NCA-affiliated rhetoric, as they see it, is under threat from within and without the field of communication studies. 3 That my review should have been singled out for their expression of disciplinary angst stems apparently from my enthusiasm for rhetoric's increasing globalization and for my failure to appreciate how that intellectual movement further undermines NCA-rhetoric's already weakened position relative to its real and imagined rivals. But much that I had to say in the review essay in support of a globalized conception of rhetoric and of an expanded role for civically oriented rhetoricians goes unaddressed by my colleagues. Of central concern to them are issues of