Rhetoric
has incurred a base connotation is society today, due to many misconceptions
being presented. “Rhetoric is
characterized as empty words or as fancy language used to distort the truth or to
tell lies.” (Page 17). This statement illustrates the general
misunderstanding of the purpose and use of rhetoric. Rhetoric is deemed useless because it is not
an action, so why waste the breath? What
needs to be understood is that rhetoric is sometime the best course of action,
if it is the only way to avoid violence. It is not a didactic way to coerce someone into believing what the
rhetor believes, it is simply a medium to present perceptions and
opinions. The only way for rhetoric to
take place is through a two-way conversation or active listening; technology has changed the playing
field of communication.
Technological advances that allow for email, texting and other forms of social media have altered people’s rhetoric activity. The paradox of today's social networks is that constant and exhaustive social communication, is actually a less meaningful or productive form of communication. It is difficult to understand what an individual is feeling through a twenty-word text or email, but people try. Actual conversational interaction, person to person, is an endangered art. It has been replaced by the ephemeral art that is social media. “At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mails” (page 14). Even families have lost the ability to invest any sort of interest or emotion in one another. They are consumed by interacting in a way that is specifically tailored to there individual needs, strategically edited to convey themselves however they would like. Conversation would be a nuisance and take away from forms of communication they would actually like to employ.
In contemporary society rhetoric is misunderstood as base, while concurrently being supplanted in peoples lives by social media. When in reality it is the way human beings were made to interact on a deeper personal and more productive level.
