Writing about the discrimination of women, Gearhart (1979) mentions that the act of violence in the one that rules a person and is the very fact of existence for a human. She singles out our understanding of human entities and non-human ones claiming that “we have been human chauvinists too long, calling consciousness out own, cornering the market upon it, setting ourselves above everything human because of our “higher awareness”. She believes that distinguishing between human and non-human objects changes them, and, as a result, becomes an act of violence: “The act of violence is in the intention to change another”(Gearhart, 1979).
According to Gearhart (1979), feminism is an ideology of change which rises out of the experiences of women that are historically treated as less important than men and played roles of receptacles, hearers, listeners, holders, environments and creators of the environments whereas violence has been associated mainly with men. The theorist draws our attention to the conquest model of human interaction. She points out the importance of conquering for men as a vital act without which their lives can have no sense. Since not everything can be conquered in the direct meaning, the concept was transferred to the field of rhetoric and metaphors. However, Gearhart (1979) emphasizes on the fact that even taking into account that there was some intent of changing the idea of conquering, “the difference between a persuasive metaphor and a violent artillery attack is obscure and certainly one of degree rather than of kind”. Therefore, she claims that the relations between men and women are influencing their worldview and further understanding of the world. It is interesting to point out that Gearhart noticed that metaphors containing violent actions were primarily used on women and then were transferred to the sphere of rhetoric. We can analyze the writing of Foucault (1972) who claimed that “in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality.” From these words we can see that he keeps the side of a conqueror that is opposite to the philosophy of feminist criticism.
Moving further, Gearhart (1979) provides her understanding of womanization in culture. She provides an interesting example of Mao The Tung’s metaphor of the egg and stone claiming that there is “internal basis for change”: an egg has the potential to become a chicken whereas a stone doesn’t have it even when all the external factors are favorable. Therefore, the linguist believes that if there is an internal willing to erase the conflict, it has a great potential to solve it peacefully through dialogue. According to Gearhart (1979), during the last decades, the field of persuasion broadened into the field of communication where the whole communication environment is understood as a matrix and raw a parallel between it and a womb, claiming that “a matrix is that within which or from which something takes form or begins”. We can see that she applies attributes the communication terms to the sphere of femininity and makes connections between them.
Another representative of feminist criticism, Celeste Condit in her work on gender and rhetoric analyzes the representatives of dichotomy feminism and claims that the theorists recommend a shift from the study of “rhetoric” since it is treated as persuasion and, therefore, related to male sphere, to the study of rhetoric as “communication” (Condit, 1997). However, it should be taken into account that the theorists of dichotomy feminism understand persuasion in different ways: Gearhart claims that “any attempt to persuade is an act of violence”, Foss and Griffin argue that the very definition of rhetoric as persuasion is a manifestation of the patriarchal bias, whereas Spitzack and Carter believe that women’s eloquence influenced a lot at the early stages of feminist studies.
Condit (1997) analyzes the worldviews of gender dichotomists and claims that they see gender quality as the key one determining central features of one’s identity and, as a result, their interests. Moreover, they claim that rhetoric belongs to the patriarchal realm since it plays a key role in the discourse of public sphere. They support the idea stating that men usually have more access to the public sphere comparing to women. It is important to point out that the representatives of feminist movement focus on the future perspectives of women and their opportunities to have access to publicity and make public speeches. Further, dichotomy feminism is aimed to replace rhetoric (understood as public persuasion) with communication studies focused on private, non-persuasive discourses. Furthermore, Condit (1997) claims that gender diversity offers a non-dichotomous understanding of gender, she argues that during the recent decades rhetorical studies were closely associated with “feminine” attributes rather than with masculine attributes. The theorist highlights the idea of going beyond the observation that rhetoric historically has been practiced primarily by males to explore the multiplicity and contradictions of the gendering of that practice, therefore, showing the specifics of a gender diversity perspective. Dichotomy feminists offered a simplistic portrayal of the history of rhetoric that does not provide a sufficient analysis of the complexities of the gendering in rhetoric. Moreover, “a gender diversity perspective treats rhetoric as the grounds of the construction of gender, rather than as the product of an already constructed essentialist gender” (Condit, 1997).
It is important to mention that the notions of the relationship between intention and the good have been debated for a long time, and provide to be more complex than is reflected in the analysis offered by dichotomy feminism. Further, the dichotomy feminists presuppose that people should live conservatively, closed to the external influence of the others. Therefore, they claim that we are isolated individuals at the first place rather than social animals who must cooperate in order to survive. Condit (1997) emphasizes on the fact that rhetoric is a social activity and feminists should pay attention to this fact rather than searching ways to replace it.
On balance, I would like to say that historically women were denied a voice in language and were not heard due to the predominance of male point of view. This fact is clearly visible from the writing of Foucault who was analyzing the discourse of language from the side of a man avoiding to mention any information about the impact of feminism in the above-mentioned sphere. The works of Gearhart and Condit showed that feminist understanding of the world had important impact on the understanding of rhetoric and communication as separate notions. Moreover, the theorists provided the information on the contribution of the feminist studies into the sphere of communication and language.
References
Condit, C. M. (1997) In Praise of Eloquent Diversity: Gender and Rhetoric as Public Persuasion. In Women's Studies in Communication, 20:2, 91-116.
Foucault, M. (1972). The Discourse on Language. In The archaeology of knowledge ; and, the discourse on language. New York: Pantheon Books.
Gearhart, S. M. (1979). The womanization of rhetoric. Women's Studies International Quarterly, 2(2), 195-201.
