Public rhetoric refers to discourse both within a group of people and between groups, often centering on the process by which individual or group discourse seeks membership in the larger public discourse. Public rhetoric can also involve rhetoric being used within the general populace to foster social change and encourage agency on behalf of the participants of public rhetoric. The collective discourse between rhetoricians and the general populace is one representation of public rhetoric. A new discussion within the field of public rhetoric is digital space because the growing digital realm complicates the idea of private and public, as well as previously concrete definitions of discourse. Furthermore, scholars of public rhetoric often employ the language of tourism to examine how identity is negotiated between individuals and groups and how this negotiation impacts individuals and groups on a variety of levels, ranging from the local to the global.
Public rhetoric participants A public, not to be confused with the public, is composed of members that address each other, are addressed as a group, and also subscribe to specific ideals. Michael Warner describes a public as "being self-organized, …a relationship among strangers …[where] merely paying attention can be enough to make [one] a member." Robert Asen notes that identity formation of members of a public "entails mutual recognition among members of diverse cultures." To Warner, publics are a social space where information is exchanged and is required for the exchange of information.
Counterpublics Within the public sphere, dominant publics exist whose discourse can subordinate other publics or exclude them from a related discourse. Counterpublics are the result of discourse and/or people feeling marginalized, ignored, inadequately voiced, or silenced within the public sphere. "Counterpublic refers to those publics that form through mutual recognition of exclusions in wider publics, set themselves against exclusionary wider publics, and resolve to overcome these exclusions," writes Asen. Where dominant public groups typically manufacture heteronormative public spaces and discourse, counterpublics seek to insert or reinsert voices and perspectives of and from publics. Discourse then abnormalizes or even challenges dominant public rhetoric. Warner describes the facilities of counterpublic using the LGBTQ+ community:
As Asen furthers, "Individuals do not necessarily recognize exclusions and resolve to overcome them by virtue of their location in a social order." Asen maintains that claiming a counterpublic of this form can diminish counterpublic forms to particular contributors who share specific interests with other members but might not consider each other as allies.
Subaltern and bourgeois groups Amid publics and counterpublics, prevailing ideology, discourse, and images can create a hierarchy of group members and the rhetoric thereof. The struggle for political and social power within the public sphere between publics gives rise to dominant and weaker internal publics within a public, namely subaltern and bourgeois publics, respectively. For example, in their article "Graffiti Hurts in the United States," Terri Moreau and Derek H. Alderman describe an anti-graffiti task force, Graffiti Hurts, advocating for the eradication of urban graffiti in public spaces. This organization funded mural projects that would serve as a deterrent for would-be graffitists. While graffiti is often considered a lesser art form compared to the classical arts such as music, canvas painting, and sculpture, the mural projects "actually work to carry out a 'normative' prescription of landscape. The normalization has the ability to eradicate the potential for alternative constructions of public expression. As [Kurt] Iveson observes, 'A legal mural might have some effect in making ... people's culture more visible in public space, but often this is on someone else's' terms.'" Keith Haring argues that the dominant images of a gay counterpublic produce "clones" representing "well-built," effeminate, white males. While whiteness is idealized, racial minority imagery and representation was and remains marginalized.
A bourgeois subgroup within a public is primarily composed of "private individuals…[that] do not 'rule'.... Instead, their ideas infiltrated the very principle on which the existing power is based." The bourgeois within a public represent a prevailing definition of the relevant publics and thereby control a greater degree of shared space for the related discourse between the larger public membership.
Strangers Strangers are those who are not aware of their membership within a particular public. They are capable of being members of a public; however, they can also hold no opinion or in other ways pay no attention to their potential membership to a public. Strangers are normally not those who ignore their membership (which implies one is aware of being a member of a public). To Warner, without the presence of strangers in a public sphere, public discourse cannot occur because it is a requirement for public discourse to address strangers and provide them the awareness to identify themselves as an addressed public.
