Anxious Rhetorics of Intergenerational Love in Parenthetical Girls' Entanglements (2012)

Undergraduate: Haley Konitshek

Faculty Advisor: Jordynn Jack
Department: Political Science

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Scholars in rhetoric are increasingly attentive to the power of normative rhetorical strategy to shape and restrict social function. There has been growing intrigue regarding the effect of normative rhetorical impression on exchanges within human relationships. This paper takes up the connection between social conversation about love as identified by recent scholars, and its power to script and consequently direct romantic interactions within intergenerational relationships. By controlling the conversation and limiting access to that conversation, popular genres utilize strategic rhetoric to define social norms. Consequently, those the conversation proscriptively excludes exist within restricted spheres of language and expression. I develop an understanding of social direction and the transformation of American attitudes, which historically have informed these social norms. To demonstrate the effect of normative rhetorical strategies on intergenerational relationships, I analyze the lyrical and musical responses to this causality in Entanglements, a controversial concept album by Portland's experiential pop band Parenthetical Girls, which warrants attention from rhetoric scholars. I argue that this artistic adaptation comments on a general phenomenon of sexual hierarchy within the United States and that this hierarchy influences the exchange between partners in intergenerational relationships, ultimately reducing expressions of relation and intimacy.