Page 329 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
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llenges of Rhetoric 329
in the Era of “Bytes and Likes”
Petra Aczél, Corvinus University of Budapest
“Rhetoric is no longer the title of a doctrine and a practice, nor a form of cul-
tural memory; it becomes instead something like the condition of our exi-
stence.” (Bender–Wellbery, 1990: 25)
“How will our rhetorical and media theories need to be re-worked to acco-
unt for the interactivity inherent in participatory entertainment?” (Urban-
ski 2010: 67–68)
Summary
Although defined, traditionally, as the art of persuasion, rhetoric has always tended
to outgrow its original concern. Its twofold disciplinary nature, of theory and prac-
tice (utens-docens as Burke named them), has been calling constantly for redefini-
tions and scientific legitimization. Often, scholars augured or stated the death and
recognized and announced the rebirth of rhetoric. Anti/Postmodernist theories
were seeking new horizons to (re)interpret it in a more “integrative” way, introducing
it to function as a communicative framework of all societal and mediated functions.
In the era of digital literacy and new media, rhetoric is facing new challenges which
urge theoreticians to rediscover the hidden capacities of the classical faculty. Con-
tributing to e–rhetoric, netoric, digital and visual rhetoric, this paper intends to cast
light upon the almost forgotten “subdomains” of rhetoric and endeavours to prove
its capability to be both the condition and the critical view of (new) media discourse.
Key words: rhetorical ideal, new media, visual rhetoric, procedural rhetoric, spatial
rhetoric, aural rhetoric
I 1. Prologue
n the second media age, the challenges to rhetoric concern mainly
the faculty itself. The new, semi-virtual, participative publicity media
maintains and makes rhetoric enact in the way, originally, to which it
was entitled. Although the classical “toolbar” of rhetoric needs a bit of
reconfiguring, rhetoric’s main challenge is to discover its hidden fields
and capacities which can offer more than the functionalist description
of new media discourse. This chapter aims at outlining a theoretical
framework to interpret classical rhetoric in a new way; to show the ca-
in the Era of “Bytes and Likes”
Petra Aczél, Corvinus University of Budapest
“Rhetoric is no longer the title of a doctrine and a practice, nor a form of cul-
tural memory; it becomes instead something like the condition of our exi-
stence.” (Bender–Wellbery, 1990: 25)
“How will our rhetorical and media theories need to be re-worked to acco-
unt for the interactivity inherent in participatory entertainment?” (Urban-
ski 2010: 67–68)
Summary
Although defined, traditionally, as the art of persuasion, rhetoric has always tended
to outgrow its original concern. Its twofold disciplinary nature, of theory and prac-
tice (utens-docens as Burke named them), has been calling constantly for redefini-
tions and scientific legitimization. Often, scholars augured or stated the death and
recognized and announced the rebirth of rhetoric. Anti/Postmodernist theories
were seeking new horizons to (re)interpret it in a more “integrative” way, introducing
it to function as a communicative framework of all societal and mediated functions.
In the era of digital literacy and new media, rhetoric is facing new challenges which
urge theoreticians to rediscover the hidden capacities of the classical faculty. Con-
tributing to e–rhetoric, netoric, digital and visual rhetoric, this paper intends to cast
light upon the almost forgotten “subdomains” of rhetoric and endeavours to prove
its capability to be both the condition and the critical view of (new) media discourse.
Key words: rhetorical ideal, new media, visual rhetoric, procedural rhetoric, spatial
rhetoric, aural rhetoric
I 1. Prologue
n the second media age, the challenges to rhetoric concern mainly
the faculty itself. The new, semi-virtual, participative publicity media
maintains and makes rhetoric enact in the way, originally, to which it
was entitled. Although the classical “toolbar” of rhetoric needs a bit of
reconfiguring, rhetoric’s main challenge is to discover its hidden fields
and capacities which can offer more than the functionalist description
of new media discourse. This chapter aims at outlining a theoretical
framework to interpret classical rhetoric in a new way; to show the ca-
