Moral Panic and the Nasty Girl

[almac82]

In the article "Moral Panic and the Nasty Girl", paragraph 31 demonstrates the use of the rhetorical strategy logos. The authors illustrate how the nasty girl has become a "folk devil" that society has projected their anxieties onto. In this paragraph the authors use the psychoanalytical perspective to show their point. In psychoanalytical terms, the nasty girl is "more likely to be the object of projection rather than the source of concern and fear". This is to say that society has gone through huge changes in the last few decades; these changes has left people not knowing what to expect from the world anymore. These large, generalized anxieties tend to find a specific focus and create the phenomenon of moral panic.
This article specifically focuses on the gender issues that surround the increase in female violence and how this increase has deeply challenged the ingrained societal beliefs that girls are supposed to be "nice". Women have gone through huge changes in gender roles since the industrial revolution due to many shifts in society as a whole. These shifts have affected everyone in society, and are particularly visible when we look how roles and expectations have changed for women, because of this it becomes an easy area to project ones fear. This paragraph's use of logos to break down the reasons for the moral panic towards the nasty girl allows the reader to reflect upon their own fear projection and how the issues we tend to focus on are often symptoms of a much larger, more complex problem.

Comments

[blondedreamer26]

Hello- thanks for pointing out the use of logos. No wonder I connected with the material so literally, Im a logos girl at heart. Did you forget to include a discussion question?