Music as Persuasion: Refuting Hegemonic Masculinity in “He Thinks He'll Keep Her”

Abstract

This essay examines the rhetorical strategies Mary Chapin Carpenter employs in her attempt to persuade listeners to reject hegemonic masculinity through song. “He Thinks He'll Keep Her” is used as a case study because it marks a turning point for female popular music artists and the messages they may espouse through their music. Three general implications arise from this analysis. First, music can function effectively as an authentic voice for women as a marginalized group. Second, music can be an effective means by which to persuade nonmembers to accept an argument as legitimate by (a) simultaneously offering incongruent discursive and nondiscursive messages, thereby generating meaning through irony, (b) cushioning an oppositional discursive message in incongruent discursive musical form, making the argument more palatable, and (c) repeatedly using an ambiguous discursive message in the chorus, allowing meaning to evolve gradually over the course of the song. Third, the illusion of life rhetorical perspective serves as an effective model by which to discover how musical messages consisting of both discursive verbal content and nondiscursive emotional content may persuade as well as communicate.