Jailhouse Stylistics | Notes on Legal Style and Rhetoric

By Edward Stetson

Student notes on legal style and rhetoric including rhetorical figures of speech, structure, and dramatic techniques, elements of functional grammar, sentence analysis, and suggestions for document organization and presentation. This text surveys a variety of important works on writing , providing a practical reference to legal writers, with a topical guide and glossary. Finally, it provides a complete grammatical analysis of two legal opinions by the much admired Supreme Court jurist Judge Robert W. Jackson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward Stetson
• Release date: Jan 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005807658

Edward Stetson

An occasional student of style, logic, and literature.

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Cover jailhouse logic image

Table of Contents

jailhouse Stylistics :   notes on prose style and function

Table of Contents

Preface

topical guide

Rhetoric 1

Repetition- Epizeuxis, Conduplicatio, conduplicatio, Epimone, EPANALEPSIS, EPISTROPHE...

Rhetoric 2'

Structure-Parallel Structure: ISOCOLON, Reversal of Structure: CHIASMUS, order anastrophe,

Rhetoric 3

Dramatic-Paralipsis, deferred, the thing already known, APOSIOPESIS, METANOIA, the negative,

Metaphor 1

Figures of Comparison-Animals, Nature, Inner States

Metaphor 2

Human Biology, Savagery, Poverty,

Functional Grammar 1

Theme and Rheme, functions, clauses, conjunction, modal comments, WH- groups,

Functional Grammar 2

Process, participants and circumstances, happenings, transitivity, material and mental, attribution, ...

Style

The Saxon finish and restatement, Metonymy, Hyperbole sentence length, Left and right branching, Uses of the Passive,

Writing Tips from Fiction

Beginnings, Immediacy, Characters, Conflict, Tension, Comparison, Resonance, Revision

Classic Style 1

Truth, Presentation, Hedges, Scene Joint Attention, Abstractions Can Be Clear and Exact, Language

Classic Style 2

Joint Attention, Steps to classic style, cognitive compression into objects, mental networks, tutorial

Legal Writing

Planning, logical sequences and order, sentences, parallelism, ending emphasis, strong precision, persuasion, transitions,

signposts, clutter, Drafting, document design, editing and revision

Sentences and Words

Be verb, Pronouns, Him, They, whom, Commas, arrangement, to do list

Judge Robert W. Jackson stylistics

Set syllogism and modality

J1 clause and conjunction

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES.

J2 clause and conjunction

UNITED STATES v. DI RE.

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Topical Guide

Back contents

Preface

This study guide is merely an extraction of notes from relevant materials referenced in the end notes. It is hoped that after reading the references, the notes will provide a quick summary to legal and other expository writing practitioners. The final section provides a novel analysis of some stylistic features of criminal opinions of Supreme Court Judge Robert W. Jackson.

reference [preface]

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Farnsworth on Rhetoric

Repetition

Epizeuxis. Our first device, EPIZEUXIS (e-pi-zeux-is), is the repetition of words consecutively. The simple and classic form repeats a word thrice: a verbal pounding of the table.

Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation! Othello, 2, 3

Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen – Moby Dick – Moby Dick! Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

Conduplicatio generally. conduplicatio likewise involves repetition of the same word, but this time with each instance separated by other words. Some examples with repeated nouns:

No lawyer can say so; because no lawyer could say so without forfeiting his character as a lawyer. Grattan, speech in the Irish Parliament (1793)

for emphasis Omar Khayyam’s wine-bibbing is bad, not because it is wine-bibbing. It is bad, and very bad, because it is medical wine-bibbing. Chesterton, Heretics (1905)

To expand a statement or further define it. This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, had to me the air of novelty, and of a novelty not wholly without danger. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791)

to add explanation And the odious letters in the writing became very long; – odious because he had to confess in them over and over again that his daughter, the very apple of his eye, had been the wife of a scoundrel. Trollope, The Prime Minister (1876)

The double use of conduplicatio. A classic pattern in the use of this scheme involves two initial claims, each of which is then repeated with elaboration or reasons for it.

Sir, he was a scoundrel, and a coward: a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman, to draw the trigger after his death! Johnson, in Boswell’s Life (1791)

Epimone Repetition of Phrases

Doublets

The cause, then, Sir, the cause! Let the world know the cause which has thus induced one State of the Union to bid defiance to the power of the whole, and openly to talk of secession. Webster, speech in the Senate (1833)

triplets

You seem to come like my own anger, my own malice, my own – whatever it is – I don’t know what it is. But I am ill-used, I am ill-used, I am ill-used! Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857)

the Refrain-repettiion of longer phrass

Intermittent repetition of phrases

announced Repetition

When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality – the reality, I tell you – fades. Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)

EPANALEPSIS (ep-an-a-lep-sis) occurs when the same word or phrase is used at the beginning and end of a sentence or set of them – e.g., The King is dead. Long live the King! (or, in the original French, Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!). The usual effect is a sense of circuitry; the second instance of the repeated word completes a thought about it.

Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841)

SPECIAL EFFECTS-motion, demands, duplication

Repetition to suggest motion, action, or sound. But, sir, from the light in which he appears to hold the wavering conduct of up, up, up – and down, down, down – and round, round, round, – we are led to suppose, that his real sentiments are not subject to vary, but have been uniform throughout. Livingston, speech at New York Ratifying Convention (1788)

Work on, My medicine, work! Othello, 4, 1

T]he contest between the rich and the poor is not a struggle between corporation and corporation, but a contest between men and men, – a competition, not between districts, but between descriptions. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791)

REVERBERATIONS

Ingenious men may assign ingenious reasons for opposite constructions of the same clause. They may heap refinement upon refinement, and subtlety upon subtlety, until they construe away every republican principle, every right sacred and dear to man. Williams, speech at New York Ratifying Convention (1788)

For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril; – nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown. Melville, Pierre (1852)

Repetition at the Start: ANAPHORA

Repetition of the subject with changes in the verb. Anaphora is helpful for describing different things all done, or to be done, by the same subject. Often it also involves repetition of an auxiliary verb while the main verb changes; when used with the active voice in the first person, such constructions can produce a sense of inexorability:

The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. Exodus 15:9

with different complements

Every man sees that he is that middle point whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant. Emerson, Spiritual Laws (1841)

with different objects

They wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money, they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they wanted autographs, they wanted