Canadian feminists at the turn of the 20th century were interested in producing a collectivity that buttressed arguments for women’s social and political participation. In this process, the negotiation of class relations among women was of particular importance in giving this feminism political weight. Often Canadian writers who took a feminist…[Read more]

This essay focuses on the woman’s page in the Grain Growers’ Guide, edited between 1912 and 1917 by Francis Marion Beynon. I approach this material with questions that have become prominent in rhetorical studies of women’s writing. How were women called forth to speak, and what were their motivations to participate in public debate? How did woman…[Read more]

From 1909 onward, the Canadian suffrage debate was heavily influenced by reports on suffrage militancy from Great Britain and the United States. Militancy played an influential role in Canadian suffrage history not through its practice–there was no Canadian militant campaign–but through an ongoing discussion of its meaning. Using Anne Fre…[Read more]

This article offers a way of using the theory of audience design—how speakers position different audience groups as main addressees, overhearers, or bystanders—for written discourse. It focuses on main addressees, that is, those audience members who are expected to participate in and respond to a speaker’s utterances. The text samples are artic…[Read more]