The Rhetorical Turn

You’ve read the essay called “The Turn” by William Langewiesche. At several points in this essay the writer shifts from one phase of his argument to another. In simple writing instruction, those are called transitions; in seventh grade you probably worked hard on transitions, and practiced using various words and phrases called “transitions.” News Flash: words such as “Firstly” or “However” or “In conclusion” are not transitions themselves; they are transition signals. The transition is within the writing itself. Simply put: you can slap the word “thirdly” anywhere, but if what follows the word “thirdly” isn’t substantially different from point two, then your transition is just window-dressing.

It’s time to forget that seventh-grade practice, or to go beyond and above it. In simple writing situations—such as writing down the directions to drive from one place to another—“next,” “then,” “now,” are indispensable to clarity. But in the mix of clarity and style we call writing, such obvious steps obscure the real process of moving through a piece of writing, which involves two sorts of movement. One good way to sort out those sorts is whether the change takes place in the writer or in the audience.

A writer can get you the reader to move from point A to point B, or from body to conclusion, with simple logos—just words, including perhaps some of those cheesy transition phrases you practiced back there in middle school. In many cases that’s more than enough. Depending on the type of writing, anything more could be pompous or bombastic.

But more often it’s best--deepest, most effective, most interesting—to change everything at those key points. A tool writers use to do that is often counterintuitive to good writing. We’re often taught to stay consistent: consistent in ethos, pathos, logos, consistent in perspective, tone, etc. That’s good information in the default but rules were meant to be broken, and one of the most effective ways to get your reader’s attention and keep it is to shift.

I call it “the rhetorical turn.”

For simplicity you might think of it as an actual turn, as in turning from one thing to another. At one point you are facing one direction; then you move your body to face another. There’s a song about it:

Stand in the place where you live

Now face North

Think about direction

Wonder why you haven't before

Now stand in the place where you work

Now face West

Think about the place where you live

Wonder why you haven't before

The rhetorical turn has a variety of points and applications. There is no simple formula for composing it, only the main rule of writing: do it on purpose, not by accident. In your proposal essay the form—a standard, generally expected formula for doing this job—includes the assumption of a clear turn: the point where you stop talking problem and suggest a solution. On one level it’s form-based: start a new paragraph, and voila you are on solution now. You do that with words, so it isn’t a big shift. On another level this shift is created in the mind of your reader, a transition that requires him to make decisions: do I accept the problem? Do I accept the writer’s ethos? I do? Okay, then I’m receptive enough to handle the proposal. I’m ready to move on.

Or, do I not? In that case, the turn comes too soon and I resist or reject because the writer didn’t give me enough to go on (or gave me too much or lost my trust, etc.). On another level, the turn is a point of challenge: the place where the writer has to let go of control of phase A and move to phase B, has to give up the power to the reader, has to let the essay fly on its own.

What They Look Like

Choosing the subheading above is a rhetorical choice for me. So is returning to the first person in this section. So the subhead above signals a change, rather obviously, in anticipating the reader’s question and sending a message that I intend to answer that question. That’s one form of rhetorical turn, a rather structured and direct way, not very stylish or engaging, a tad rigid, a bit simple, but effective. You might choose in your proposal essay to stop your paragraph flow, skip a space, insert a subheading such as “Proposal”, maybe make it boldface or all caps (I’d make you take it out if you did, but you could argue that it’s right), skipping another line, then starting your proposal phase. That would be a rhetorical turn, or at least the appearance of one. If you do such a thing, you had better deliver what the reader expects: a change. If you don’t deliver the change, then they’ll decide you’re “crying wolf” (like most idioms, that has a story—if you don’t know it, look it up.) Structurally, you are promising something whenever you create a turn. That’s why it’s critical to do it clearly, well, decisively. Some writers hedge their bets (another idiom with a story) and try to sneak or slide their way from section to section in the essay. In formal writing you should be crisp and decisive; if your writing isn’t crisp, I’ll call you soggy or mushy.

The big turn-signal above is not skillful or subtle. Such a visual/ formal turn is not a bad organizational move, but it “talks down” to the reader. Typically I’ll encourage you to transfer some of the challenge of the turn to the reader; make it more interesting and complex, and challenge yourself to make it a real and effective rhetorical turn without the obvious signal so the reader can enjoy the connection that arises.

One common turn-style is the hypothetical, in which you transition from discussing your topic by inviting the reader to enter the world of the essay. You might say, “Imagine a WHS freshman, walking down the hallway hunched under the burden of a forty-pound backpack.” Such a choice commits you to complete that hypothetical, to stay in it and with it until it has served its purpose, then to disengage from it clearly and crisply so the reader isn’t confused or uncertain.

A more common rhetorical turn is a rhetorical question. These tend to flow prodigally from the pens of young writers, but they carry a responsibility too. Rhetoricals must be textured carefully. Do you intend the reader to answer the question in their mind? Can they answer only one way? Or do you hope that the reader will weigh the question truly and carefully, and then carry the answer they’ve created forward into the next component of the essay? These two styles of rhetorical are often sloppily interchanged by students.

While the rest of us feast on pheasant and fava beans, the fourth lunch students are forced to eat the stomped, linty scrapings from the cafeteria trays. Is this fair?

What choice would you make: put food on the table this week, or pay for health insurance you may not need now, or ever?

