Popping the Bubble of Authoritativeness
An author (lawyer or not) walks a tightrope when he/she wants to write authoritatively.
From law professor Eugene Volokh:
People sometimes warn law students of the importance of careful proofreading and word usage, by saying that errors (or things that are perceived as errors) impair the lawyer’s credibility. I think there’s some truth to this, but the focus on “credibility” is a bit imprecise — it’s not that people will see the lawyer as dishonest, or likely to be factually inaccurate.
Instead, I think a good way of thinking about it has to do with authoritativeness. Here’s my sense of the matter, admittedly an impressionistic one rather than a scientific one:
Rightly or wrongly, something that seems to be a thoughtful written argument by a respectable professional tends to have more than just a logical persuasive effect — it also has a psychological effect. If the argument is well-crafted, the reader is inclined to credit not just the factually verifiable claims in the argument (whether about fact or about precedent), but the analogies and the speculation in that argument, too.
. . . .
As a lawyer, you want to create this bubble of authoritativeness, so you can take advantage of this psychological effect. But slips, even something as small as a typo, or something less small, like a usage error, can pop that bubble.
First, they distract the reader from the flow of your argument; they break the spell that successful rhetoric can cast.
Second, they make you seem less authoritative — sloppy (as with typos) or ill-educated (as with usage errors, or perceived usage errors). The reader won’t consciously say, “Oh, this lawyer doesn’t know how to use this word, so I’ll vote against his client” or even “so I’ll be more skeptical of his logical argument.” But subconsciously the extra support you’ve gotten from your perceived authoritativeness (whether or not that perceived authoritativeness is justified) will have largely disappeared.
. . . .
If you look like you’re angry, overexcited, strident, or even too impassioned you don’t look like the sort of person that we see as most authoritative any more. You thus lose the psychological force that the bubble of authoritativeness provides you, and you’re unlikely to regain that psychological force through your visible agitation or emotion.
Link to the rest at The Volokh Conspiracy
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I trust anything Eugene Volokh writes. I don’t always agree, but I know that he’s always an honest broker.
Not that it’s relevant in any way, but he’s a real life legal Dougie Houser.
This “honesty” is a rare thing in the lawyer, according to many sources.
So very, very true.
I especially appreciate his observation on authority as being an assumed mantle, usually self-applied. Even in the Law, the last authority is the last situation argued and decided. For writers, it’s thankfully much easier: did it work the last time you tried it? OK. It works, then. But we still don’t want to throw too many nits to the doubters, do we?
Yes. Excellent points.
This relates to voice for an author, although it’s alittle different. A voice in fiction that works has authority and confidence behind it. The voice may be describing and speaking for insecure, weak or over-emotional characters, but the voice itself has to have strength and be in control.
Or in non-fiction, the author can be discussing their own personal failings, fears and insecurities, which have to ring true and make the author accessible, but their voice still needs to be clear and firm. That is what makes memoir such a tricky balance.
I’m with Rob on Volokh. Not only that, but I think his point is especially pertinent for fiction writers, too. And, this is how editors or beta readers make themselves useful.
Did you want your narrator to be unreliable? Or is it that you didn’t pay attention to continuity tracking? Maybe you didn’t realize that a particular word you used to describe someone doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means? It’s not inconceivable.
Are you attempting to foreshadow? Or did you just not realize what you’re putting in the reader’s mind when you say, “Little did she know?”
When you wrote, “May the Lord do so to me, and more also if I do/don’t do this*” did you mean to create a cliffhanger in that sentence? Or was it unintentional?
Not being in command of language can change, obscure, or utterly destroy the perception the writer was attempting to create. When critiquing I always try to emphasize how these kinds of mistakes can wreck the enjoyment of a story, not to mention a writer’s reputation.
*That one drove me mad. The “what” in question remains a mystery to this day; no one today seems to know what action is being threatened in that sentence, which occurs repeatedly. Instances like this are why I think it’s good to allow outsiders to write stories about your group: They notice and record details that insiders glide over. I once read an article that mentioned that this was the benefit of Pearl S. Buck’s “The Good Earth” to modern day Chinese people. She apparently detailed Chinese customs of the day that are now foreign/unknown to modern day Chinese, since those customs are no longer followed.
Thanks for posting this, PG.
This speaks to my reasons for considering correctness necessary. The reader won’t notice your correctness, only your lack of it. Why make yourself look less credible or competent as a writer, even if it doesn’t actually impede the reading of your story? Good post.
Very good points all. I cannot resist, however, pointing out that sometimes it is good to have bubbles popped. G. K. Chesterton recommended the practice of now and then putting your meaning in words of one syllable, so that your meaning would have to stand without ‘authoritativeness’ to lean on. Where an authority would say:
The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment.
Chesterton would have us say instead, now and then:
I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out.
Orwell, of course, wrote one of the most famous essays in English history with the same view. As he put it, if you simplify your language, ‘when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.’ Alas, people will be stupid, and they will even be so stupid as not to notice their own stupidity. But it is a very good corrective for the ego of the Authority if other people, at least, can tell when he is being stupid.
It was for this reason that St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the most painfully dull and plodding style his considerable gifts could muster. He said that he could have written entertainingly and eloquently, but he did not want any of his readers to be misled by rhetoric. If he wrote in plain dull language and let his arguments speak for themselves, it would do much less damage when he happened to be wrong. That alone, to me, was reason enough to call him a saint.