Understanding the Child Marriage Practice: A Rhetorical Study of Child Marriage Facebook Posts

Abstract

Various efforts advocating to end child marriage practice have been focused on finding evidence for its harmful effects and ways for development actors to fight against it. While the strategies include key messaging, there is a lack of focus on engaging communication as a social science (Calhoun, 2011). This dissertation utilized the Rhetorical Tradition in Communication Theory to answer this question: What are the rhetorical acts of the defenders and opposers of child marriage? By combined coding of themes and speech acts, and analysis of rhetorical appeals, devices and strategies performed in comments in Facebook posts on child marriage, it finds that the defenders of child marriage assert a collaborative and unified adherence to a belief in the superior form of religion. In contrast, opposers of child marriage vary in their acts, some with anti-religious rhetoric. Overall, combining the speech acts brought the study to the conclusion that the overarching rhetorical act of defenders is religious superiority in matters such as child protection and religious living. In contrast, the speech acts of opposers are scattered.

Advocates to end the child marriage practice have the rhetorical space of situatedness of child welfare as a common ground with defenders. As a precaution, advocates should consider politeness by being selective when calling child marriage a “practice.” For the defenders, the girl’s marriage is mainly a sacred act towards religious perfection under divine law, which is above any material, social, and other worldly concerns.