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The Political Use Of "Family Values" Rhetoric, Elizabeth Caroline Powell

Communication Theses

The bipartisan political slogan “family values,” coupled with discourse surrounding the supposed breakdown of the American family, is a rhetorical move used by political agencies in an effort to excuse the socio-economic failings in America and to reassign responsibility for these failings to the private sphere. This rhetoric tends to promote the idealized nuclear family, while marginalizing the poor and non-traditional family groups.