Aristotle Lives!!!!!

Lunsford and Ede’s distinctions—and overlaps—between classical and modern rhetoric are helpful in coming toward a (more helpful and unified) definition of rhetoric, one that brings attention to the presence of classical rhetoric (particularly Aristotle) in modern theories of rhetoric.  By divorcing Aristotle’s Rhetoric  from his full body of work, contemporary theorists of rhetoric tend to misrepresent and misinterpret Aristotle’s goal of rhetoric to the point where Aristotle’s and other classical rhetoricians’ theories of rhetoric are deemed obsolete for a modern context; Lunsford and Ede—and Zappan—demonstrate that theories of rhetoric from classical rhetoricians—Aristotle in particular—are still useful lenses to analyze language use in current, contemporary contexts. 

As Lunsford and Ede explain, Aristotle was interested in how the rhetor and audience negotiate meaning: “Aristotle’s rhetoric provides a complete description of the dynamic interaction between rhetor and audience, an interaction mediated by language” (44).  Meaning-making is then an interactive process—a social interaction that is negotiated with language.  This social, dialogic interaction that’s involved in creating meaning has often been attributed to modern rhetoricians such as Bhaktin and Burke—in our class specifically.  Lunsford and Ede go as far as to point out how Burke explicitly ties persuasion (in the broader sense), identification, and communication—Burke uses Aristotle’s conceptualization of rhetoric to contextualize it within the evolving contexts of the time.

I think that might be my “take-away” from the readings this week—well, I think there’s a few. First, as Lunsford and Ede explain, we—as contemporary rhetoricians—shouldn’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” In other words, Aristotle and the other classics have something to offer; their theories are not wholly obsolete in the changing contemporary contexts.  The second “take-away” is closely tie to the first: just as Burke and Zappan, we should take the essence of Aristotle (through his full body of work) and contextualize it.  As Zappan points out: “dialogue—conceived not as a mode of persuasion, but as a testing of one’s own ideas, a contesting of others’ ideas, and a collaborative creating of ideas—is possible in any medium: oral, print, digital” (320-1).  I liked this excerpt particularly because Zappan is not fashioning the Digital environment as a wholly unique and different point of study; with the emergence (and ever-emergence) of digital environemnts and digital communities, the digital is still a medium of communication where dialogue takes place. While the digital environment is, in fact, unique and different, it is not wholly unique as to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”  Understood fairly, Aristotle speaks about dialogue and negotiation of meaning—what better place for this to occur than in digital environments?  But as Zappan points out, we should contextualize Aristotle’s conceptualization of rhetoric to account for the affordances and constraints of the digital forum: speed, reach, anonymity, and interactivity.