deconstructionism, late medieval logic was ultra-subtle, full of jargon, and disdainful of elegant verbal style. In other words, it had almost crowded rhetoric and grammar out of the curriculum. For McLuhan, grammar, or the study of language, was nothing less than an earlier version of his cherished New Criticism. But he was also interested in the specialty of More and Erasmus, which was rhetoric—the use of language to sway an audience.
He quickly noticed that modern-day advertisers were using exactly the same techniques as the ancient rhetoricians. When he taught freshman English at Wisconsin, instead of rehashing expected themes, like symbolism in Hawthorne, he showed advertisements to his classes and analyzed their rhetorical devices. Throughout his career, McLuhan insisted that advertising was one of the great art forms of
