An indispensable text--now revised and expanded for the digital age--this volume showcases some of the most important work by contemporary rhetorical theorists. The introduction and section openers frame major problems and questions facing the field. Topics include the epistemological status of rhetoric, how rhetorical address shapes public responses to social and political controversies, the shifting contexts of public communication, how theorists have negotiated the tensions between modernist and postmodernist considerations, mass media, and the relationship between rhetoric and...