Rhetoric as Balance: A Dialectical Feminist Perspective

Abstract

This article uses Condit's “Gender Diversity,” and Foss, Griffin, and Foss's “Feminist Reconstruction” essays as starting points to argue for “dialectical feminism” as a viable perspective on the relationship between gender and rhetoric. Dialectical theory, as evidenced by trends in communication and rhetorical studies, can be used to chart the interdependence indigenous to gender relations, and rhetoric can be viewed as a functional way to balance power or to mediate between diverse or discordant gendered realities.