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[Ned Bedinger]

Technical Writer wrote:

> Ned Bedinger wrote:
> 
> I classify it as a variant of the
 > rhetorical device known as "mirrors"
 > which comprises barbershop mirrors, funhouse
 > mirrors, smoke and ....</quote>


>> Your comments could be as appropriately classified 
 >> as obfuscatory prose. Pomposity is an inappropriate
 >> (although altogether too common) response for
 >> technical writers implying they are unreplaceable.
 >> They are not. That is the bottom line. Misdirection,
 >> obfuscation, and tatty little asides do nothing to
 >> change the basic scenario.


Tek, you shouldnt take it so hard.

You took my prose as obfuscated, pompous. I wrote it in that stilted 
academic style to color it that color, because formal rhetoric is an 
academic discipline--you can take rhetoric out of the school, but you 
can't take the school out of rhetoric.

I'm trained in classification science.  It has been a while since I 
aimed for real expertise in it, but I've internalized certain of the 
values, and I guess I do see the world through that lens.  I'm 
comfortable with words like classify and variant. People in 
classification science are forever discovering, naming, or classifying 
something. The point is as much to test the classification system as it 
is to believe that it is absolute.

My definition of rhetoric, as an amateur student of it, is a bit narrow 
but workable:  rhetoric is the art and science of using language to 
attract and persuade an audience. We're all intuitive users--any time 
you use any sort of expression that is done for effect, like 
exaggerating or understating a point, is use of a rhetorical devices.

I should own up to your charge of misdirection.  What I wrote might have 
been interpreted as saying that "mirrors" is an established item in the 
inventory of rhetorical devices. Anyone who went to the web and looked 
for it would have been skunked. The truth is, I identified and named it 
on the spot, which is what I wrote, Anyway, I'm not going to have time 
to shepherd it through an academic gauntlet of test for timeless 
rhetoricity. Let's consider the nomination withdrawn.


Hope this helps.

Ned Bedinger
doc at edwordsmith.com