Classical and Contemporary Views of Kairos

8/13/2019 Classical and Contemporary Views of Kairos

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Classical and Contemporary Views of Kairos

The current surge of web-based literacy practices often generates anxious

reactions, based on assumptions that new approaches to writing mean certain illiteracy,

adding just one more refrain of Johnny cant write to our cultural conversation. Much

of the concern focuses on the notion that web-based media are largely solipsistic,

narcissistic, without discourse, without audience, merely authors speaking to

themselves. The relevance of this current rhetorical moment and the patterns of the

rhetoric at play can be understood more fully through a consideration of kairos, the

cornerstone of rhetoric within the Golden Age of Greece (Sipiora 3); the concept is key

to understanding and legitimizing current web-based rhetorics.

In Studies in Iconology , art historian Erwin Panofsky describes the concept of

kairos as the brief, decisive moment which marks a turning-point in the life of human

beings or in the development of the universe (71); he describes the visual

representations of the concept as a fleeting male figure, bald except for one lock of hair,

holding scales which are balanced on the edge of a knife. The image Panofsky describescharacterizes well the rhetorical concept of kairos: a rhetorical opportunity is easily

missed, but an attentive rhetor can grab the moment and hold it down. The scales

balanced on the knife edge also show the tenuous nature of a rhetorical moment, but

they also illustrate the varied views of kairos, the concept itself balancing between polar

philosophies.

Kairos, in its classical interpretations, embodied two polar views: an ordered,

objectivist view, represented by Aristotle and Plato, in which rhetorical actions are

shaped by pre-existing, immutable conditions. Then there is the other side: the

uniquely timely, the spontaneous, the radically particular (Miller xiii). This view,


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mainly associated with Gorgias and Isocrates, suggests that there is a lack of human

order and the rhetor must be attentive to that unpredictability.

Within classical rhetoric, a period which encompassed Aristotle through

Augustine, the concept of kairos was viewed as both a pragmatic and philosophical

matter, a public and private concern. The two sides of the debate sought to provide

theories of human motive, human selfhood, and human society (Lanham 203). With

such high stakes, it is no surprise that kairos could convey extremes of on the one

hand, slavish propriety, and on the other, solipsistic novelty (Miller xiii). That kairos

embodies the conflict between a philosophical and a rhetorical worldview is no surprise;

as Richard Lanham writes, the quarrel between the philosophers and the rhetoricians

constitutes the quarrel in Western culture (202). Another way to understand the

conflicting definitions of kairos is provided by Mick Doherty in his introduction to the

launch of the journal Kairos : kairos as realm vs. tool. Is kairos a tool, something

functional or working in the world or a realm, a reconceptualized world view? Is

kairos a moment that exists independent of demands of rhetor or a situation createdby the rhetor? (quoting C. Miller).

To understand the balance and contrast of kairos throughout rhetorical history,

lets first look at the Aristotelian view of the concept. Aristotles view of kairos presents

a formulary, suggesting that if the rhetor understands the character and disposition of

his audience he will be able to respond exactly right: the sick man is easily provoked in

regard to his illness, the necessitous in regard to his poverty, the warrior in regard to

warlike affairs, the lover in regard to love affairs, and so with all the rest (Rhetoric

II.10) His topoi are rigid, a catalogue of techniques that can respond to all existing

rhetorical situations. Platos view of kairos similarly reflects fixed, objective knowledge;


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as Socrates notes in the Phaedrus, [The rhetor] will classify the speeches and the souls

and will adapt each to the other, showing the causes of the effects produced and why one

kind of soul is necessarily persuaded by certain classes of speeches, and another is not

(Bizzell and Herzberg 163); the rhetor will have a knowledge of the times for speaking

and for keeping silence (164). The challenge of the rhetor in responding to the kairotic

moment is to understand the range of human souls and respond accordingly. The nature

of souls/ individuals is fixed, awaiting the rhetors analysis and response. In this

objectivist view of kairos, context is a pre-existing condition which the rhetor analyzes

and responds toa vessel waiting to be filled. While the kairotic moment itself is

fleeting, the nature of souls and truth is not.

