Study Buddies How to Speak How to Listen By Mortimer Adler

17 Pages·2005·0.04 MB·English

Study Buddies

How to Speak How to Listen

By

Mortimer Adler

Submitted By
Raymond Harris

In Partial Completion Of
The Course Requirements For

(BP-319) Intermediate Expository Preaching 1

As Taught By

Brother Joseph D. Meador

Southwest School of Bible Studies
Austin, Texas

October 13, 2005
“How to Speak - How to Listen” Study Buddies
Mortimer Adler
BP-319: Intermediate Expository Preaching 1
Joseph Meador

Chapter 1

1. How do you make contact with the mind of another person? (p. 3)

“Sometimes it is through cries, facial expressions, gestures, or other bodily signals, but for
the most part it is by the use of language”

2. What are the four uses of language? (p. 3)

Writing, speaking, reading, and listening

3. What are the two parallel pairs of language? (p. 3)

Writing and speaking

Reading and listening

4. Why was it that before the printing press, speaking and listening played a much larger
part in education than writing and reading? (pp. 5-6)

“because, in the absence of the printed page and with written books available only to the very
few, those who had some kind of schooling - either by individual pedagogues, in the
academies of the ancient world, or in the mediaeval universities - were compelled to learn by
listening to what their teachers said.”

5. In what sense were teachers “lecturers” in the medieval university? (p. 6)

“Only the teacher had the manuscript copy of a book that contained knowledge and
understanding to be imparted to the students. As the etymology of the word ‘lecture’
indicates, lecturing consisted in reading a text aloud, accompanied by a running commentary
on the text read.”

Raymond Harris 2
“How to Speak - How to Listen” Study Buddies
Mortimer Adler
BP-319: Intermediate Expository Preaching 1
Joseph Meador

6. What skills did Plato and Aristotle believe had to be acquired for learning how to use
language effectively in writing and reading, in speaking and listening? (p. 6)

“that the arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic were the skills that had to be acquired for
learning how to use language effectively in writing and reading, in speaking and listening.”

7. How do speaking and listening differ from writing and reading? (pp. 8-10)

In live discussion, one cannot go back over what one has heard.

“Ongoing speech is generally unamendable.”

“there is no way of improving one’s listening on a given occasion. It has to be as good as it
can be right then and there.”

An oral discuss ends when the speaker stops, which leaves the potential for no additional
time for clarification.

Raymond Harris 3
“How to Speak - How to Listen” Study Buddies
Mortimer Adler
BP-319: Intermediate Expository Preaching 1
Joseph Meador

Chapter 2

1. Explain how the language use of writing and reading are solitary activities. (pp. 12-13)

“they are usually [done] in the solitude of one’s study, at one’s desk, or in one’s armchair.
The fact that in writing we are addressing ourselves to the minds of others does not make the
writing itself a social affair. The same is true of reading. Getting at the mind of the writer
through the words he or she has put on paper does not make reading a social event.”

2. Explain how speaking and listening are social activities. (p. 13)

“They always involve human confrontations. They usually involve the physical presence of
other persons, the speaker speaking to listeners who are present while he or she speaks, the
listener listening to a speaker who is right there.”

3. Discuss the meaning of conversation. (p. 15)

The word used most frequently by Adler “because it has the widest application, covering
highly purposeful and controlled discussions at one end of the spectrum (including even
formal debates or disputations) and the idlest of talk at the other end (such as… what we
sometimes call small talk.”

4. Discuss the meaning of communication. (p. 15)

It “is the jargon word of the social scientists and of electronics specialists who have
developed elaborate ‘communication theories.’”

5. Discuss the relation between communication and community. (pp. 15-16)

“There is communication among brute animals in a wide variety of ways, but no
conversation.” They may send a type of signal to one another, “[b]ut the sending and
receiving of signals is not conversation, talk, or discussion. Brutes do not talk with one
another; they do not carry on discussions.”

“Without communication, there can be no community. Human beings cannot form a
community or share in a common life without communicating with one another.”

Raymond Harris 4
“How to Speak - How to Listen” Study Buddies
Mortimer Adler
BP-319: Intermediate Expository Preaching 1
Joseph Meador

Chapter 3

1. What are the three (3) arts concerned with excellence in the use of language for the
expression of thought and feeling?

p. 23
Grammar, logic, and rhetoric

2. The ancient and honorable art of rhetoric is the art of .

p. 24
Persuasion

3. Throughout its long history, the teaching of rhetoric has been concerned mainly, if not
exclusively, with oratory and .

p. 24
Style

4. Define “Oratory.”

p. 25
“Oratory consists of attempts to persuade others to act in one way or another. The rhetorical
skill of the orator is aimed solely at a practical result, either a course of action to be adopted,
a value judgment to be made, or an attitude to be taken toward another person or group of
persons.”

5. Define “Rhetoric.”

p. 24
“The ancient and honorable art of rhetoric is the art of persuasion.”

p. 25
“[R]hetorical aim… is purely intellectual, one might almost say theoretical, rather than
practical. When we try to exert our rhetorical skill for this purpose, we are persuaders of a
different kind than when we engage in oratory for a practical purpose.”

