Mandatory Blog Entry 2

While reading this specific chapter in our book I came to find that a specific rhetoric term was repeated numerous times throughout chapter 2. This specific term is known as Kairos. When I first heard of this interesting sounding term, I immediately thought Greek. Maybe it could be an old Greek God or monster of some sort. This was my initial assumption. Turns out I was not too far off. In ancient Greek, the word Kairos means the right or opportune moment." The greeks used this word to describe a special event that would happen in a random period of time. In rhetoric, the definition is not all that different. Kairos is specifically used to identify a speaker or writer's ability to adapt with his surroundings and change with the events that change around him. A rhetor is not always going to be able to predict how the circumstances of his or her work will be so they must be able to become accustomed to whatever change they encounter and prosper all the same. Another definition this term has in the world of rhetoric is it refers to the people who are recieving the rhetoric such as an audience. More specifically, the current state of the audience and their process of thought before they recieve the specific piece. In Aristotle's form of rhetoric, the definition of the word is used to represent the space and time context in which a piece is delivered to an audience. I didnt really understand all these different definitions but the one that is mostly focused on is the term that relates to the time and space in which the piece is given. As I read more and thought about this, the latter definition is a lot easier to comprehend to me. fI feel that kairos is an important rhetoric tool for speakers, writers, artists etc. It is especially important to a speaker or a writer who is hoping to make a difference in this world. Kairos will be a very important thing to take into consideration as we are working on our next assignment. We will be presenting a topic that we wish to change and possible ways to start that change but also we will have an audience that must be convinced. It is important that we pay attention to the kairos in which we present our assignment because it is highly possible for a controversial topic to be taken out of context or misconstrued. While we are presenting our specific topics we must pay attention to the environnment we are presenting. If this topic is a hostile one that is attacking a way of life or a predetermined method of thought, then the reader must be prepared for that. Being prepared is a reference to an earlier definition of Kairos. It seems to me that Kairos is more commonly used during the presentation aspect of a piece rather than the early or predevelopmental stage. It mostly comes into play when the presenter must be prepared and ready for what they could encounter when giving a specific piece. It could also theoretically be used when preparing the piece for example, altering words or sentences to be more politically correct or sympathetic to a time, place of environment.