understood to mean that style of speaking and writing should
conform to the subject matter, to the audience, to the speaker
and to the occasion. What is important, however, is that decorum
summarizes the reciprocal relation between speaker and audience,
such that each informs the other. Neither the speaker nor the
audience in itself is the locus of decorum. This means that
decorum is the product not of the text, or of the speech, but
rather of the mutual relation itself. At the same time, the
perception and the culture of the audience are crucial to the
relation: they provide the structure within which the speaker
must move.
Thus decorum is not a simple rhetorical technique.
Certainly in the ancient world it was seen as an indicator of
social and cultural forms of belief, knowledge and practice. The
relation between speaker and audience, like that between ruler
and ruled, and that between teacher and student, both
determined, and was determined by, the over all or prevailing
socio-cultural and socio-political system.
To know how to address a particular audience would mean to
know how to establish the decorum of that particular instance,
which, in turn would mean to know not only the character and
social psychology of the listener, but also to become immersed
in the listener’s culture. This is what Michael Polanyi called
Convention