This paper is dedicated to the development of rhetoric in Poland after 1989
taking into account adaptation processes at two levels: communication practices
and research refl ection. The sociopolitical transformations have enabled an
unrestricted development of rhetorical activities, which were impracticable in the
former Eastern Bloc countries: advertising and marketing, political debates, civic
engagement, academic freedom. The adaptation has taken place at the level of
communication habits of citizens and rhetorical practices of rhetoric researchers
themselves. The study adopts the descriptive methodology and focuses on several
aspects: the process of internal differentiation of rhetorical studies, the infl uence
of the American rhetorical criticism on the studies, the rhetorical perspective
in linguistic research, media studies, and politics. The paper emphasises the
cultural characteristics of Polish rhetorical studies, which draw inspiration from
three main sources: 1) Old Polish oratory and its modern analyses from the
perspective of literary studies; 2) analyses of the propaganda of the times of
the Polish People’s Republic, including the media; 3) modern concepts from
the areas of argumentation, rhetorical criticism, discourse analysis, and media
studies. The overview shows that, after 1989, rhetorical studies can be described
as a self-organising system cre ated by dense intertextual relations, relationship
networks, and institutional frameworks rather than as a compilation of sparse
individual works.