Changes in Rhetoric--Do People Even Know? 

Blog Post #1

Chapter 1 ARCS

This chapter is quite an interesting introduction on how the history of rhetoric explains peoples’ misconceptions about the topic today, and how our contemporary world disagrees with basic principles of rhetoric that its founders created.  I find it intriguing, the notion of how a person’s credibility and even citizenship in a community was determined by their ability to communicate, and it had little to do with their family heritage and finances, because throughout most of history that has not been the case.

In the comparisons between ancient and contemporary rhetoric there were changes noted about how people view certain components of rhetoric, such as extrinsic and intrinsic proofs.  Facts were not trustworthy in ancient times; people’s personal accounts and experiences gave them more credibility than the information from another person’s experiences.  The difference between atechnoi and entechnoi give way to the contemporary view (and opposing one at that to ancient times) about how interpretations can be viewed through different networks, and those networks allow for the context of the argument itself.  Today, people do not allow for personal experience to always be a credible source, they look for obscure facts and numbers to back up their arguments, where ancient rhetors might argue that the argument of an individual who has not experienced what they are arguing for is null and void and cannot thus follow the method of the rhetorical proofs. 

The view of having an opinion is another major change that has occurred within contemporary rhetoric—people are personalized to their views, and those views become an extension of their identity; where ancient rhetors believed that opinions could not be owned by individuals and could easily be changed should another present an argument that is viably compelling.  Although things in the world of communication (really everything) are constantly changing and adapting to the current situations, it might be useful for people to really take a look at the foundations of rhetoric, examine what was established, what it ought to be and evaluate whether or not their present use of the rhetoric as a means of communication and argument is utilized, accurately represented, and practiced.