ABSTRACT
Advice columns have rarely been the subject of serious scrutiny by media scholars. They are more usually the butt of jokes but this chapter will argue that they are worthy of serious consideration. They are certainly very popular. In a 1989 survey Marje Proops was the most widely read writer in the Daily Mirror (Patmore 1993, p.314) but it is the porousness of the columns that makes them such a fruitful area of study. The unique twoway relationship of the columnists with readers means that, rather than performing, as is usually argued (Beetham 1996, p.23), a narrowly normative role, newspaper agony aunts can be instrumental in challenging norms. Their ambivalent role in a private, or feminine, space within what has been a masculine institution places them at the edge of discursive formation. Their position as non-experts arguably gives them a very special significance in the recasting of discursive boundaries – they are the lightning conductors of social unease. They listen to what has been unsayable, and in listening and then reproducing these forbidden discourses, they bring them into the realm of the ‘normal’ and sayable.
