Audience Analysis and Reception Studies of Rhetoric

Abstract

Without audiences, there would be no rhetoric. Understanding audiences, therefore, is essential for understanding rhetoric. If we do not understand when, how and why audiences are influenced by communication, or see how they negotiate and reject rhetorical messages, then we do not understand rhetoric. In light of this, it is surprising that rhetorical scholars have paid so little attention to audiences—or to be more precise: to empirical audiences. This book encourages researchers to do more studies of empirical audiences and their reception of rhetoric. The chapters offer examples of central methods of understanding reception and empirical audiences: historical approaches such as archival-historical methodology and historiography, interviews and focus group research, protocol analysis, ethnographic participation and observation, appropriation as reception and finally triangulation, where the researcher applies several methods in unison. While these methods are common in media studies, anthropology, cultural studies and other fields of research, they are surprisingly rare in rhetorical studies.