Evolution and Future of Rhetoric in Electronic Age - Research Paper Example

Analyzing the Evolution and Future of Rhetoric in our Electronic Age Section Rhetoric is an ancient art of discourse and a practice of persuading public. It has been used effectively and extensively since earliest of times with the likes of Sophists, Aristotle and Cicero being its primary teachers. However, with the dawn of World Wide Web and electronic era, the scope and future of rhetoric is in great danger as it has considerably undermined the value rhetorical process held once upon a time. Today, everything is becoming digitized and nobody is interested in reading books or in literature for that matter. It is easy to term rhetoric as a traditional practice that has no place in this era but the art of persuasion is still very much impactful and active. This means there is further evolution in store for rhetoric and it cannot become obsolete however, classical rhetoric may never regain its lost position. In this paper, rhetoric has been discussed from various aspects from its origin to evolution, post-modern theory of rhetoric and the challenges it faces from electronic media. Analyzing the Evolution and Future of Rhetoric in our Electronic Age From ancient times rhetoric has served as the perfect art of discourse, which allows a speaker/writer/researcher to enlighten, motivate and even persuade a given set of audience and/or readers. The need and significance of rhetoric as an effective form of art and a component of English studies has been realized from the time of Aristotle. However, with the onset of post-modern era a question mark has been added to its requirement since the electronic age and the gadget generation has left little room for discourse using classical rhetoric processes. Nonetheless, the future of rhetoric is something that remains to be analyzed properly without dangling into the argument of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of this art form in electronic era. In this paper, the future of rhetoric in our electronic age will be explored and an analysis will be made about its historical evolution and the challenges it faces today utilizing information from various scholarly sources. Understanding Rhetoric: In simple words rhetoric is the assertion of “Eiro or I Say”. It is the “art of discourse,” or “art of speaking,” which has been practiced since ancient eras and was one of the three subjects of the Trivium (syllabus) of medieval universities the other two being Grammar and Logic. (Fishwick, 2007) The word Rhetoric has been derived from a Greek word “rhetorike” which denotes the “civic art” of public speaking since it was largely developed in deliberative public forums such as law courts. Rhetoric as a term was firstly used by Plato in his famous dialogue “Gorgias” in 385B.C (Fishwick, 2007). Over time, its scope and dominance grew tremendously evolving from strictly political scenarios to every sphere of civic life; ultimately it gripped literature and became an important element of English texts eversince. Through rhetoric, it becomes possible for authors and speakers to use language effectively enough that their text/speech becomes persuasive. Every single social activity is based around rhetoric. For instance, political parties need to use this art for persuading people; similarly, court trials and media campaigns cannot thrive without the power of persuasion. Evolution of Rhetoric: Rhetoric emerged as a methodical study, which was developed by a group of educators, debaters and believers known as the Sophists. Sophists, according to James Fieser, “maintained that truth is only a matter of persuasive argumentation.. they offered an argument strategy called anti-logic.. using this technique students could turn a weaker argument into a stronger one” (2000). Sophists employed an outlook that largely manipulated its meaning and usage in the modern society since they believed that words were powerful enough to mediate the audience and rhetoric could serve as a way to ensure government’s affirmation. They employed a flexible approach towards truth and morality. Plato, one of the most revered of Socrates students, believed Sophists’ concept of rhetoric was derogatory and believed that to present something bad as good in front of public was an inappropriate practice. Plato wrote about rhetoric in Gorgias, “I sum up its substance in the name flattery, this practice has many branches... one is cookery.. I call rhetoric another branch of it as also personal adornment and sophistry.” (Benson & Prosser, 1969) Plato urged that rhetoric needs to be outlined more comprehensively and deception should not be its primary characteristic. The progress of classical rhetoric continued during the “Middle Ages” after the fall of the Roman Empire, which was a time when Christianity was becoming popular and morality was becoming the top-most priority of the populace. This was the era when classical rhetoric’s characteristics turned from negative and somewhat deceiving to a fancy art. Aristotle played a pivotal role in refining the concept and scope of classic rhetoric; he was the one who included rhetoric in the three main arts of discourse and made it a mandatory part of western education. Aristotle provided the best explanation of rhetoric; he believed that it is “the ability to see what is possibly persuasive in every given case” and rhetorician is “someone who is always able to see what is persuasive” but may not always be successful in persuading (Hogan & Reid, 2012). For Aristotle, rhetoric was the “counterpart of dialectic” that relied on logic and discourse instead of emotions, and