Arguments about Women’s Rhetoric can be seen throughout feminist rhetorical theory in different forms. Here are some claims made about women’s rhetoric and its role in understanding communicative practices in general.
One common theme among feminist rhetoricians is that it is possible to identify a different voice that makes possible collaboration and creation of a multi-voiced text. Initial efforts were about recovering texts that have been suppressed by the male canon.
Women “do” rhetoric differently, and are reinventing the rhetorical tradition. Because of women’s contributions, rhetoric will be judged in part on the basis of relationship, growth, community, and learning.
Joy Ritchie redefines women’s rhetorical theory in the context of its relationship to content, practice, experience and pedagogy. Women’s rhetorical situations tend to be rooted in practice and using transgressive forms, such as letters, journals, columns, which challenge traditional notions of style, invention, arrangement and other rhetorical forms.
It is difficult to separate feminism from women’s rhetoric because the demand for rights has often be an impetus for women’s writing. As Susan Jarratt has pointed out, women’s rhetoric has functioned politically and figuratively, based on asserting the right to speak and challenging established power relationships.
One of the basic topics of women’s rhetoric is a complex interaction of cooperation and subversion. This involves new rhetorical strategies and a different sense of exigency based on gender, critiquing prevailing rhetorical views while seeing where women’s rhetoric can function cooperatively.
In women’s rhetoric, the term woman becomes problematized in order to create a new subjectivity. The definition of woman becomes varied and challenging to standard views and in turn challenge typical notions of what it means to do rhetoric.
Part of the goal of women’s rhetoric is to carry on the feminist tradition of recovering a previously unknown or ignored canon. This means opening up or interrupting the traditional male canon, regendering past conceptions of the rhetorical tradition.
Women’s rhetoric also opens up discussions of previously ignored writing of other marginalized groups and is connected to considerations of class and race.
Women’s rhetoric desires to understand symbol use from various feminist perspectives in order to challenge dominant practices and constructs of gender. It recognizes that the patriarchal bias of many rhetorical theories limits an understanding of rhetoric.
