I have a couple frameworks that seem to fit into this:
One is the Greek word “kairos,” which means… something kinda like “right now,” but in the context of rhetoric means something more like “the present environment and mood.” A public speaker, when giving a speech, should consider the kairos and tailor their speech accordingly. This cashes out in stuff like bands yelling out, “How are you tonight, Houston?!” or a comedian riffing off of a heckler. It’s the thing that makes a good public speaker feel like they’re not just delivering a canned speech they’ve given hundreds of times before, even if they have.
The other framework to me is the “language” of objects. When you’re first learning to drive a car, for example, you don’t fully understand the way the steering wheel affects the direction the car will turn, or how the angle of the gas pedal affects the acceleration. But as you get more adept, you can “speak” the language of the car. You know what every growl of the engine means, or the quirks of adjusting the seatbelt, or the spaces you can squeeze into. At one point, I was calling this the “machine spirit” of the object—there’s almost an animistic sense to this idea. You act, and the object “responds” in some way. A rubber band gives moments before it snaps, or the tone of a kettle changes as the water starts to boil.
I have a couple frameworks that seem to fit into this:
One is the Greek word “kairos,” which means… something kinda like “right now,” but in the context of rhetoric means something more like “the present environment and mood.” A public speaker, when giving a speech, should consider the kairos and tailor their speech accordingly. This cashes out in stuff like bands yelling out, “How are you tonight, Houston?!” or a comedian riffing off of a heckler. It’s the thing that makes a good public speaker feel like they’re not just delivering a canned speech they’ve given hundreds of times before, even if they have.
The other framework to me is the “language” of objects. When you’re first learning to drive a car, for example, you don’t fully understand the way the steering wheel affects the direction the car will turn, or how the angle of the gas pedal affects the acceleration. But as you get more adept, you can “speak” the language of the car. You know what every growl of the engine means, or the quirks of adjusting the seatbelt, or the spaces you can squeeze into. At one point, I was calling this the “machine spirit” of the object—there’s almost an animistic sense to this idea. You act, and the object “responds” in some way. A rubber band gives moments before it snaps, or the tone of a kettle changes as the water starts to boil.