Polysyndeton, Social Media, and the Contested Meanings of January 6, 2021

Abstract Adapting a Burkean approach to rhetorical tropes, this essay argues that polysyndeton comprises a significant trope shaping political communication via social media. We argue that polysyndeton reflects the cultural dynamics of liquid modernity and furnishes an organizational logic to a particular domain of human symbolic action, namely, social media. Because polysyndeton dually stresses amplification and association, grouping things that do not have a necessary relationship and delivering them to an audience as an undifferentiated mass, it is perfectly suited to serve as a lens for interpreting the political and cultural complexities of our present era, including the Capitol Riot of January 6, 2021.