Classical, Modern, and Digital Rhetoric

Some of Lunsford and Ede’s distinctions between classical and modern rhetoric hold.  Both Aristotle and modern rhetoricians see humans as a “language-using animal,” both rational and emotional (45).  Lunsford and Ede argue that the modern age is “an age of print” (45).  They leave out visual and multimodal texts that abound today. Zappan points out that dialogue can take place “in any medium: oral, print, digital” (320-321).  While print is important, it is one medium people use to communicate.  While Aristotle sees the audience as rational and emotional so the rhetor can find the best means to communicate with the audience, modern rhetoricians see people as rational and emotional so that rhetoric can be participatory and collaborative (Zappan 322).

Lunsford and Ede argue that, “According to Aristotle, rhetor and audience come into a state of knowing which places them in a clearly defined relationship with the world and with each other, mediated by their language” (45).  Certainly Aristotle envisions a rhetor reaching an audience, and it is the rhetor’s job to figure out how to persuade the audience using language.  I read Aristotle’s audience as a passive audience, there to be reached.  When Lunsford and Ede say that in both classical and modern rhetoric “rhetor and audience may jointly have access to knowledge,” they argue that audience has more agency than I think Aristotle gives audience (45).  Digital rhetoric, according to Zappan, allows us to “understand the processes by which authors and readers work together to achieve self-expression or creative collaboration” (322).  Zappan’s relationship between rhetor and audience is dialogic, not one-way communication.  I’m not sure Aristotle sees rhetoric as dialogic in the way Zappan considers digital rhetoric to be dialogic.

Lunsford and Ede claim that, “Aristotle’s theory establishes rhetoric as an art and relates it clearly to all fields of knowledge” (45).  When Aristotle establishes rhetoric as being used in the three occasions of ceremonial, forensic, and deliberative, I don’t read his rhetoric as relating to all fields of knowledge.  Aristotle limits where rhetoric happens.  Not all fields of knowledge would be discussed in the three occasions Aristotle lays out.  I think that the theorist who relates rhetoric to all fields of knowledge is Burke.  Digital rhetoric relates to anything that can be discussed in a digital space.  Zappan argues that digital rhetoric builds “communities of shared interest” (322).  That’s a wider scope than Aristotle’s three occasions.

Lunsford and Ede are correct to argue that the dichotomy between classical and modern rhetoric they lay out at the beginning of the article is oversimplified and “seriously flawed” (40).  Classical rhetoric is not solely manipulative, just as modern rhetoric is not always interested in true cooperation and communication.  Aristotle was interested in public speech, in moving audience in a morally right way, as Lunsford and Ede point out (41).  Modern rhetoric takes a broader scope, interested in communication public and private.  Both classical and modern rhetoric see people as rational and emotional and are concerned about knowledge.  Digital rhetoric gives us new spaces to express ideas, shape identity, and collaborate around shared interests (Zappan 322).