Posted by Gio on 3.18.18 in Ancient Rome

Bring magic to Social Media with Rhetoric

Ancient Roman rhetoric and social media couldn’t be further apart. Or could they? Consider this: We feel a huge excitement and spend countless hours texting, messaging, posting and”tweeting”. We hope our followers will increase in numbers and click “like, like, like”! Yet the traditional frameworks of “debating society” and “rhetoric” are synonymous of “bore, bore, bore!”.

Consider that:

• the figures of speech of ancient times lend power to our everyday communication.
• figures of speech get used by marketers and wordsmiths every day to build those catchy soundbites.
• you have great power at your fingertips by linking Roman rhetoric to social media!

Yet the magic seems to be in the grasp of the few. Why shouldn’t we, every day Joe’s of this world, learn and leverage that power too?

A “tricolon”, an “alliteration”, a “metaphor” may all sound like equivalents of the word “boredom”. But what happens when their products are applied to media?

• “I came, I saw, I conquered” survived millennia.
• “Yes. We. Can.” & “Make America Great” won presidential elections.
• “Finger Licking Good!” made chicken (sales) fly.

“Hey, you and I are in tune. I wink. You smile.” An emoticon is nothing more, nor less than a means to emote and create a sense of “Ethos”.  …Aristotle wrote about it, we have it at our fingertips.

The rhythmic and rhyming, alliterative gems of musical minstrels, The Black Eyed Peas, seems miles from Roman literature.

“I took ur pictcha: with one particular; reason and its-tcha; capture ur charactcha.
I like to sit and stare-attcha.
Aint nothin’ wrong with stairin’atcha.”

So finally, you say, “So what? Rhetoric and social media?”

We conclude: Roman rhetoric and social media are not apart. If we learn how a few of the tools of rhetoric do their magic the result, amplified through social media, can be huge.