Feminist Rhetorical Criticism

Feminist rhetorical criticism recognizes that the symbolic construction of women and gender is central to the study of communication. When critics select a feminist critical approach, their goal is to explore and explain that construction. Feminist rhetorical criticism is grounded in the assumption that, historically and currently, women and men often have different access to channels and positions of power. Because this differential access can affect the communication styles and strategies used by women, feminist criticism is used to understand, validate, and theorize about those communicative differences. As a critical tool or approach, feminist rhetorical criticism helps scholars explain how communication is used to constrain and/or enable women, how communication is used to resist those constraints and facilitate empowerment, and how communication is used to create nonoppressive identities and ways of being. Because feminist rhetorical criticism is an approach to the study of communication that informs every aspect of a scholar's critical process, this entry will describe the political nature of feminist rhetorical criticism and explain the methodologies, texts, and stances taken by feminist critics.

Feminist rhetorical criticism has an explicitly political agenda: The critic's goal is to advance and improve the symbolic and material positions of women. When scholars engage in feminist rhetorical criticism, they seek to understand that oppression as well as the communication used by and about women to overcome that oppression. Additionally, although feminist rhetorical criticism always begins with an explicit exploration of the position or positions of women in societies because of its overtly political goals, it also takes into account the myriad and complex identities women hold. These identities are linked to the historical, cultural, ethnic and racial, sexual, and socioeconomic realities of women's lived experiences. As such, feminist rhetorical criticism is grounded in the acknowledgment of two things related to the study of communication: Gender matters and gender does not exist in isolation; it is always present in a state of interconnection with other subject and identity positions.

Feminist rhetorical criticism can be a perspective, approach, or method that stands on its own, or it can be linked to other critical and theoretical perspectives, approaches, and methods. When used alone, the critic uses an inductive approach, asking, “How is gender symbolically constructed in this text?” or “What is the construction of gender in this text?” The critic then identifies and explains the various examples of its construction. In this inductive approach, the critic is searching for examples of how women as well as men are constructed in a text, or series of texts, and what that construction tells scholars about symbol use and women's oppression. With this inductive approach, the critic also always identifies the interconnections of race and ethnicity, economic status, and other identities and subject positions as they are linked to and influence communication. When used in combination with other critical methodologies, the critic might ask a more focused question or set of questions, such as “How does a woman's subaltern status affect her ability to communicate in this text, or texts?” or “How does a woman's token status facilitate or constrain her communicative options?” and “How does the communication strategy of appropriation function in this text?” This is the approach taken by Dana Cloud on Oprah Winfrey's biography. These more focused questions allow a critic to concentrate on a particular aspect of communication and function as guides or links to particular bodies of theory the critic finds relevant to the text under study. In this more focused approach, the critic also identifies the intersections and influences of race and ethnicity, economic status, sexuality, and the like.

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