As I understand, rhetoric refers back to the study and research of the written, spoken and also visual language. It is used to investigate how our language is utilized in order to maintain social groups and for other important aspects of social behavior.
In American society today, it is easier to find people studying and researching the written and spoken language of our people. These people are most commonly known as linguists, people who study every aspect of a language, including the grammar, the sound of the language, and how the language’s words develop over periods of time.
Rhetoric is vital in today’s society since it is the fundamental way of how different generations speak and write to each other. Today’s society has a more unique way of using language to maintain social groups. Nowadays, we use acronyms like “Lol” and “Idk” to express our type of language in American society. However, this does not only occur in American society. It happens all over the world internationally. Surrounding this matter in society today, our types of communication are all condensed into short forms of phrases or even emojis. This is our way of communicating with our generation of people. In order to better understand this issue, however, our society should try and improve our use of more literate phrases and complicated vocabulary instead of using the most simplest of words. Due to the use of simple words, our society’s rhetoric is low and underdeveloped. This is only way that we can improve the American’s society of rhetoric.
For example, the newer usage of smartphones allows for essential 24/7 communication, but it limits how much we can say. Twitter limits posts to 140 characters, and other social media platforms include emojis and GIFs. We’re seeing a transformation from face-to-face communication to one that is solely text-based. If you look around even here on campus, a lot of people are looking down at phones.
Issues around the country stem from this text based society. We see people all over social media making disrespectful comments and stupid remarks. Social media leads to what is known as “flame wars”. This is when two people over the internet argue and resort to more and more stupid remarks. In my honest opinion, this would never happen in face-to-face conversations.
In the end, social media leaves more room for interpretation of opinions.
I like the direction you went with this. It made me wonder how time savings plays into the abbreviation of our written language. Nice post!