New Population, New Ideas

By adding the experiences of Anzalduá, Campbell, and the “second population” to the field of rhetoric, we can not only become aware of the ways that a dominant rhetoric shapes a subjugated population, and the way that rhetoric is used by a subjugated population, it also gives us a new lens through which we can look at other cultures and experiences.

Anzalduá discusses the ways that existing in a borderlands, between multiple cultures, multiple localities, multiple languages, multiple everythings, works to shape an individual’s identity. It can work to alienate them, because they cannot identify with an single group or culture, but it can also strengthen them, because they can use the codes or techniques of these different groups and cultures to create a new style. She turns the “internal multiplicity” (pg. 1583)—the “wild tongues” (pg. 1585)—that she, and many others, were punished for using and shows that they can be hybridized to construct “positive discursive resource[s]” (pg. 1583). Anzalduá uses her mestiza consciousness—her hybridity—to examine and “break down paradigms” that would be invisible to those belonging to just one culture. This mestiza consciousness allows those who harness it to not only become aware of, but also prove, the fact that “all blood is intricately woven together” (pg. 1601).

Anzalduá, like Gates, also shows us that language, and rhetoric, can be used as an act of rebellion. It can be a secret language, available only to those who are a part of the culture, one they can hide from the dominant cultures, and one that they can use to separate themselves from it. The speakers of this secret language can resist the dominant discourse, and empower themselves by constructing their own language and their own identity to go along with it. But, as Gates also discusses, the fact that this secret language, or the one’s home discourse, is seen as a “bastard language”, can cause its speakers to have a “low estimation of [themselves]” (pg. 1588); it can make them believe that they are not as good as those who can—or do—speak the dominant discourse. Unlike Gates, Anzalduá’s theory gives more room for the switching between codes—the negotiation between the different identities that compose an individual. 

Campbell shows us how a population’s struggles and their goals can work towards shaping their rhetoric—and as she argues, can even lead to the construction of a genre of rhetoric. She argues that there are rhetorical conventions and features that are specific to “women’s liberation” and those features separate it from rhetorical genres like the ones Bitzer and Aristotle defined. 

I think that the theories and arguments that are given to us by scholars like Campbell and Anzalduá are not just applicable to their own cultures and/or genders. Instead, I think they can be used as lenses to look at other communities and cultures to see if there are any similarities.