Written Communication Jul 2009

Confronting Rhetorical Disability

Kim Hensley Owens University of Rhode Island

Abstract

Through its analysis of birth plans, documents some women create to guide their birth attendants' actions during hospital births, this article reveals the rhetorical complexity of childbirth and analyzes women's attempts to harness birth plans as tools of resistance and self-education. Asserting that technologies can both silence and give voice, the article examines women's use of technologies of writing to confront technologies of birth. The article draws on data from online childbirth narratives, a childbirth writing survey, and five women's birth plans to argue that women's silencing, or rhetorical disability, during childbirth both prompts and limits the birth plan as an effective communicative tool. The data suggest that the birth plan is not consistently effective in the ways its authors intend. Nonetheless, this analysis also demonstrates that the rhetorical failure of the birth plan can be read as, and thereby transformed into, rhetorical possibility.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2009-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088308329217
Open Access
Closed
Topics
disability studies voice and style

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (9)

  1. Campeau (2023)
    Who’s a Vaccine Skeptic? Framing Vaccine Hesitancy in Post-Covid News Coverage
    Written Communication
  2. Campeau et al. (2023)
    “It Makes Everything Just Another Story”: A Mixed Methods Study of Medical Stor…
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  3. Larson (2021)
    The Rhetoricity of Fat Stigma: Mental Disability, Pain, and Anorexia Nervosa
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  4. Campeau (2021)
    Translanguaging outside the academy: Negotiating rhetoric and healthcare in the…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  5. Swacha (2018)
    “Bridging the Gap between Food Pantries and the Kitchen Table”: Teaching Embodi…
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Show all 9 →
  1. Reed (2018)
    Building on Bibliography: Toward Useful Categorization of Research in Rhetorics…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  2. Breuch et al. (2016)
    Toward Audience Involvement
    Written Communication
  3. Ray (2016)
    Stylizing Genderlect Online for Social Action
    Written Communication
  4. Johnson (2010)
    The Skeleton on the Couch: The Eagleton Affair, Rhetorical Disability, and the …
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly

Cites in this index (0)

No references match articles in this index.

Also cites 11 works outside this index ↓
  1. 10.1002/14651858.CD003519
     ↗
  2. 10.1515/text.1.1996.16.3.299
     ↗
  3. Bourdieu, P. (1990)
    The logic of practice (R. Nice
     ↗
  4. 10.1017/CBO9780511813085
     ↗
  5. Christie, C. (2000)
    Gender and language: Towards a feminist pragmatics
     ↗
  6. 10.1056/NEJMp068290
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  7. 10.1080/00335630701425100
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  8. 10.1515/mult.2004.001
     ↗
  9. Mizuno, K. (2004)
    10.1111/j.1651-2227.2004.tb00856.x
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  10. 10.1001/jama.294.3.359
     ↗
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CrossRef global citation count: 22 View in citation network →

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