Chapter 2: Kairos and the Rhetorical Situation: Seizing the Moment

“Kairos and the Rhetorical Situation” focuses on kairos and how kairos is very much a key part of any rhetorical situation. Ancient Greeks had multiple concepts of time, in such that they defined chronos as measurable time and Kairos as a separate element of time. Rather than being a measurable thing, karios was more of a theoretical notion that timing within rhetorical situations is opportunistic and one must capitalize on this when employing rhetoric. I feel that such a notion must have been extremely important in ancient times since assembly and the ability to shed light on an issue may have been extremely limited and in some cases impossible. However I would ask, does todays ability to post to social media and the web give a greater occurrence of this Kairos notion since any person or group can reach the masses easily through social media? Does the fact that people can be bombarded with advertisement and testimony on issues at the click of a button?

            I say no. Though it may seem that society can be reached easily due to our current interconnectivity and constant state of feeding on web based information, this is not the case. In fact, I would argue that this extreme state of interconnectivity and web based information creates a lessened ability for Kairos to be practiced. As I understand it, Kairos is supposed to relate to the timing and opportunity used by a rhetoric appeal, and when society becomes used to the social media bombardment and constant advertising it becomes even harder for rhetorical appeal to do its job. This is because the constant presence of issues and topics people are exposed to leads them to block out most things they don’t find appeal in. Thus, appeal must be that much greater and focused on target markets. This is why sites such as Facebook and other web based companies keep track of people’s internet searches and interests, because then it becomes easier to pin point your location within certain target markets and successfully appeal to you.

            In continuing with the readings, Kairos can be understood in certain rhetorical situations as questions. For example the book mentions the urgency of an issue as part of Kairos. The book continues to say that the shelf life of a topic or issue can be different and affect situations in many ways. I would then ask as I did earlier, does media affect this? Is the shelf life of an issue extended or shortened by media?

            This one is tough and I would say there are many different ways of looking at it however, just as previously stated, the constant bombardment of topics and issues people face makes it hard for an issue to seem important for a long time. Granted the book states that there are certain issues which stand the test of time such as abortion I would say that most shelf lives are shortened and the ones that are extended such as abortion are due to the ever changing knowledge people have access to on these issues. What do my readers think? I know this is a bit wordy, but I was having trouble understanding the readings fully.

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. Print.