The Power of Words : Unveiling the Speaker and Writer's Hidden Craft

In 1888, Mark Twain reflected on the writer's special feel for words to his correspondent, George Bainton, noting that "the difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter." We recognize differences between a politician who is "willful" and one who is "willing" even though the difference does not cross word-stems or parts of speech. We recognize that being "held up" evokes different experiences depending upon whether its direct object is a meeting, a bank, or an example. Although we can notice hundreds of examples in the language where small differences in wording produce large reader effects, the authors of The Power of Words argue that these examples are random glimpses of a hidden systematic knowledge that governs how we, as writers or speakers, learn to shape experience for other human beings. Over the past several years, David Kaufer and his colleagues have developed a software program for analyzing writing called DocuScope. This book illustrates the concepts and rhetorical theory behind the software analysis, examining patterns in writing and showing writers how their writing works in different categories to accomplish varying objectives. Reflecting the range and variety of audience experience that contiguous words of surface English can prime, the authors present a theory of language as an instrument of rhetorically priming audiences and a catalog of English strings to implement the theory. The project creates a comprehensive map of the speaker and writer's implicit knowledge about predisposing audience experience at the point of utterance. The book begins with an explanation of why studying language from the standpoint of priming—not just meaning—is vital to non-question begging theories of close reading and to language education in general. The remaining chapters in Part I detail the steps taken to prepare a catalog study of English strings for their properties as priming instruments. Part II describes in detail the catalog of priming categories, including enough examples to help readers see how individual words and strings of English fit into the catalog. The final part describes how the authors have applied the catalog of English strings as priming tools to conduct textual research. In 1888, Mark Twain reflected on the writer's special feel for words to his correspondent, George Bainton, noting that the difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter. We recognize differences between a politician who is willful and one who is willing even though the difference does not cross word-stems or parts of speech. We recognize that being held up evokes different experiences depending upon whether its direct object is a meeting, a bank, or an example. Although we can notice hundreds of examples in the language where small differences in wording produce large reader effects, the authors of The Power of Words argue that these examples are random glimpses of a hidden systematic knowledge that governs how we, as writers or speakers, learn to shape experience for other human beings.

Over the past several years, David Kaufer and his colleagues have developed a software program for analyzing writing called DocuScope. This book illustrates the concepts and rhetorical theory behind the software analysis, examining patterns in writing and showing writers how their writing works in different categories to accomplish varying objectives. Reflecting the range and variety of audience experience that contiguous words of surface English can prime, the authors present a theory of language as an instrument of rhetorically priming audiences and a catalog of English strings to implement the theory. The project creates a comprehensive map of the speaker and writer's implicit knowledge about predisposing audience experience at the point of utterance.

The book begins with an explanation of why studying language from the standpoint of priming--not just meaning--is vital to non-question begging theories of close reading and to language education in general. The remaining chapters in Part I detail the steps taken to prepare a catalog study of English strings for their properties as priming instruments. Part II describes in detail the catalog of priming categories, including enough examples to help readers see how individual words and strings of English fit into the catalog. The final part describes how the authors have applied the catalog of English strings as priming tools to conduct textual research.
Book Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Table of Contents......Page 8 Foreword......Page 10 Preface......Page 18 Acknowledgements......Page 21 Introduction: Words and their Potency for Priming Audiences......Page 22 I: Preliminaries......Page 28 1 Priming Audience and Practices of Literacy......Page 30 2 Cataloging English Strings for Their Priming Potencies: A Report of a Research Study......Page 46 3 Methods for Selecting and Cataloging Strings......Page 64 4 The Catalog Hierarchy......Page 74 5 The Hierarchy in Relation to Previous Scholarship......Page 78 II: Results......Page 84 6 Cluster 1: Internal Perspectives......Page 86 7 Cluster 2: Relational Perspectives, Part I......Page 126 8 Cluster 2: Relational Perspectives, Part II......Page 166 9 Cluster 3: External Perspectives......Page 210 III: Implications and Applications of Rhetorical Priming Theory......Page 232 10 Using Priming Strings to Analyze Corpora of Texts......Page 234 References......Page 262 Author Index......Page 270 Subject Index......Page 272 "This book reports a multi-year research project designed to unveil the systematic knowledge by which we create experience for audiences through linear streams of words. The product of this research is a rich catalog of the English language classified around various families and subfamilies of words and word strings, and their distinctive effects in priming audiences. The catalog, the details of its organization, and the interactions across categories together constitute what the authors call a theory of rhetorical priming. This book motivates the need for such a theory, presents the research behind its development, the theory itself, and finally, applications of the theory across areas of textural scholarship, from the study of Shakespeare and the Federalist papers to Presidential Inaugural, and advertisements. This book should be of interest to researchers in rhetoric, discourse analysis, cognitive, applied, and corpus linguistics and writing educators."--Jacket