The Value of Artifice

 Talking normally is a big deal nowadays. If someone uses words such as gauche or defenestrate, they’re either an English major or a major weirdo. It’s actually crazy how we don’t see rhetoric in stuff like: ads, TV shows, or even the way we talk. We keep big words like artifice and rhetoric for political speeches  and argumentative essays. In Steven Pinker's Words Don’t Mean What They Mean, he says that conversation is to “convey a message and continue to negotiate that relationship.” You can disagree with that and say that your friends talk to you cause they like you, or cause you think you’re a sexy stud, but the clear truth is that you bring some sort of value to their lives using rhetoric. Being funny or making jokes is literally rhetoric 101, as you use your verbal skills to portray something that appeals to your audience and in turn continues the relationship. If you really want to test this, how many friends do you have that don’t make you laugh, talk, or even smile? Nobody hangs out with a person that makes them feel bad(at least not rational people). 

This is where artifice comes in. Artifice is defined as “clever or cunning devices or expedients, especially as used to trick or deceive others.” Now tricking and deceiving are pretty heavy-handed words, as you might think of a cheater or a hedge fund manager, but they can be seen as pretty normal things. For example, I could be tricking you with my writing style. I could talk really formally if you met me in person, but right now my informal writing style probably makes you think of me as just another normal guy you would talk to. It would be unfair to label me a cheater just because I try to make you relate to me, and I think that’s the problem with how we view artifice. We make ourselves look a certain way so that we can be happy with how others see us and how we see ourselves. Are you fooling someone if you wear makeup because they can’t see the true look of your face? 

Artifice is a very necessary tool for communication, and to say that it’s wrong or deceiving would be discrediting human communication. Look at how much entertainment we’ve gotten from it!