Effective Communicators Are Holistic
The first communication principle describes Lewis’s holistic communication strategies. To be holistic is to be all-encompassing, drawing upon several elements to create an integrated, comprehensive approach to communicating with others. Lewis was a holistic communicator in that his messages appealed to both the eye and the ear; his written messages were not only designed to be read (an appeal to the eye) but also to have an auditory quality (an appeal to the ear), as reflected in his practice of speaking the words aloud as he wrote.
In addition, Lewis was holistic in that he integrated reasoning—the process of using evidence to reach a conclusion, with creative applications of his rich imagination to express his ideas. The nature of his subject matter made his ideas difficult to document with tangible, or observable evidence. Lewis sought to provide evidence for the nature of God, affirm the underlying logic of Christianity, while inviting his readers and listeners to use their own powers of reasoning to reach a conclusion. He constructed arguments either inductively (from specific examples to a general conclusion) or deductively (arguing from a general, ←21 | 22→assumed-to-be-true premise to reach a specific conclusion). Many of his readers appreciate his logical, structured way of clarifying murky or mysterious ideas. Lewis was holistic in that in addition to, and often simultaneously, he would spark the imagination with images, analogies, metaphors, and stories. It was his skilled use of both strategies that made him a holistic communicator.
Besides appealing to the eye and the ear, as well as reason and imagination, Lewis drew upon skills in persuasion (rhetoric), debate (dialectic), and romantic ideals (the poetic) to communicate his ideas and message. His apologetic works were unabashedly persuasive; he used his debating skills to refute the ideas of others in support of his own. He would also use language poetically to appeal to his reader’s and listener’s sense of aesthetics. Chapter 4 uses Lewis’s own words as examples of his holistic communication strategies to look both “at” and “along” what he describes.129
Effective Communicators Are Intentional
The second principle posits that Lewis was an intentional communicator. To be intentional is to be mindful, purposeful, and aware of the communication goals and objectives to be accomplished. Lewis was intentional in that he planned his messages for maximum clarity and persuasive effect—he used the writing process to help sharpen his ideas and communication goals. Pre-writing activities, taking walks and being a voluminous reader, helped him think about what he was going to say before he said it. His communication objective, although sometimes intentionally but subversively masked from the reader until just the right moment, was always clear to Lewis. He knew where he was leading his readers. Lewis’s letters and occasional diary entries modeled his journalistic skill of clear and memorable description. Lewis does not wander aimlessly—even though as a reader you may, at times, not know exactly where he is or where he is leading you, he knows. His books, essays, lectures, stories and poems focused on illuminating a specific idea linked to a precise purpose.
Clarity was an important communication goal for Lewis, whether writing a novel or helping a student express his or her ideas in a tutorial. A specific strategy for being clear is to use precisely the correct word. Having the command of a large vocabulary gave Lewis the ability to use just the right word rather than needing to pile on unneeded words. Brevity was more than the soul of wit; it was his pathway to clarity. Lewis marshalled words to achieve a memorable style. Chapter 5 describes Lewis’s principle of intentionality.
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Effective Communicators Are Transpositional
The third principle is that of transposition. Lewis described this unique communication concept in a sermon published as delivered at Mansfield College, Oxford University, in June 1944. To transpose is to transform something from one level to another. Transpose is a musical term. To transpose from one musical key to another is to play the same tune written in, for example, the key of D down a whole tone to the key of C. All notes in both the melody and harmony are played, or transposed, to a different key. Transposition for Lewis was always a process of going from the higher to the lower. As he described the process, transposition is moving from a richer, more-detailed, more-colorful, multidimensional experience to a less-rich, less-detailed but nonetheless accurate explanation in an attempt to communicate (or transpose). He sought a way to illustrate how an ineffable emotion could more easily be understood by someone. Some experiences, especially emotional ones, are simply too rich, “high,” inexplicable, or foreign to the experiences of others, to adequately describe. “Symbolism,” wrote Lewis to Sister Penelope in a March 25, 1943 letter, “exists precisely for the purpose of conveying to the imagination what the intellect is not ready for.”130 Transposition is a communication process that uses similes and metaphors—especially visual metaphors—to express emotional ideas that the “intellect is not ready for.”131
How do you describe the emotional impact of Grand Canyon to someone who is blind? How do you express the joy experienced when listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to someone who is deaf? In each instance one would transpose—use a means of communication with which the listener is familiar—to describe a richer (“higher”) experience that is completely foreign and unobtainable. Metaphor, simile, and allegory are key communication strategies to express the inexpressible. The story of the incarnation, suggests Lewis, is a classic example of the metaphorical process of transposition when myth became fact.
Effective communicators are able to select symbols, images, metaphors, or make other comparisons to clarify that which is difficult to explain prosaically. The principle of transposition makes the ineffable effable, the murky clear, and the difficult-to-comprehend more easily grasped. Lewis was a master of this technique often relying on visual metaphor, comparisons, “supposals,” and other tropes to express complex or hard-to-explain ideas. Chapter 6 describes the process of transposition in detail and uses Lewis’s own words and examples to illustrate the concept.
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Effective Communicators Are Evocative
The fourth communication principle, that effective communicators are evocative, involves getting messages out of the reader or listener, stimulating both their hearts and minds to help them discover meaning. To evoke is to elicit, awaken, arouse, induce, and stimulate. C. S. Lewis used a variety of communication techniques to evoke images and emotions from his readers and listeners. Lewis knew that people are more likely to believe “data” drawn from their personal experiences, rather than to rely on the descriptions of others. Chapter 7 discusses Lewis’s methods for evoking a response, especially an emotional response, from his readers and listeners.
How does Lewis evoke emotional meaning? He describes a situation for the reader or listener rather than tells someone how to feel. The key to evoking a response is not to tell someone what to feel, but to paint a picture with words so that the reader or listener experiences his or her own emotional reaction. Lewis once suggested that he didn’t consider himself effective at making strong, explicit emotional appeals to listeners, such as making an emotion-infused, impassioned plea to persuade others.132 He would not, he said, be good at using strong emotional appeals to make successful “alter calls” in a religious service.133