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This document is a foreword for a special issue of the journal Res Rhetorica titled "Rhetoric in Scandinavia." It provides an overview of the growth and development of rhetoric as an academic discipline in Scandinavia over the past 50 years. The foreword highlights the presence of rhetoric sections at universities in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, the existence of the journal Rhetorica Scandinavica, and the formation of the Nordic Rhetoric Society. It discusses the cultural and linguistic connections between the Scandinavian countries and the diversity of research interests and methods within the Scandinavian rhetoric community. The foreword emphasizes the importance of fostering stronger ties between European rhetoricians and promoting integration and collaboration in research and teaching. The text also discusses the characteristics of Scandinavian rhetoric scholarship, including its unique perspective that views society and political structures as accessible and capable of improvement. It recognizes the influence of the high level of trust and small national communities in the region, as well as the prevalence of social corporatism and the public nature of academic institutions. Scandinavian rhetoric research often takes a melioristic undertone, recognizing the potential for positive change and understanding human fallibility. The text concludes by providing an overview of the articles and topics covered in this special issue on Scandinavian rhetoric research. [Extracted from the article]

This article argues for the relevance of a rhetorical approach to the study of citizenship, proposing the concept of rhetorical citizenship as a term for a fourth dimension of citizenship and as a scholarly approach to the topic in addition to the dimensions of status, rights, and identity commonly recognized in the literature. We show how this view aligns with current views of the multidi Citizenship Studies mensionality of citizenship, explain our use of the term rhetoric, and illustrate the usefulness of a rhetorical approach in two examples. In close textual readings both examples – one vernacular, one elite – are shown to discursively craft and enact different notions of citizenship vis-a-vis the European refugee crisis. We conclude that a rhetorical perspective on public civic discourse is useful in virtue of its close attention to discursive creativity as well as to textual properties that may significantly, but often implicitly, affect citizens’ understanding of their own role in the polity, and further because it recognizes deep differences as inevitable while valorizing discourse across them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]