Challenges an ideology hidden within the history of rhetoric that privileges one form of the art over another--one approach moves outward toward the social world of public affairs, the other inward toward the center of the human soul. Recounts several "moments" in the creation, repression, and eventual recovery of a rhetoric of the…

Analyzes the compatibility of science with rhetorical inquiry. Provides definitions of rhetorical and scientific inquiry and delineates their plurality of current transformations. Discusses when these transformations are incompatible and when they are compatible. (KEH)

Continues the process of questioning what is taken for granted in communication research and expanding the views of rhetorical processes. Explores how and where texts are created, and how texts interact with each other, especially in terms of "intertextual interanimation." (RS)

Proposes an alternative to the patriarchal bias in most traditional rhetorical theories--invitational rhetoric, grounded in the feminist principles of equality, immanent value, and self-determination. Argues that its purpose is to offer an invitation to understanding and that its communicative modes are the offering of perspectives and the…

Demonstrates that the concept of rhetorical vision yields insight into the creation, rise, and potential demise of a special theory--the critical autoethnography special theory (CAST). Explicates the Symbolic Convergence Theory's ability to explain how special communication theories come into being as the product of rhetorical visions containing…

Uses the Cold War rhetorical vision as a paradigm case illustrating the emerging theory of group consciousness, part of Symbolic Convergence Theory. Explains that three streams of communication (consciousness creating, consciousness raising, and consciousness sustaining) characterize the life cycle of a rhetorical vision. Demonstrates that…

Proposes that empirical disposition toward the dialog of informal discourse (the Vernacular Rhetoric model) provides a deeper understanding of public opinion than either the Rational Deliberation or the Opinion Poll models. Discusses an outsider's experience witnessing vernacular discourse, the rhetorical locus of public opinion in vernacular…

Sketches a key mechanism called "Substitute Vocabularies" whereby practitioners of democracies seek to reconcile contradictions between democratic political principle and repressive political action. Illustrates this by identifying the Richard Nixon administration's political principles regarding Native Americans as articulated in…

Contributes to rhetorical scholarship by analyzing the life and work of the intellectual, quiet, enigmatic civil rights leader Robert Parris Moses. Analyzes Moses's substantive message, personal persona, and second persona as synergistic and reciprocal elements of reconstitutive identification by understanding his rhetorical goals and the…

Contributes to rhetorical scholarship by exploring the rhetorical implications of presidential travel spectacles. Finds that travel spectacles enable administrations to marginalize verbal eloquence, visually simplify complex political issues, narratively interpret presidential agendas, synoptically reify presidential personae, and construct or…