Social Change – English 151 Research Compendium

Condit, Celeste M. Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change. Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1990.

Celeste Michelle Condit is an associate professor in speech communication in the University of Georgia. She is also known as a co-author of another book known as “Crafting Equality: America’s Anglo- African Word”. The book “Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change” examines the terminology and rhetoric used in the abortion issue in the United States. The author looks at how various participants in the discussion, such as politicians, activists, and media sources, utilize language to influence the public’s views and affect public policy. The author also discusses how the rhetoric have a powerful impact on public opinion and policy, and that effective communication strategies are essential to advancing reproductive justice and human rights. This book is useful because it examines the ways in which various stakeholders in the debate use language to shape public opinion and influence policy, the book provides insight into the cultural, political, and ideological factors that contribute to the abortion debate.

“Public disclosure serves as such a bridge because it is both a concrete material practice and the bearer of ideas. It becomes, therefore, vital to any understanding of the evolution of material practices and ethics. Unfortunately, the few studies that have taken serious account of the disclosure of the abortion controversy have lacked methodological sophistication or have taken a static ahistorical perspective.” (Condit)
“Omitting this disclosure seems to reproduce the blanket of silence over these feminisms and to rely on a crude distinction between public, or *out-group, rhetoric and *in-group rhetoric.” (Condit)

Monshipouri, Mahmood. Inside the Islamic Republic. Google Books, Oxford University Press,

15 Dec 2015

Mahmood Monshipouri is an Iranian-Born author and educator. He teaches international relations as a professor at San Francisco University. His book, “Inside the Islamic Republic,” discusses Iran after the 1979 Revolution in the new Islamic government. Mainly, he states and analyzes the major changes in Iran’s post-revolution, and how it has led to dramatic shifts within the society. Monshipouri also makes arguments that changes during post-revolution Iran have been deleterious on many occasions. This article is useful as it can provide a more broad context of Iran’s background, which will first generate an understanding that will eventually lead to the conflict surrounding women through the use of other sources. It is important for this source to be used in the beginning of my essay for context.

1 -“It is worth noting that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini depicted the 1979 Revolution as an Islamic rather than an exceptionally Iranian one, conferring further legitimacy on it as an anti-imperialist and anti-West movement capable of spreading. Both symbolically and substantively, this moved fueled pan-Islamism throughout the region and led to an increased disdain toward foreign influence” (Monshipouri 2).

2 -“More broadly, these factors have led to cumulative uncertainties and policy failures in the wake of the dramatic socioeconomic, cultural, and political changes that the country has recently undergone, making it increasingly imperative to define and understand the broader contours of social and cultural change in Iran” (Monshipouri 2).