Theorizing Chemical Rhetoric: Toward an Articulation of Chemistry as a Public Vocabulary

Abstract

Chemistry has been a pivotal part of scientific discovery and human life for centuries. This essay argues that chemical terms, tropes, figures, appeals, and narratives serve as powerful rhetorical features of public discourse. From affinities and atoms to dark matter and radioactivity, chemical rhetoric fulfills a central organizing function in contemporary society and shapes how people deliberate and delineate their identities, relationships, and communities. The present research demarcates chemical rhetoric as a form of nonexpert communication, and explicates its association with chemistry’s disciplinary history, as well as with technical chemical language’s grounding in key focal concepts. More specifically, it maps out a framework for defining and theorizing chemical rhetoric through three, interconnected lenses: historical–ecological, conceptual articulation, and vernacular. The overarching goal in this essay is to create an infrastructure for investigating chemistry’s longitudinal circulation and emergence as a shared public vocabulary.