Bonnie J. Dow

Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility

–The discourses constructing the coming-out of Ellen DeGeneres/Ellen Morgan, star of and lead character in the ABC television sitcom Ellen, were permeated with implications of authenticity and liberation, illustrating the continuing power of the confessional ritual described by Michele Foucault in The History of Sexuality. In contrast to the popular interpretation of the coming-out as an escape from repression, media treatment of the Ellen phenomenon was productive, in Foucaults sense, constructing a regulatory discourse that constrained the implications of gay visibility on commercial television by channeling it through a narrative of psychological autonomy, through television norms for representing homosexuality, and through an overarching strategy of personalization. I conclude with a discussion of the problems of “poster-child politics” as exemplified by the Ellen discourse.

«Feminine style» and political judgment in the rhetoric of Ann Richards

This essay argues for a revised perspective of the theory of “feminine style” developed by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell to explain the characteristics of historical feminist rhetorical action. Using a cas...

The State of the Art in Feminist Scholarship in Communication

The emergence of feminist scholarship in the field of communication follows, in many respects, a semilar historical trajectory to that of feminist visibility in the culture at large. When the second wave of feminism emerged in public consciousness around 1970, communication scholars began to attend more closely to the role of gender in communication practices. That attention was inflected by the concerns of the women’s movement—exposing sexism and sex-role socialization, interrogating the role of power in relations between men and women, understanding how awareness of the influence of gender requires rethinking claims of universality based on male experience and behaviors. In rhetorical studies, these emphases produced such germinal scholarship as Karlyn Kohrs Campbell’s 1973 essay, “The Rhetoric of Women’s Liberation: An Oxymoron,” which argued that second-wave feminist rhetoric could not be adequately understood through traditional rhetorical models. In interpersonal communication, they led to a question

Hegemony, feminist criticism and the Mary Tyler Moore Show

This essay claims that the feminist premise of The Mary Tyler Moore Show is contradicted by the patriarchal relationships and role definitions developed within its narrative, hegemonic devices that are bolstered by the conventions of the situation comedy genre. The conclusion explores the ideological tension produced by the shows narrative that allows for differing evaluations of the programs message, and discusses the implications for feminist criticism of televisions hegemonic patterns.

The function of epideictic and deliberative strategies in presidential crisis rhetoric

This essay argues for a revised perspective on presidential crisis rhetoric informed by an understanding of differing exigencies. Using speeches by Ronald Reagan, two types of crisis rhetoric are examined: those which fulfill a need for communal understanding and are characterized by epideictic strategies, and those which strive for policy approval and are characterized by deliberative strategies. The essay concludes that crisis rhetoric cannot be viewed as a homogeneous type of discourse; rather, it should be analyzed in relation to the different exigencies it responds to and the different functions it performs. Implications for the study of crisis rhetoric as a rhetorical genre are also discussed.

Femininity and feminism in Murphy Brown

While past examples of feminist rhetorical criticism have emphasized women as communicators, analysis of communication about women can illustrate the existence of recurring rhetorical strategies that devalue women. As an example, analysis of the situation comedy Murphy Brown illustrates how the programs female title character enacts a patriarchal interpretation of the excesses of liberal feminist ideology. Murphy Brown functions to reinforce the dichotomy between femininity and feminism that is an inherent problem of liberal feminism, demonstrating the need for greater critical attention to the range of feminist theories available for evaluation of rhetorical artifacts.

The “womanhood” rationale in the woman suffrage rhetoric of Frances E. Willard

Frances E. Willard, the leader of the Womans Christian Temperance Union from 1879–1898, relied primarily on womanhood arguments, making her uniquely successful at promoting woman suffrage with conservative audiences. Willard, through strategic use of euphemism and metaphor, linked womans desire for the vote with the qualities of women embodied in the “true womanhood” ideal. This essay concludes that the popularization of Willards strategies represented a transformation of the symbolic context of the woman suffrage movement, and it examines the implications of that transformation for later feminist action.

AIDS, Perspective by incongruity, and gay identity in Larry Kramer's “1,112 and counting”

AIDS activist Larry Kramers 1983 essay, “1,112 and Counting,” was a key rhetorical event in the development of AIDS activism by gays. This analysis relies on perspective by incongruity to explain Kramers attempts to stimulate AIDS activism by altering gays’ perceptions of the disease and its implications for their lives and identities. The author argues that the power of perspective by incongruity in this case is linked to its facilitation of genuine argument, a personalized form of persuasion that forces both arguer and audience to confront an arguments implications for their own identities and behavior as moral human beings. The conclusion suggests that “1,112 and Counting” functions as a variant of constitutive rhetoric that de‐constructs and re‐constructs audience identity.

Fixing feminism: women's liberation and the rhetoric of television documentary

On May 26, 1970, ABC broadcast the first television documentary treatment of the womens liberation movement. Part of a wave of media attention that second‐wave feminism received in the spring of 1970, the documentary was produced and reported by Marlene Sanders, a reporter sympathetic to the movement who hoped that the documentary would correct its image problems. Three key rhetorical moves in the documentary—form, framing, and refutation—are used to “fix” the movement, that is, to repair its radical image and to stabilize its meaning by inserting it into dominant narratives of social change derived from generic conventions of the television documentary, from a nostalgic vision of the civil rights movement, and from the media pragmatism favored by the liberal wing of womens liberation, which is shared by Sanders. The conclusion traces the implications of the documentarys rhetorical/ideological strategies for understanding how dominant media naturalize particular narratives about the possibilities for and meanings of social change.

Spectacle, spectatorship, and gender anxiety in television news coverage of the 1970 women's strike for equality

This essay examines television news coverage of the August 2 6, 19 70 Womens Strike for Equality, the first major media event of the second wave offeminism in the U.S. It explores three levels on which the news reports on the three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC), rely on notions of women and visual pleasure: first, in their positioning of the Strike as sheer spectacle; second, in their verbal and visual framing of the Strike as absurdist entertainment rather than reasoned protest, and third, in their emphasis on the issue of femininity under attack, an emphasis in which femininity is largely represented by womens bodies. I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which the framing of the events functions both to assert and to assuage a profound sense of gender anxiety on the part of the assumed male spectator for the coverage.