Dominance and legitimacy: the rhetoric that men use in their discourse on their violence against women

Abstract

Academic interest in applications of rhetoric to social issues is undergoing a revival. This paper develops a rhetorical analysis of discourse generated by men who have been recently violent towards women. The texts have been drawn from transcribed interviews with 14 men who had recently begun or are about to attend stopping violence programmes. Each 90-minute interview prompted the men on their views towards women, violence and relationships. A range of rhetorical devices within the text were identified and their effect was analysed. This paper focuses on five devices: reference ambiguity, axiom markers, metaphor, synecdoque and metonimy. The strategic effects of each device are discussed with close reference to sample passages from the transcripts. The paper explores how these rhetorical devices resource discourses of male dominance and entitlement to power, and how these in turn resource men in their violence towards women. Increased sensitivity to the nuanced effects of the rhetoric is seen to improve understanding of how men justify, camouflage and maintain positions of dominance within relationships with women.