Recognition of the transgender self: an examination of the apologia of the 'pregnant man'

value. (300) Examining the Dixie Chicks’ apologetic rhetoric in response to their criticism of President George W. Bush, Towner argues that the Dixie Chicks avoided apologizing and transcended the accusations of being un-American by linking their actions to high-order values of “patriotism” and “American.” The success of the Dixie Chicks’ persuasion depended on the audience agreeing or disagreeing with the definition of these core values. Ware and Linkugel clarify that the factors are not found within the speech; rather, they act as classifying instruments identified by the critic so that rhetorical strategies can be grouped, understood, and therefore studied. Thus, although some studies that employ Ware and Linkugel’s factors misuse the role of genre, the method does not inherently suffer from the criticisms of formalism and reductionism. Indeed, Ware and Linkugel are the first to acknowledge the likely objections to the scientific rigor and variable-approach to human behavior. However, they do not view their theory as a cookie-cutter or social scientific approach to rhetorical criticism, arguing instead that it, “serves merely as a source for a new departure in thought” (418). Specifically, the method calls for more than just classification; instead, the ambiguity of the factors/strategies requires the critic to determine how the strategies operate rhetorically in the speech of self-defense. As Ware and Linkugel clarify, “The factor terminology forces the critic to discern which choices a given strategy represents. The total import of these factors of apologetic discourse, however, become apparent only after we consider the ways in which the speakers usually combine them to produce that human behavior we term the speech of