with this understanding he developed a comprehensive theory of rhetoric that benefits western thinkers even today (Hogan & Reid, 2012). Aristotle provided three categories of rhetoric namely: Deliberative (where audience is persuaded for taking or not taking an action such as political oratory), Judicial (speech to determine accused or innocent such as lawyers participate in a trial) and Epideictic (ceremonial discourse that determines praise or blame) (Hogan & Reid, 2012). Thus, rhetoric evolved from deceptive to knowledge and logic based art of persuasion. The evolutionary analysis of classical rhetoric would be incomplete without the mentioning of Marcus Tullius Cicero, the most influential rhetorician of all times. Cicero believed that a perfect orator must be eloquent since artificial eloquence was actually rhetoric, and asserted that political science must not be eliminated from the scope of rhetorical persuasion. Cicero stated in his work De Inventione, “I do not agree with those men who think that knowledge of political science is in no need for eloquence…oratorical ability … [is a] part of political science.” (Cicero & Yonge, 1851) In De Oratore, Cicero introduced three basic elements of rhetorical eloquence namely: “prove, please and persuade” (Cicero & Yonge, 1851). Moreover, Cicero provided the influential five divisions of rhetorical process known as the canons. These include: invention (finding the perfect argument for discourse), arrangement (structuring the text or speech), style (the way of writing, narrating or performing something), memory (tactics or methods used to aid the rhetorical process and improve memory) and delivery (managing gestures and voice during discourse). With the passage of time classical rhetoric underwent various changes due to the new forms/styles of persuasion and writing which slightly deterred its cultural dominance. According to John Bender and David Wellbery “classical rhetoric came to an end in the post-Renaissance culture of Europe,” especially after enlightenment and romanticism (cited in Brooke, 1997). Evidently, every rhetorician provided a conflicting approach towards classical rhetoric and during the course outlined this concept, elaborated its jurisdiction and extended its scope. Post-modern Era and the New Rhetoric: 20th century predominantly altered the circumference of rhetoric and as a result New Rhetoric emerged which involved rediscovering the role of argument and the significance of rhetoric epistemology. Collin Brooke explains that “modern rhetoric is substantially different from the classical model.” (1997) In the classical model, knowledge and the world was believed to be non-tenable and that wisdom was not only the orator’s property but it was open and everyone was capable of knowing all that was worth-knowing. The community of culture was a clear advantage of classical oration and this distinguishes modern and classical models. In New Rhetoric, argumentation forms the core, cultural hegemony is unavailable and the orator has turned into an all-knowing specialist while people are assumed to be unaware or having incomplete knowledge. Kenneth Burke and Chaim Perelmankey were two prominent theorists of modern rhetoric of the 20th century. In his work A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), Kenneth Burke described that modern rhetoric encompasses consubstantiality and identification instead of persuasion (Brooke, 1997). In Traité de largumentation - la nouvelle rhétorique (1958) Chaim Perelmankey stresses that audience adherence and values are of equal importance and that audience are also of two types universal and particular. Another theorist S. Michael Halloran explains modern rhetoric involves argumentation because today “speaker and audience inhabit different worlds” and therefore, Ethos is “generated by the seriousness and passion with which the speaker articulates his own world” (Brooke, 1997). The modern day speaker’s willingness and expertise on presenting his world as an open entity can only help in attaining the objective, which is of materializing the rupture. In simple words, modern rhetoric has incorporated semiotic strategies in to the original concept of rhetoric; speaker now not just rely on describing the claim or argument but on identifying the values of the dissimilar group of audience and employing such strategy that helps him persuade the audience effectively. Challenges Faced by Rhetoric in Electronic Age: Rhetoric has undergone dramatic changes with the advent of electronic age. Collin Brooke states that contemporary culture has become more of a hindrance or threat for the five key tendencies of classical rhetoric namely “objectivism, subjectivism, liberalism, literacy, and nationalism.” (1997) One of the greatest challenges in this regard is Deconstruction. It is a style of analysis (both philosophical and literal) that found its most devoted propagator in Jacques Derrida. Derrida believes that nothing in the world is static and stable and therefore, pure presence and systematical alignment of intrinsic meaning impossible. In terms of rhetoric and particularly persuasive speech, deconstructionists believe that in modern rhetoric the audience serve as nothing else but “a conglomeration of subjects whose identity is fixed prior to the rhetorical event [..] those subjects have an essence that cannot be affected by the discourse” (Lucaites et al., 1999). He argues that speech largely relies on language, which is just a combination of signs and words cannot assert meaningful changes since these are not self-sufficient. Their meaningfulness is dependent upon the success of a