Words have power, and people have “an appetite for well-expressed wisdom, motivational or otherwise,” says Ward Farnsworth.
He’s dean of the University of Texas School of Law, and author of Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric.
The book shows examples of rhetoric (the art of persuasion) from the famous such as Churchill, Lincoln and Dickens, and lesser well known speakers.
Phrasing contributes to effectiveness. A 2000 study by cognitive scientists at Lafayette College found when people were shown two statements of the same pithy saying, study participants were more likely to say the rhyming aphorism seemed true.
“As O.J.Simpson’s lawyer once said, ‘If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.’ The study shows that the way an idea is expressed can affect judgments about its merit,” Ward Farnsworth says.
A more motivational example is Napoleon Hill’s dictum, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
The details of wording make a difference Farnsworth says.
“While there are many ways to say the same thing, one may be more pleasing and convincing than all the others because of the way words are arranged. For example, parallel construction where two halves of a claim are ‘attractively balanced,” can be effective he says.
‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure’ is a parallel construction.
A reversal of structure, or ‘chiasmus’ is also attractive – “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” he says.
Ward Farnsworth says metaphor use can make a simple idea compelling.
When business people talk about ‘dropping the ball’, or ‘scoring an own goal’ – they are making implied comparison to sports.
A metaphor usually succeeds by making its subject more visible, or by making it simpler, or by caricaturing it.
The quote ‘Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid’, woud be far less powerful or evocative if it stopped after the first sentence.
These are some of the principles he lays bare in opening up the tools of rhetoric.
What use could your business make of such persuasive language (or even a Million Dollar Message!)?