Week of November 17, Tuesday Blog Post

Just after reading the introduction to the modern and postmodern rhetoric chapter in The Rhetorical Tradition, I discovered what I wanted to discuss for this post. In the introduction it is stated that at the beginning of the twentieth century rhetoric appeared to be declining, that it was no longer a promising art that displayed any sense of importance. Later on in the same introduction the argument is made that although this may have been how the twentieth century began with rhetoric it is currently grown to encomass “a theory of language as a form of social behavior, of intention and interpretation as the determinants of meaning, of the way that knowledge is created by argument, and of the way that ideology and power are extended through language.” Personally, I believe that rhetoric encompassed this idea as early as medieval rhetoric, therefore I also make the argument that rhetoric has not experienced any original philosophies during the twentieth century. If we look at university educations rhetoric, which is under the umbrella of an English degree, is no longer a popular degree that individuals try to study. Sure it can be beneficial, still it is not a developing practice that continues to be updated like the sciences. I believe rhetoric was more desired in earlier times, although today it is not a trait that people try to focus their entire lives trying to master it. The invention of rhetoric is simply not there anymore. Today, the rhetoric that is applied is differently than with past applications. Nevertheless, we seem to have lost the creators of it simply because ancient and medieval rhetors have managed to say all there is to the idea of rhetoric. The rhetoric that rhetors create today is simply a challenge of ancient or mediaval rhetoric, but nothing original.