A particular issue in rhetoric is dealing
with the prevailing prejudices of your audience. In relation to a
particular
issue each tribunal
will come with pre-existing views as to the desirable position.
How you structure your argument will depend on whether you are
going with those prejudices or working against them:
If the wind
is in your favor then it is best to allow the tribunal
to gain the impression that it has itself developed the arguments
you present in support of their prejudice. Encourage the tribunal
to express its prejudices and then nod vigorously in response
to them. The rhetorical question is made for such circumstances.
It
is also wise to be short, and to reserve your energy for any
reply.
First, you can plough on. This
is only feasible if you think that there is overwhelming reason
and evidence
in your
favor and
the tribunal is the kind to take this into account. A judge
may grudgingly
concede he is wrong on the law but sometimes even the
most cogent evidence will not convince a mob.
Second, you can change
tack and try to side-step the problem. Primarily this
is achieved by aligning your argument so that
it falls into
the first category. A stark example, unlikely to be encountered
in real life, arose in a competition debate. The topic
of debate was
homosexual rights, which those proposing the motion had
chosen to define as allowing gay marriage but not allowing gay
adoption (neither
of which were permissible in law in the United Kingdom
at
the time.) To take the straight opposition to the position
put forward meant
arguing emotionally that it was “against the laws
of God and man” to permit such a thing and thus
straight into the teeth of the prejudices of this particular
tribunal
(young, British,
college students from a largely liberal background).
To have done
so would
have been to lose. Instead, we opted to side-step the
problem by arguing instead for gay rights that included
adoption.
Now the
prejudices were against the proposers and their more
limited relaxation of the
law.
An alternative approach is the
corollary or “senate
amendment” attack.
(It has the latter name because of the prevalence
of this approach in the US legislature where amendments
on very
different topics are
tacked onto legislation in order to either scupper that
legislation or get through something that would otherwise
have failed to gain
sufficient support). In short, you connect the primary
argument (in which the prejudice is against you) to a
secondary argument (in which
the prejudice is with you). In order to support the secondary
argument – which
is a necessary corollary of the primary argument – the
tribunal is forced to go against its prejudices in relation
to the primary
argument. An example is this: in a recent court case
that I was involved in the issues could be divided into
two
groups – questions
of liability and questions about the appropriate remedies
to apply if the defendant was found liable. In relation
to the latter the
prejudice of the court was against the arguments that
I would have wanted to run on behalf of the defendant.
Rather
than confront this
head on I suggested that the arguments were so long and
complex as to virtually warrant a trial in themselves.
However, since it might
not be necessary to consider them if the court found
in favor of my client they could be set to one side for
the
time being. The court
gratefully took the opportunity to avoid the issues – so
the prejudice against my client was not present during
consideration
of the liability and a new prejudice, against an outcome
that would necessitate much additional work, now operated
in the court’s
mind.
The third option is the Mark
Anthony approach – appear
to agree with the prevailing prejudice but subtly undermine
it by changing
the nature of what you are agreeing with. So
in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar Brutus has persuaded
the mob that he has acted in
Rome’s best interests
by ending Caesar’s ambition. The two pillars of
his argument are 1) I, Brutus, am trustworthy and 2)
I tell
you Caesar’s
actions showed over-reaching ambition. The mob’s
belief in the first pillar leads them to accept the second.
Mark Anthony’s
argument must overcome the mob’s prejudice to believe
Brutus because of his honorable status. He does so by
purporting to agree
that Brutus is honorable while attacking the second
premise – by
suggesting that Caesar did what he did for the people
of Rome with the result that the attack on the second
pillar
of Brutus’ argument
undermines the first pillar:
“Friends, Romans, countrymen,
lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.”
