Disciplining the Female Student Body: Consequential Transference in Arguments for School Dress Codes

Abstract

Based on an examination of news coverage from 2013 to mid-2018, this article analyzes rhetoric in favor of school dress code policies. I illustrate how women’s bodies are problematized in order to manifest grounds for regulating female attire. By employing pragmatic lines of argument, pro-dress code rhetors foster what I term consequential transference. Because pragmatic arguments rely on identifying consequences, questions of agency are implicit, as presuppositions of who is responsible for the consequences are embedded into the fabric of the discourse. In this case, dress code defenders paint female immodesty as responsible for several harmful potentialities, including negative social judgments, sexual harassment, and the distraction of male students in the classroom. I assert that pragmatic argumentation is a serviceable tool for underwriting misogynistic culture because consequential transference warrants female regulation and punishment by diminishing the accountability of other actors.

Keywords:

• Pragmatic argument
• consequential transference
• dress codes
• victim blaming
• body policing
• slut shaming

Note

Notes

1 One hundred incidents is a conservative estimate. Using LexisNexis Academic and Google Scholar, I gathered and analyzed 169 newspaper articles about dress code controversies from 2013 to mid-2018, a limited number of which covered the same or multiple incidents.