Toward a Gramscian critical rhetoric

Although Gramsci's application to the communication discipline has received incomplete consideration, Gramsci can provide an insightful perspective on the cultural dominance of rhetoric and the formation of a critical telos. Under the framework of telos, this paper argues that Gramsci's work can make a valuable contribution to our understanding of critical rhetoric. This analysis demonstrates that Gramscian notions can extend critical rhetoric into an enterprise that permits critical self-reflexivity and praxis and, through a Gramscian commitment to telos, create new opportunities and perspectives for conceptualizing communication.