Speech and its dimensions. A case of the emergence, tradition and continuity of the theory of rhetoric In the contemporary digital media landscape

Abstract

Less research today is interested in the contemporary place of speech as communicated contents in the contemporary media landscape, which is drastically different from historical stages of media use with speech as a phenomenon of orality or literality. Despite its foundation in rhetoric as associated theory and practice of oral speech, the theory of rhetoric has provided us since Greek antiquity with a stable and established approach for a theoretical reflection of media and speech. This article presents the main concepts of speech that are today used in different approaches to research. It describes the historical elements of rhetoric for a typological approach to speech in five dimensions (speech as the realization of language, as an utterance, as a discourse, as a genre of traditional rhetoric, and as mediated contents). Finally, it discusses and demonstrates how these dimensions are elements of the production process of persuasive rhetoric in the theory of rhetoric that is present in the current media landscape with oral communication, speech in mechanical media, legacy media, and new media.