In his essay entitled "The Rhetorical Stance" Wayne Booth points out three "clumsy poses" often used by speakers or writers who are attempting to be persuasive: the pedant stance, the advertiser's stance, and the entertainer's stance. These are three positions taking by "rhetoricians" that do not, according to Booth, contain a proper balance among "...the available arguments about the subject itself; the interests and peculiarities of the audience; and the voice, the implied character, of the speaker."(Booth, 27)
             The pedant stance refers to a speaker or writer sacrificing his audience for the subject, creating almost a "book report" of an argument Booth calls "...written not for readers but for bibliographies." (Booth 27) This case often occurs when a speaker or writer is given an audience seemingly not worth any extensive attempts at persuasion for his argument (or no specific audience at all), or when he is not given an argument (or "question," as Booth often refers to it) for which he has any particular passion (or no specific "question" at all). Booth uses as an example students writing persuasive papers on literature in which it is often quite obvious that the students either have no particular interest in the pieces any further than what grade they earn and/or know that their audience is merely their instructor who knows they have "...no rhetorical purpose," (Booth 28) and, therefore, can not be expected to write a very persuasive paper.
             The advertiser's stance refers to a speaker or writer is almost the exact opposite of the pedant stance–putting too much concern on influencing the audience and not enough on the subject of the argument. Booth shows how many "experts" believe that merely stirring up the audience means the speaker or writer has succeeded in his persuasive argument, and he s
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