But the speech was so powerful in part because of its kairotic moment: the timing and atmosphere of the speech lent themselves to powerful oratory. The speech was rhetorically powerful: it changed minds, persuaded people to support the civil rights movement, and served as a powerful rallying cry for a generation of reformers. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. ![]() Kairos means taking advantage of or even creating a perfect moment to deliver a particular message.Ĭonsider, for example, Dr. In Greek, kairos represents a kind of “qualitative” time, as in “the right time” chronos represents a different kind of “quantitative” time, as in, “What time is it?” and “Will we have enough time?” (Kinneavy Stephenson). In Greek, both kairos and chronos literally mean “time,” but kairos does not mean “time” in the same sense as used in contemporary English. Kairos is crafting serendipity, like when the sun comes out at the end of a romantic comedy after all the conflicts have been resolved. Kairos is timeliness, appropriateness, decorum, symmetry, balance-awareness of the rhetorical situation or “the circumstances that open moments of opportunity” (Kinneavy Sipiora Vatz Bitzer Hill 217). So what is it? Kairos is knowing what is most appropriate in a given situation for our purposes, let’s think of it as saying (or writing) the right thing at the right time.Īppeals to kairos in written form try to make use of the particular moment-attempting to capture in words what will be immediately applicable, appropriate, and engaging for a particular audience. “Kairos” is an ancient rhetorical concept that has gained importance in different disciplines over the centuries. ![]() “ This is the right time, and this is the right thing.” Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
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