Raymond Harris 5
“How to Speak - How to Listen” Study Buddies
Mortimer Adler
BP-319: Intermediate Expository Preaching 1
Joseph Meador

6. What is “Sophistry?”

pp. 27-28
“Sophistry is always a misuse of the skills of rhetoric, always an unscrupulous effort to
succeed in persuading by any means, fair or foul. The line that Plato drew to distinguish the
sophist from the philosopher, both equally skilled in argument, put the philosopher on the
side of those who, devoted to the truth, would not misuse logic or rhetoric to win an
argument by means of deception, misrepresentation, or other trickery.

The sophist, in contrast, is always prepared to employ any means that will serve his purpose.
The sophist is willing to make the worse appear the better reason and to deviate from the
truth if that is necessary to succeed.”

Raymond Harris 6
“How to Speak - How to Listen” Study Buddies
Mortimer Adler
BP-319: Intermediate Expository Preaching 1
Joseph Meador

Chapter 4

1. Define ethos.

p. 30
It is a Greek word signifying a person’s character.

“Establishing one’s character is the preliminary step in any attempt at persuasion. The
persuader must try to portray himself as having a character that is fitting for the purpose at
hand.”

2. Define pathos.

pp. 36-37
“pathos consists in arousing the passions of the listeners, getting their emotions running in
the direction of the action to be taken.”

“pathos is the motivating factor.”

3. Define logos.

p. 37
“Logos - the marshalling of reasons.”

“Reasons and arguments may be used to reinforce the drive of the passions, but reasons and
arguments will have no force at all unless your listeners are already disposed emotionally to
move in the direction that your reasons and arguments try to justify.”

4. Of the three factors in persuasion - ethos, pathos, and logos, which should always come
first?

Ethos

5. Please explain briefly the reason for your answer above (to question number 4).

Without successfully establishing one’s credibility, the audience will have difficulty in
listening to the speaker. It may be sufficient a stumbling block that the audience will refuse
the speaker’s presentation regardless of truth contained therein.
Raymond Harris 7
“How to Speak - How to Listen” Study Buddies
Mortimer Adler
BP-319: Intermediate Expository Preaching 1
Joseph Meador

6. To be effective in the use of pathos, in order to evoke favorable emotional impulses,
what two things must the persuader bear in mind?

pp. 40-41

“First of all, they must recognize those human desires that they can depend upon as being
present and actively motivating forces in almost all human beings….”

“Persuaders cannot always count on the desires that are generally prevalent in their audiences
and ready to be brought into play. Sometimes they must instil the very desire that they seek
to satisfy with their product, their policy, or their candidate.”

7. Please list the eleven (11) desires (motivating forces) which exist in human beings. (Note
to student: Nine are listed in the Adler text. The full eleven desires are found in the
“Textbook Study Guide” by brother Meador.)

p. 41
(1) Liberty
(2) Justice
(3) Peace
(4) Pleasure
(5) Worldly goods
(6) Honor
(7) Good repute
(8) Position
(9) Preference
(10)
(11)

8. Define enthymeme.

pp. 42-43

It is “[t]he classical name for” the avoiding of lengthy, involved, and intricate arguments; it is
the omission of “many steps in the reasoning [the arguments] represent to catch the minds of
[the] listeners.”

Raymond Harris 8
“How to Speak - How to Listen” Study Buddies
Mortimer Adler
BP-319: Intermediate Expository Preaching 1
Joseph Meador

9. What is deliberative rhetoric?

p. 45
It “refers to political oratory in legislative assemblies”

10. What is forensic rhetoric?

p. 45
It “refers to the kind of speech that occurs in judicial proceedings, as, for example, counsel’s
summation to a jury”

11. What is epidictic rhetoric?

p. 45
It “refers to any effort to praise or dispraise something, whether that be a person or a policy”

Raymond Harris 9
“How to Speak - How to Listen” Study Buddies
Mortimer Adler
BP-319: Intermediate Expository Preaching 1
Joseph Meador

Chapter 5

1. Define the lecture as instructive persuasion (p. 48).

“so the term ‘lecture’ can be used to cover all forms of instructive persuasion - efforts at
persuasion that aim at an intellectual or theoretical rather than a practical result, a change of
mind rather than a change of feeling or of impulse to act in one way rather than another.”

2. What two types of lectures does Adler deal with on page 49?

“First of all, the kind of lectures that occur in the classrooms of our educational institutions,
the canonical fifty-minute talks that may take place with or without interruption by the
listeners.”

“Secondly, there is what, in distinction from the fifty-minute classroom talk, I call a formal
lecture, delivered in a lecture hall to an audience of any size and always without
interruption.”

3. List various types of instructive speech, as found on pages 49-50?

“Sermons from the pulpit of a church or any religious congregation are also instances of
teaching when they consist of commentary on a biblical text or an explanation of it, usually a
passage from the lesson of the day. Sermons can, of course, be oratorical rather than didactic
when they consist in practical persuasion, aiming to change the will or conduct o the listeners
rather than trying to improve their understanding.”

“…instructive speech also occurs in the world of business. A conference of business
executives may be addressed by its chief executive or by one of its business at hand, for the
purpose of analyzing a business problem to be solved so that it is better understood, or for the
purpose of stimulating thought about the operation of the business.”

“Military staff meetings may also involve addresses by a military leader for one or another of
the three purposes mentioned above in the realm of business conferences.”

“…instructive speech may even occur at a dinner table or in a drawing room when the host or
hostess invites one of the guests, usually the guest of honor, to address those assembled on a
topic concerning which the person asked to talk is thought to have some special competence
or expertise.”

Raymond Harris 10