ORNAMENTAL FALLACY
The contrast between a rhetoric of figures and a rhetoric of arguments stems from and exacerbates the classical distinction between the two basic production stages of rhetorical discourse, researching arguments and thexpressing them verbally. The break between inventio and elocutio is generally attributed to Ramus (Ong, 1958). According to this view, only elocutio and actio fall within the realm of rhetoric, while inventio, dispositio and memoria are reassigned to thinking (cognition). This popular opposition between an ornate, figurative, rhetorical discourse on the one hand, and an argumentative discourse ideally free of subjectivity or figuration, on the other, was strongly reasserted by Locke in the modern perspective of a discourse aimed at developping scientific thought. This antagonism has been pushed to the confrontation and mutual rejection of a discourse of pleasure and emotion and an austere discourse of reason.
1. Fallacious rhetoric?
Socrates rejected the entire enterprise of rhetoric, as the art of constructing a persuasive discourse, in the name of a transcendental truth, as exposed by Plato in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, see argumentation (1); persuasion; probable.
In modern times, this ancient critique has been reinforced by a new wave of criticism developed in the name of scientific discourse. Rhetorical discourse is now routinely disparaged for substituting the search for pleasure for the search for truth. Rhetoric is seen as fulfilling a futile and perverse desire for ornamentation, and in order to eradicate this evil, figures of speech should be eliminated.
Ornamental-persuasive rhetoric is thus reconstructed as a discourse of passion, perverse and magical. Figures and tropes are defined within the framework of ornatus, then, the elocutio is assimilated to the ornatus, through synecdoche. Finally rhetoric itself is reduced to elocutio. This ornamental vision of “make-up rhetoric” that has been opposed to the natural, healthy discourse of reasoned argument, see verbiage. The following excerpt from Locke is an authoritative reference in discourses that attack ornate language.
[34] Seventhly, language is often abused by figurative speech. Since wit and fancy find easier entertainment in the world than dry truth and real knowledge, figurative speeches and allusion in language will hardly be admitted as an imperfection or abuse of it. I confess, in discourses where we seek rather pleasure and delight than information and improvement, such ornaments as are borrowed from them can scarce pass for faults. But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness; all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats: and therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render them in harangues and popular addresses, they are certainly, in all discourses that pretend to inform or instruct, wholly to be avoided; and where truth and knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great fault, either of the language or person that makes use of them. What and how various they are, will be superfluous here to take notice; the books of rhetoric which abound in the world, will instruct those who want to be informed: only I cannot but observe how little the preservation and improvement of truth and knowledge is the care and concern of mankind; since the arts of fallacy are endowed and preferred. It is evident how much men love to deceive and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its established professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great reputation: and I doubt not but it will be thought great boldness, if not brutality, in me to have said thus much against it. Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived. (Locke, Essay, III, X; Fraser, p. 146-147)
De Man has shown that this is all about the status of natural language in science and philosophy:
At times, it seems as if Locke would have liked nothing better than to be allowed to forget about language altogether, difficult as this may be in an essay having to do with understanding (1972, p. 12).
This observation does not directly invalidate Locke’s thesis because it is possible to interpret the thesis as beeing concerned with the capacity of ordinary language to convey the new mathematical forms of scientific knowledge.
In the modern age, the language through which “we preserve and develop truth and knowledge” is not natural language, but rather the languages of calculation. Nevertheless, de Man rightly emphasizes the contradictory nature of an undertaking that engages in an analysis of reasoning in natural language after first condemning it.
2. Against Ornate Discourse
The main argumentative topoi of the discourse which condemns figures as fallacious ornaments are as follows.
2.1 Fallacy of irrelevance and inconsistency
In an argumentative discourse under development, all decoration is a form of entertainment, that is to say a distraction for the audience. As a result, the figures, permanently serve as “red herrings », lacking of relevance; they are fallacious because they deviate from the question.
During the delivery of an argumentative speech, any embellishment serves as entertainment and distracts the audience. In argumentative language, rhetorical devices are as « red herrings » because they are irrelevant and divert attention from the issue at hand.
These figures knowingly violate three Gricean principles, the maxims of quality, quantity and relevance. To use Klinkenberg’s French term, the use of figures is an impertinence (Fr), meaning that they are both “irrelevant” and “impertinent” (Klinkenberg 2000; Klinkenberg 1990, pp. 129–130). Moreover, they violate the principle of non-contradiction. The metaphor is both true and false, and guilty of ambiguity and category mistake.
2.2 Fallacies of verbiage and emotion
The classical concept of figurative discourse is based on the ability to choose between two chains of signifiers to express the same idea, or refer to the same entity, state of the world or semantic content. This results in an excess of words compared to the strict requirements of the objective discourse. The coexistence of different signifiers to express the same thing or the same truth is at the root of the fallacy of verbiage–a kind of meta-fallacy that leads to all others.
Moreover, the figurative language tends to favor the complicated and the rare, which are the opposite of ordinary, simple and direct speech. When an apparently simple form appears in such an elaborate discourse, it only seems simple due to a double subtlety. An unsophisticated addressee expects a simple expression, while a sophisticated addressee anticipates that this expectation will be thwarted and anticipates the figuration. This second-level expectation is then itself frustrated by the simplicity of the expression itself. The ornamental figure is outlandish, and thus produces a surprise, the prodrom of emotion. This opens the way to numerous ad passiones fallacies; aesthetic emotions being fallacious like any other passion. This connection is explicit in Locke’s quotation.
2.3 The language transparency fallacy
Taking scientific language as the norm in order to guarantee direct access to objects and their natural relations, the language of argumentation should be regulated and unambiguous. It should lack neither nor exceed what is necessary, and be proportionate to the nature of things. In other words, it should be transparent and ad judicium. Figures, that pretend to glorify the truth, actually veil it. Ornaments are worse than fallacies because they are their source and mask.
However, the problem is that figures are the flesh and bones of everyday expression. To eliminate them would require renouncing natural language and argumentation in human affairs altogether.
3. An etymological argument against the decorative view of the ornatus
Are the figures ornaments? The word ornament is derives from the Latin ornamentum (adj. ornatus, verb ornare). The primary meaning of ornamentum is: “1. Apparatus, tackle, equipment […] harness, collar […] armor” (Gaffiot [1934], Ornamentum). The past participle adjective ornatus shares this basic meaning.
The phrase: « naves omni genere armorum ornatissimae » (C. Julius Caesar [The Gallic Wars] 3, 14, 2) translates to “boats with ample equipment [weapons and tackles].” (Ibid.). Thus, an ornatus speech is, litterally speaking, a speech well equipped to fulfill its function. In the context of public affairs, a well-equipped rhetorical discourse is a well-argued one. The arguments are in fact part of the ornamenta, the equipment of the discourse.
When considered as part of the discourse’s equipment, figures can be integrated into the analysis of argument, for example as instruments for constructing discourse objects and schematizations. In any case, they should not be seen as constituting an extraneous “level” that accompany and distorts the purely cognitive level. Rather, they should be seen as part and parcel of all the operations that construct the argumentative discourse.