ABSTRACT
Advice to “get the facts” and appeals “well based on facts” are familiar to anyone who participates in argument today. The locutions so common in Sumner’s work are common still. Theorists, critics, and teachers of rhetoric are prone to see rhetoric as the handmaiden of truths somehow fixed outside of and prior to efforts to relate symbolically environment, others, and self at specific moments. Critics of rhetorical discourse remain quick to enlist “factual” as a term of positive evaluation. Overwhelmingly, Larson’s supportive material is what would be classified in most public speaking textbooks as factual examples. He selects examples carefully for their clarity and impact and limits their detail in ways that allow him to pack his discourse with the greatest number of instances possible. Fulbright's remark about peacetime indicates that those who espouse a rhetoric of facts are likely to believe that persuasion is sufferable only in unusual circumstances, e.g., wartime.
