The Logic of Examples:

Essays that succeed in persuading readers seem to have some combination of three elements: first, they are rational or logical; second, they demonstrate the good character or good sense of the writer (and thereby gain our trust); third, they are emotionally satisfying to the reader. Traditionally the elements of this "rhetorical triangle" have been labeled as logos, ethos, and pathos. We have already briefly examined one small way of appealing to the emotions--through sensory description.

Let's turn to the issue of logic for a bit. Traditionally, we recognize two basic types of logic, inductive and deductive. Briefly, inductive reasoning involves using specific observations and facts to arrive at general definitions or rules. Deductive reasoning does the reverse; it begins with accepted definitions or rules and applies them to specific cases. Philosophers and scientists have formalized both of these processes into precise and powerful tools for the discovery of truth. We will examine some of these formal systems later.

However, as valuable as the formal systems may be, they are not always of use to the rhetorician, for although scientists and philosophers may have all of eternity to discover Ultimate Truth, the rest of us must often make practical decisions without sufficient facts or evidence in situations requiring fairly quick reactions. Further, since we are social creatures and our actions involve others, we make group decisions. As individuals within the group, we must attempt to present our views of the situation under less than philosophically or scientifically ideal circumstances. To aid us in this attempt, we employ two short-cut methods--one basically inductive and the other basically deductive. These methods are called example and enthymeme. The second of these, the enthymeme, we will discuss a little later.

The use of examples, often called "illustration," is one of the oldest and surest methods of persuading people. Basically, illustration is an attempt to affirm the truth of something by demonstrating it in specific cases. "Demonstrate" basically means to show. The principle, then, is fairly simple: claim something is true; then show it as directly as possible. Produce an actual case.

In practice, however, it presents some difficulties. First, examples cannot absolutely prove the truth of an assertion unless every possible example is presented. That is probably impossible in most cases, and it is highly impractical in the rest. As the poet Marvell said, "At my back I always hear Time's winged chariot drawing near." Second, we are frequently involved in psychological questions: how many examples are enough? what kinds of examples are likely to persuade specific individuals? what is the general mind set of my audience? how controversial is my topic and how extreme will my thesis seem to this audience? Factors such as these show why rhetoric has traditionally been called an art rather than a science, for the rhetorical situation constantly changes and the rhetorician must react accordingly. There are some guidelines, however. For some reason, people tend to trust things they see as true at least three times. Three good examples are frequently quite convincing.

Sometimes, however, one good example is convincing if it seems to represent the whole sufficiently. For some topics, however, many examples--even statistical analyses of examples--are required. Another important point is that examples must be as specific as possible. You also need to develop your examples fully. That. of course, brings us back to the issue we discussed earlier: description. Unless your audience is thoroughly familiar with the examples you are presenting, you are going to have to make them crystal clear if you wish to be compelling in your arguments.

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 Structure with Examples

"Birds in Isolation" illustrates the simplest and perhaps most effective structure for example essays. In fact, the pattern is expanded into essays of all types. In "Birds in Isolation" the pattern looks like this:

You will find that you will be using this basic pattern often in your college writing:

• Introduction and thesis
• supporting paragraph or section
• supporting paragraph or section
• supporting paragraph or section
• conclusion

Later we will look at other kinds of support and at variations on this pattern, but the logic of this structure will remain throughout all kinds of essay writing.

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Sample essay

Birds in Isolation

Birds reared in isolation from their kind do not generally know what species they belong to: that is to say, not only their social reactions but also their sexual desires are directed towards those beings with whom they have spent certain impressionable phases of their early youth. Consequently, birds raised singly by hand tend to regard human beings, and human beings only, as potential partners in all reproductive activities.

A female barnyard goose which I now possess was the only survivor of a brood of six, of which the remainder all succumbed to avian tuberculosis. Consequently she grew up in the company of chickens and, in spite of the fact that we bought for her, in good time, a beautiful gander, she fell head over heels in love with our handsome Rhode Island cock, inundated him with proposals, jealously prevented him from making love to his hens, and remained absolutely insensible to the attention of the gander.

The hero of a similar tragicomedy was a lovely white Peacock of the Schoenbrun Zoo in Vienna. He too was the last survivor of an early hatched brood which perished in a period of cold weather, and to save him, the keeper put him in the warmest room to be found in the whole zoo, which at that time was in the reptile house with the giant tortoises. For the rest of his life this unfortunate bird saw only in those huge reptiles the object of his desire and remained unresponsive to the charms of the prettiest peahens.

A tame adult male jackdaw fell in love with me and treated me exactly as a female of his kind. By the hour, this bird tried to make me creep into the nesting cavity of his choice, a few inches in width. He became most importunate in that he continually wanted to feed me with what he considered the choicest delicacies. Remarkably enough, he recognized the human mouth as the orifice of ingestion, and he was overjoyed if I opened my lips to him, uttering at the same time an adequate begging note. This must be considered as an act of self-sacrifice on my part, since even I cannot pretend to like the taste of finely minced worms, generously mixed with jackdaw saliva. You will understand that I found it difficult to cooperate with the bird in this manner every few minutes! But if I did not, I had to guard my ears against him; otherwise, before I knew what was happening, the passage of one of those organs would be filled right up to the drum with warm worm pulp, for jackdaws, when feeding their female or their young, push the food mass, with the aid of their tongue, deep down into the partner's pharanx. However, this bird only made use of my ears when I refused him my mouth, on which the first attempt was always made.

(Adapted from King Solomon's Ring by Konrad Lorenz)