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The core function of argumentation in a democratic setting must be to constitute a modality for citizens to engage differences of opinion constructively – for the present but also in future exchanges. To enable this function requires acceptance of the basic conditions of public debate: that consensus is often an illusory goal which should be replaced by better mastery of living with dissent and compromise. Furthermore, it calls for an understanding of the complexity of real-life public debate which is an intermixture of claims of fact, definition, value, and policy, each of which calls for an awareness of the greater ‘debate environment’ of which particular deliberative exchanges are part. We introduce a rhetorical meta-norm as an evaluation criterion for public debate. In continuation of previous scholarship concerned with how to create room for differences of opinion and how to foster a sustainable debate culture, we work from a civically oriented conception of rhetoric. This conception is less instrumental and more concerned with the role of communication in public life and the maintenance of the democratic state. A rhetorical meta-norm of public argumentation is useful when evaluating public argumentation – not as the only norm, but integrated with specific norms from rhetoric, pragma-dialectics, and formal logic. We contextualise our claims through an example of authentic contemporary public argumentation: a debate over a biogas generator in rural Denmark., The core function of argumentation in a democratic setting must be to constitute a modality for citizens to engage differences of opinion constructively – for the present but also in future exchanges. To enable this function requires acceptance of the basic conditions of public debate: that consensus is often an illusory goal which should be replaced by better mastery of living with dissent and compromise. Furthermore, it calls for an understanding of the complexity of real-life public debate which is an intermixture of claims of fact, definition, value, and policy, each of which calls for an awareness of the greater ‘debate environment’ of which particular deliberative exchanges are part. We introduce a rhetorical meta-norm as an evaluation criterion for public debate. In continuation of previous scholarship concerned with how to create room for differences of opinion and how to foster a sustainable debate culture, we work from a civically oriented conception of rhetoric. This conception is less instrumental and more concerned with the role of communication in public life and the maintenance of the democratic state. A rhetorical meta-norm of public argumentation is useful when evaluating public argumentation – not as the only norm, but integrated with specific norms from rhetoric, pragma-dialectics, and formal logic. We contextualise our claims through an example of authentic contemporary public argumentation: a debate over a biogas generator in rural Denmark.

This overview presents 10 Ph.D. projects that illustrate the breadth of Scandinavian rhetorical research. Among them are projects on specific conceptualizations in the field of rhetoric such as accusations, anger, the body, and voice in writing; projects on the rhetoric of groups, organizations and social movements such as the EU, LGBTQ+ minorities, and climate activists; projects that capture public debates, for example on forestry and climate change; didactic projects, and projects entertaining new methods and methodologies for rhetorical research, such as computer assisted big data analysis and participatory rhetorical criticism. This representation of 10 diverse emerging scholars from 6 Scandinavian universities gives a taste of the contemporary rhetorical research scene in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

Retorik var oprindelig læren om talekunst. I dag er retorik et moderne kommunikationsfag der beskæftiger sig med mundtlige, skriftlige og multimodale tekster. Med fokus på både overtalelsesvirkning og etisk forsvarlighed er retorik kort sagt læren om god kommunikation. I RETORIK. TEORI OG PRAKSIS præsenterer retorikforskere fra Københavns Universitet fagets centrale områder og de vigtigste teoretiske og analytiske begreber. Indføringen dækker bl.a. argumentation, genre, stil og retorisk kritik. Hertil kommer kapitler om retorikkens historie og dens praktiske aspekter – mundtlig fremførelse, kropssprog og udarbejdelsen af mundtlige og skriftlige tekster. I denne udgave er tilføjet et kapitel om visuel retorik. RETORIK. TEORI OG PRAKSIS er en grundbog til undervisning i retorik på videregående uddannelser, men henvender sig også til andre interesserede. Den giver et samlet overblik over faget og en indføring i dets terminologi. Omfattende litteraturhenvisninger gør desuden bogen nyttig for læsere der vil fordybe sig yderligere i retorik.

Amerikanske forskere har analyseret hele 1700 undskyldninger fra de sidste 68 år. Undskyldningsekspert Lisa Villadsen ser på resultaterne.

I faget Livsoplysning i den nye aftale om læreruddannelsen optræder retorik som et nyt element i forhold til det fag det erstatter, Kristendomskundskab, Livsoplysning og Medborgerskab. I denne artikel argumenterer jeg for at retorikkens tilbagekomst til læreruddannelsen er en god ide, men samtidig vil jeg gerne udfordre placeringen af retorikken i det af fagets fire overordnede indholdsområder der hedder ’Autoritet, dømmekraft of retorik’ og ikke (også) i indholdsområdet ’Demokrati og medborgerskab’. Efter min opfattelse burde det sidste punkt have inkluderet begrebet ’retorisk medborgerskab’, og mit hovedærinde i artiklen er at beskrive dette begreb og argumentere for dets værdi som bindeled mellem personlige formidlingskompetencer og kompetencer i samfunds- og demokratideltagelse. Mit ønske med artiklen er pege på hvordan det nye fag kan udvikle sig på tværs af hvad der jo blot er bullet points og ikke strengt afgrænsede emnefelter.

