This course is an introduction to communication, as a field and rhetoric as a discipline. Rhetoric, began over two thousand years ago as the study of, citizenship through oral persuasion, and in the, past century has broadened into an examination of, how humans shape social realities through the use, of symbols. The course also introduces students, to theories that contradict the common perception, of communication as information exchange, or, language as a transparent medium for ideas., Instead, communication is investigated as a, central human activity that simultaneously opens, and closes doors of possibility.