In contrast to this objective view of kairos, Isocrates and Gorgias viewed kairos

as a situational, flexible concern rather than a rigid formula. According to Bizzell and

Herzberg, Fitness for the occasion kairos is all, to Isocrates (p); the concept

formed the core of his paideia , his educational program. Not surprisingly, then, kairos is

explored in many of his addresses, with a variety of connotations. Isocrates speaks ofkairos as circumstances (e.g. Speeches of general import and credibility and the like are

devised and spoken through many forms and circumstances that are difficult to learn --

Encomium of Helen); the occasion (e.g. speech perhaps be unsuitable for this occasion . ..--

Evagoras); the moment (views may be adapted to the right moments Antidosis) and

timeliness (e.g. what is untimely is always irritating To Demonicus).

The mutability of the kairotic moment is explored further by Gorgias. In even

starker contrast to Plato, Gorgias believed that truth was dependent upon the moment;

as Eric White explores in Kaironomia : [For Gorgias] kairos entails a recognition of the

antithetical nature of the truth, and consequently, of the provisional character of the


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logos of the moment (qtd. in Sipiora 20). Gorgias was heavily influenced by

Pythagoras, who asserted that the best thing in every action is kairos (Rostagni 34); in

the Pythagorean view there are two things to say on every matter, and kairos allows us

to make the same thing seem big or small, beautiful or ugly, new or old (Rostagni 37).

With Gorgias, we find the full expression of one of the polar views of kairos mentioned

previously by Miller, that of the radically particular. Because particular moments

cannot be anticipated, the rhetor will face uncertainty and conflict. Part of the rhetorical

process is recognizing this conflict and making decisions regardless:

For Gorgias, kairos stands for a radical principle of occasionality which implies a

conception of the production of meaning in language as a process of continuous

adjustment to and creation of the present occasion, or a process of continuous

interpretation in which the speaker seeks to inflect the given text to his or her

own ends at the same time that the speakers text is interpreted in turn by the

context surrounding it. (White, quoted in Sipiora )

Not only was Gorgias rhetoric focused on the mutability of the kairotic moment, butthrough kairos he viewed rhetoric as the idea of living well, as the center of education

(Rostagni). This view is starkly in opposition to Plato who promoted the goal of

knowing well, being able to identify and convey the truth in every moment. For

Gorgias, the goal was not to seek and find the truth, but to respond effectively to any

given context.

As mentioned previously, the contrasting views of kairos were not settled with

the classical period. In one of the works for contemporary discussions of rhetoric, The

Rhetorical Situation, Lloyd Bitzer argues for an objective view of kairos, echoing Plato:

The presence of rhetorical discourse obviously indicates the presence of a rhetorical


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situation. For Bitzer, each rhetorical moment begins with an exigence which invites

utterance from the rhetor. While Bitzer doesnt explicitly use the word kairos, the

specific terminology is later linked to rhetorical situation by theorists such as James

Kinneavy (who speaks about situational context.) Bitzers views align with Platos in

that the rhetorical moment pre-exists the rhetors contribution; there is fixity in the

situation and the rhetor is responding, not creating. Reflecting again the ancient debate,

Bitzers arguments about the rhetorical situation were shortly countered by Richard

Vatz in his response, The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation. Vatzs key argument is

that No situation can have a nature independent of the perception of its interpreter or

independent of the rhetoric with which he chooses to characterize it. Not only must a

rhetor anticipate all exigencies since he or she can never know the particulars of a

discourse situation until actually situated within it (Sipiora, p.10), but also the rhetor

can really never fully know the discourse situation without understanding the

perceptions of both rhetor and audience. Rather than positioning meaning in events

which dictate response as Bitzer does (reflecting the Aristotelian/ Platonic objectivistview), Vatz positions meaning with the interpretations made by rhetors and audiences

(the subjective view advanced by Isocrates, and more so by Gorgias). As with classical

discussions of rhetoric, there seems to be little agreement in this debate about what

kairos is, and its functioning seems highly dependent on underlying philosophical views.

