[Res Rhetorica] Call for Papers: Mediated Rhetoric of Recent Conflicts

Communication may be a means of eliminating difference and misunderstanding among individuals and communities, but it also gives rise to possible conflicts of interest, and can be strategically used to express conflicting views and values. While these conflicts may be represented as simple differences, contrasts, discords and dissents, they may escalate to arguments and attacks, opposition and abuse, hostility and violence.

The linguistic and semiotic constructions of recent conflicts often depend on the situational and cultural contexts and the affordances of communication technologies used to mediate them, especially with their proliferation in the 21^st century.

This issue explores the rhetorical dimensions of conflict discourses as reflected in contemporary media landscapes. It aims to show how established rhetorical categories and analytic protocols can be adapted to making sense of and explaining the mechanisms of today’s conflicts, both real and imagined. Submissions ranging from case studies, to interdisciplinary projects, and comparative rhetorical media analyses, are invited on, among others:

• Ongoing geopolitical divisions and diplomatic rifts;
• Recent radical expressions of aggressive nationalism, chauvinism and supremacy;
• Imagery and semiotics of current armed conflict, hybrid war, persecution and terror;
• Exclusionary and discriminatory discourses, “us vs. them” polarization;
• Argumentation in social protest, religious dissent, clashes of civilizations, “culture wars”;
• Eristic and stylistic means of perpetuating (or mitigating) conflict;
• Media manipulation, strategic maneuvering, propagandistic disinformation;
• Media affordances, practices and devices that amplify conflicts
• Rhetoric of contempt and hate speech – exposed and explained;
• Language-based exclusion, language control vs. language dissent
• Recommendations on resilience in conflict situations and mitigation in communication breakdowns.

Issue 2/2025 (in English) is developed in collaboration with CORECON project https://grants.ulbsibiu.ro/corecon/

Issue editors: Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska (molekk@uni.opole.pl) and Ecaterina Ilis (ecaterina.ilis@ulbsibiu.ro)

Deadline for submissions: November 30, 2024

Date of publication: June 2025

contact: info@resrhetorica.com

https://resrhetorica.com/index.php/RR/announcement/view/19