ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the rhetorical fieldwork as "a set of approaches that integrates rhetorical and qualitative inquiry toward the examination of in situ practices and performances in a rhetorical field." Importantly, while in practice scholars engaging in rhetorical fieldwork largely share a perspective on rhetorical scholarship informed by the critical turn in rhetoric, rhetorical fieldwork is not necessarily limited to only critical scholarship. Rhetorical fieldwork is not a fixed set of critical commitments, a specific application of methodological procedures, or a pre-determined interpretive schema. Rather, rhetorical fieldwork describes a set of research practices that share a loosely defined perspective on: the role of the critic relative to their object of study, what constitutes rhetorical activity worthy of criticism, and how the contexts from which that rhetorical activity emerge can serve as a source of critical insight for the rhetorical fieldworker. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.
