ABSTRACT
The quiet revolution embodied in the rhetorical turn is larger than the field of audience-oriented criticism in the humanities, but it is not unrelated and has evolved, in no small part, from the borrowing of textual and rhetorical theory from the humanities. The implications of a language-based model of knowledge are many, though one of the most significant has been a reconceptualization of what constitutes "text". The idea of a text is no longer confined to a written representation of "reality" or, more narrowly, a work of literature. A text might be a mathematical model or statistical analysis, a novel or ethnographic record, a work of art or tool, a ritual or painting, a social action or public policy. The chapter reflects a variety of practices and disciplinary contexts, in this particular instance focusing primarily on sociology, anthropology, and psychology.
