What can sororities teach us about belonging?
Charlotte Hogg, professor of rhetoric and composition at Texas Christian University, delves in the question.
Faculty Bio:
Dr. Charlotte Hogg is a professor at Texas Christian University specializing in rhetoric and composition. She has authored, co-authored, or co-edited five books, most recently White Sororities and the Cultural Work of Belonging. Her work has also appeared in Inside Higher Education, The Washington Post, College English, Rhetoric Review, Peitho, and elsewhere. She teaches women’s rhetorics and literacies, creative nonfiction, and composition.
Transcript:
What is it about sorority life that remains so appealing? Greek-life, even with its bad press, comprises roughly 10% of the college population nationally and as high as 50% on some campuses. I researched National Panhellenic Conference (aka historically-White) sorority life behind the highly curated recruitment videos to better understand what sorority systems can teach us about how subcultures enact belonging.
Belonging seeks to erase differences for insiders, leaving others as outsiders. This kind of ideological work is done rhetorically through creating a shared space of making meaning connected to cultural values. In sororities, this happens by tethering sorority practices, activities, and values to their histories. Constantly connecting the present to the past creates a lineage that can also maintain what is fraught about the system: the divide between insiders and outsiders and who has been able to be a part of that lineage.
Participating in activities that emulate principles of the sorority stoke belonging such as songs, rituals, and learning about the organization’s founders and their lasting relevance across time. Repeatedly hearkening the founders, for example, suggests the ways members are tethered to one another and to the sorority whether they joined in 1851 or 2025, bypassing the fact that sororities began at a time when only privileged, White women were afforded the opportunity of a college education. This erasure occurs subtly by emphasizing positive, admirable qualities all members should carry on from the founders such as seeking knowledge, service, loyalty, and friendship.
Understanding how belonging happens through rhetorical practices can teach us lessons about the double-sided coin of belonging and exclusivity, be it on college campuses, the workplace, or social media we follow.
