Frivolous literary note

[dennis grace]

Sorry for quoting the whole post, but you're going to have to clarify some
things for me.

>In the exchange between and Dennis and Joe, Joe wrote:
>>>
>>>I think that were we to begin attributing words in works of fiction to the
>>>fictional characters who "said" them, well, things could get a bit more
>>>confusing than they need to be.  Slippery slope and all...?
>
>and Dennis replied
>
>>Nah.  Slippery slope is where you say something like, "Look, the
>>illegitimacy rate is rising.  Therefore, someday most births will be
>>illegitimate."
>
>Sorry Dennis, but Joe had it right.  The slippery slope is a stock argument
>that says, if we deviate from a particular rule, even in some small way,
>then to be consistent we must deviate in other ways, which eventually land
>us in a position we don't want to be.  Think of walking on a mountain path:
>take one step off it and you tumble down to the bottom.  The stock argument
>you illustrate is an argument from extrapolation.

According to the rhetoric texts I've been teaching from for the last few
years, slippery slope fallacies are any extrapolation that assumes an
exponential cascade will result whenever anything starts going awry.  My
statement about illegitimacy was ill-defined.  In particular I was thinking
of the ludicrous "Coming White Underclass" from Wall Street Journal, ca
1992, which says, hey the African American illegitimacy rate exceeded 25% in
the sixties and is now in excess of 68%; the white American illegitimacy
rate is now approaching 23%.  Therefore, if the white illegitimacy rate
exceeds 25%, whites'll shoot right past 70% in the next twenty years.

Also, as far as I know, the rhetorical descriptor "slippery slope" is used
exclusively to describe a logical fallacy, in which case Joe's reasoning
only makes sense if his intent was facetious (and, yeah, I know, this IS the
Pynchon list, after all).

As to Joe's statement, I don't see how things being made more confusing by
attributing fictional statements to fictional characters constitutes falling
into a slippery slope.

*sigh*

Just thankful I don't have to teach Rhetoric and Composition again next
semester, je reste

Dennis Grace
University of Texas at Austin
English Department
Assistant Instructor
Recovering Medievalist

"And first, with relation to the mind or understanding, 'tis manifest what
mighty advantages fiction has over truth."  --Jonathan Swift's Grub-Street
Hack, _A Tale of a Tub_