| Abstrakt: |
This analysis of Marian Wright Edelman's book, The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours, demonstrates how the power of the parental voice as a persuasive social force can move an audience to action and generate changes in policy. Parental narratives can become the primary basis for how children perceive, judge and gain knowledge about their lives. Thus, the rhetoric of parents-immediate and extended-serve as narratives we live by. The rhetorical situation, image of the universal mother, and use of the "motherly nag," as a rhetorical device, all aid Edelman's argument that parents are ready-made storytellers just by their inherent family legacies. By passing on their family legacies through parental narratives, children are able to develop their narrative rationality-probability and fidelity. Thus, parental narratives support Fisher's narrative paradigm, which treats people as storytellers-authors, and co-authors who creatively read and evaluate the texts of life (Fisher, 1985b). Therefore, parents serve not only as authors of their life narratives, but also as co-authors of the life narratives of each of their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