Is kairos the situation that exists, the situation created by the speaker, or something else

altogether?

The ongoing debate suggests that perhaps the meaning of kairos will never find

a balanced resting point, but I believe some kairotic accord can be found in the concepts

application to current web rhetorics and an exploration of the progression of orality and


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literacy through the classical period until now. The underlying philosophical debate

surrounding kairos focuses on ways of knowing and communicating which depend upon

always-shifting communication technologies. With each change in technology, and the

accompanying emphasis on orality or literacy, comes a new definition of rhetoric. Long

before naysayers were warning about the dumbing-down effects of the web and other

electronic media, Plato was fearful about the impact of writing. For Plato, writings only

purpose was to serve as an aid to memory and writing on its own would only create a

world of discord and uncomeliness (Seventh Letter). In the Phaedrus, he warns, This

invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because

they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external

characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory

within them (165). In Platos objectivist worldview, there was a direct link between a

man and his utterance; writing would sever that link, and consequently the access to

truth and knowledge.

With much of classical rhetoric focusing on the invention of writing as acommunication tool, it is no surprise that the invention of electronic media--particularly

because of its mixing of literacy and orality--marked the return of rhetoric, as Richard

Lanham asserts in The Electronic Word. If rhetoric was primarily a study of orality, it

seems clear that its return would be marked by a second orality, a concept explored by

Walter Ong in his classic Orality and Literacy . Ong explores the progression from

orality to manuscript- and then print-based literacy, to a secondary orality facilitated by

electronic media. While manuscript culture had preserved a feeling for a book as a

kind of utterance, an occurrence in the course of conversation, (123) print transformed

the book into a thing rather than an utterance. Ong continues,


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By isolating thought on a written surface, detached from any interlocutor,

making utterance in this sense autonomous and indifferent to attack, writing

presents utterance and thought as uninvolved with all else, somehow self-

contained, complete. Print in the same way situates utterance and thought on a

surface disengaged form everything else, but it also goes farther in suggested

self-containment. Print encloses though in thousands of copies of a work of

exactly the same visual and physical consistency (130)

Ongs observations reflect exactly Platos critiques of writing in the detachment and

autonomy of the text.

This fixity and autonomy of text has been challenged, of course, by the notion of

intertextuality, a concept taken for granted by manuscript culture with its endlessly

altered copies and palimpsests (Ong 131). While Ong does explore the concept of

intertextuality, his textwritten in 1982does not have the benefit of observing the

further revelations of his secondary orality; while the video culture that Ong observed

certainly hinted at a return to orality, web-based participatory discourse extends evenfurther. Printed text was fixed, but web-based text is endlessly mutable; while sharing

similarities with print, is more like a manuscript culture, which deliberately created

texts out of other texts, borrowing, adapting, sharing the common, originally oral,

formulas and themes, even though it worked them up into fresh literary forms

impossible without writing (Ong 131). Further, Ong asserts that this new orality has

striking resemblances to the old in its participatory mystique, its fostering of a

communal sense, its concentration on the present moment, and even its use of formulas

(134); if this was true in 1982, then it is even more so now with the participatory media

of web 2.0.


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With this open-endedness, there is a certain amount of fear, perhaps a desire to

hold tightly to the Platonic view of objectivity and fixity. The fear can be seen in the

fierce debates over plagiarism and fair use with web texts. Print created a new sense of

the private ownership of words (Ong 128), even though copies were common in

manuscript culture. The expected fixity of text that has been cultivated by the print

culture is being challenged with the web. With the easy remediation of the web,

permanent words are also public and adaptable. The use of texts is changing, but

perceptions of text still hold tightly to previous views of text and ownership. Ong

argues that the media of secondary orality, despite their cultivated air of spontaneity, . .

are totally dominated by a sense of closure which is the heritage of print (135), but this

no longer seems to be the case. Texts are endlessly open, repeatable and adaptable. And

none of us knows exactly how to define this new rhetoric.

