The Progression of the Fifth Canon
As the years progressed and changed, so did rhetoric. Delivery took a plunge in popularity for awhile and "ironically, written words developed a kind of priori status" (McCorkle). Even though Greek and Roman culture was pretty much an oral society writing was beginning to take it's place within the society and the "relatively new technology of writing was subject to the aesthetic, logical and formal dimensions of an already established oral culture" (McCorkle). It was because of the teachings of the Sophists and the worry of persuasion, like that of the worry Aristotle had, "the declining status of delivery was itself a mechanism of remediation, in that it was an attempt on the part of the rhetorical theorists to divert attention away from the embodied rhetorical performance and refocus the attention towards words" (McCorkle) and this is when the written word really started to take it's place within society.
Even before Gutenberg came along with the printing press, the written word began taking place through manuscripts and such. As Buchanan states in her book Regendering Delivery "positioning delivery in a particular social and historical context dramatically alters the scope of the fifth canon, which continues to address the speaker's use of voice and body, of course, but also interprets that performance in relation to the larger cultural currents that envelop and affect it". Delivery and speech started taking a more formal platform; and writing was becoming a lot more trustworthy with it's delivery, mostly because of the effect that there was a lack of persuasion from a rhetor onto an audience. As McCorkle states "the canon of delivery served as an important tool in naturalizing the handwritten and machine-printed word, helping to downplay the role of the speaking body in some cases and to play up the concept of writing-as-materialized-thought in others". And so, as the years progressed rhetoric began taking on new meaning and the delivery of rhetoric began taking on new forms.
1. How has rhetoric changed since the time of Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian?
2. What are modern ways of rhetorical delivery that you have noticed yourself?
3. What are the pros and cons of being able to use technology for our delivery?
2. What are modern ways of rhetorical delivery that you have noticed yourself?
3. What are the pros and cons of being able to use technology for our delivery?