Rhetoric and Communication Studies

Rhetoric and communication studies examines how language, images, and symbols are used to persuade, construct identity, and organize collective life — with particular attention to how these practices shape democratic participation and public memory. Scholars in this area analyze everything from political speeches and protest movements to visual media and environmental messaging, asking not just what arguments say but how they work on audiences and what social arrangements they reinforce or challenge. Current research pushes into questions that remain genuinely contested: How do racialized narratives persist across generations through cultural memory, and what communicative strategies have historically marginalized communities used to contest them? The field also grapples with how digital and visual forms of argumentation are remaking the conditions under which democratic deliberation is even possible.

Works

58,730

Total citations

404,372

Keywords

RhetoricDemocracyPublic DiscourseActivismVisual ArgumentationRace and Identity