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Burkean identification in Conservative Christian and feminist antipornography rhetoric
Abstract
This study used Kenneth Burke's theory of identification to examine the language used by feminist and Conservative Christian antipornography critics to discover if they shared dialectic substance enough to form a unified rhetorical community. The Conservative Christians were represented by Donald Wildmon and Neil Gallagher while the feminists were represented by Andrea Dworkin and a variety of other rhetors. The research found the rhetoric provided little basis for unity and far more opportunity for division. Strategic identification is undermined because of the discrepancy of terms used by each community to describe themselves. While both communities describe themselves as loving, correct, knowing, and angry only the Conservative Christians describe themselves as leaders, sincere, concerned, decent, good, involved, persistent, balanced, supportive, human, healthy, naive, unknowledgable, unimpressive, fearful, in the minority, and tempted. The feminists describe themselves as tender, intuitive, aware, brave, oppressed, and filled with self-hatred, despair, and anguish. Antithetical identification is avoided because the two groups portray their enemy in significantly different ways. To the Conservative Christians, pornography threatens their way of life and the social order, causes harms ranging from lust to murder, lies about society, perverts unsuspecting observers and is used by perverts and addicts. The subjects in pornography are prostitutes with abberent physical characteristics and pornography is, itself, sexual abuse. Feminists portray pornography as a threat to needed social change, and as a tool used by the oppressor that endangers, degrades, and exploits all women. Unnoticed identification is prevented by the differences in the metaphors and myths upon which the two communities rely. Conservative Christian metaphors include disease, pollution, addiction, height, growth, light and dark, engulfment, and freedom while feminists use metaphors of decay and burden. Both use a consumption metaphor but in significantly different ways. Feminist rhetoric makes use of a malevolent male myth while Conservative Christian rhetoric uses myths of supernatural forces and inevitable progression. Both communities use a powerful media myth, but the nature of media power is different for each community.
Subject Area
Communication
Recommended Citation
VerLinden, Jay G, "Burkean identification in Conservative Christian and feminist antipornography rhetoric" (1990). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9121939.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9121939