Eating fish cakes with friends a few years ago, one of us was suddenly chewing a cigarette stub which must have been dropped into the cream of fish out the back of the fishmonger's shop at some point. Oh, bother. And when we went back to the shop the next day (well, not me, I wasn't ready to face their disgrace) and told them what had happened, all the man behind the counter could think of saying was: "I guess you weren't very pleased with that..."
That was all. No apologies, no free salmon, no please don't tell the local press...
That same year I had just started teaching composition, and Swedish colleagues had introduced me to the ancient progymnasmata programme, a sequence of 12-14 basic rhetorical exercises among which is: Impersonation. Frank D'Angelo calls it the Speech-in-Character and introduces it as
a speech put on a person's lips in an imaginary situation for the purpose of characterization. It is the imitation of a person's moral character, habits, and feelings. (198).So - the following week I asked my students to compose a speech-in-character attributed to the guy at the fishmonger's. They were to estimate what was at stake in his rhetorical situation and compose a fitting response in the form of a dramatic monologue. As I remember it, the students (at least those who volunteered to read their versions out loud) composed some excessively rude responses, drawing a caricature of a man of very poor character, and I can see how I - as well as the man himself, of course - was asking for that.
When on a different occasion I tried out the exercise again, a friend of mine did in fact compose a more than appropriate response, a performance in damage control that I - as well as the man himself (not to mention his boss) - could only have dreamt of. It went along these lines: "We can't make this up to you, and I see how this incident might have put you off fish for a while--and I can't really blame you for not shopping here anymore--- still, why don't you come back in a few months when shrimp from the fiords are at their very finest, and we'll treat you and your friends an incredible amount..."
There's a fishdealer-in-character. Kind as well as proud in a situation which was nothing to be proud of.
3 comments:
I vividly remember participating in this exercise. And I have thought of it often - both when passing the fishmonger (whom I have boycotted eversince... he should definately have handled that situation better and offered us shrimp) and when experimenting with progymnasmata.
Just a question... do you think progymnasmata-exercises/challenges work better when based on the teacher's/challenger's own first-person-first-hand-experiences?
Not in any general sense, no. In this case - the fishcake case :) - I believe I was trying to point out to the students that character is projected all the time, and that rhetorical moments appear all the time (and not just in the lives of reporters and politicians). But the fact that the story was my own might have been a drawback - and I realized this when the 'right answer' was eventually composed - because I was expecting just that: the right answer (to my own needs as a customer). I see now that there's the salesman aspect too ---it's a tricky thing, isn't it, to ask students to serve you as their customer? Hopefully, the playful aspect of a exercise-on-the-spot overshadowed that part...
PS - I like the character that you're introducing here as a matter of course: 'the progymnasmata challenger' (who might, as we speak, be walking the streets daring people to compose little arguments for the sake of argument)
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