Rose McGowan's Me-Too Speech: A Study in Language

I'd like to take a break from politicians and talk about Rose McGowan's "Me-Too" speech, which discussed sexual abuse, at the Women's Convention in Detroit, Michigan. McGowan's character resisted evil on the television show Charmed, and it was interesting to hear her talk about real-life evil. I'll talk little about her actual allegations and motivations--other people are more qualified to discuss them--and instead look at her language use, which featured sophisticated rhetorical tropes and figures of speech. Powerful language helps a speaker emphasize key points. The audience remembers points that a speaker expresses in powerful language.

First, the #MeToo hashtag is itself a neologism, that is, an invented term attributed to Tarana Burke. Unfamiliar phrases, especially if they are short and pithy, grab our attention. Referring to her own history as a sexual assault victim, McGowan used the "me-too" phrase to identify herself with her audience: "Thank you, Tarana Burke, thank you to all of you fabulous, strong, powerful me-toos, because we are all me-toos -- and thank you to Tarana for giving us two words and a hashtag that helped free us." McGowan continued by linking "I" and "we" statements to establish identity: "I have been silenced for twenty years," soon followed by "We are free. We are strong. We are one massive collective voice."

In that opening section, one also notes McGowan's parallel language: "We are free. We are strong. We are one massive collective voice." The "we are's" have a cumulative effect. She continued: "Its time to be whole. It's time [to] rise. It's time to be brave." Also parallel, also a cumulative effect.

A "monster" metaphor then drove home her attack on evil: "In the face of unspeakable actions from one monster, we look away to another: the head monster of all right now and they are the same and they must die." Repetition then drove her point home: "It is time. The paradigm must be subverted. It is time."

People respond well to groups of three, leading us to notice McGowan's rhetorical tricolon: "Name it, shame it, call it out." She ended with a brilliant allusion to Nathaniel Hawthorne: "The scarlet letter is theirs, it is not ours. We are pure, we are strong, we are brave and we will fight."

At the end of her speech, she tied her sense of unity and female empowerment into a thinly-veiled attack against Donald Trump's Access Hollywood scandal.

Effective, powerful language made this speech memorable.

Alas, McGowan was later charged with a drug offense. Too bad.