The island has, historically, played a special role in the cultural imagination - sometimes as a place of promise of tranquillity; at other times the remoteness has seemed attractive for more sinister reasons. Using islands for extreme exclusion has a long history and remains important for understanding the complexities of inclusive education. This volume presents new case studies of island exclusion of prisoners, people with disability, and refugees in the Global North and South. It also offers reflections on practices of re-inclusion and the larger issues of inclusive education.

This chapter discusses official apologies to care leavers as gestures of inclusion and attempts to prepare the way for victims’ reintegration into society as moral and social equals. For official apologies to play a role in building a “bridge” between victims and the rest of society this must entail acknowledging care leavers’ former state of being isolated from their family, culture, and society to enable them to “leave” that state of imposed exclusion behind while also preparing the surrounding society for their reintegration in the community. The chapter expands theoretical claims about the potential meaningfulness of official apologies to also account for the significance for the surrounding community and illustrates these claims through two examples, Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology to the Stolen Generations and Mette Frederiksen’s 2022 apology to Greenlandic children., This chapter discusses official apologies to care leavers as gestures of inclusion and attempts to prepare the way for victims’ reintegration into society as moral and social equals. For official apologies to play a role in building a ‘bridge’ between victims and the rest of society this must entail acknowledging care leavers’ former state of being isolated from their family, culture, and society to enable them to ‘leave’ that state of imposed exclusion behind, while also preparing the surrounding society for their reintegration in the community. The chapter expands theoretical claims about the potential meaningfulness of official apologies to also account for the significance for the surrounding community and illustrates these claims through two examples, Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology to the Stolen Generations and Mette Frederiksen’s 2022 apology to Greenlandic children.

Submission for the 6th International Conference on Rhetoric “Days of Ivo Skaric” Lisa S. Villadsen Section of Rhetoric, Dept. of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark lisas@hum.ku.dk Title: “I wouldn’t have interrupted the debate if I had felt that my concerns were being heard”: The prospects for rhetorical debate norms, deliberative listening and civility Keywords: Civility, rhetorical citizenship, dissent, deliberative democracy Abstract: Before the general election in Denmark in 2022, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation hosted an event called “Democracy’s Evening”. Broadcast live with all party leaders lined up to debate the nation’s pressing issues, the debate was suddenly interrupted by a group of climate activists shouting slogans and showing signs. Within one minute the protesters had been escorted off stage. In a newspaper opinion piece one of the protesters later reflected back on the event, expressing her doubts if this kind of civil disobedience was the right way to promote the climate cause. She explains that her participation was based in frustration over not feeling heard, but also discusses her concerns about how to communicate about climate topics. Acknowledging that when climate activists speak many people feel ignored or directly attacked, she predicts further alienation. In a time where polarization of public debate has become a widespread political phenomenon, a key challenge for the field of rhetoric is to explore ways to prevent that public debate atrophies (because people withdraw in disgust) but can remain, or reinvent itself, as a forum for critical exchange of viewpoints. I am interested in what rhetoric might contribute to a public discussion of norm transgressing debate behavior both in terms of analysis and useful criteria for evaluation. With a theoretical basis in ideas about deliberative democracy, I draw how recent rhetorical theory approach, Before the general election in Denmark in 2022, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation hosted an event called “Democracy’s Evening”. Broadcast live with all party leaders lined up to debate the nation’s pressing issues, the debate was suddenly interrupted by a group of climate activists shouting slogans and showing signs. Within one minute the protesters had been escorted off stage. In a newspaper opinion piece one of the protesters later reflected back on the event, expressing her doubts if this kind of civil disobedience was the right way to promote the climate cause. She explains that her participation was based in frustration over not feeling heard, but also discusses her concerns about how to communicate about climate topics. Acknowledging that when climate activists speak many people feel ignored or directly attacked, she predicts further alienation. In a time where polarization of public debate has become a widespread political phenomenon, a key challenge for the field of rhetoric is to explore ways to prevent that public debate atrophies (because people withdraw in disgust) but can remain, or reinvent itself, as a forum for critical exchange of viewpoints. I am interested in what rhetoric might contribute to a public discussion of norm transgressing debate behavior both in terms of analysis and useful criteria for evaluation. With a theoretical basis in ideas about deliberative democracy, I draw how recent rhetorical theory approaches the question of appropriateness and civility in public debate. Using the episode in the Danish election program and the ensuing discussion about it, I focus on the notions of ‘civility’ as and on the idea of ‘listening rhetoric’. I discuss how notions of civility can be combined with Bob Ivie’s thoughts on dissent and the trickster figure as crucial to dissensual democracy on the one hand and my own and Christian Kock’s notion of ‘rhetorical citizenship’ on the other – all with the ambition to initiate formulati

Rhetorical argumentation is a craft: collective, processual, and circulating, and it partakes in the indeterminate evolution of public norms. Official apologies can illustrate how rhetorical modalities over time can reflect change in civic sensibilities and effect collective moral reflection and evolution. Rhetorical citizenship, understood as encompassing both critical production and reception of publicly circulating arguments, is a way of conceptualizing the interaction between the individual and the collective in the ongoing discursive formation of the community and the norms that inform it.

