Invention I

Invention is the discovery of arguments, according to classical rhetoric.  The word comes from the Latin invenire, “to come upon.”  The premise behind the notion is that, while the facts of the issue at hand vary from case to case, the forms of the arguments available to the rhetor, whom I’ll call the writer, are similar from case to case.

Those forms, what I call frames, are categorized into two logical approaches, inductive and deductive.  Inductive frames are those of the example:  instances, stories, descriptions; and statistics, which generalize those Roger-level phenomena.

Deductive frames are derived from syllogisms.  They take the form of if this is true, then that must also be true.  The if clause (among many options) signals a premise, the then clause is the conclusion. 

Several frames are found among the deductive box of arguments:  contraries, comparisons, analogies and part-for-whole arguments require analytical reduction into components.  If A has these parts, and they correspond to B’s parts, then we can speak of A by speaking of B.  The analogy is akin to the commutative property in arithmetic:  If A=B, then B=A.  I speak of A by speaking of B.

Other frames for deductive argument include definition:  If justice means “getting what you deserve,” then …  Certain conclusions can be asserted to follow from that definition:

1.  You should be compensated for good work (be it flipping hamburgers, acing tests, closing sales).

2.  You should be free to vote if you’re an American citizen.

3.  You should be treated with dignity.

And so on.

Similarly, if you belong to the category American Citizen, you enjoy certain guaranteed rights, not all of which may be enjoyed by non-citizen residents, though, in our case, that number is limited.  Whether a person enjoys those reserved for citizens depends on whether that person belongs to the category of “American Citizen.”  This frame is traditionally called “genus-species,” or category—member.

Other deductive frames include Contraries (“If obsession with social media causes anxiety disorders, abstention from social media will calm the mind”) and “More and Less,” or what we might call a fortiori, Latin abbreviated from a fortiori argumento, “from stronger argument” (“If a high school graduate has trouble finding a good paying job, how much more trouble will a high school dropout have?”) We use Antecedents—Consequences and Cause—Effect as we do premise—conclusion.  Past-Fact/Future Fact involves moves to the origins or history of the issue at hand and extrapolation into the future if current trends continue.  There are others, but let this compilation suffice.

The advantage of such catalog of argument frames?  It gives you resources for how you present your case.  It makes possible your figuring out not only what but how to state your arguments.  It goes beyond reasons and examples, allowing you to be interesting as well as informative and persuasive.  I would argue that being interesting is the most efficient route to being persuasive.  And the vehicle for being interesting is variety.

The point I want to make here, though, is that there exist a multitude of ways to frame arguments that have been available to you for over 2,000 years.  But you’d never know it by reading a typical college composition textbook, which is focused on the writing process.

I continue the discussion of invention in my next post, with an overview of inductive frames.

In my YouTube videos I discuss many of the more popular frames, both deductive and inductive.  If you need more examples, check those out. The link for my channel is on the left side of this blog home screen.

Additionally, you can purchase the Martin Luther King Teaches Rhetoric to see the variety of frames King uses in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail."