Time is of the Essence

In Killingsworth's "Appeal to Time" he makes reference to the idea of how time is represented through modern and classical rhetoric. In regards to classical rhetoric time is represented through types of speech, being forensic, epideictic and deliberative speech. In Modern rhetoric examples are given through types of documents to represent the past present and future, being reports (past), instructions (present), and proposals (future.)

He also puts an emphasis on the importance of timeliness and urgency and represents these through the concepts of “kairos” and “exigence.” “Kairos” is finding the right argument for the right moment, whereas “exigence” is when topics emerge as urgent consideration at a particular historical time. He represents in his article the Martin Luther King Speech as an example of exigence. During the time of this speech it was relevant to speak of this topic because the inequality of race was at a high. A key point that I found important was the idea of urgency being related to relevance. Therefore the relevance of a particular argument can be determined by the urgency of its meaning.

Time is a huge issue in the concepts of what is going on. The term modern popped up all over this article;  the idea of modern being understood as something that is occurring right now. Everything in time is in the present and moving toward a better future. In my opinion, every aspect of life involves time and the strive to become better or to create something better. There will always be a “modern” in the life of everyone, and in terms of rhetoric we will always reflect of the past to see how it affected the present, but the overall goal is to use this to move on to the future and continue expanding the rhetorical theory over time.