This book examines the reception of rhetoric and the rhetoric of reception. By considering salient rhetorical traits of rhetorical utterances and texts seen in context, and relating this to different kinds of reception and/or audience use and negotiation, the authors explore the connections between rhetoric and reception. In our time, new media and new forms of communication make it harder to distinguish between speaker and audience. The active involvement of users and audiences is more important than ever before. This project is based on the premise that rhetorical research should reconsider the understanding, conceptualization and examination of the rhetorical audience. From mostly understanding audiences as theoretical constructions that are examined textually and speculatively, the contributors give more attention to empirical explorations of actual audiences and users. The book will provide readers with new knowledge on the workings of rhetoric as well as illustrative and guiding examples of new methods of rhetorical studies.

Providing a comprehensive survey of the empirical research, theory, and history of public speaking, this handbook fills a crucial gap in public speaking pedagogy resources and provides a foundation for future research and pedagogical development. Bringing together contributions from both up-and-coming and senior scholars in the field, this book offers a thorough examination of public speaking, guided by research across six key themes: the history of public speaking; the foundations of public speaking; issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion; considerations of public speaking across contexts; assessment of public speaking; and the future of public speaking in the twenty-first century. The evidence-based chapters engage with a broad discussion of public speaking through a variety of viewpoints to demonstrate how subtopics are connected and fraught with complexity. Contributors explore public speaking in education, business and professional settings, and political contexts, and outline how skills learned through public speaking are applicable to interpersonal, small group, and business interactions. Reinforcing the relevance, importance, and significance of public speaking in individual, interpersonal, social, and cultural communication contexts, this accessibly written handbook will be an indispensable resource for public speaking instructors and program administrators. It will also be valuable reading for Communication Pedagogy and Introduction to Graduate Studies courses.

Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship: Fifty Years of the Rhetoric Society of America collects essays reflecting on the history of the Rhetoric Society of America and the organization’s 18th Biennial Conference theme, “Reinventing Rhetoric: Celebrating the Past, Building the Future,” on the occasion of the Society’s 50th anniversary. The opening section, “Looking Back: RSA at Fifty” describes the establishment of the organization and includes remembrances from some of the founders. These historical essays consider the transdisciplinary nature of RSA scholarship and pedagogy and offer critical reviews of trends in some of its subfields. The essays in the second section, “Reinventing the Field: Looking Forward,” focus on the future of scholarship and pedagogy in the field, from reinventing scholarship on major figures such as Vico, Burke, and Toulmin, to reconsidering future work on rhetoric and democracy, rhetoric and religion, and rhetoric from both sides of the Atlantic. The authors in the last section, “Rhetorical Interventions,” offer critical interventions on contemporary issues, including food justice, fat studies, indigenous protest, biopolitics, Chinese feminism, and anti-establishment ethos. Together, the essays in Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship offer a Janus-faced portrait of a discipline on the occasion of its golden anniversary: a loving and critical remembrance as well as a robust exploration of possible futures. Contributors include Kristian Bjørkdahl, David Blakesley, Leah Ceccarelli, Catherine Chaput, Rachel Chapman Daugherty, Richard Leo Enos, Joseph Good, Heidi Hamilton, Michelle Iten, Jacob W. Justice, Zornitsa Keremidchieva, Jens E. Kjeldsen, Abby Knoblauch, Laura Leavitt, Andrea A. Lunsford, Paul Lynch, Carolyn R. Miller, James J. Murphy, Shelley Sizemore, Ryan Skinnell, David Stock, Joonna Smitherman Trapp, Victor J. Vitanza, Ron Von Burg, Scott Welsh, Ben Wetherbee, Elizabethada A. Wright, Hui Wu, Richard E. Young, and David Zarefsky.

Covering a broad range of rhetorical perspectives, Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action, third edition presents a well-grounded introduction to the basics of rhetorical criticism and theory in an accessible manner for advanced undergraduate courses and introductory graduate courses. Throughout the text, sample essays written by noted experts in the field provide students with models for writing their own criticisms. In addition to covering traditional modes of rhetorical criticism, the book introduces less commonly discussed rhetorical perspectives as well as orientations toward performing criticisms including close-textual analysis, critical approaches, and analysis of visual and digital rhetoric. The third edition includes the following features: New chapters on visual rhetoric and digital rhetoric Potentials and Pitfalls sections analyzing individual perspectives Activities and discussion questions in each chapter Glossary of important terms

This volume considers the paramount implications to persuasive communication that media brought regarding how we think, express, argue and feel together. It is concerned with both the media practice of rhetoric activity and the rhetorical practice of media activity: it considers how the media integrated rhetorical speech, and analyses how rhetoric adapted to media societies. Media and rhetoric are highly dependent on each other because, to persuasively communicate today, media must also be considered. The book is about how the media alter the ways we talk, discuss, argue and convince. It is focused on the theoretical and empirical analysis of communication technologies such as advertising and digital technologies as persuasive mechanisms and central tenets of contemporary 21st century rhetoric. Concentrating on two of the most fundamental areas of media rhetoric—advertising and digital media—the six chapters, authored by scholars from around the world, demonstrate how persuasive speech is exerted in, through and by the media.

