Audience Responses to Muzaffar al-Nawab’s Political Poems Published on YouTube

Abstract

Audience rhetoric is a modern critical concept that restores the status of the recipient and represents a novel perspective in rhetorical studies; it shifts the focus from the rhetoric of the speaker to that of the addressee, positioning the audience as a creator of rhetoric—empowered by linguistic and digital tools to assert its own rhetorical voice. Often, audience rhetoric serves as a tool for marginalized groups and oppressed peoples to confront authoritarian discourse. This study aims to examine how the consciousness of the audience of poet Muzaffar al-Nawab merges with his political texts. The research is divided into two sections: the first addresses the theoretical frameworks of audience rhetoric, while the second focuses on the practical application; the study also includes an introduction and a conclusion. The research concludes that the audience’s responses to al-Nawab’s poems are diverse, characterized by active engagement that involves reinterpreting the texts and projecting them onto real-world events.