Rhetorical Devices

Modernism, with its individualistic focus, gave us a disdain for formality, including rhetorical devices. Yet, just as all particulars must take some form in order to exist, so ongoing dialogue cannot be had without rhetorical devices. Consequently, each modern and post-modern generation has rejected the prevailing forms and devices as "formal," and replaced them with their own. This appears to have happened at an ever increasing rate as Western society has splintered and decayed. Each generation seems to think that it has finally arrived at "pure" individual expression, and fails to recognize its own rhetorical devices as such.

Why are rhetorical devices necessary? Is it because they function as placeholders for common clues? The way that rhetorical devices come about has to do, I think, with the way people--and communities of people--associate meaning with things. That is, we assign meaning to things by association. That seems to me very much related to the way that we know the world as described in LTK.