Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons^™

Show Me Your Desire: Critical Discourses Of Legislating Voter Identification, Right To Work, And Sb 1070., Michelle Kearl

Michelle Kelsey Kearl

While popular and political discourses seeking to shore up the mobility of bodies ‘to be’ in public is nothing new, the recent convergence of a host of legislating is worth noting. The rhetoric surrounding voter identification and right to work laws, as well as Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 underscore xenophobic compulsions to reconstitute the appropriate public body. In this manuscript I am specifically interested in the intersection of race and class as they emerge in the political discourses of these cultural and legislative debates. In these three cases several tropes emerge including traditional arguments to preserve the American Dream for …