This book aims to recast the way that philosophers understand rhetoric. Rather than follow most philosophers in conceiving rhetoric as a specific way of speaking or writing, it shows that rhetoric is better understood as a dimension of all human discourse and action—what the author calls “rhetoricity”. This book provides the first philosophical treatment of rhetoricity. It is motivated by two ongoing developments. The first is the debate between Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin about philosophy’s relation to rhetoric. Both Badiou and Cassin are critical of rhetoric, albeit for different reasons. Second, there has been a growing resurgence of interest in rhetoric considering the recent rise in authoritarian politics as well as new forms of propaganda driven by “persuasive technologies”. This book identifies the common target of Badiou’s and Cassin’s otherwise incompatible critiques: rhetoric’s conception of audience. It offers a fresh take on the “new rhetoric” project of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, putting their work into conversation with the Badiou-Cassin debate. The book then turns to the hermeneutic philosophy of Paul Ricoeur in search of an expanded conception of audience. It shows that Ricoeur’s hermeneutic philosophy allows us to extend Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s psychological notion of audience to texts themselves and to argue that human beings have a rhetorical capacity to reflect on audiences in search of what is potentially persuasive. The Rhetoricity of Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in contemporary European philosophy, rhetoric, argumentation studies, and social theory.

​Service-Dominant logic can be described as a mind-set for a unified understanding of the purpose and nature of organizations, markets and society. A concept that was first introduced by Vargo and Lusch in 2004, S-D logic has generated not just a vast host of journal articles and books but has established an expanding sphere of influence across marketing scholarship. In this book, the author uses a rhetorical approach to investigate the ‘marketing’ of Service-Dominant logic, asking how the formulation and presentation of the logic aids in its persuasive promotion. In doing so, the book explores the lexicon choices, metaphors, symbols, and persuasive gambits that have resonated so strongly with marketing academia, with the aim of understanding how these elements work together in a compelling narrative that delivers the logic’s core value proposition of transcendence. The author investigates how these rhetorical strategies have evolved as the S-D logic framework has developed, examining the revisions to its foundational premises and axioms and the introduction of new perspectives such as systems theory. It is the first book-length rhetorical analysis of a single strand of marketing discourse and as such, it serves as a showcase for the methodology, the insights it can provide, and its value for marketing scholarship.

This handbook is a resource for students, faculty, and researchers who are focused on understanding the role communication plays in the formation and execution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Bringing together authors who are thought-leaders and emerging scholars from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives, it examines the issues central to CSR communication including: theoretical underpinnings, form and content of CSR messaging, the boundaries of engagement, and the tensions associated with CSR communication. It offers a unique combination of functional and formative approaches to CSR communication designed to expose readers to a blend of approaches. With attention to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, this handbook also explicitly addresses recent societal changes and how those changes will impact CSR communication research and practices in the future. Offering both a strong introduction to topics for novices as well as a more advanced interrogation of CSR communication for more knowledgeable readers, the handbook is appropriate for advanced students and researchers in public relations, strategic communication, organizational communication, and allied fields.

A one-stop source for scholars and advanced students who want to get the latest and best overview and discussion of how organizations use rhetoric While the disciplinary study of rhetoric is alive and well, there has been curiously little specific interest in the rhetoric of organizations. This book seeks to remedy that omission. It presents a research collection created by the insights of leading scholars on rhetoric and organizations while discussing state-of-the-art insights from disciplines that have and will continue to use rhetoric. Beginning with an introduction to the topic, The Handbook of Organizational Rhetoric and Communication offers coverage of the foundations and macro-contexts of rhetoric—as well as its use in organizational communication, public relations, marketing, management and organization theory. It then looks at intellectual and moral foundations without which rhetoric could not have occurred, discussing key concepts in rhetorical theory. The book then goes on to analyze the processes of rhetoric and the challenges and strategies involved. A section is also devoted to discussing rhetorical areas or genres—namely contextual application of rhetoric and the challenges that arise, such as strategic issues for management and corporate social responsibility. The final part seeks to answer questions about the book’s contribution to the understanding of organizational rhetoric. It also examines what perspectives are lacking, and what the future might hold for the study of organizational rhetoric. Examines the advantages and perils of organizations that seek to project their voices in order to shape society to their benefits Contains chapters working in the tradition of rhetorical criticism that ask whether organizations’ rhetorical strategies have fulfilled their organizational and societal value Discusses the importance of obvious, traditional, nuanced, and critically valued strategies such as rhetorical interaction in ways that benefit discourse Explores the potential, risks, paradoxes, and requirements of engagement Reflects the views of a team of scholars from across the globe Features contributions from organization-centered fields such as organizational communication, public relations, marketing, management, and organization theory The Handbook of Organizational Rhetoric and Communication will be an ideal resource for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars studying organizational communications, public relations, management, and rhetoric.

Nobody doubts that politicians ought to fulfil their promises – what people cannot agree about is what this means in practice. The purpose of this book is to explore this issue through a series of case studies. It shows how the British model of politics has changed since the early twentieth century when electioneering was based on the articulation of principles which, it was expected, might well be adapted once the party or politician that promoted them took office. Thereafter manifestos became increasingly central to electoral politics and to the practice of governing, and this has been especially the case since 1945. Parties were now expected to outline in detail what they would do in office and explain how the policies would be paid for. Brexit has complicated this process, with the ‘will of the people’ as supposedly expressed in the 2016 referendum result clashing with the conventional role of the election manifesto as offering a mandate for action.