Because classical rhetoric was kairos-focused, kairos could also be key to our

understanding of electronic media and the rhetoric it encourages/ produces. First, lets

consider the objectivist view of kairos. If kairos depends upon knowing audience, theweb with its vast and often anonymous audiences can seem akairic. Texts move about,

unhinged with the audience constantly changing. Ong echoes Millers previous

description of writing as a solipsistic operation. With this solipsistic view of web-

based discourse, writers are expressing themselves with no audience, with no apparent

concern for feedback. In a 1996 dissertation, Steve Krause questions, What happens to

a rhetorical situation when it is no longer clear who is the audience and who is the

rhetor? On the web, not only do rhetor and audience conflate in the constant flow of

texts, but also the texts themselves gain a rhetorical autonomy as they shift away from

their original contexts. With the sudden and quick shifts of positions between speakers,


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audiences, and situations rhetoric becomes not just an act of discovery but an act of

creativity (Krause).

These shifts in context can be seen in viral videos, changing meaning as they

move from their original to unexpected contexts. Consider, for instance, an infamous

example of viral video, the Appalachian State recruitment video, which an editorial in

the ASU student newspaper described in this way, The jingle is horrible, the lyrics are

absurd and the pictures make Appalachian seem like an institution stuck in the 1970s.

This short film includes a series of cheery faces, cheesy graphics and the tagline,

Appalachian State is Hot Hot Hot! (Video is viewable here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVENWl8uBeg ). It was originally created for the

Appalachian Family Caravan tour, an alumni boosting effort, the video was intended (at

least according to the official word) to create unity among alumni groups, a sort of

inside joke. According to an NPR report on the viral phenomenon Lorin Baumhover,

Chief of Staff for the Office of the Chancellor at Appalachian State asserted, We would

never create something like that to attract students. It's horrible" (Palca). Of course, theintentions of the original video as an inside joke were quickly lost as it made its way

across the web to a variety of audiences. While the video seems like a bad idea in any

context, its wide popularity and viewing had little to do with its original rhetorical

intentionseven these are hard to pin down given the fact that descriptions of intention

came after the videos popularity and accompanying criticism. Texts shifting through

various contexts may not immediately seem rhetorical because they lack a rhetor, but

their interpretations and material impact cant be ignored. They are rhetorical because

in a given space they have meaning for a specific audience. Even Lloyd Bitzer, who

asserts that only some acts are rhetorical, acknowledges that a text can become
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVENWl8uBeghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVENWl8uBeg


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rhetorical if by some chance it should fit a situation (although he doesnt seem to think

that this chance rhetorical relevance is possible).

This rhetorical mutability is perhaps the challenge of web-based rhetoric, but

also its opportunity. Perhaps the fact that the web fits so poorly with the Platonic view

of kairos, and the reality that electronic communications are our most dominant form of

communication, suggests that Gorgian/ subjectivist view of rhetoric and kairos is the

true definition of rhetoric (at least for this kairotic moment). As Lanham asserts,

Elegies for the book. . .suggest that the convergence of technology, democratization,

and the return of rhetoric provides the dominant reality for the arts and letters in our

time (221). While orality and literacy are often split (as evidenced not only by current

fears about web-based (il)literacy but also fears about writing replacing speech in

classical times), Kathleen Welch, in her book Electric Rhetoric argues that we need to

accept the interdependence of orality and literacy. The literacy of the web is still

alphabetic, but it is also visual, aural, etc.just as classical rhetorical written texts were

still oral (as evidenced by the written construction of oral dialogues). This movementtowards a hybrid literacy/ orality has prompted the return of a variety of nearly

forgotten rhetorical concepts: the canons of memory and delivery and the concept of

kairos. According to Welch, Isocratic rhetoric is the perfect model for new electronic

rhetorics. Both Gorgias and Isocrates embraced the new technology of writing and

allowed for a rhetoric that was intersubjective, performative, and a merger of oralism

and literacy.

