Legal Communication Students Win Top Paper Award

Two legal communication students won an award at the most recent meeting of the National Communication Association. Alondra Gilbrech and Reaves Robinson were named as the runners-up for the James L. Golden Outstanding Student Essay in Rhetoric Award. This highly competitive award honors the best student essay on the history, theory, or criticism of rhetoric.

Gilbrech and Robinson’s essay is titled, “The Case Against Leftist Lunacy: A Metonymic Criticism of Libs of TikTok’s Forensic Rhetoric.” Their work explores how Chaya Raichik uses the right-wing Twitter account @LibsofTikTok to associate left-wing individuals with extremist beliefs. Throughout their essay, Gilbrech and Robinson show how Raichik employs rhetorical strategies like metonymy—the trope of association—to incriminate left-leaning groups like LGBTQ+ teachers, medical professionals, and pro-choice supporters, among others. Ultimately, Gilbrech and Robinson advance a powerful case for how right-wing commentators use rhetoric to target and harass their opponents.  

Gilbrech and Robinson’s project was directed by Terrell Jake Dionne, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, who had this to say: “Alondra and Reaves embody kairos. Kairos is the rhetorical figure for seizing the opportunity to say the right thing at the right time. Alondra and Reaves accurately detected the growing influence of @LibsofTikTok at a moment when the account was still somewhat unknown. In the process, Alondra and Reaves created scholarship about an emergent phenomenon that has had quite an impact on US public discourse. All in all, I am inspired by their perceptiveness and commitment to using scholarship to promote inclusive excellence.”

This story also appeared in the University of Arkansas News publication.