THE CRITIQUE OF VERNACULAR DISCOURSE KENT A. ONO AND JOHN M. SLOOP Critical rhetoricians should, by criticizing vernacular discourse, follow the path of those who have discussed the rhetoric of the oppressed. The critique of powerful discourse has broad "historical" impact and therefore has been the primary mode of critique within rhetorical criticism. In addition to the critique of widely disseminated texts, critics should examine texts that profoundly influence vernacular communities and communitas. We conceptualize how a study of vernacular discourse could be carried out by defining vernacular, describing the critique of vernacular discourse, explaining the purpose of such criticism, and illustrating our approach through a brief study of one example of vernacular discourse: World War II representations of women in the Pacific Citizen, a Japanese American newspaper. I f one thing has remained a consistent practice in rhetorical criticism at least since Kenneth Burke's (1957) "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle,' " it is a critical focus on the discourse of the empowered, discourse of those who control, design, and create the public space. Burke did not study what homosexuals and Jews in the United States were saying about the Nazi movement in Germany. He did not look at the discourse of those in Germany who resisted or protested Hitler's rule. Burke's study is compelling because it indicts Hitler's rhetoric; it challenges the voice of oppression, villainy, martyrdom, and demagoguery in Mein Kampf Burke was interested in rhetoric of the inhuman, the brutal, and the obsessed. His focus on Hitler's rhetoric is what makes his essay exemplary rhetorical criticism. Indeed, some might say that Burke's focus on power defines what rhetorical critics do: examine speeches of those who caused grave injustices and altered history as a result. For these scholars, the critique of power illuminates how power functions, how it controls. However, the focus on evil power is not the only way to study power. Praiseworthy discourse, such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s (1963) "I Have a Dream" speech or Abraham Lincoln's (1863) Gettysburg Address, are often objects of study because they should be remembered, admired, and perhaps emulated. The rhetor learns how to make arguments, and through emulation speaking and writing become clearer. l Thus, documents of power have been both deconstructed and emulated in the history of rhetorical criticism. But if we limit our attention to such documents available to the widest possible audience, documents that shaped the "history" of our society, then we are missing out on, and writing "out of history," important texts that gird and influence local cultures first and then affect, through the sheer number of local communities, cultures at large. Burke made the choice to analyze Hitler's rhetoric rather than the rhetoric of Jews in Warsaw or Berlin. He made a choice to criticize the man in control, not those buckling under his fist. We argue in this essay that rhetoricians-or more specifically, critical rhetoricians 2 -should, by criticizing Kent Alan Ono is assistant professor of rhetoric and communication at the University of California, Davis. John Martin SloCJ'P is assistant professor of speech communication at Drake University. Portions of this manuscript were drawn from kent Ono's doctoral dissertation (Iowa, 1992), Bruce Gronbeck (director). A version of this manuscript was presented at the SPeech Communication Association Convention in New Orleans, LA, 1994. We would like to thank Todd Boyd, Sarah Projansky and Carole Blair for their help on this manuscript. COMMUNICATION MONOGRAPHS, Volume 62, March 1995