Sonja Foss

1
Sonja Foss

• A womens perspective

2
Feminist criticism

• Assumptions
• Womens experience are different from mens
• Womens voices are not heard in language
• Mens experiences are assumed to be universal

3
How are they different?

• Biologically, sure but
• The socialization processes that women and men
  undergo are different
• These processes teach women to be quieter than
  men
• And to assume positions of service and
  subservience

4
Language

• Foss says that womens experiences are not
  incorporated into language
• Women are denied a voice in culture because their
  discourse is kept from the public realm
• Women have been denied access to power because
  they have been denied access to rhetoric

5
The loss of the womans perspective

• Women are lost as members of the social world
• When women speak they are not taken seriously
• When they speak their words are less often
  recorded and analyzed

6
Foss challenges

• The tenets and assumptions of rhetoric
• Because the female voice has been absent in its
  creation
• She does not discard rhetorical theory altogether
• But notices its inception was focused on the
  concerns of men
• She wants to create a new rhetoric that takes
  everyones perspective in to account