Governing Codes: Gender, Metaphor, and Political Identity (Lexington Studies in Political Communication)

Focusing on the power of metaphor in the rhetorical construction of political reality, Anderson and Sheeler put the spotlight on gender and politics like no one before.

Karrin Vasby Anderson and Kristina Horn Sheeler have combined forces to produce a smart, crisply written treatment of metaphor’s strategic role in contemporary U.S. politics. They focus on the constitutive uses of language by four strong women, each working to re-articulate and thus turn to her political advantage otherwise negative stereotypes of women in positions of leadership. Ann Richards, Christine Todd Whitman, Elizabeth Dole, and Hillary Rodham Clinton provide rich cases for the authors to probe and critique the nexus of gender, metaphor, and political identity. This is a study not only of cultural constraints but also of rhetorical ingenuity and the enhancement of women’s political agency. It confronts head on the troublesome metaphor of sexual containment that has trapped political women in a debilitating double bind. This is a book that will be of immediate interest to scholars and students alike for its accessible insights into rhetorical constraint, ingenuity, and maneuver.