Blackwell Reference Online

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Insofar as rhetorical practice travels through systems of symbolicity, so-called channels or modes of communication are the discursive spaces within which rhetoric operates. And insofar as rhetorical practice should culminate in some sort of adjustment or change in audients’, readers’, or viewers’ knowledges, feelings, self-identities, and/or behaviors, the ways in which those dimensions of individuals are accessed physiologically are central to rhetorical effectivity. Those two axioms comprise the grounds for rhetoricians’ interest in the orality-literacy theorems. The orality-literacy theorems grow out of studies of oral, literate, and electronic media of communication (→  Media History ; Medium Theory ). Milman Perry's work in the 1920s on rhythmic and syllabic patterns in Homer, arguing that oral rhetors could insert variously metered epithets – “pre-fabricated materials” ( Ong 1982 , 21) – from a stock list, showed us how grand epics could be presented without brute memorization; standardized forms plus commonplace epic themes could be woven endlessly into different-yet-coherent patterns in oral psychoculture. Psychocultural theorization, contrasting oral and literate cultures, had begun. Here is a dual focus on both the ways in which whole societies are dominated by one or more of those media in any given epoch ( macro-theorems ) and the processes by which individuals come ... log in or subscribe to read full text