Orientation Public rhetoric participants produce discourse relative to a larger conglomerate of people or publics. Within the public sphere, different publics engage their own or other publics in conversation creating discourse that affects their own and other groups through definition of public boundaries, redefining public structure, and dispersing related public ideology. For a person to produce public rhetoric, one would self-identify with a public. Media, culture, and geography are the more predominant orienting processes that channel people towards and away from specific publics. Through public rhetoric, publics can recruit strangers and embed or polarize members of the same or other publics. Political propaganda and product advertisement are two concrete examples of forces that orient strangers and publics through analog and digital media. When people engage in public discourse, "describ[ing] themselves and others, they do not engage in a value-neutral and transparent process. Rather, representational processes implicate participants in (often unacknowledged) choices regarding how people should be portrayed". As one begins to form judgments regarding the image of a public, of a particular ideology, or of the protocols governing inclusion and exclusion in public discourse, that person then gains membership within a relevant public, thus becoming, in part, a representation of the whole image of said public.
How one is introduced to a public varies as existing knowledge and experience can augment how one perceives a public and public rhetoric. Tony Hiss points out how places can orient and disorient civilians. In his discussion, Hiss describes public parks as having the function of "changing the way we look at things, diffusing our attention and also relaxing its intensity…". The geography of the park often contrasts the image of the city in which it exists. Effective entrance design for parks encourage visitors to enter, displacing prior experience in exchange for "park experience", in a transition that navigates the visitors smoothly to and from the park experience. Similarly, when strangers are introduced to public discourse, orientation processes enable strangers to adopt and displace specific images of a public and evoke their membership to the new public.
Rhetoric for public use According to David J. Coogan and John M. Ackerman, "rhetoric is in the midst of discovering anew its usefulness." As service learning and civic engagement increase at colleges and universities, rhetoric begins the process of regrouping and becoming relevant in the community outside of the academy. In both the field of English and of communication, rhetoric's reputation needs to be repaired and adapted to meet the needs of the general populace. In general, the public view of rhetoric is a negative one. It is the talk of politicians—filled with lies and manipulation. Instead, the public work of rhetoric should try to lead to social change. Scholars such as Ellen Cushman and Cynthia Sheard demonstrate this belief in their work; these and other scholars believe that rhetoricians should use their tools for the good of the public. In order to make this shift in rhetoric's reputation, rhetoric needs a new set of guidelines by which to prepare rhetoricians to participate in social action.
Rhetoric in praxis as social action Because rhetoric and composition are so closely related, the composition classroom becomes an open space for fostering social activism through service learning and allowing students to develop a sense of agency for both their scholarship and their interactions with the public. Ellen Cushman tells readers in her article "The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change" that "one way to increase our participation in public discourse is to bridge the university and community through activism. Given the role rhetoricians have historically played in the politics of their communities, [Cushman believes] modern rhetoric and composition scholars can be agents of social change outside the university." Through their respective institutions, Cushman argues that both young and old scholars of rhetoric and composition can use their educational expertise to connect with the public outside of the university that, as scholars, they are typically estranged from. Because universities are often situated as counterpublics within the overall public of the geographic area in which they are located, it appears that scholars often feel prohibited from approaching and participating in the outside community. In order to negate this feeling of being restricted from community engagement, Cushman urges members of the rhetoric and composition community at universities to participate in service learning.
Reciprocity from practicing rhetoric in public spaces In an attempt to bridge the gap between the university and the community, Cushman suggests ways to "empower people in our communities, establish networks of reciprocity with them, and create solidarity with them." In order to invent this network of reciprocity, Cushman urges rhetoricians and students within the university to venture outside of the boundaries of the institution, foster relationships with members of the community, and to perform work that benefits the community. Hopefully the scholar perceives a kairotic moment in which they come to an understanding of the relationship between the community and public rhetoric and are then, in turn, able to write and publish on their work. In essence, "[Cushman is] asking for a deeper consideration of the civic purpose of our positions in the academy, of what we do with our knowledge, for whom, and by what means." Aside from the reciprocity that inherently comes from performing social activism within the general community, engaging with those outside of academe allows scholars to improve the public's general conception of rhetoric, thereby increasing the field's ethos in the eyes of the general public.
Reforming the public's view of rhetoric