Sunday, February 14, 2010
In Kinneavy's "Kairos: A Neglected Concept", he looks at the emphasis of occasion in all its headings and definitions. The modern use of the Greek word 'kairos' is used as 'weather' in the everyday forcast. In looking at the long list of recent scholars using kairos as an integral piece of rhetoric, Kinneavy states, "all stress the importance of the unique background of the interpreter to the business of interpreting anything" (84). I would say the 'weathering', or occasion of the background of the reader is what shades their interpretation and thus when they begin to comment on it, the textuality of the text . While the speaker hopes to evoke a sort of emotion in his audience to concrete their relationship with his message, which kairos as a purging of the tension within a text is an emotional reaction, the audience's interpretation can stand as their existence and definition within the rhetorical triangle. The notion of 'proper measure and right time' sound to me a heuristic process, as Corbett illustrates in his article on the composition process "The Topoi Revisited". For Enos in "Recovering the Lost Art of Researching the History of Rhetoric", reading the primary text is a way to move away from a discussion of it diluted with interpretations. Kairos as a stylistic move of the speaker to have better timing and good measure is a step toward effective presentation but the audience will ideally assert their commentary on the speaker with equal measure but tainted with reactions formed their own opinions and derived from their belief system. Everyone should start a relationship of the primary source which birthed such prolific discussion of it. Everyone should try to track the ideaology surrounding it through pedagogy or some other track. One should track their own reaction of source and discussion as their encounter it and display that relationship within their commentary as they begin to enter the discussion. I think this is what is missing in students' and scholars' essays alike. To use a text as the metaphor for awaking within their own experience
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