Note
This essay argues for a reclamation of rhetoric as an essential component of civic education and preparation for citizenship. In current usage, rhetoric is often used to denote empty speech; in reality rhetoric is anything but empty. People use rhetoric to make sense of the world symbolically; through rhetoric, people define themselves and their relationships to others, cast blame or praise on individuals and groups, ascribe motives for actions, and interpret events. Empirically observable phenomena are the province of the sciences, but phenomena that are perceptible only through our symbolic representation of them—such as nation states, political identity, and religious ideologies—are firmly in the domain of rhetoric.
