Jens E. Kjeldsen is Professor of Rhetoric and Visual Communication at University of Bergen, Norway. He has written extensively about rhetoric, visual communication and argumentation, speech making, speech writing and PowerPoint-presentations. Kjeldsen is President of the Rhetoric Society of Europe and co-founder and longtime chief editor of the research journal Rhetorica Scandinavia. Several of his publications, including two edited collections, deal with reception-oriented approaches in the field of rhetoric.

This book examines the reception of rhetoric and the rhetoric of reception. By considering salient rhetorical traits of rhetorical utterances and texts seen in context, and relating this to different kinds of reception and/or audience use and negotiation, the authors explore the connections between rhetoric and reception. In our time, new media and new forms of communication make it harder to distinguish between speaker and audience. The active involvement of users and audiences is more important than ever before. This project is based on the premise that rhetorical research should reconsider the understanding, conceptualization and examination of the rhetorical audience. From mostly understanding audiences as theoretical constructions that are examined textually and speculatively, the contributors give more attention to empirical explorations of actual audiences and users. The book will provide readers with new knowledge on the workings of rhetoric as well as illustrative and guiding examples of new methods of rhetorical studies.