Overview

Rhetoric, Embodiment, and the Ethos of Surveillance: Student Bodies in the American High School investigates the rhetorical tension between controlling student bodies and educating student minds. The book is a rhetorical analysis of the policies and procedures that govern life in contemporary American high schools; it also discusses the rhetorical effects of high-security, high-surveillance school buildings. It uncovers various metaphors that emerge from a close reading of the system, such as students' claims that school is a prison. Jennifer Young concludes that many of the policies governing contemporary American high schools have come to rhetorically operate as a discourse of default that works against the highest aims of education, and she offers a method of effecting a cultural shift for going forward. Specifically, Young calls for an explicit application of intentional rhetoric to match discourse to audience and suggests that the development of empathy as a core value within the high school might be more effective in keeping students safe than the architectural and technological approaches we currently employ.

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9781498555999

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Reviews

Young provides a thorough analysis of the ways in which we position, police, and regulate student bodies. Reading everything from policies to architecture, Young persuasively illustrates the real and immediate need for a more nuanced understanding of the impact of embodiments in secondary education settings. -- A. Abby Knoblauch, Kansas State University Jennifer Young's book is an exemplary application of critical discourse analysis to the plight of young people who too often feel imprisoned in our schools. Her savvy and illuminating analyses are fully in the service of ending business as usual and getting on with a badly needed paradigm change in school and society. -- James Paul Gee, Arizona State University

Author Information

Jennifer Young is assistant professor of English at Tiffin University.

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