Rhetoric Review Jul 2011

Reviews and Reactions: A Rhetorical-Cultural Analysis ofThe Business of Being Born

Kim Hensley Owens University of Rhode Island

Abstract

This article analyzes The Business of Being Born, a documentary that critiques dominant American childbirth practices, practitioners, and locations as overmedicalized, and offers midwife-attended homebirth as a safe, viable option. The rhetorical-cultural analysis focuses on the documentary's reception, including twenty-six film reviews and two statements issued by the American Medical Association and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The article demonstrates the role of ethos in genre reception, with a particular look at celebrity ethos associated with documentaries. The article suggests not only that visual arguments such as documentaries currently affect cultural conversations more readily than print arguments but also that dominant discourses and ideologies delimit those conversations' boundaries.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2011-07-01
DOI
10.1080/07350198.2011.581947
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Topics
rhetorical criticism genre theory argument affect and writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Kuehl et al. (2015)
    Designing public communication about doulas: analyzing presence and absence in …
    Communication Design Quarterly

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CrossRef global citation count: 2 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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