One of the challenges of defining kairos, in classical or contemporary times, is

the potential conflict in its very definition. A theory [of kairos] would seem to

undermine the spontaneity of speaking implied by the very notion of kairos(Poulakos


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89). How can kairos be defined and pinned down into a usable definition if its practice

hinges on an always flexible and fleeting moment? While this contradiction might seem

irreconcilable, the combination of orality and literacy promoted by the web allows for

the spontaneity of kairos to remain intact while also providing evidence for its function.

Web-based writing is instant and flexible, but it is also recorded. With kairos, the

instant moment, not the finished form, largely determines the meaning. . .of a particular

utterance (Poulakos 89). On the web, the instant moment (which might occur at the

time of creation, the time of initial reception, or at dozens of moments later) retains its

spontaneity, but it is fixed by the comprehensive data collection of the web. I may

initially view the Appalachian State as a negative commentary on the region, but I can

also explore the path of the text, reading student commentaries and faculty observations

from five years ago. The kairos of the text is both fixed and fluid.

Poulakos explains the instant moment of kairos as the confluence of utterance

and time, or to a marking of time with speech (89). On the web, with its fluid audiences,

that confluence of utterance and time could occur at any moment, without any specificattention to the rhetor or an immediate exigence. Here, the realm and tool as explained

by Krause both seem to be at play. The realm of time exists, unchangeable, but through

the tools implicit in kairos the rhetor can make an utterance that is appropriate given

the timing. Of course, the utterance can continue forward, disconnected from the rhetor,

asserting a meaning of its own. The rhetor can use kairos a tool, but kairos exists

without him. The message acquires a life of its own. As Manovich explains, A new

media object [which could be video, image, text, etc.] is not something fixed once and

for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions (36). His

description reflects the manuscript culture Ong explores: Instead of identical copies, a


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new media object typically gives rise to many different versions. And rather than being

created completely by a human author, these versions are often in part automatically

assembled by a computer (36). Each kairotic moment, each creation of a media object

gives rise to multiple others.

Kairos is the present moment amongst all others and the web, which often seems to be

akairic, allows that present moment to be tied down first in thought and then explored

and adapted. Isocrates rhetoric consisted of interior discourse and exterior discourse, a

private and a public self, making writing, thinking, and speaking. . . interdependent for

[Isocrates] and heavily conditioned by the technology of writing (Welch). This is

echoed by Carolyn Ericksen Hill who describes kairos as a sort of resonance, a balance

of opposing forces that connects writing and rhetoric to thinking and feeling, similar to

the Pythagorean/ Gorgian view of kairos. As Lanham describes with his concept of

oscillation, electronic discourses creates movement between and ultimate blending of

the thinking/ being/ feeling self. The writer thinks and explores abstract thoughts

and from this develops an interaction with the public.This confluence of utterance and time can be seen even more fully through the

micro-discourse of Twitter, where the immediate moment is key. Twitter is often

criticized as being solipsistic, narcissistic, and clutter at best. It is a highly criticized

discourse, but also widely embraced. Not all discourse can be contained within the 140

character constraint of Twitter, but the immediacy of the Tweet can be the beginning of

the rhetorical moment, the thought that captures the kairotic immediacy, providing

opportunities to expand the discourse to continued conversations, to more developed

texts, and social action. An utterance on Twitter may be minimal, but it can lead to

further utterance and action, as demonstrated recently with protests in Moldova. With


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15 minutes of planning among a few friends, in several hours a protest of 15, 000 was

generated. As Natalia Morar, the initiator of the protest articulated, "None of us could

imagine that such a thing could happen, but it shows there exists a very big protest

inside society and within young people. While the exigence of broader social discontent

did exist before the protest formed, encouraging the group of young planners to meet,

the specific kairotic moment was made easier to grasp through web-based discourse.

