"Rhetoric is the art which seeks to capture in opportune moments that which is appropriate and attempts to suggest that which is possible (26)." |
style = "an inescapable reality of speech" (27)
Aristotle says about style: "It is not sufficient to know what one ought to say, but it is necessary also to know how one ought to say it" (qtd. on 27).
Style/How = "a matter of the speaker's choice" borne out of "the peculiar expression of [the speaker's] personality" (27).
kairos = opportune moments; knowing the rhetorical situation; knowing "whether now is the time to speak" (28).
Timely speech is more persuasive (29).
Kairos = speaking appropriately at the right time (29).
to prepon = the appropriate; conforming what is said to both audience and occasion (29); sense of propriety.
Timeliness and appropriateness are a matter of feeling; elastic in application; relative (29-30)
In determining these two elements, a speaker must factor in:
- Their discretionary powers
- The Cultural norms
- The reading of the situation
- The image of the audience
- The prediction of the potential effects of the speech
to dynaton = what's possible; what a rhetorician must move towards in a speech after timeliness and appropriateness are assessed.
Why articulate the possible? (30)
1. Driving forces in a man's life = "desire to be other and to be elsewhere"
2. Here/Now is lacking; future holds potential; audience participates in both at once[um, what does this say about fate? Free will? Is this the driving force for humankind?]
"This is where the rhetorician steps in and helps him resolve his existential dilemma" (30)
"A special dimension of the possible, then, is afforded by the novel" (30)
Novel = not like novels/books, but what is "new"; what has never been heard before (30)
Actual individual permanence being | Possible manifold change becoming |
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