Rhetoric-as-Becoming: Rethinking Origins

• In Event: Re-Thinking Foundational Questions and Problems in Communication Studies

Abstract

This paper argues that with the aid the thematic of différance, rhetoric exists not as being but rather in the process of becoming. Rhetoric-as-becoming is a comprehensive thematic with which one may view the rhetorical situation. An understanding of rhetoric-as-becoming redefines the rhetorical situation, shows rhetoric as epistemological, and provides a tool for rhetorical analysis. Rhetoric-as-becoming opens the field of rhetoric to new ways of understanding how rhetoric becomes in and through discourse.

Author

• Andrew James Swenson, Concordia University