Rhetoric, Academic, and Pedagogical Communication
DOI 10.55206/VDUF2324
Ralitsa Kovacheva-Bezhan
National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts “Krastyo Sarafov”
Email: bejan@mail.bg
Abstract: The article examines the classical Aristotelian model of persuasion, based on the triad of ethos, pathos, and logos, but from a new and different perspective, namely, within the context of corporeality and embodied cognition (embodiment). According to this understanding, the mind, thought, and language do not exist independently of the body but are directly conditioned by our physical experience and senses. The hypothesis is that the deficit of artificial intelligence in comparison with the living orator is not merely moral or value-based – it is, above all, physical: generative models have no breath, weight, spontaneity, or presence here and now. This bodily absence underlies what classical rhetoric describes abstractly as the absence of ethos and pathos. The methodology is innovative and incorporates auto-cyberethnographic observation, as well as internal and external observation. The analysis is based on three stage experiments (Improbotics, Annie Dorsen, and Interrobang / Chatbot Challenge), in which the boundary between machine-generated and live performance is literally tested before an audience, complemented by the evocative power of the literary voice of Zdravka Evtimova. Three forms of art – literature, theatre, and oratory – are examined from a creative and a methodological perspective that has not been explored to date. The conclusions drawn from the analysis indicate that rhetorical education, which may form part of actors’ training during and beyond the third decade of the 21st century, at a time when artificial intelligence is developing and being increasingly utilized dynamically, requires a return to the body – to voice, breathing, and presence – as a primary rather than a secondary source of persuasiveness.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence, rhetoric, corporeality, embodied cognition (embodiment), ethos, pathos, logos, performance, breath, presence.
Rhetoric and Communications Journal, issue 69, October 2026
