i've read gorgias before and like many have heard and read countless remarks on and discussions of "socratic dialogues." i was particularly struck, this time around, by socrates' insistence on dialogue as the mode of fleshing out arguments. this has prompted me to reflect on the concept of mode versus genre. is the dialogue a method, a mode, a genre? it seems to be a form that allows for a specific kind of social action (as miller might define genre), and therefore helps us see the ways in which new rhetorical discussions of genre (not as form, per se, but as typified rhetorical responses to exigencies) might illumine classical texts.
socrates calls for brevity, and in talking to gorgias asks if he would be "willin to complete the discussion [through] alternately asking questions and answering them, and to put aside...this long style of speechmaking." in approaching gorgias, polus, and callicles this way, socrates is able to take full advantage of playing with and working through enthymemes--it seems to me that it is through the enthymeme that socrates is most successful--his series of questions necessarily lead to his unveiling of some kind of hidden implication embedded in the agreement of the discussion participants.