Obscurity, verbosity, and pretentiousness are to be avoided; unusual words are to be used only when they aid clarity and prevent the aforementioned faults. For Aslell, women's rheloric should focus on the art of conversation, us both Sutherland and Renaissance scholar Jane Donawerth have argued. This is women's proper rhetori­cal sphere, different from but in no way inferior to the public sphere in which men use oratory.

accommodate her audi­ence.

We all need to have things pointed out to us, things stressed in our interest.

Her solution is pedagogical: a shift toward inquiry as social action. Rather than encouraging students merely to write about what interests them or to take a definitive position in a paper or speech (requiring them to decide whether something is good or bad), Rice proposes that educators encourage their students to investigate the complexities of a given topic without a commitment to reaching a conclusion.