That fleeing figure with the forelock is easier to grab and pin down. Fifteen minutes of

planning leads to quickly distributed information and a response within hours. Without

the web, the fleeting moment might quickly disappear, irretrievable. As Tim OReilly

comments about Twitter, It makes visible the structure of implied communities. The

people who are involved in the same areas and the same interests tend to follow each

other (LA Times). As Sipiora notes, quoting Kermode, kairos is a point in time filled

with significance, charged with meaning derived from its relation to the end (2); while a

mere twit may not seem like a statement charged with meaning, if considered from its

potential rhetorical end, it typifies the kairotic moment.The subjective view of kairos presents context as an actor, as influential as the

rhetor or the audience in interpreting the text. The web, with its mutability, is a

laboratory of this active context and the impact of kairos. Lanham explains this new

electronic rhetoric as operating within an economics of human attention-structures;

the words in the information society operate in an ambiguous fashion, overlapping,

bumping into one another, creating unintended meanings, making more meaning come

out of an utterance than an author put into it (229). With this overlapping and

ambiguity of texts, there is often concern about the overload of information, that in the

ambiguity everything becomes trivial. But as Lanham assures, We do not need to


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worry about peoples being swamped by useless information. They will pick out what is

germane to their needs (242). While the disparate philosophical views of kairos may

not be resolved, web-based discourse does offer a reasonable compromise. Perhaps there

is not fixity, no absolute truth or exigence waiting for response, but with the balance of

orality and literacy, there is a connection between thought and utterance. In this

balance of flexibility and connectivity, perhaps both philosophers and rhetoricians

would be happy.


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Works Cited

Aristotle. Art of Rhetoric. Trans. J.H. Freese. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2006.

Benedikt, Amelie Frost. On Doing the Right Thing at the Right Time: Toward anEthics of Kairos . Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory, and Praxis. PhillipSipiora and James S. Baulin Eds. Abany: SUNY Press, 2002. 237-246.

Bitzer, Lloyd F. The Rhetorical Situation. Philosphy and Rhetoric . 1 (January, 1968): 1-14

Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg, Eds. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings fromClassical Times to the Present.

Doherty, Mick. Kairos Layers of Meaning. Kairos. 20 April 2009.

Editorial. The Appalachian. 26 January 2006. Appalachian State University. 27 April2009.


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Miller, Carolyn R. Foreword. Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory, and Praxis.Phillip Sipiora and James S. Baulin Eds. Abany: SUNY Press, 2002. xi-xiii.

Moldovas Twitter Revolutionary Speaks Out 25 April 2009. BBC News. 27 April2009.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. London: Routledge, 2000.

On Twitter, mindcasting is the new lifecasting. 11 March 2009. LA Times . 27 April

2009 < http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/03/

on-twitter-mind.html>

Palca, Joe. Ivy League: Cold! Appalachian State: Hot! Hot! Hot! 1 August 2006.National Public Radio. 27 Apr. 2009

Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes In the Art of the Renaissance.NewYork: Westview Press, 1972.

Plato. The Seventh Letter. MIT Classics Department. 27 April 2009

Poulakos, John. Kairos in Gorgias Rhetorical Compositions. Rhetoric and Kairos: Essaysin History, Theory, and Praxis. Phillip Sipiora and James S. Baulin Eds. Abany:SUNY Press, 2002. 89-96.

Sipiora, Phillip. Introduction: The Ancient Concept of Kairos. Rhetoric and Kairos:Essays in History, Theory, and Praxis. Phillip Sipiora and James S. Baulin Eds.Abany: SUNY Press, 2002. 1-22

Vatz, Richard E. The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric. Philosophy and Rhetoric 6.3 (1973): 155-60

Welch, Kathleen. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and a New Literacy .Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

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Classical and Contemporary Views of Kairos