How to Attract and Hold an Audience Author:J. Berg Esenwein Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: When illustration by example is used according to the laws of narration, it becomes an efficient aid to exposition. It should be remembered that illustration is ... more »not argument, though argument often appeals to examples to support its contention. To master the process of exposition is to become a clear thinker. " I know, when you do not ask me,"1 replied a gentleman upon being requested to define a highly complex idea. Now some ideas defy explicit definition ; but no mind should take refuge behind such exceptions, for where definition fails, other forms succeed. Sometimes we feel confident that we have perfect mastery of an idea, but when the time comes to express it, the clearness becomes a haze. Exposition, then, is the test of clear understanding. To speak effectively you must be able to see your subject clearly and comprehensively, and to make your audience see it as you do. It is the basis of all sound argumentation. 4. Argumentation This we define as the process of producing pure conviction. For the accomplishment of this end argumentation proceeds according to the laws of Logic — defined by McCosh as " the science of the laws of discursive thought " ;2 and by Whately as " the science, and also the art, of reasoning."3 1 Working Principles of Rhetoric, Genung, p. 561. 2 Logic, p. 1. 8 Logic, p. I. The very name " logic " has to many an awful sound — they covet its power, but are frightened by its supposed intricacies. In point of fact, nothing is simpler than common-sense reasoning. A host of hair-splitting processes and learned terms are doubtless valuable to the specialist; but for the orator's purpose — and let it be remembered that for his uses alone these thoughts are presented — an acquaintance with a few simple forms of reasoning is all that is necessar...« less