Dialogue and the Prospect of Rhetoric

Abstract

The turn toward dialogue during the past 40 years by communication scholars, particularly, interpersonal and organizational communication scholars, has been well documented. More recently, a number of these communication scholars have highlighted the importance of dialogue to public/rhetorical communication. However, to date, dialogue research has not taken hold in a substantial way in rhetoric and argumentation studies. A thesis of this review is that there is a substantial stream of dialogue research within 20th and 21st century rhetorical and argumentation studies that might provide grounds and direction for contemporary dialogue research by rhetoric and argumentation scholars. The goal of the review is to identify key essays in this stream of research as well as to highlight some of the fundamental themes running through these essays.