Because today’s reading had to deal with Frederick Douglass, the question of how class effects rhetoric has come up.
Since ethos is a huge part of rhetoric, your class standing is definitely a major part of your effectiveness as a rhetorician. In the days of Frederick Douglass, because of his race, he wasn’t well respected, despite his intelligence and education (though that education was not realized in the traditional ways). Douglass really had to work to get any point of his across to his audience, something he was successful in doing because he was such badass. We talk about him today, after all.
Today, anyone with a computer and a connection to the internet can spout their words of wisdom, rants, and raves for everyone or no one to read. Class standings are somewhat non-existent, though if your name is well-known, you tend to get more re-tweets than your average 14 year old does.
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