Anthony R. Garcia
Temporal rhetoric persuades audiences to take action or accept ideas by drawing upon their perception of time.
The way an audience experiences time greatly affects the way they make decisions, whether that means opening up to an argument, a state of mind, or a product.
For writers and other creators, a wide range of tools are available for using temporal rhetoric. These tools consist of sentence structure, sound, speech, and a host of widely available digital tools.
For readers, an understanding of temporal rhetoric can lead to more informed, critical consumption of digital media.
Examples of Temporal Rhetoric
To get a better idea of what temporal rhetoric is, let’s look at some examples. The list below begins with text-based examples and moves into new media, where digital tools play a key role in creating temporal effects.
Loose and Periodic Sentences
A key difference between a loose sentence and a periodic sentence is the way a reader perceives time while reading.
Periodic sentences, by delaying the key information, are often used to build suspense for the reader, who awaits in anticipation for the payoff. Loose sentences, on the other hand, enact the opposite sensation of time, where there is no certain ending to wait for, but rather a feeling of free flow and spontaneity that takes the reader on an unspecified, rambling path (It is tellingly associated with the running style).
Here are a few examples that illustrate the differences in temporal effect, starting with the periodic sentence.
The Temporal Rhetoric of Periodic Sentences
Notice how the exaggerated example below builds suspense by working its way to a climax:
Standing beneath his bedroom’s doorway, listening between tentative breaths and trying to suppress his fear that someone was in the kitchen waiting, knife or gun in hand, to take his life and make good on a vengeful promise, Robert, in a darkness that refused to soften, knew he had been found.
The sentence sets the scene, slowly releasing details about Robert’s position in his home, his emotional and psychological state (tentative breathing), his very specific and fearful suspicion that someone is in the kitchen, still more information about the quality of darkness in the home, then finally the main clause, which reveals the main point: Robert is not alone.
If done well, a periodic sentence can prime an audience for the payoff, making them feel a sense of anticipation until they reach the end fully engaged and (hopefully) receptive to the main point.
Here’s another example from the opening of the Declaration of Independence:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
The subordinate structure allows for a graceful introduction to the topic (dissolving political bonds), and it allows time for powerful appeals to be made to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” before the reader gets to the main clause. The main clause itself defers to a subordinated structure (relative clause), which allows Jefferson to pay “respect to the opinions of mankind” and hold the key point till the very end where the emphasis is at its highest point, the key point being that they will “…declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Move the key point to the front and the statement becomes too abrupt, making it lose its “decent respect” for the audience. Abrupt is a good word in the context of discussing temporal rhetoric. It relates to a sensation of time which often leads an audience to interpret a message as curt, blunt, or just plain rude—not good if you’re trying to convince an audience.
The Temporal Rhetoric of Loose Sentences
Look at how the following loose sentence creates a different time sensation, a sense of unspecified unfolding (I.e., there is no impending resolution.):
Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention.
– David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
Wallace is exploring dullness and its connection to psychic pain. This exploration is one of open suggestion and contemplation, where the writer is searching for nuance and giving the reader the sense that this contemplation could continue. In terms of temporal rhetoric, the sentence invites the reader to linger and to contemplate additional nuances. This temporal effect (this invitation to the reader) would be dulled, if not lost, by rewriting the sentence into the periodic style. As it stands, The structure complements the content.
(What other examples can you think of at the sentence level? Two that immediately come to mind are the short, staccato sentences used in suspense scenes within a thriller novel and the disruption of temporal flow caused by glaring grammatical errors and typos).
Musical Cadences
There is a loose similarity between sentence patterns and chord progressions in the way they use temporal rhetoric to create a sense of either forward movement or closure. In music, open (or weak) cadence is used to compel listeners to keep listening, to make them feel as though the music is leading to a stronger resolution. A closed (or strong) cadence, on the other hand, gives listeners a sense of closure, a feeling that it is time to move on to a new section or that the piece has ended.
Listen to how the Jaw’s theme creates a sense of forward movement toward an ominous conclusion.
The Speed of Speech
The cadence of speech also creates rhetorical effects. A perfect example is the Sleep With Me podcast by Drew Ackerman, which relies on his slow, soporific voice to lull listeners to sleep. Its purpose is to help insomniacs fall asleep, and to this end, Ackerman delivers an impressive rhetorical performance. To ramble on meaninglessly, giving no indication that something interesting or satisfying is about to happen, but at the same time retaining the listener, requires impressive rhetorical skill.
Take a listen:
Speech cadences can create rhetorical effects in many other ways. Talking too fast can instill mistrust in the listener (He’s a fast-talking salesman), while talking too slow can cause impatience or annoyance (more so when the slow speech is interpreted as being deliberate—and not for the purpose of helping someone fall asleep).
Of course, it always depends on context. Accelerated speech is desirable in many situations. One interesting example points to the demand for features that alter the playback speed of video and audio media. You can change the settings for Youtube videos, podcasts, and audiobook apps, which allow you to watch or listen at an accelerated speed. Being able to listen to an audio book at 2x speed is quite appealing to the busy professional looking to accelerate self-improvement.
Such playback features are sometimes directly promoted. For example, one of the podcast apps on my smart phone has a feature called “smart speed,” where the silences between spoken words are digitally cropped out. (Do such features influence the way podcasters deliver their vocal performances? I myself have noticed a feeling of mild disappointment when an increased playback speed on a podcast creates unintelligible speech).
