Careful Negligence: Cicero's Low Style and Business Writing

Careful Negligence: Cicero's Low Style and Business Writing Craig Kallendorf Texas A&M University Carol Kallendorf, Kallendorf Communication Services and Texas A&M University Researchers and practitioners alike in the field of business communication describe the stylistic norms of good business prose with noteworthy consistency . All are agreed that successful business writing is clear, concise, and appropriate to the audience. However, when it comes to defining those descriptive terms and identifying the tools one may use to create such an effect, the consensus falls apart. The majority opinion recommends a narrowly circumscribed list of generalized stylistic injunctions: choose words that are precise and concrete, be concise and clear, make your style simple and inconspicuous (Lesikar 6-69; Menning, et al. 9-35; Sigband and Bateman 35-73). Other writers, however, have suggested that the full range of rhetorical tools and strategies should be at the disposal of business, technical, and scientific writers (Halloran, "Classical Rhetoric"; Halloran, "Technical Writing"; Halloran and Bradford; Whitburn, et al.). Does the history of rhetoric offer any stylistic model which might help us sharpen these definitions and develop a more sophisticated taxonomy, thereby creating more precise — and even more teachable — stylistic goals? In other words, does the past hold a rhetorical model which can help us move from the descriptive to the prescriptive in business communication? Cicero's low style, the style appropriate to "a man who pays more attention to thought than to words" (Cicero, Orator xxiii.78), offers such a rhetorical model. The discussion which follows is intended to accomplish three objectives: to provide the first complete analysis of Cicero's description of the low style in Orator xxiii.75-xxvi.90, a passage which has received only cursory attention in modern commentaries on the text (Kroll 78-90; Sandys 85-101); to demonstrate the appropriateness of this stylistic model to business communication; and to sketch the pedagogical implications of Cicero's model. This argument is part of our attempt to develop a rhetoric of business communication along classical lines, beginning with an adaptation of traditional heuristic tools (Kallendorf and Kallendorf, "A New Topical System"), moving through the persuasive function of business communication (Kallendorf and Kallendorf, "The Figures of Speech"), and then delineating its stylistic norms and the means for achieving them. 33 34Rocky Mountain Review It is well known that Cicero (Orator xxi.69) establishes three levels of style, high, middle, and low, and that he associates each level with one of the duties of the orator (officia oratoris), so that the high style aims to sway (ßectere), the middle to please (delectare), and the low to prove (probare; Douglas; Lausberg 519-25; Martin 329-45; Quadlbauer 82-93). Cicero clearly found the high style, "the kind of eloquence which rushes along with the roar of a mighty stream, which all look up to and admire," most useful in his own work. It has the power to sway people's souls because it moves ("permovere ") them, now storming the feelings, now creeping in upon them (Orator xxviii.97). The middle style in turn is "charming," "a brilliant and florid, highly coloured and polished style in which all the charms of language and thought are intertwined" (Orator xxvii.96). The low style is restrained and plain, following the ordinary usage, relatively free of artifice in comparison to the others, designed to show the wisdom of its user (Orator xxiii.78). In spite of his preference for the high style, Cicero stresses that all three genera dicendi have their proper place. Depending on circumstances, rhetoricians must move from one style to another, not only as they move from one piece of writing to another, but even as they move from part to part within the same piece (Ora/o/· xxi.69-xxii.74; cf. Orator xxixAOi). Thus we would expect to find a place for each style in business. When we think of writing a commendation for a job well done or an article defending the free enterprise system, we may need passages eloquent enough to "rush along with the roar of a mighty stream. " And when we think of preparing an afterdinner speech or writing a catchy marketing letter, we can use some sections with the polish...