Critical Rhetoric| Toward Social Justice Activism Critical Rhetoric Scholarship

Authors

  • Lawrence R. Frey University of Colorado Boulder
  • Joshua S. Hanan University of Denver

Keywords:

communication activism, critical rhetoric, interventions, social justice

Abstract

Although critical rhetoric scholarship foregrounds voices of oppressed communities and challenges systemic power imbalances, its doxastic and performative potential to affect social justice has lagged behind its conceptual (and, more recently, methodological and empirical) development. One reason is because that scholarship has privileged rhetoricians performing criticism as the end goal rather than using their criticism to conduct activism scholarship by engaging in and studying critically social justice interventions. This essay articulates a social justice activism approach to critical rhetoric scholarship that involves rhetoricians intervening collaboratively with oppressed communities and activist groups to make unjust discourses more just, and studying and reporting those endeavors.

Author Biographies

Lawrence R. Frey, University of Colorado Boulder

Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder

Joshua S. Hanan, University of Denver

Associate Professor in the Department of rhetoric and communication ethics at the University of Denver

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Published

2020-02-01

Issue

Vol. 14 (2020)

Section

Special Sections

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