Welcome to the Canadian Society of Rhetoric (CSSR), a scholarly society dedicated to the study of rhetoric in the broadest possible terms. We welcome scholars from a wide range of disciplines: music, communications, literature, history, medieval and renaissance studies, political science, philosophy. We share our work at an annual conference, usually held in conjunction with the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, and we publish a biennial journal (Rhetor) of peer-reviewed rhetoric scholarship.

Join us for our upcoming conference at the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario in 2012. We will feature a special on Rhetoric and Uncertainty, chaired by Lyn Bennett of Dalhousie University. The deadline to submit proposals is January 9, 2012. Please see the Call for Proposals for more details.

"We might as well keep in mind that [speakers persuade] an audience by the use of stylistic identifications; [their] act of persuasion may be for the the purpose of causing the audience to identify itself with the [speakers'] interests; and [speakers draw] on identification of interests to establish rapport between [themselves] and [their] audience. So, there is no chance of our keeping apart the meanings of persuasion, identification ('consubstantiality') and communication (the nature of rhetoric as 'addressed')" (Burke)