I think Marrou is trying to put into practice some of what the Hellenistic Greeks taught about rhetoric in his chapter on the same. In it he makes free use of em dashed clauses - you know, the sort that are supposed to be quick interjections. The sort that are designed to grab your attention. Some might even say that they're a charming device that, at the very least, persuades you to view the speaker as lively and animated. Those two qualities being important for eloquence, it seems.
That was, after all, the goal of rhetoric among the Greeks. The whole purpose of the subject was to learn how to speak persuasively. Those that mastered the art, unsurprisingly, played a large political role. They acted as ambassadors, diplomats, counsellors. In a way, it's not unlike today. Spoken eloquence can get you far - though not nearly as far as it could in a world still consisting primarily of small, relatively close-knit communities.
At the same time, Hellenistic rhetoric is said to have been universal. In fact, Marrou bemoans the lack of unity in language in his own day.
Today, in 2013, I don't think we have a problem with the unity of language. Our system is such that code switching when talking with different groups of people is more important than always speaking a single perfect language or in a single perfect style.
No comments:
Post a Comment