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Abstract
This article surveys and reflects upon the influence of anthropomorphism in environmental and sustainability discourses. It summarizes key perspectives on and tensions surrounding anthropomorphizing rhetorics, ultimately arguing that such rhetorics need not be anthropocentric. The article first defines core concepts and terminology, including anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism. It then provides an ideological history of environmental communication's tension between humanism and more-than-humanism, highlighting the role of communication and symbolism in shaping (or constraining) perspectives and making a case for a middle path of human-oriented (rather than human-centered) appeals, before concluding with recommendations for future work.

In 2012, actor-director Clint Eastwood was twice the special focus of attention in America, not for his acting or directing accomplishments but for a pair of uniquely prominent and instantly memorable televised ideological statements. His scripted appearance in a two-minute Super Bowl XLVI halftime commercial for the Chrysler Group was widely lauded while his address to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, later that year remains to this day an object of pointed criticism and widespread ridicule. This essay uses side-by-side rhetorical analyses of the two examples - this tale of two Eastwoods - to demonstrate the import of expectation and rhetorical persona in an age of modern, national, and global celebrity. The comparison illustrates how a massively famous speaker whose mediated public image has achieved highly symbolically status may both benefit from and struggle with what I call "iconographic persona." The essay argues that celebrity speakers and spokespersons in modern societies must seek congruence between iconographic persona and rhetorical ethos. In Eastwood's case, the expectations and associations met and solidified by the Chrysler ad went unmet in the RNC address, and thus two appeals by the same speaker resulted in two very different receptions. In conversation with Amossy, Halloran, and Butterworth in "connecting" contemporary discussions of rhetoric, celebrity, nationalism, and sport, this essay sheds light on the unique rhetorical position of the celebrity speaker in the political or activist spheres.

This collection applies critical communication methods and perspectives to examine how individuals and communities have responded on a global scale to present day water crises as matters of social justice. Case examples consider oratory, mass demonstration, deliberation, testimony, and other rhetorical appeals.