Earning One's Inheritance: Rhetorical Criticism, Everyday Talk, and the Analysis of Public Discourse

Quarterly Journal of Speech

Volumn 89, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 109-131

  McCormick, Samuel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

Author keywords

Everyday talk; Imitation; Oratorical influence; Public address; Rhetorical criticism

Indexed keywords

EID: 0242556428     PISSN: 00335630     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00335630308176     Document Type: Review

References (100)

1. Wil A. Linkugel, R. R. Allen, and Richard L. Johannesen, Contemporary American Speeches: A Sourcebook of Speech Forms and Principles, 4th ed. (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Inc., 1978), 2-3.
2. Michael Calvin McGee develops this point in "A Materialist's Conception of Rhetoric," in Explorations in Rhetoric: Studies in Honor of Douglass Ehninger, ed. Ray E. McKerrow (Glenview: Scott, Foresman, and Company, 1982): 23-48, specifically 26-28.
3. Karen Tracy, Everyday Talk: Building and Reflecting Identities (New York: Guilford Press, 2002), 5.
4. Elaborate discussions of how such markers function in discourse can be found in recent introductory texts to the field of discourse analysis. See, for instance, Tracy, Everyday Talk, and Deborah Cameron, Working With Spoken Discourse (London: Sage Publications, 2001). Other useful texts include Karen Tracy, "Discourse Analysis in Communication," in The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton (Malden: Blackwell Press, 2001), 725-49; and Jonathan Potter, Representing Reality (London: Sage Publications, 1997).
5. Elaborate discussions of how such markers function in discourse can be found in recent introductory texts to the field of discourse analysis. See, for instance, Tracy, Everyday Talk, and Deborah Cameron, Working With Spoken Discourse (London: Sage Publications, 2001). Other useful texts include Karen Tracy, "Discourse Analysis in Communication," in The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton (Malden: Blackwell Press, 2001), 725-49; and Jonathan Potter, Representing Reality (London: Sage Publications, 1997).
6. Elaborate discussions of how such markers function in discourse can be found in recent introductory texts to the field of discourse analysis. See, for instance, Tracy, Everyday Talk, and Deborah Cameron, Working With Spoken Discourse (London: Sage Publications, 2001). Other useful texts include Karen Tracy, "Discourse Analysis in Communication," in The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton (Malden: Blackwell Press, 2001), 725-49; and Jonathan Potter, Representing Reality (London: Sage Publications, 1997).
7. Elaborate discussions of how such markers function in discourse can be found in recent introductory texts to the field of discourse analysis. See, for instance, Tracy, Everyday Talk, and Deborah Cameron, Working With Spoken Discourse (London: Sage Publications, 2001). Other useful texts include Karen Tracy, "Discourse Analysis in Communication," in The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton (Malden: Blackwell Press, 2001), 725-49; and Jonathan Potter, Representing Reality (London: Sage Publications, 1997).
8. The tension between word choice and expression is developed in Rom Harré and W. Gerrod Parrott, "Embarrassment and the Threat to Character," in The Emotions: Social, Cultural, and Biological Dimensions, ed. Rom Harré and W. Gerrod Parrott (London: Sage Publications, 1996), 39-56.
9. This distinction highlights the gap between text and performance. Recording and documenting the sounds of a speaker's words and phrases moves us in the direction of the performance of discourse. Nevertheless, because interpretation hinges on a preliminary restoration of meaning, our arrival as analysts at such performance is at best belated, leaving rhetorical critics and interpretive social scientists alike always already in the trenches of textuality. Transcription methods are themselves hermeneutic endeavors marked by the eclipse of the event of "doing" discourse by the significance of what is "done" in/by speech. This basic interpretive break underwrites all forms of understanding and explanation. What an emphasis on the paralinguistic brings to rhetorical criticism, then, is not the unrefined performance of discourse, but a critical resource for partially reanimating our artifacts. In the final analysis it is less an answer to questions of fulfillment than a response to methodological issues of closeness and accuracy.
10. There is nothing new about this interpretive turn for rhetorical scholars. Michael Leff's theory of hermeneutical rhetoric, for instance, seeks to articulate how traditions can be revised without losing their identity and how speaking political subjects can change themselves within these traditions. Michael Leff, "Hermeneutical Rhetoric," in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader, ed. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 196-214. In a more recent essay, Leff again takes up this task as he traces the ways in which Lincoln's Cooper Union Address participates in a larger performative tradition and seeks to establish itself as a unique response to an immediate rhetorical situation. Michael Leff, "Lincoln at Cooper Union: Neo-Classical Criticism Revisited," Western Journal of Communication 65 (2001): 232-48. What if new about this interpretive turn, however, is the argument for extending it into the study of ordinary political discourse.
