The four forms of English composition are exposition, argumentation, narration, and description. Exposition teaches; argumentation convinces and persuades; narration tells; description shows. In oratory we have five classes: philosophic, demonstrative, forensic, deliberative, and social, and the four forms of composition may be employed in any of the five classes of oratory. Speakers, as a rule, use the narrative for the statement; exposition, argumentation, or description, for the body; and sometimes one form and sometimes another for the conclusion. A speaker might adopt the narrative form for stating his points, the argumentative for making them clear, and the descriptive for driving them home.
exposition
Exposition means the interpreting of a passage or a work, explaining and expounding its meaning, analyzing its parts, and laying bare to the reader or listener all that might be obscure. A splendid example of exposition is the following extract from The American Scholar, by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town—in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and cope-stones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.
But the final value of action, like that of books, and better than books, is, that it is a resource. That great principle of undulation in nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of the breath; in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold; and as yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and every fluid, is known to us under the name of polarity—these “fits of easy transmission and reflection,” as Newton called them, are the law of nature because they are the law of spirit.
The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are a weariness—he has always the resource to live. Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary. The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think. Does he lack organ or medium to impart his truths? He can still fall back on this elemental force of living them. This is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. Let the grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. Let the beauty of affection cheer his lowly roof. Those “far from fame,” who dwell and act with him, will feel the force of his constitution in the doings and passages of the day better than it can be measured by any public and designed display. Time shall teach him that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ of his instinct, screened from influence. What is lost in seemliness is gained in strength. Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandseled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.
argumentation
Argumentation means the stating of points or facts, the logical presentation of them, and the drawing of conclusions from a consideration of the premises. Its objects are to convince and persuade the reader or listener. Argumentation that stops with conviction is incomplete—it must persuade as well as convince in order to be effective. A speaker accomplishes practically nothing if he convinces an audience but does not persuade it to do the thing he desires. Arguments may be direct or indirect. They are direct when aimed at a stated conclusion, and they are indirect when they are employed to disprove what is opposed to the speaker’s contention. The most effective form of argument is where the two forms, direct and indirect, are employed, thus not only demolishing one contention but clearly establishing the other. It is comparable to the contrast in oratory where the statement is made that a certain thing is not only not of a certain class but specifically belongs to another one. This is “clinching” the argument, and it leaves not a loophole for the escape of the opponent.
Here is an excellent piece of argumentative oratory, taken from an address of William H. Seward in the celebrated Freeman case.