As the word turns: Drama, rhetoric, and press coverage of the Hill-Thomas hearings

Because of the unique character of the Hill-Thomas hearings, journalists were left without a stock political plot to render the proceedings in familiar terms. Using narrative and rhetorical analyses, the study examines how newspaper journalists turned to so-called women's entertainment genres such as soap opera and melodrama to dramatize and ultimately depoliticize the hearings. The study identifies four recurring rhetorical themes-melodrama, eroticization, agon, and privatization-that served to frame Hill's allegations of sexual harassment against Thomas not in terms of social and political debate but in terms of drama.