11. There is nothing new about this interpretive turn for rhetorical scholars. Michael Leff's theory of hermeneutical rhetoric, for instance, seeks to articulate how traditions can be revised without losing their identity and how speaking political subjects can change themselves within these traditions. Michael Leff, "Hermeneutical Rhetoric," in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader, ed. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 196-214. In a more recent essay, Leff again takes up this task as he traces the ways in which Lincoln's Cooper Union Address participates in a larger performative tradition and seeks to establish itself as a unique response to an immediate rhetorical situation. Michael Leff, "Lincoln at Cooper Union: Neo-Classical Criticism Revisited," Western Journal of Communication 65 (2001): 232-48. What if new about this interpretive turn, however, is the argument for extending it into the study of ordinary political discourse.
12. Harold Bloom's concept of influence is closely related to this notion of oratorical influence. He defines the term most fully in his Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). "Influence, as I conceive it, means that there are no texts, but only relationships between texts" (3). This concept develops out of Bloom's notion of creative correction, which he discusses most thoroughly in his Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 30.
13. Harold Bloom's concept of influence is closely related to this notion of oratorical influence. He defines the term most fully in his Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). "Influence, as I conceive it, means that there are no texts, but only relationships between texts" (3). This concept develops out of Bloom's notion of creative correction, which he discusses most thoroughly in his Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 30.
14. Mirroring in many ways the methodological tensions between ethnography and discourse analysis, criticism of ordinary political discourse tends to focus on anecdotes about concrete situations rather than transcriptions (recorded and documented instances) of actual social interaction. Although it is true that transcription is an interpretive enterprise (cf. endnote 6), emphasizing it over narration has the effect of limiting knowledge claims about speaking political subjects to explicit features of their recorded interactions. This interpretive limitation may benefit research attempting to engage and enrich instances of vernacular scholarship such as Gerard A. Hauser, "Vernacular Dialogue," Communication Monographs 65 (1998): 83-107; and more generally, Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia: South Carolina Press, 1999); Robert Asen, "Representing the State in South Central Los Angeles," in Counterpublics and the State, ed. Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 137-57; and Robert Hariman, Political Style (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). Another curious turn in the critique of ordinary political discourse is the study of speech emanating from local speech communities (letters to the editor, artistic movements, independent films, and so on). The methodology is embodied in Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, "The Critique of Vernacular Discourse," Communication Monographs 62 (1995): 19-46. If the critical turn toward anecdotes about everyday talk can benefit from studying transcribed instances of such discourse, scholarship attempting to engage and enrich the work of Ono and Sloop might benefit from a rigorous treatment of speech occurring in these local speech communities (for example, discourse occurring in the homes of those who write letters to the editor, in the coffee houses and classrooms where artistic movements are discussed, on the sets of independent films, and so on). At present, the analysis of speech emanating from local speech communities, as Ono and Sloop demonstrate, more closely embodies a tension between official rhetoric (such as the hegemonic discourse of government officials, news reporters, and professional critics) and popular rhetoric (such as the discourse of filmic texts, artists, and autobiographies) than it does the more encompassing tension among official, popular, and everyday rhetoric (the discourse of ordinary political actors, local community members, low-level employees of large organizations, college students, and so on). Of the few texts that avoid both of these analytic tendencies in the study of ordinary political discourse, Thomas B. Farrell's work with conversation is the most extensive: Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin's work with egocentric discourse occurring in nationwide focus groups offers a similarly provocative turn: David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin, "Egocentric Argument and the Public Sphere: Citizen Deliberation on Public Policy and Policymakers," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4 (2001): 407-31.
15. Mirroring in many ways the methodological tensions between ethnography and discourse analysis, criticism of ordinary political discourse tends to focus on anecdotes about concrete situations rather than transcriptions (recorded and documented instances) of actual social interaction. Although it is true that transcription is an interpretive enterprise (cf. endnote 6), emphasizing it over narration has the effect of limiting knowledge claims about speaking political subjects to explicit features of their recorded interactions. This interpretive limitation may benefit research attempting to engage and enrich instances of vernacular scholarship such as Gerard A. Hauser, "Vernacular Dialogue," Communication Monographs 65 (1998): 83-107; and more generally, Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia: South Carolina Press, 1999); Robert Asen, "Representing the State in South Central Los Angeles," in Counterpublics and the State, ed. Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 137-57; and Robert Hariman, Political Style (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). Another curious turn in the critique of ordinary political discourse is the study of speech emanating from local speech communities (letters to the editor, artistic movements, independent films, and so on). The methodology is embodied in Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, "The Critique of Vernacular Discourse," Communication Monographs 62 (1995): 19-46. If the critical turn toward anecdotes about everyday talk can benefit from studying transcribed instances of such discourse, scholarship attempting to engage and enrich the work of Ono and Sloop might benefit from a rigorous treatment of speech occurring in these local speech communities (for example, discourse occurring in the homes of those who write letters to the editor, in the coffee houses and classrooms where artistic movements are discussed, on the sets of independent films, and so on). At present, the analysis of speech emanating from local speech communities, as Ono and Sloop demonstrate, more closely embodies a tension between official rhetoric (such as the hegemonic discourse of government officials, news reporters, and professional critics) and popular rhetoric (such as the discourse of filmic texts, artists, and autobiographies) than it does the more encompassing tension among official, popular, and everyday rhetoric (the discourse of ordinary political actors, local community members, low-level employees of large organizations, college students, and so on). Of the few texts that avoid both of these analytic tendencies in the study of ordinary political discourse, Thomas B. Farrell's work with conversation is the most extensive: Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin's work with egocentric discourse occurring in nationwide focus groups offers a similarly provocative turn: David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin, "Egocentric Argument and the Public Sphere: Citizen Deliberation on Public Policy and Policymakers," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4 (2001): 407-31.
16. Mirroring in many ways the methodological tensions between ethnography and discourse analysis, criticism of ordinary political discourse tends to focus on anecdotes about concrete situations rather than transcriptions (recorded and documented instances) of actual social interaction. Although it is true that transcription is an interpretive enterprise (cf. endnote 6), emphasizing it over narration has the effect of limiting knowledge claims about speaking political subjects to explicit features of their recorded interactions. This interpretive limitation may benefit research attempting to engage and enrich instances of vernacular scholarship such as Gerard A. Hauser, "Vernacular Dialogue," Communication Monographs 65 (1998): 83-107; and more generally, Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia: South Carolina Press, 1999); Robert Asen, "Representing the State in South Central Los Angeles," in Counterpublics and the State, ed. Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 137-57; and Robert Hariman, Political Style (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). Another curious turn in the critique of ordinary political discourse is the study of speech emanating from local speech communities (letters to the editor, artistic movements, independent films, and so on). The methodology is embodied in Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, "The Critique of Vernacular Discourse," Communication Monographs 62 (1995): 19-46. If the critical turn toward anecdotes about everyday talk can benefit from studying transcribed instances of such discourse, scholarship attempting to engage and enrich the work of Ono and Sloop might benefit from a rigorous treatment of speech occurring in these local speech communities (for example, discourse occurring in the homes of those who write letters to the editor, in the coffee houses and classrooms where artistic movements are discussed, on the sets of independent films, and so on). At present, the analysis of speech emanating from local speech communities, as Ono and Sloop demonstrate, more closely embodies a tension between official rhetoric (such as the hegemonic discourse of government officials, news reporters, and professional critics) and popular rhetoric (such as the discourse of filmic texts, artists, and autobiographies) than it does the more encompassing tension among official, popular, and everyday rhetoric (the discourse of ordinary political actors, local community members, low-level employees of large organizations, college students, and so on). Of the few texts that avoid both of these analytic tendencies in the study of ordinary political discourse, Thomas B. Farrell's work with conversation is the most extensive: Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin's work with egocentric discourse occurring in nationwide focus groups offers a similarly provocative turn: David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin, "Egocentric Argument and the Public Sphere: Citizen Deliberation on Public Policy and Policymakers," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4 (2001): 407-31.