larger structure, of which these are a part. Rhetoric, Derrida believes, is merely a “means of expression” and language “is a system of relations and oppositions whose elements must be defined in differential terms” (Lucaites et al., 1999). Deconstruction involves that the prospects of rhetoric being used for evil purposes cannot be overlooked and therefore, it is important to criticize it and immunize the audiences against the adverse effects of its inappropriate usage. Deconstruction challenged the very basic aspect of oratory, which is the world of knowledge, by arguing that it does not exist and the ontological nature of rhetorical practices can be elaborated rationally through deconstruction oriented critique. (Aune, 1990) Rhetoric of display is yet another challenging aspect of post-modern era; it is an idea that has been derived from Greek term Deiktikos which means “show forth” or “exhibit” (Prelli, 2006). Since rhetoric was the art of persuading and this practice was hugely aided by display but in modern era it is this specific aspect that has taken over every other aspect of rhetoric. The domineering preference of using visualized forms of communication over oratory has laid a significant impact on the very understanding of rhetoric due to which “showing forth” has become synonymized with “showing off’ (Prelli, 2006). Today, issues have become of little importance whereas exhibiting concerns and feelings through exaggerated self-display is an ongoing norm, which has brought public focus on how something is being presented not on what the discourse is all about or the problem at hand. Rhetoric of display is operating at all levels be it a museum or theme park, artifact or stores, and even it is obvious in highly crucial political campaigns; it has suddenly emerged as the perfect form of communication as well as persuasion and a dominant rhetoric of electronic age. False Literacy is yet another fruit of the electronic age and according to Sven Birkerts “what has been sacrificed in the contemporary era is not literary culture itself, but rather its adherents own belief in it.” (Brooke, 1997) The impact of integrating digital technology into every aspect of life has resulted in incidents like the dismantling of Brick and Mortar Library by Cushing Academy, Massachusetts, in 2010 (Blair, 2010). It was done to establish a digital library comprising of around 20,000 volumes and Kiosks and salient e-book readers for encouraging reliance on e-books and techno-savvy norms of reading and learning. (Blair, 2012) David Metzger asserts that in an age where books could have served as prophets, since awareness of key matters of origin (as far as human beings are concerned) is far more required now than in any other era, electronic influence has jeopardized it all. (1997) Due to digital influences, “we seem to know where individual persons come from” but do not know “what is the origin of a "people?"”(Metzger, 1997) On the other hand, it is the correlation of prophecy and books that “is central to the construction of a people as a ‘collective’ through continuity rather than contiguity.” (Metzger, 1997) However, one aspect that cannot be overlooked is that literature was already on a decline and this cannot totally be blamed on post-modern era or the electronic age. This was aptly put forth by Collin Brooke in these words “the world of Literature, if indeed it ever existed, is gone, and it vanished long before hypertext, databases, and the World Wide Web.”(1997) Brooke asserts that the world of literature even as a cultural paradigm was never active in literal sense and this is why it is of no use to blame modern technical advancements for paving the way to its downfall. Future of Rhetoric in the Electronic Age: In modern era rhetoric (as an art and a practice) has met a substantial decline due to the advent of electronic modes of communication and cultural integration. The preference people now give to digital counterparts of everything has become an obstacle for this ancient form of persuasion. Today, as pointed out by Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Lab director, information exchange has been transformed from being “traded as atoms or Evian bottles to a time where information is traded as bits” (Metzger, 1997). This eventually will transform or even revolutionize the concept of nation and community altogether, which will be replaced by large or small scale electronic communities sooner or later. Computers and World Wide Web has definitely imposed a question mark on the favorable or for that matter even a positive future of rhetoric. The impact of electronic age both on the norms of persuasion and oration is intensive and wide-ranged, which as discussed above has affected the art of rhetoric from various aspects. In the new future, electronic age will affect the five Cicero’s classical rhetoric canons. The rhetoricians’ duty of invention is largely taken over by the Internet search engines and hypertext links. Audience now easily gets to validate any claim made by the orator almost instantaneously while there is seemingly little to no effort involved, which diminishes the importance of invention in a discourse. However, from another perspective, the online databases containing a plethora of material and images can be used to revolutionize rhetorical process altogether. Websites can act as useful tools for tracking down relevant and beneficial data sources and digitized images can be utilized for reinforcing the message conveyed. Therefore, it is going to be a two-fold impact on the whole where there is no future for the classical style of rhetoric but there is immense