Wk 2.3 Modern Period's Four Approaches of Study

The modern period’s Douglas Ehninger and his identification of four approaches towards the study of rhetoric is an interesting concept within Chapter 1, since these approaches highlight the idea that there are different, interesting ways in which communication can be interpreted and understood. Through the classical approach, past insights from the Classical Period and its rhetoricians are adapted to modern times. Communication’s writing and speaking as an art form, focusing on the problems of style and eloquence, followed the belletristic approach. The elocutionary approach focused on the canon of delivery, designing elaborate and artificial systems of instruction in which speakers could improve their skills in presentation, both verbally and nonverbally; it ultimately caused a bad reputation towards the study of reputation, since its lead to a rigid style that strayed from a natural, spontaneous and appropriate means of speech delivery and presentation. The psychological or epistemological approach used a more scientific means of studying communication. This approach focused on understanding the relationship between thought and how people are able to affect and influence another through communication, most notably speech; this direction of rhetorical study focused and emphasized the significance of the relationship between the sender and receiver within communication, where the receiver of a message engages in the creation of meaning.
These directions of the study of rhetoric highlighted the change of the ways in which communication was understood, bringing about the different views of the study of communication, and eventually leading into the contemporary views of communication.