The Disappearing Accused: Rhetoric, Narrative, and Campus Sexual Assault

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a rhetorical analysis of media reports on campus sexual assault informed by the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). The analysis reveals patterns of narrative construction wherein those accused of campus sexual assault remain absent from reporting while universities and accusers are burdened with responsibility. Consequently, the “disappearing accused” contributes to public uncertainties about how to respond to the problem of campus sexual assault and complicates how governing policies, particularly Title IX, are perceived, wherein Title IX’s equity framework does not match expectations of justice in response to violence.

Notes

1. The authors would like to extend our most sincere thanks to the RR reviewers for this article, Jenny Andrus and Julie Jung, for their helpful and generative feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

2. “Linguistic device” is the term that these authors use as their focus of analysis, though it bears noting that these devices are operating argumentatively and rhetorically across the discourses they study, offering a productive cohesion between their findings and our analyses here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lourdes Fernandez

Lourdes Fernandez is a term Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of Composition at George Mason University, where she teaches advanced composition, technical communication, and rhetorical theory. Her work focuses on faculty professional development and writing program administration. Her research interests include institutional responses to public problems, research methods, and rhetorics of sexual assault. Her work appears in Technical Communication Quarterly and Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric. She can be reached at [email protected].

Heidi Y. Lawrence

Heidi Y. Lawrence is an Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University. Her work focuses on professional and technical communication, controversies in health and medicine, research methods, and rhetoric. Her research has appeared in the Journal of the Medical Humanities, Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, and the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. She is the author of Vaccine Rhetorics, published by The Ohio State University Press, forthcoming spring 2020.

Bonnie Stabile

Bonnie Stabile is Research Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Public Policy (MPP) program at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Professor Stabile teaches courses in policy analysis, program evaluation, and ethics in the public policy, public administration, and biodefense programs. She directs the Gender and Policy (GAP) Center at the Schar School, and is Editor of World Medical & Health Policy, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley. Professor Stabile’s recent research projects and publications include an interdisciplinary investigation of sexual assault policy; and an examination of the role of gender in public affairs education.