1.1 Phaedrus and Saussure

Phaedrus presents some rather interesting discourse on the nature of a good argument. It is the responsibility of the writer or orator to be informed on the subject, lest the writer "puts good for evil". In short, presenting an argument while oblivious to the facts behind the matter can only lead to bad places. The writer should also present the nature of the argument first and foremost, as well as define the key elements of the argument so there is considerably less room for confusion. Even if the writer is well informed and knowledgeable, without persuasive technique the argument won't have the same impact. The same goes for a persuasive speaker; without a basis in fact, there is no foundation to establish an argument on.

Saussure provides a more basic analysis of linguistics and language from the ground up, beginning with the definition of language then branching into further details on the subject. He goes in depth describing the distinction between a signifier and a signified, how individuals recall the sound of the word and associate it with an image and how the concept has meaning to us.

Saussure continues by describing the way that things can be assigned 'arbitrary' signs in a sense, being labeled something that phonetically may have no relationship with the concept. This is especially true with many terms that have been born from new social media. Take Twitter, for example. The process of posting on Twitter, tweeting, has very little to do with 'tweeting' as it was known prior to the existence of Twitter. There is no audio feedback for posts that sounds like the noise associated with tweeting, there are no birds involved or other tweeting creatures aside from aesthetically pleasing digital representations at the sign-in screen.

There is some reasoning in words developed for social media, however. Take a look at this lexicon, for example. A limited list, to be sure, but the terms have something in common: length. If at all possible, the words that may tangentially have something to do with the concept at hand are truncated and combined, such as blog, moblog, and so on. Acronyms are also extremely popular, and combining acronyms with words is social media nirvana (see podcast, Personal On Demand broadcast).

To say that shortening terms, chunking, and being concise are new techniques would be highly inaccurate. Newspaper writers have been working on hard-hitting ledes for quite some time to draw readers into their stories, for example. The difference now is the limited space writers have to draw in their audience has been condensed to 140 characters and the distinction between writer and audience isn't so clear.

Most people can identify the more experienced writers, however. As mentioned in Phaedrus, there is an order to things; a beginning, middle, and end. Although the means of presenting such writing has changed, the method has not. Take this journal of Game Studies, for example; the writing on this site is clear and professional, what we'd expect from an essay offline.

Not all blogs and other interactions in new social media have the same level of writing. Flamewars are a perfect example of individuals using new technology to attempt to use rhetoric persuade a community to take a position against another individual through means that are largely devoid of knowledge. These quarrels can be seen on most public forums online, and part of the reason why they are so prominent is due to the anonymity of the writers. While this technique may not change which writing we consider knowledgeable or persuasive, the largely anonymous population people use as sources for rhetoric in new social media can make it more difficult to determine how knowledgeable or deceptive the person at the other end of the line is being.