"Age of Rhetoricality"

John Bender and David E. Wellbery in their chapter "Rhetoricaaity:  On the Modernist Return of Rhetoric." in The Ends of Rhetoric:  History, Theory, and Practice explains that rhetoric is no longer practiced as it was in antiquity.  They argue that "modernism is an age not of rhetoric, but rhetoricality" (25).  He argues that rhetoric was maintained within a specific "set of limitations" relating to a particular purpose and goal, topoi.  In modern times, rhetoricality is defined by not fixed point of discourse.  There are no viewable set of limitations in defining rhetoric as a pragmatic art.     Instead well formed institutions, we have decentralized points of power and overlapping discourses.

And this was true of the modern era until the time of  web 2.0.  Web 2.0 in effect turned everyone into a meaningful orator who could potentially influence a discourse on a substantial level.  The economic concept of the long tail illustrates how marketing has turned into creating a band wagon to creating smaller yet numerous communities of stakeholders who have considerable amounts of power in the smaller discourses.   

Bender and Wellbery affirm that his plurality does not allow for a single definition of rhetoric that classical times allowed.  However this is not to say that today's rhetoricians do not possesses a specialized set of literacy skills that allow them to function in the production processes of knowledge and meaning.

As the video in my previous post showed, a majority of people who have access to these technologies are voicing their ideas within the limitations of the genres the are using and the discourses in which they function.  Rhetorics seemed to be a more appropriate term when describing the current idea of rhetorical studies today.   There are still a specialized skill set needed in determine one's ability to take any particular rhetoric and be effective with it.