A simple rhetorical question has only one logical answer, and functions much like a statement: in the example above, read “It isn’t fair that we feast on pheasant and fava beans…” etc. The next question isn’t so simple. The reader is asked to provide an answer, but notice that the writer’s real rhetorical purpose isn’t to elicit an answer at all. The true purpose is to force the reader to weigh the two alternatives, and to create a qualitative difference between those two; to put themselves in the position described; to comprehend the unfairness of the question and (in this case) to see a third answer: the question itself is a dilemma, a Hobson’s choice.

Simple rhetorical questions can be effective but they tend to be carelessly used, a kind of simple breakup of the series of statements. They can be lined up in groups with little loss of focus or clarity, though it isn’t the most refined technique to do so.

The latter sort of question, a Socratic question, should be asked sparingly and never in groups. The next paragraph of the essay should engage the reader’s answer but should avoid ruling on it; you have asked the reader’s true opinion, engaged the reader in an active way. These questions make good conclusion foundations if the purpose or outcome of the essay can tolerate some ambiguity or soft closure.

Shifting perspective is another style of rhetorical turn. Stepping in to the first person is a powerful move for a writer. In some situations, a writer must establish that ethos in the first person; but if it can be delayed, the act of finally coming forward as I earns the writer some added attention and focus. The same is generally not true when you shift from the third person to the first. First person is informal but intimate; it changes the psychological effect of ethos, “cashing in” on the authority that the writer has established. For example:

In 1997, a Pew Charitable Trust survey put the number of homeless people on the streets of Minneapolis at 1800 on any given night. The number of shelter beds available at that time was approximately 400; the number of daily free meals served in the city was about 2000. Per capita Minneapolis is about average among large American cities, but this figure is distorted by the proximity of St. Paul, which has an outsized homeless problem of its own and fewer resources, leading to some undercounting of people and overcounting of resources. But Pew also measures homelessness in another way. The Climate Index of Homelessness (CIH) measures the quality of life for homeless people by factoring in climate, crime, and law enforcement policies. With the coldest temperatures and the coldest cops of any major city in the US, Minneapolis is a grueling hell for homeless people in the winter.

Pew’s CIH is a compelling measure of the pain and risk of living out of doors in a Minnesota winter, but it’s not the best measure. I prefer the less statistical and more anecdotal “MIH”, the Me Index of Homelessness. It is very accurate, because I spent the dead of winter 2004 on the streets of Minneapolis.

Writers can also “turn” in time. The general assumption of readers is that things come in chronological order. This assumption is subliminal, a default, but that expectation can be used to surprise a reader, or challenge them to work out the relationship between sections in an essay themselves. Cause-and-effect, tight-focus description, or writing about the nature of things—definition essays, for example--are an especially likely place to use this type of turn.

In 226 a small Roman garrison force surprised and routed an army of Vandals nearly ten times its size. The Gauls regrouped, drew in additional forces from their allies to the west, and wheeled on the Romans, triggering the first great battle in the Ardennes Forest, but not the last. By the time the two armies collided, the Romans had been reinforced by a single legion and so was still outnumbered nearly eight to one. But the Roman generals never hesitated; they advanced in perfect Roman discipline and inflicted crushing losses on the barbarian force. Fewer than 200 Gauls survived the day, but military historians still mark it as a Roman defeat. That was the last time the Legions were able to deploy their superweapon, their technological ace-in-the-hole, unopposed. The secret was out, and the military superiority it conveyed was lost. During the battle a small detachment of Vandal scouts surprised and captured a Roman cavalry probe, separated the legionnaires from their heads, and rode the prime Roman mounts home. They didn’t realize it, but hidden in plain sight in those cavalry mounts was the secret to Roman military hegemony.

At Thermopylae, a small force of Spartans, allies, and helot slaves held back a massive force of Persians in 440 BCE. Their secret was the phalanx, and the discipline and guts that made it work. The phalanx was a land-tank, an armored formation of people moving in perfect synchronization and purpose learned (at least by the Spartans) over a lifetime of training and drill. When done well, the phalanx was the military sine qua non, the apex of power and conquest. After Thermopylae the phalanx only grew stronger, more sophisticated, and more unstoppable. But within a few years a simple technical innovation killed the phalanx as dead as a stump.

Imagine a young man, maybe your age; he lives on a cattle spread in central Montana, perhaps, or maybe a rough livestock-and-corn operation in central Minnesota or a dude ranch in New Mexico. On any given day this young man mounts his horse in the most natural and casual manner, but he too is on close terms with the Roman superweapon. In fact, he’s scraping his boots on it.

Carefully constructed transitions for this essay would try to soften the confusion of three different time periods in an odd order. But if the writing is engaging and the idea is worth developing with some juice—as is the concept that the great superweapon of the Romans was nothing more than the fixed stirrup—readers will create the relationship for themselves. The assumption that history and technology essays must progress in order has been turned around by the writer, and the surprise or misdirection can be used to good effect. The reader has to build it, and when readers invest in a piece of writing to that extent, the payoff is great.

Plan your essays by paragraphs, by purpose, by outline; but plan them also by turns. Know when you use one; use it sparingly, carefully, but decisively. Most essays have one or more; they are not “required,” but they are another way of exerting writerly control over your work. If your essay is ineffective, flat, boring, or unpersuasive, revise it for those key shifts we call “turns.”