About the book chapter: Bengtsson investigates how selected audiences react to the implied audience in Danish political print newspaper commentary. When introducing the concept of second persona, Edwin Black only uses vague expressions like “vector of influence” and “the pull of an ideology” about the impact of the discursive audience construction, but instead of taking this for granted, Bengtsson uses think-aloud protocol as a way of studying an audience’s reaction, getting a better grasp of how people understand, interpret and negotiate commentator discourse. The study finds that while some people engage in the implied audience offered, others have strong negative reactions refusing to take it upon them. The study shows how readers react to the commentators postulating manner, and call for arguments to use in discussions with family and friend.

About the book: 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.