The Scots and the Modes of Discourse

In The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Campbell spends some time discussing the purposes of rhetoric: “to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, or to influence the will” (Bizzell 902). He sees these aims as quite distinct from each other; though a rhetor might use more than one of these actions in a speech, only one of them can truly be the “end” or purpose of the speech (902). Campbell also explains that different rhetorical techniques are used to achieve these four purposes. Concise, strong arguments connect to the understanding, beauty influences the imagination, emotion controls the passions, and “vehemence” is sure to sway the will (898). Campbell’s interest in the mind’s divisions and subdivisions (influenced by the Scottish psychology of the time), along with the way he links them to parts of rhetoric, laid the ground for the “modes of discourse” to become popular in the study of rhetoric.

Robert Connors calls Bain’s English Composition and Rhetoric (1866) the first pronounced elaboration of the modes of discourse, which affected composition textbooks until at least 1930. Like Campbell, Alexander Bain divides the mind into similar categories, “the Understanding, the Will, the Feelings” (1146). Bain takes these groupings a step further, however, moving from rhetorical techniques that influence each part of the mind to actual forms (modes) of discourse guaranteed to have certain effects. These are “Description, Narration, Exposition, Oratory [Persuasion], and Poetry” (1146). He explains that the first three connect to the Understanding, Persuasion moves the Will, and Poetry inspires the Feelings (1146).

Bain’s neat little categories and connections might seem attractive to someone who is studying or teaching composition. But his presentation of the modes of discourse as the universal solution to writing and teaching writing appears a bit hypocritical coming from someone who introduced his textbook by saying, “The command of language is a grand total, resulting from the practice of a life; a small fraction of that total is all that can grow up within the limits of a Course of English Composition” (1145).