This essay offers a case study of post-World War II discourse which attempted to rescind popular wartime images of the dehumanized enemy. By examining seventeen post-war issues of Ladies Home JournalAmthe most influential women's periodical of the time--the essay shows how the magazine's writers adopted a feminine style of discourse in order to encourage their millions of subscribers to view Japanese, Italian, and German war survivors in radically different ways. Specifically, the analysis suggests that the magazine rehumanized the former enemy through three interrelated attitudinal levels: I) feeling compassion; 2) adopting sufferance; and 3) experiencing identification. After exploring each area, the essay offers several implications of the analysis.

    Humans have long perceived war as masculine. The Greeks personified war in the form of the warrior Ares, whose sons were Phobos (or terror) and Deimos (or fear)--and whose name may have come from the word arsen, or "male" (Doty, 1993, p. 140). Centuries later, Victorian Britain embraced what Dawson (1994, p. 82) calls "popular imperialism," a philosophy which valued "the image of the brave British soldier-hero in endless colonial conflicts, with the emphasis very much on nationalist, racist, and militaristic aspects of masculinity" (Beynon, 2002, p. 31). Both of these examples are but two elements in a long tradition of masculinizing warfare and its various components. As Ruddick concludes, "nearly everyone agrees that war is in some sense 'masculine'" (1993, p. 10).

    Masculinized perceptions of warfare are consistent with the language choices we typically make when describing the actions of war. In particular, Cohn has argued that gendered discourse significantly shapes our perceptions of the enemy. Within the masculinized language of warfare, she suggests, the enemy is no longer human, but is a target, a victim, and an abstraction (1993). Other scholars have examined the related process of linguistically dehumanizing the enemy (Grossman, 1995; Hogan & Williams, 1996; Ivie, 1980, 1986). As Keen (1986) argues, "generation after generation, we find excuses to hate and dehumanize each other, and we always justify ourselves with the most mature-sounding political rhetoric" (p. 10).

    This language of dehumanization falls squarely into a category that one might call "the masculine style." As described by Dow and Tonn (1993), the style encompasses discourse that is typically "abstract, hierarchical, dominating, and oriented toward problem-solving" (p. 288). Dehumanizing discourse fits this description particularly well in its blatant attempts to justify bloodshed by separating enemies from their humanity-in the process describing beasts and infestations that deserve death or extermination (Link, 1991).

    To borrow Burke's perspective, this masculinized process of linguistic separation dehumanizes others through the principle of discontinuity, or "terms that take things apart" (1966, p. 49). Fortunately, Burke's perspective insists that there is also a complementary linguistic principle. Where there are "terms that take things apart," he points out, there may also be "terms that put things together" (p. 49). In the context of the language of war, this perspective suggests that while it is possible to use discourse to dehumanize the enemy, it may also be possible to use discourse to rehumanize the enemy.

    Such a discourse of rehumanization would be likely to follow a pattern described in recent years as the "feminine style" (K. K. Campbell, 1989, p. 12; Hayden, 2003; Tonn, 1996). This style encompasses language choices which are "characterized as concrete, participatory, cooperative, and oriented toward relationship maintenance" (Dow & Tonn, 1993, p. 288). Rather than enabling and encouraging the slaughter of an inhuman enemy, here would be language that "puts things together" (Burke, 1966, p. 49)--healing the wounds of war by reuniting enemies with their human qualities. The rehumanization process would thus linguistically rescind previous dehumanization, making it easier to establish a peaceful relationship after the end of hostilities.

    Regrettably, while scholarship has revealed much about the process of dehumanization prior to war, little work has explored the linguistic process by which enemies become former enemies, and even new allies. Eckhardt (1991) agrees, writing that "we know more about enemy images and some of their consequences ... than we know about how to make them and how to break them" (p. 88). Of course, if dehumanizing discourse and rehumanizing discourse are truly constituents of a masculine style and a feminine style, respectively, this situation should be no surprise. After all, Foss and Griffin (1995) have argued that most rhetorical research actually reinforces a patriarchal, masculinized perspective of discourse. An important task for linguistic scholars, then, is to investigate further forms of discourse which are less likely to reinforce patriarchal, masculinized systems of language.

    The central aim of this essay is to investigate such a feminine form of discourse by offering a case study of rehumanizing rhetoric. The discourse in question took place in the months following World War II. This time period is significant for my purposes primarily because that conflict presented Americans with three different enemies--Italy, Germany, and Japan--and thus multiplied the potential for rehumanizing discourse after the war. Although domestic attitudes toward these three enemies were not always identical, each was dehumanized during the war as administration propaganda worked to encourage soldiers on the battlefront and civilians on the home front to see the opposition as inferior and deserving of defeat (Fussell, 1989, chap. 9).

    The following analysis centers on the peacemaking discourse published in Ladies Home Journal (LHJ) from May, 1945 (immediately after the final victory in Europe) through September, 1946 (one year after the victory in Japan). LHJ, as the publication that "transformed the field of women's magazines" (Peterson, 1956, p. 11) was one of the primary periodicals of the era, with a circulation of over four million (topped only by Reader's Digest) (Peterson, p. 41). In addition, its pages offered regular columns by Eleanor Roosevelt and Dorothy Thompson--dubbed the two most influential women of the era (Sanders, 1973, p. 225). Due to its influence and popularity, then, LHJ offers an excellent venue for a case study of post-war popular discourse.

    An examination of LHJ's contents in the seventeen-month window reveals a persistent thread of discourse that described the three recently-defeated enemies.(FN1) Centered primarily in the magazine's "special features" section, the articles comprising this discourse offered a sharp contrast to the publication's other content, such as advertisements and commentary on fashion and beauty, gardening and decoration, as well as poetry and serial short stories featuring female protagonists.(FN2) Consistent with the magazine's other contents, however, this unusual discourse was self-consciously feminine--as exemplified in columns such as "Women and Peace" (B. B. Gould, 1945), and "A Call to American Women" (Thompson, 1945b), which articulated a perceived role for women as peacemakers in the aftermath of war. In these and other articles, LHJ encouraged readers to send food to Europe, to challenge lawmakers to end the need for wars, and--most of all--to help reconstruct the shattered post-war world.

    Beneath LHJ's calls to action was an ever-present charge to recognize the essential humanity of the three former enemies.(FN3) Unlike the masculinized public discourse which earlier depicted these enemies as barbaric, savage, or inhuman, the immediate post-war issues of the magazine offered a very different view of the defeated foes--a view which would serve quite well as an example of the feminine style. In particular, LHJ's peacemaking discourse built this positive view by tacitly endorsing three interrelated attitudinal levels: 1) feeling compassion; 2) adopting sufferance; and 3) experiencing identification. The following sections of this essay will examine each level in turn.