a
world rife with real violence and oppression, full of Rwandas and Bosnias and eleven-year-olds spraying bullets at
children in Chicago and in turn being executed by gang lords, it is odious of Toni Morrison to say that words are
violence.
Indeed, equating "verbal violence" with physical violence is a treacherous, mischievous business. Not long
ago a writer was charged with viciously and gratuitously wounding the feelings and dignity of millions of people.
He was charged, in effect, with exhibiting flagrant prejudice against Muslims and outrageously slandering their
beliefs. "What is freedom of expression?" mused Salman Rushdie a year after the ayatollahs sentenced him to death
and put a price on his head. "Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." I can think of nothing sadder than
that minority activists, in their haste to make the world better, should be the ones to forget the lesson of Rushdie's
plight: for minorities, pluralism, not purism, is the answer. The campaigns to eradicate prejudice - all of them, the
speech codes and workplace restrictions and mandatory therapy for accused bigots and all the rest - should stop,
now. The whole objective of eradicating prejudice, as opposed to correcting and criticizing it, should be repudiated
as a fool's errand. Salman Rushdie is right, Toni Morrison wrong, and minorities belong at his side, not hers.