17. Mirroring in many ways the methodological tensions between ethnography and discourse analysis, criticism of ordinary political discourse tends to focus on anecdotes about concrete situations rather than transcriptions (recorded and documented instances) of actual social interaction. Although it is true that transcription is an interpretive enterprise (cf. endnote 6), emphasizing it over narration has the effect of limiting knowledge claims about speaking political subjects to explicit features of their recorded interactions. This interpretive limitation may benefit research attempting to engage and enrich instances of vernacular scholarship such as Gerard A. Hauser, "Vernacular Dialogue," Communication Monographs 65 (1998): 83-107; and more generally, Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia: South Carolina Press, 1999); Robert Asen, "Representing the State in South Central Los Angeles," in Counterpublics and the State, ed. Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 137-57; and Robert Hariman, Political Style (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). Another curious turn in the critique of ordinary political discourse is the study of speech emanating from local speech communities (letters to the editor, artistic movements, independent films, and so on). The methodology is embodied in Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, "The Critique of Vernacular Discourse," Communication Monographs 62 (1995): 19-46. If the critical turn toward anecdotes about everyday talk can benefit from studying transcribed instances of such discourse, scholarship attempting to engage and enrich the work of Ono and Sloop might benefit from a rigorous treatment of speech occurring in these local speech communities (for example, discourse occurring in the homes of those who write letters to the editor, in the coffee houses and classrooms where artistic movements are discussed, on the sets of independent films, and so on). At present, the analysis of speech emanating from local speech communities, as Ono and Sloop demonstrate, more closely embodies a tension between official rhetoric (such as the hegemonic discourse of government officials, news reporters, and professional critics) and popular rhetoric (such as the discourse of filmic texts, artists, and autobiographies) than it does the more encompassing tension among official, popular, and everyday rhetoric (the discourse of ordinary political actors, local community members, low-level employees of large organizations, college students, and so on). Of the few texts that avoid both of these analytic tendencies in the study of ordinary political discourse, Thomas B. Farrell's work with conversation is the most extensive: Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin's work with egocentric discourse occurring in nationwide focus groups offers a similarly provocative turn: David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin, "Egocentric Argument and the Public Sphere: Citizen Deliberation on Public Policy and Policymakers," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4 (2001): 407-31.
18. Mirroring in many ways the methodological tensions between ethnography and discourse analysis, criticism of ordinary political discourse tends to focus on anecdotes about concrete situations rather than transcriptions (recorded and documented instances) of actual social interaction. Although it is true that transcription is an interpretive enterprise (cf. endnote 6), emphasizing it over narration has the effect of limiting knowledge claims about speaking political subjects to explicit features of their recorded interactions. This interpretive limitation may benefit research attempting to engage and enrich instances of vernacular scholarship such as Gerard A. Hauser, "Vernacular Dialogue," Communication Monographs 65 (1998): 83-107; and more generally, Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia: South Carolina Press, 1999); Robert Asen, "Representing the State in South Central Los Angeles," in Counterpublics and the State, ed. Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 137-57; and Robert Hariman, Political Style (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). Another curious turn in the critique of ordinary political discourse is the study of speech emanating from local speech communities (letters to the editor, artistic movements, independent films, and so on). The methodology is embodied in Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, "The Critique of Vernacular Discourse," Communication Monographs 62 (1995): 19-46. If the critical turn toward anecdotes about everyday talk can benefit from studying transcribed instances of such discourse, scholarship attempting to engage and enrich the work of Ono and Sloop might benefit from a rigorous treatment of speech occurring in these local speech communities (for example, discourse occurring in the homes of those who write letters to the editor, in the coffee houses and classrooms where artistic movements are discussed, on the sets of independent films, and so on). At present, the analysis of speech emanating from local speech communities, as Ono and Sloop demonstrate, more closely embodies a tension between official rhetoric (such as the hegemonic discourse of government officials, news reporters, and professional critics) and popular rhetoric (such as the discourse of filmic texts, artists, and autobiographies) than it does the more encompassing tension among official, popular, and everyday rhetoric (the discourse of ordinary political actors, local community members, low-level employees of large organizations, college students, and so on). Of the few texts that avoid both of these analytic tendencies in the study of ordinary political discourse, Thomas B. Farrell's work with conversation is the most extensive: Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin's work with egocentric discourse occurring in nationwide focus groups offers a similarly provocative turn: David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin, "Egocentric Argument and the Public Sphere: Citizen Deliberation on Public Policy and Policymakers," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4 (2001): 407-31.
