New Media Storytelling

Defense of Rhetoric
Radio Storytelling
The Audiences Ear

Defense of Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the use of symbols to

produce an effect.

The Weak Defense [of rhetoric] argues that

there are two kinds of rhetoric, good and bad.
The good kind is used in good causes, the bad
kind in bad causes (Lanham 155).

Platos Socrates famously argued, A man must know the

truth about all the particular things of which he speaks or
writes, and must be able to define everything separately;
then when he has defined them, he must know how to divide
them by classes until further division is impossible; and in the
same way he must understand that nature of the soul, must
find out the class of speech adapted to each nature, and
must arrange and adorn his discourse accordingly.

Richard Lanham counters this. And yet jurisprudence

in the West from the Greeks onward has offered the
opposite answer, a Yes! which I shall call the Strong
Defense, and which Samuel Johnson summarized
with his usual absence of cant as, Sir, you do not
know it to be good or bad till the Judge determines
it. (156).

Richard Lanham continues, The Strong Defense

assumes that truth is determined by social dramas,
some more formal than others but all man-made.
Rhetoric in such a world is not ornamental but
determinative, essentially creative (156).

Rhetoric (cosmetic/ornamental)

Stuff
Substance
Idea
Thought
Value
Fact

Rhetoric
(determinative,
essentially
creative)

Weak Defense of Rhetoric

Strong Defense of Rhetoric

Radio Storytelling

Strong and weak defenses of

storytelling.

11

essentially creative

51

some more formal than others but all man-made

25

social drama

52

76

till the Judge determines it

The Audiences Ear

As a journalist, in other words, you are

working both in soundand in time. You
have listeners, not readers. (Kern).

Writing for the ear (Kern).

Sound is physical [] Its actually

touching you (Abumrad).

Our ears will fill in the gaps in the narrative;

the sound help us see the funeral and the lost
home and the college demonstration (Kern).

31

the technical underpinning

The right soundthe whine of an air siren in wartime, the

echoes in a building abandoned because of a chemical
spill, the roar of a trading pit in Chicagocan substitute for
dozens or hundreds of words, can can be as descriptive
and evocative as a photograph (Kern).

New Media Storytelling