abstract: At their cores, both rhetoric and public sphere theory have conceptualized how membership in public and counterpublic settings, as well as participation in public life and discussion, is cultivated, shared, contested, and shaped. Previous case studies on publics and counterpublics have looked at the experiences of individuals and collectives who enact practices in rhetorical invention that mark participation in public life. Much of public sphere scholarship focuses squarely on seasoned individuals in positions of authority and decision making in mainstream publics. Conversely, counterpublic spheres focus on the labor of individuals who have extensive experience in articulating discursive practices in response to dominant publics. However, a quietude that has permeated much of rhetoric and public sphere scholarship comes by way of the absence of youth-based voices in the public sphere. It is these same youths who are expected to lead the very publics that claim to represent them, yet do not afford them a mode of participation or agency in their own right. Given that studies in critical and vernacular rhetoric invest significant inquiry into the ways that marginalized communities enact responses towards dominant and mainstream ideologies, it is necessary to consider how these youthful perspectives contribute to rhetoric and the public sphere writ large. In an effort to inform the rhetorical tradition of its potential in accounting for the voices of youth, this study explores the ways in which youth speak, perform, and embody the various ways in which they belong to a public sphere. Through fieldwork in the LGBTQ youth organization One n’ Ten, I aim to speak to the ways in which rhetorical scholarship can begin to move towards a rhetoric of youth in public life. In this field, I utilize the concepts of enclaving and imagining in counterpublic spheres to examine the practices, discourses, and values that give rise to a queer counterpublicity that emboldens LGBTQ youth to speak and act in a way that honors their identities. Moreover, I draw on theories of critical and vernacular rhetorics to make sense of how One n’ Ten provides youth with opportunities to enact rhetorical agency conducive toward participation in public and counterpublic spheres. Finally, I discuss implications pertaining to how the experiences of young individuals stand to substantially inform theories in public, counterpublic, critical, and vernacular rhetorics, all of which contain opportunities to represent the experiences of both LGBTQ youth and youth writ large as members of public life. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication Studies 2018

Climate change is something that people are growing more concerned about. In conjunction with this, sustainability is becoming more important for Swedish consumers who shop online. Studies have also shown that it has become more common to shop second hand. A company that seeks to capitalize on this is Sellpy. The company describes itself as Sweden's largest e-commerce for second hand items. The purpose of this essay was to conduct a critical rhetoric analysis to investigate how the rhetoric works in Sellpy's communication on the web page “Vårt ansvar”. In addition the study aimed to investigate if there were underlying meanings in Sellpy's communication. To accomplish the purpose of the study the theoretical framework includes rhetorical theories, more particularly the rhetorical situation and the rhetorical disposition. The theoretical framework also includes the terms greenwashing and corporate social responsibility. These terms are used as tools to strengthen our reasoning and to helps us interpret why Sellpy's communication looks the way it does. The method used in this study is critical rhetoric analysis and includes the aspects disposition and situation. It aims to gather a deeper understanding of why a message is formatted as it is. The result showed that the text on the page "Vårt ansvar" largely follows the five parts included in the rhetorical disposition. The results also indicate that the rhetoric in Sellpy's communication is used to convince the audience that Sellpy is a reliable company with a good sustainability agenda that continuously strives for improvement through its sustainability work. Finally our results show that there is a primary underlying meaning in Sellpy's communication, namely that Sellpy wants to capitalize. In addition to this we interpret that there are also two secondary underlying meanings: the audience is good and does the environment and society a favour if they use Sellpy’s service and Sellpy is a reliable company that does good.

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