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THE
REVIEW OF
COMMUNICATION Addressing Reasoning’s CompositionS-A Welch
Edward Corbett and Rosa Eberly. The Elements of
Reasoning (2nd edition). Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.
146 pages. Index. $16.00 (cloth); $9.00 (paper). Rosa Eberly’s efforts to update Edward Corbett’s original The Elements of Reasoning ended in good results. The second edition of this short text is concise, clear, and uses many good examples to teach the basics of rhetoric and reasoning and is written with clarity. The book addresses key issues of reasoning such as stases, topoi, and fallacies and shows how they are significant to today’s students. Chapter 1 sets the stage for thinking about reasoning. The primary concepts of reasoning are introduced with examples as guides. The historical implications of reasoning are addressed, which helps put the idea of reasoning in a modern perspective. The discussion on the end of reasoning being judgment (11) is clear, particularly in how it incorporates the concept of time. Chapter 2 extends the ideas in Chapter 1 by answering questions associated with persuasive ideas. The primary focus of this chapter is the five stases: conjecture, definition, cause and consequence, value, and procedure and proposal. Utilizing these five stases, chapter 2 begins to associate the questions with possible paths toward answers and the structure these answers could take. This is further expanded into where one may find points of agreement and/or disagreement. All of this discussion is intended to help the reader determine how to proceed in reasoning. The chapter gives detailed examples of the various claims available with the stases. The examples are clear and add greatly to the discussion of each stasis. Chapter 2 concludes with describing the means available to structure reasoning so that sense can be made of discourse. Beginning with chapter 3 the book then steps back and begins to address each stasis in detail. Chapter 3 addresses the first stasis, conjecture. The chapter is useful in how it presents qualities associated with conjectural claims. Chapter 4 focuses on the stasis of definition. Within this focus, Eberly addresses the role of definitions as well as the types of definitions. Chapter 5 focuses on the stasis of cause and consequence and the means of reasoning within this stasis. Chapter 6 focuses on the stasis of value. This chapter contains guidelines for reasoning with values that help explain how values and reasoning work together (107-109). Chapter 7 focuses on the stasis of procedure and procedural issues, including a discussion of feasibility, plausibility, and credibility. The final chapter, chapter 8, discusses rhetoric as a tool in becoming a citizen critic. In this chapter many examples are presented on how one use reasoning to become a citizen critic. In addition, there is a large discussion of fallacies, labeled diversions of reasoning (124-130), which can distract from the reasoning process. The book contains many positive features. The style of writing is conversational and easy to read. The structure of the book proceeds in an orderly manner. Each chapter has a set of relevant exercises that help solidify the lessons of the chapter. The strongest point of The Elements of Reasoning is Eberly’s use of excellent, current examples. These examples do an admirable job of describing how the examples relate to the concept at hand. If a concept is not clear in how it is presented, the associated example quite often helps clarify the concept. By presenting the concept followed by an example, the book allows the reader to readdress the concept with the example in mind. There are sections of this book that are quite strong. The guidelines for causal reasoning (90) are helpful for understanding how causal reasoning can easily become a diversion to reasoning. In particular, the foundation for argument is a very good section (97). In fact, its clarity is so helpful in understanding reasoning that it might better serve the text by being placed earlier. The feasibility, plausibility, and credibility section of the stasis, procedures and proposals, is good but not in-depth enough. Expansion of the ideas would benefit the presentation of that stasis. While there are many excellent features to this book, there are some weaknesses as well. The book has useful, clear examples but it seems to assume much background understanding on the part of the reader. The discussion on canons and ethos, pathos, and logos seems to assume that the reader understands fully what they are and how they are connected. This is especially true if this is the first time a reader encountered these concepts. In addition, the structure of the book establishes premises that are key, but does not make their key role evident until much later. Examples of this include how definitions result from collective human reasoning (7), the key role of listening in the reasoning process (14), and what rhetoric is and how it fits in with reasoning (16). When one first reads these rather basic statements, they do not stand out as a premise in reasoning. It is only after you read the detail about the various stases that the importance of the statements becomes clear. For example, the relationship between the stases and the canon, while mentioned in chapter 1, was not evident until the discussion on the structure of reasoning was addressed in Chapter 2 (32). It is as though there is an implicit road map about how all of these terms and concepts are related. However, the road map is not clear nor is it discussed. These omissions, while frustrating, could be cleared up through class lectures that showed the importance of and relationship between the key concepts. Despite some frustrating sections, The Elements
of Reasoning is a text worth using in any class that addresses the
reasoning process. It is easy to read, full of relevant examples, and
contains good exercises at the end of each chapter. S-A Welch is assistant professor of communication at Hanover College.
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