Talking about playback speed might sound a little silly, but understanding the rhetorical effect of playback speed can have huge financial implications. For example, TV networks hire companies who specialize in speeding up the playback of TV shows so that they can open up more space for advertisements. Take a 30 minute show and speed it up so that it’s now a 28 minute show, and you have yourself more ad space. Doing this requires an understanding of how an audience experiences the sensation of time, and the question becomes how far can you go without causing too much temporal awareness.
Digital Tools and Temporal Rhetoric
I kind of touched on digital tools in the previous section, but they were closely tied to speech delivery. Content creators use digital tools to employ temporal rhetoric in other, less obvious ways to persuade audiences.
For example, let’s look at some important decisions professional bloggers make when publishing their content. One of the first questions to answer is how often posts should be published. Consistent posting is said to enhance SEO and build credibility, and audiences form expectations about when new content will be published (whether they expect it once a week or only occasionally), so publishing frequency is a rhetorical choice that influences audience experience.
Most professional bloggers manage email lists to communicate with their audience. Some create very rhetorically sophisticated autoresponder email campaigns, where software trickles out emails according to a planned schedule. Most of these automated email campaigns are designed to nurture an audience and make them more receptive to the final email in the sequence, usually a sales pitch or other call to action. Here’s an example of the types of email you might be sent in such a sequence:
Email 1: Welcome email that includes interesting or useful content.
Email 2: Useful content
Email 3: Useful content
Email 4: Useful content related to a product or service
Email 5: Sales pitch or promotion email for the product or service
The steady diet of useful information is meant to gain the trust of the receiver. Many factors affect whether the receiver ultimately takes action, but one that is certainly key is the temporal effect of the email chain. Space the emails too closely, and you run the risk of annoying or overwhelming readers; space them too far apart, and you run the risk of losing their attention. Not surprisingly, professional bloggers often test and measure different frequencies to discover which ones lead to the best open rates.
Professional bloggers face many other temporal-rhetorical decisions as well. Here are just a few more examples.
Pop-ups
Pop-up ads and boxes are not typically well-received by web users; however, we continue to see them because they are effective at getting users to make a choice, to take definite action, whether that action simply be closing the pop-up, engaging with it, or leaving the website entirely. (Typically, the desired result is to get the user to enter an email address).
For bloggers and webmasters who use pop-ups, there are some interesting temporal-rhetorical questions to answer. How long before the pop-up appears? Too soon, and you make an annoying experience even more so. Too late, and the user may already be gone from the website. Should the pop-up appear when the user has scrolled down the page a certain length? Should a pop-up appear right before the cursor reaches the exit box? The answers usually derive from strong audience analysis and testing.
Countdown Timers
Another interesting example of temporal rhetoric is the use of countdown timers to get the audience to feel a sense of urgency and take action before time runs out. This sensation of time running out is meant to invoke FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).
As emotionally-based as this appeal is, it’s no surprise that internet marketers employ this strategy to increase sales. The image below is a good example of what digital countdown timers look like. The goal is often to get the audience to sign up for a live webinar before registration closes, complete a transaction on a checkout page, or to take advantage of time-sensitive sales, such as those found on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Apps and “Benevolent Deception”
Software designers sometimes create artificial wait times in an app’s user interface as a way of building trust (or preventing the loss of trust) with the user. For example, a program may compute results in less than a second, but the progress bar on the user interface will make it seem as though the computation actually took longer. Or an uneven process might be represented by an animation showing smooth and steady progress.
It turns out that users can become suspicious if a program completes a task too quickly. For example, if an app reveals personalized results for loan rates, the user won’t believe that the results are actually customized if the results appear too quickly.
There are more interesting examples, but I won’t go into them here. The article, Why Some Apps Use Fake Progress Bars, provides a good overview and links to other interesting sources.
Other Interesting Examples
Geico’s Unskippable Ads
The rhetoric of these ads is notable for the way it responds to the given time constraints. Understanding that most of the audience is waiting for the Skip Ad button to appear after five seconds, the ad creators redefine what this five-second waiting period means to the audience—and thus alters the way it is experienced.
Movies and Pacing
A filmmaker employs numerous strategies for invoking an audience’s time-sensation (more than I’ll try to list). A few examples include the frequency of scene transitions, scene length, and camera movement.
Time sensation is often at the heart of stock phrases we use to describe our experience watching a film:
The movie seemed to drag on
The plot felt rushed
I was holding my breath during that chase scene.
The jump scares were completely unexpected—they were perfectly timed.
The movie was so good, the three hours felt like two.
Here’s a short video that talks about slowing down time within narrative works:
And of Course Kairos
Every example of temporal rhetoric in this post is really just a case of someone appealing to kairos, which is the Greek word for “time, place, and circumstances of a subject” (according to A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms by Richard Lanham)
Simply put, kairos is the study and practice of communicating the right thing at the right time in the right place to the right audience.
Kairos deserves its own post, so I won’t say more here, but you can read a brief introduction to kairos at Writing Commons.
Conclusion
Do you have any examples of your own?
I found an interesting one from an article entitled, “Rhetoric of the Temporal Index: Surveillant Narration and the Cinema of ‘Real Time,’,” which looks at how dramatized surveillance is used as a narrational technique in film, a technique that persuades the audience in different ways, one of which is the time-sensation invoked by watching “real-time” feeds. Think about how different you feel when you are watching something recorded compared to something streamed live. (e.g., the different sensations between viewing a recorded webinar and a live webinar or between watching recorded security footage and live surveillance).
Share your examples in the comments.