promise for a revolutionized version of Cicero’s first canons. Creativity will undermine the element of arrangement since although this canon seems practical enough to create an impact but in this age there is no room for conventional norms and ways of documenting a text or speech. The more creative an orator will be, the more interest the creation will generate thereby facilitating persuasion. Style of persuasion has already been greatly transformed by electronic age due to which documents have evolved from being printed in plain black and white with little versatility in design and imagery to glamorously crafted paperbacks and pictorial illustration laden texts. Now it is very easy to lure audience by offering rhetoric of display, which although underrates the significance of the rhetorician to a large extent but makes the rhetorical process all the more effective and quick-paced. Memory is a critically important element of Cicero’s cannons that will be largely affected since in traditional approach rhetorician had to memorize the speech or notes so that while speaking at a court or among public there is no hindrance. However, today people fail to memorize anything since the impact has been lost and the place of memory in rhetoric has been claimed by the history section of the browser. Cultural hybridity and globalization that is brought forth by electronic mediums has greatly sabotaged the impactful cannon of delivery. The future of delivery is in danger because the orator does not know which type of a group will be listening to the speech. Delivery used to be an effective tool of persuasion but nowadays authors find it difficult to evaluate the set of audience that is to be targeted and even more confused are the audience because they do not know whom to listen. The credibility of delivery is lost and may not be regained. Patricia Bizzell, Professor of English at College of the Holy Cross, asserts that rhetoric will continue to be a part of discourse and literary studies. She believes that “rhetoric teaches deliberative discussion, it teaches people how to argue multiple sides of a question without allowing partisan emotions to close off debate” which is a practice that may never discontinue. (Bizzell, 2003) Despite the changes that rhetorical process and traditions may undergo in our electronic age the fact cannot be overlooked that it is a fundamental part of discourse. From fulfilling scholarly agendas to political campaigning, enlightening public about moral values or cultural disparities, every single aspect requires persuasion and due to its effectiveness the future of rhetoric is not at bleak as is being articulated. However, the future of classical rhetoric is not as promising; the growing tolerance towards history and traditions of rhetoric has caused a mutual feeling of alienation among public. (Bizzell, 2003) The absence of a sense of history, according to Bizzell is “spiritually orienting and that’s one reason why oppressed and marginalized groups deeply feel that recovering their history is crucial to their empowerment.” (2003) Until and unless people start realizing the importance of traditional rhetoric, the sense of alienation will persist. Conclusively, it can be stated that today, people can easily find every sort of information through World Wide Web and hence, it is believed that books in general and rhetorical process in particular bear no peculiarity. However, it is obvious that rhetoric’s scope and domain is so vast and diverse that its importance cannot be accounted as questionable by any means and measures. This postmodern society is tackling with far more severe political and cultural issues (due to globalization and cultural hybridity) than that of the past eras and this supposedly advocates that rhetoric can play a vital role in generating awareness among public sections regarding key issues. Too much reliance on electronic media has although diminished the value of face-to-face paradigm of debate but from another perspective, it has opened a whole new world for opportunities and possibilities through which the art of persuasion may receive further improvement and the scope may get widened even more. References Aune, J. A. (1990). Rhetoric after Deconstruction. In: Aune, J. A. eds. (1990). Rhetoric and Philosophy. Hillsdale, N.J: L. ErlBaum Associates, pp. 253-272. Benson, T. W. & Prosser, M. H. (1969). Readings in Classical Rhetoric. Boston: Allyn And Bacon. Bizzell, P. (2003). Future directions for Rhetorical Traditions. Speaker Series, 23 pp. 18-20. Retrieved from: http://writing.umn.edu/lrs/assets/pdf/speakerpubs/bizzell.pdf [Accessed: 15 Mar 2014]. Blair, K. (2012). Digital Rhetoric: a call to action. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org/2012/05/27/digital-rhetoric-a-call-to-action/ [Accessed: 15 Mar 2014]. Brooke, C. G. (1997). The Fate of Rhetoric in an Electronic Age. Enculturation, 1 (1). Cicero, M. T. & Yonge, C. D. (1851). The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero. London: G. Bohn. Fieser, J. (2000). Moral Philosophy through the Ages. Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield Pub. Fishwick, M. W. (2007). Cicero, Classicism, and Popular Culture. New York: Haworth Press. Lucaites, J. L., Condit, C. M. & Caudill, S. (1999). Contemporary Rhetorical Theory. New York: Guilford Press. Metzger, D. (1997). Saul/Paul and the Promise of Technological Reforms. Enculturation, 1 (1). Prelli, L. J. (2006). Rhetorics of Display. Columbia, S.C.: University Of South Carolina Press. Reid, R. S. & Hogan, L. L. (2012). The Six Deadly Sins of Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Read More