Title: Role of the Leader in Social Movements – Accessing Rhetoric
Headings: Role of the Leader in Social Movements
Role of the Leader in Social Movements
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Content: Moving backward for a moment, it’s also important to flesh out what Kohrs Campbell means when she claims that women’s rhetoric is substantively and stylistically different. I’ve already addressed the substantive issues (violating sex-appropriate norms), and she defines stylistic features as “characteristic modes of rhetorical interaction, typical ways of structuring the relationships among participants in a rhetorical transaction, and emphasis on particular forms of argument, proof, and evidence” (400). This is where I began this post: the notion of rhetorical interactions and leader-less social movements. Kohrs Campbell focuses on “consciousness raising,” which “involves meetings of small, leaderless groups in which each person is encouraged to express her personal feelings and experience” (400). There is no leader, rhetor, or expert. And the goal is to make the personal political, “to create awareness (through shared experiences) that what were thought to be personal deficiencies and individual problems are common and shared, a result of their position as women” (400). Here the differences of women’s rhetoric become clearer: rejecting a singular expert leader, valuing narrative and personal experience, risking self-exposure, emphasizing dialogue. And so, she concludes, the rhetoric of women’s liberation is ultimately an oxymoron: