A Division of the National Communication Association


       


"because there has been implanted in us the power to persuade each other and to make clear to each other whatever we desire, not only have we escaped the life of wild beasts, but we have come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts; and, generally speaking, there is no institution devised by people which the power of speech has not helped us to establish."


— Isocrates, Antidosis



 


Welcome to the Web site of the National Communication Association's Public Address Division.

The Public Address Division of the National Communication Association takes as its mission the practice and the promotion of the study of a wide variety of rhetoric that addresses publics. Although the term "public address" evokes a rich history of the study of political and religious oratory, we welcome and include not only traditional studies of "great speakers and speeches" but also work that focuses on rhetorical acts and artifacts from other cultures and from other media.

The Public Address Division is one of the oldest and largest divisions in NCA. Its members employ various analytical methods, including historical, descriptive, rhetorical, textual, and institutional critiques, as they examine the symbols that serve both to express and to shape public cultures. Scholarship in the division often leads to theoretical insight about the nature of public discourse at the same time as it enhances our understanding of particular discourses, rhetors or social movements. Despite the variety of critical perspectives, members of the division share a concern for the relationship between "text" and "context," the object of study and its scene.