Boy Trouble: Rhetorical framing of boys' underachievement

Abstract

This article examines discourse in the United States used to socially construct an “underachieving boys” moral panic. Employing discourse analysis I examine the adversarial rhetoric of claims-makers and the frames they deploy to undermine alternative and conflicting accounts (of females as disadvantaged) and to forestall any challenges to the scientific authority of their own (biological essentialist) account of crisis. I illustrate how this discourse adapts the rhetorical frame of gender equity from the discourse it politically opposes, and uses it to legitimate its own goals. I find that the framing of innocent victimized boys as scientific “truth” is aligned with a broader masculinity politics that blames certain “folk devils”, and a synchronic moral panic about fearsome (black) male youth. I conclude by considering the success of this moral panic as evidenced by changes in educational policies and practices in the United States.