I den klassiske retorik stod overvejelser om balance og afvejning centralt med begrebet decorum. Normerne for hvad der udgør det passende, og hvad der overskrider grænserne for det sømmelige, har ændret sig med tiden og udviklet sig i takt med varierende politiske og sociale forhold. Den teknologiske udvikling har vist sig at være en afgørende faktor i udfordringen af grænser for hvad man kan sige i det offentlige rum. I dansk offentlig debat er det efterhånden en topos at tale om den stadigt grovere tone i den offentlige debat, den ”går over grænsen”. I en tid hvor hyperpolarisering af den offentlige debat er et faktum i visse dele af verden, er det en vigtig opgave for retorikken at undersøge muligheder for at den offentlige debat ikke forstummer og fortsat kan være et forum for kritisk udveksling af synspunkter. I dette oplæg fokuserer jeg på hvordan nyere retorisk teori behandler spørgsmålet om hvad der er passende i offentlig debat, hvordan vi kan tale om normbrydende debatadfærd, og hvordan retorikken kan bidrage med brugbare vurderingskriterier. Med udgangspunkt i to nyere amerikanske bogudgivelser, Beyond Civility. The Competing Obligations of Citizenship og Words on Fire. Eloquence and Its Conditions, diskuterer jeg om Bob Ivie’s tanker om dissens og den retoriske trickster som bidrag til forståelsen af den grænsesøgende retoriks funktion, ligesom jeg diskuterer om et begreb som retorisk medborgerskab kan indgå i formuleringen af brugbare diskursive normer for vurdering af grænseoverskridende debatadfærd. (238 ord) Litteratur: Goodman, R. (2021). Words on Fire. Eloquence and Its Conditions, Cambridge University Press. Gutmann, A. & Thompson, D. (2004). What Deliberative Democracy Means in Why Deliberative Democracy? i Amy Gutmann & Dennis F. Thompson. Princeton University Press, 1-63. Ivie, R. L. (2015). Enabling Democratic Dissent. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 101(1), 46-59. Hariman, R

This chapter explores the notion of rhetorical citizenship and suggests its relevance to studies of rhetoric in society. My analysis suggests that an underdeveloped appreciation of rhetoric's role in public deliberation can be witnessed in a case study where responses to two public statements work to exclude particular points of view and to defer discussion and thus reflect a less than tolerant debate culture. The overall trajectory of my argument is that in this and similar settings, public political debate would benefit from increased attention to various manifestations of rhetorical practice, and that the concept of rhetorical citizenship may be one avenue for cultivating such a development, particularly as a frame for explicating and negotiating the communicative norms for public deliberation.

Citizenship has long been a keyword among educators, philosophers, and political theorists. Using the phrase "rhetorical citizenship" as a unifying perspective, this book aims to develop an understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon in the sense that important civic functions take place in deliberation among citizens, and that discourse is not prefatory to real action but is in many ways constitutive of civic engagement. The book pursues this aim by bringing together, in a cross-disciplinary effort, contributions by scholars in fields that rarely intersect.

Citizenship has long been a central topic among educators, philosophers, and political theorists. Using the phrase "rhetorical citizenship" as a unifying perspective, Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation aims to develop an understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon, arguing that discourse is not prefatory to real action but in many ways constitutive of civic engagement. To accomplish this, the book brings together, in a cross-disciplinary effort, contributions by scholars in fields that rarely intersect. For the most part, discussions of citizenship have focused on aspects that are central to the "liberal" tradition of social thought-that is, questions of the freedoms and rights of citizens and groups. This collection gives voice to a "republican" conception of citizenship. Seeing participation and debate as central to being a citizen, this tradition looks back to the Greek city-states and republican Rome. Citizenship, in this sense of the word, is rhetorical citizenship. Rhetoric is thus at the core of being a citizen. Aside from the editors, the contributors are John Adams, Paula Cossart, Jonas Gabrielsen, Jette Barnholdt Hansen, Kasper Moller Hansen, Sine Norholm Just, Ildiko Kaposi, William Keith, Bart van Klink, Marie Lund Klujeff, Manfred Kraus, Oliver W. Lembcke, Berit von der Lippe, James McDonald, Niels Moller Nielsen, Tatiana Tatarchevskiy, Italo Testa, Georgia Warnke, Kristian Wedberg, and Stephen West.