In the writing of Foss, Foss, and Trapp they define rhetoric in their writing; Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric as “the human use of symbols to communicate”. They suggest that rhetoric covers every aspect of the human language from facial expressions to the words in this article. These symbolisms of rhetoric create our human species social norms and melded the growth of civilization.
This article leads me to believe that society would never have occurred without the expanse of thousands of year’s worth of evolving rhetoric. Without the gigantic step forward in human evolution of communication, man would still be walking on this earth in a disorganized fashion unaware of their existence like all other animals. But luckily thanks to the small breakthrough of crude symbols millions of years ago our civilization is able to communicate anything in the broad field of rhetoric...
Rhetoric can even be found in today’s most modern society of cyberculture. I spend a majority of my time online browsing bidding websites such as eBay and shopgoodwill.com, these websites are filled with rhetoric. When viewing an item for bid, the buyer notices the picture immediately. By this mere photo one decides weather or not they want to purchase this item based on its model, condition, size, or style. Everything the potential bidding customer can see in the photo is a symbol that reflects standards in our society. When the potential bidder has made their decision to bide on the item they decide on the amount of currency (rhetorical symbol) that the item is worth. This worth of the item often corresponds directly to current norms and standards of rhetoric in our society. For example, it is an implied standard that nobody would ever pay more than five dollars for a box of Kleenex. This standard can be argued to be set by current rhetoric’s.
