Like most of Michael Drout’s recorded lectures, A Way with Words is a different experience from other audiobooks. While Drout uses his lecture notes, he is a master rhetorician and uses small tangents to give you the sense that he is in the back-seat explaining his passion for language. This back-seat image is no coincidence; Drout’s lectures are wonderful while driving. I often listen to them on the way to work. While listening to A Way with Words, I remember getting to work and looking for reasons to write memos.
I use to dread English class, so boring, so perfunctory; now I enjoy consciously composing anything I write. I am no master, but I enjoy writing and reading more. For this gift, I must thank many people; Professor Michael D.C. Drout among them.
Verbal Alchemy
The idea that powerful language changes the physical world is a major theme in the course (i.e. audiobook). Drout’s dramatic presentation of this idea gives you the sense of learning some ancient spellcraft, which can shape the physical world around you. He manages to strike an extremely effective balance: on one hand he gives rhetoric a mystical allure, on the other hand he presents rhetoric as something that is instinctual to us.
He goes on to explain how language works includes a stirring recitation of the first few lines of Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon. He continues to point out how effective speakers have used language and presentation in the modern era. The most valuable aspect of this section is that Drout will make you conscious of your rhetoric. This I think is the difference between instinctual rhetoric and verbal alchemy.
Approaching Logic
I have always hated formal logic, but mostly because I hated working through math problems in an English book. Drout comes through again, making classical logic easy. He teaches you how to use the natural logical process of your audience to bring them to your side of an argument.
The section on logic is wrapped up with a whole section on logical fallacies. If you don’t know, a logical fallacy is a tempting way of thinking that is not logically sound. For example
Tu Quoque
refers to the argument that hypocrisy disproves the hypocrite’s thesis.
Al Gore says we should reduce carbon emissions or the world will be destroyed. Who is Al Gore to say such a thing? His frequent air travel makes him one of the most polluting people in the world, and his home consumes a huge amount of energy.
We have each heard this chain of reasoning but it is fallacious because the two facts are entirely irrelevant to the point being argued. Carbon emissions may or may not be destroying our world. Al Gore may or may not be a hypocrite. These arguments however have no logical relationship to each other.
It seems that by learning logical fallacies, you learn how to avoid them and make your own reasoning more sound. Learning to avoid logical fallacies is so powerful that it will bleed into your personal life and help you to make better decisions.
The purpose of grammar is to clarify meaning
Drout wrote has an entire lecture on grammar, and I do recommend it. If you are only functionally interested in grammar, A Way with Words
has an entire section on grammar. Drout teaches the subject be explaining the reason behind grammatical rules, rather than the rules themselves. He says the purpose of grammar is to clarify meaning
, and he teaches you to use grammar to that end. It is refreshing to have an authoritative figure in grammar be so “if it works, it works” about grammar.