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To compose our character is our duty, . . and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. . . Montaigne
Every day we witness the ways in which words fail us. News reports show us, repeatedly, how all kinds of people, from all walks of life, resort to violence to end, if not resolve, their problems. Scenes from the war-ridden former Yugoslavia, news of terrorist acts and political assassinations, the unnecessary deaths of angry, aimless teenagers and innocent by-standers on our city streetsthese and other all-too-common images of violence must make us wonder, indeed, whether words can make any difference in our lives; whether sermons, speeches, negotiations, or conversations can begin to solve problems, resolve tensions, or bring peace to those in the world who are suffering. No doubt some of us have grown numb to the political and ceremonial speeches of world and civic leaders urging harmony, unity, and solidarity as if our personal and collective fates were truly ours to master. Many of us have grown suspicious, perhaps even cynical, toward public figures who, from lofty and influential positions, advocate standards of private and public conduct they themselves have violated. Indeed, everywhere we look we see ways in which words and deeds contradict each other.
Most of us, however, regularly participate in situations where appropriate conduct is assigned to and followed by us through ritualized uses of words whose authority we take largely for granted. Acts of worship, protest, celebration, and education are some of those in which we find word and deed difficult to separate and generally accept their connection without question. As participants in acts like these, we are reminded of the shared values and needs, interests and goals, that hold us together as members of groups or "communities" (civic, social, religious, professional, and so on), and we see our publicly voiced words as timely and purposeful in such contexts.
Rhetorician Chaim Perelman's pronouncement that argument begins in agreement helps explain how it is that what is compelling rhetoric for some can be mere rhetoric for others. His observation has become a commonplace within the related disciplines of composition and rhetoric, for it testifies to...