The rhetoric of antisemitism in the UK

Following Raymond Williams’ notion of keywords, we explore the extent to which antisemitism is part of the cultural and social vocabulary of Britain, explicitly and implicitly. We establish a conception of rhetoric as the theory-praxis of becoming attentive to speech and its workings in individual and collective life, both in speaking as well as in listening. In the form of a dialogic exploration of the articulation of antisemitism in individual, lived experience, we explore how what is said and what is not said determines cultural memory, belonging, identity and difference. The resulting text puts the new conception of rhetoric we propose into practice. Antisemitism emerges as a keyword in the discursive formations regarding particularity, embodiment and care. It thus transcends the bounds of ethnic, religious or migrant discrimination and shows us an essential feature of the nature of human communication.

This is an Accepted​ Manuscript of an article published by De Gruyter​ in Rhetorik: Ein Internationales Jahrbuch on October 8, 2025, available at
https://doi.org/10.1515/rhet-2025-0009

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