Ancient Greece Blog Post

Marco Rueda

Comm 160

2/1/17

We have been introduced to some very interesting concepts through lectures, article readings, and the content within our textbook.  Much of the material that we have discussed has also been included in the course content for some of my previous classes.  Most recently, I was reintroduced to the fallacies portion that was covered during the lecture.  The history of persuasion class I took last semester, heavily emphasizes the importance of being familiar with various fallacies.  It is refreshing to reacquaint myself with these concepts and become better familiarized with them.

            The sentence that was most interesting to me in our textbook was “ancient Greece was primarily an oral culture, meaning they taught and learned from the spoken word,” (Warren & Fassett, 2015).  The book further elaborates, that stories were told from generation to generation until eventually these stories were put into writing.  I find this fascinating, because contemporarily so much of what we learn and interpret is written.  Almost all lectures currently incorporate power point presentations, which is written instruction.  Other teaching methods also rely heavily on written structure, such as blackboard, email correspondence, textbook or scholarly sources, etc.  Very rarely do we learn and retain information based exclusively on oratory transmission. 

            Even more interesting, was that the textbook explains that oral effectiveness was especially important because ancient Greeks relied on their oratory skills to defend themselves in the court of law.  Historically, ancient Greeks did not have lawyers to defend them.  They required an eloquent style of speech to maintain their innocence.  I decided to do some further research into ancient Greece’s judicial processes.  I discovered that at times juries were comprised of 500-1500 individuals.  This may seem extremely excessive, but a plethora of jurors were selected to deter the jury from being bribed.  No one has the finances to pay off 500-1500 jury members.  The ability to speak effectively to convince this amount of people of their innocence was vital to ensuring their freedom.  Being an effective communicator orally can enhance your life in school, at work, at home, and even in basic conversations at a grocery store.  Proper speaking can be the key determinant in having a productive and meaningful interaction, or one that is ineffective and doesn’t produce a desired outcome.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/greekcrimpro.html