Rhetoric and Communication Studies

Rhetoric and communication studies examines how language, images, and symbolic action shape belief, coordinate collective life, and distribute power across democratic societies. Scholars in this area treat public discourse not as a transparent vehicle for ideas but as a site where meanings about race, identity, memory, and the natural world are actively constructed and contested. Current work asks how visual and digital forms of argument alter the conditions under which citizens deliberate, and what rhetorical resources social movements can draw on when dominant institutions resist change. Underlying much of this research is a foundational question about democracy itself: whether genuine public reason is possible, and what communication practices might bring it closer to being so.

Works

59,468

Total citations

406,627

Keywords

RhetoricDemocracyPublic DiscourseActivismVisual ArgumentationRace and Identity