Customer Reviews

Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and a New Literacy (Digital Communication)

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Welch brilliantly takes on the revolutionary issues posed by post-book screen media. Our conundrums in using and understanding electronic media are laid out in suprising parallels to those faced by Plato, Isocrates and other Classical Greeks when they made the mind-boggling shift from a culture of memory and oratory to texts written on paper in the Fifth Century, BCE. Recognizing movie, TV and computer screens as anything but neutral technologies, Welch formulates the Next Rhetoric, Electric Rhetoric, as what is coming (or already here) after Post-Modernism. She makes visionary recommendations for managing these media in modern life.

This book was the most difficult book I have ever read. The author clearly was writing this book for someone who has extensive background knowledge on classic rhetoric and Isocrates. She uses words that don't appear in any normal dictionary and confuse even the most advanced polyglot. Don't kid yourself, this is a tough book to read, my advice is to find a different way to get your information.