19. Mirroring in many ways the methodological tensions between ethnography and discourse analysis, criticism of ordinary political discourse tends to focus on anecdotes about concrete situations rather than transcriptions (recorded and documented instances) of actual social interaction. Although it is true that transcription is an interpretive enterprise (cf. endnote 6), emphasizing it over narration has the effect of limiting knowledge claims about speaking political subjects to explicit features of their recorded interactions. This interpretive limitation may benefit research attempting to engage and enrich instances of vernacular scholarship such as Gerard A. Hauser, "Vernacular Dialogue," Communication Monographs 65 (1998): 83-107; and more generally, Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia: South Carolina Press, 1999); Robert Asen, "Representing the State in South Central Los Angeles," in Counterpublics and the State, ed. Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 137-57; and Robert Hariman, Political Style (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). Another curious turn in the critique of ordinary political discourse is the study of speech emanating from local speech communities (letters to the editor, artistic movements, independent films, and so on). The methodology is embodied in Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, "The Critique of Vernacular Discourse," Communication Monographs 62 (1995): 19-46. If the critical turn toward anecdotes about everyday talk can benefit from studying transcribed instances of such discourse, scholarship attempting to engage and enrich the work of Ono and Sloop might benefit from a rigorous treatment of speech occurring in these local speech communities (for example, discourse occurring in the homes of those who write letters to the editor, in the coffee houses and classrooms where artistic movements are discussed, on the sets of independent films, and so on). At present, the analysis of speech emanating from local speech communities, as Ono and Sloop demonstrate, more closely embodies a tension between official rhetoric (such as the hegemonic discourse of government officials, news reporters, and professional critics) and popular rhetoric (such as the discourse of filmic texts, artists, and autobiographies) than it does the more encompassing tension among official, popular, and everyday rhetoric (the discourse of ordinary political actors, local community members, low-level employees of large organizations, college students, and so on). Of the few texts that avoid both of these analytic tendencies in the study of ordinary political discourse, Thomas B. Farrell's work with conversation is the most extensive: Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin's work with egocentric discourse occurring in nationwide focus groups offers a similarly provocative turn: David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin, "Egocentric Argument and the Public Sphere: Citizen Deliberation on Public Policy and Policymakers," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4 (2001): 407-31.
20. Mirroring in many ways the methodological tensions between ethnography and discourse analysis, criticism of ordinary political discourse tends to focus on anecdotes about concrete situations rather than transcriptions (recorded and documented instances) of actual social interaction. Although it is true that transcription is an interpretive enterprise (cf. endnote 6), emphasizing it over narration has the effect of limiting knowledge claims about speaking political subjects to explicit features of their recorded interactions. This interpretive limitation may benefit research attempting to engage and enrich instances of vernacular scholarship such as Gerard A. Hauser, "Vernacular Dialogue," Communication Monographs 65 (1998): 83-107; and more generally, Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia: South Carolina Press, 1999); Robert Asen, "Representing the State in South Central Los Angeles," in Counterpublics and the State, ed. Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 137-57; and Robert Hariman, Political Style (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). Another curious turn in the critique of ordinary political discourse is the study of speech emanating from local speech communities (letters to the editor, artistic movements, independent films, and so on). The methodology is embodied in Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, "The Critique of Vernacular Discourse," Communication Monographs 62 (1995): 19-46. If the critical turn toward anecdotes about everyday talk can benefit from studying transcribed instances of such discourse, scholarship attempting to engage and enrich the work of Ono and Sloop might benefit from a rigorous treatment of speech occurring in these local speech communities (for example, discourse occurring in the homes of those who write letters to the editor, in the coffee houses and classrooms where artistic movements are discussed, on the sets of independent films, and so on). At present, the analysis of speech emanating from local speech communities, as Ono and Sloop demonstrate, more closely embodies a tension between official rhetoric (such as the hegemonic discourse of government officials, news reporters, and professional critics) and popular rhetoric (such as the discourse of filmic texts, artists, and autobiographies) than it does the more encompassing tension among official, popular, and everyday rhetoric (the discourse of ordinary political actors, local community members, low-level employees of large organizations, college students, and so on). Of the few texts that avoid both of these analytic tendencies in the study of ordinary political discourse, Thomas B. Farrell's work with conversation is the most extensive: Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin's work with egocentric discourse occurring in nationwide focus groups offers a similarly provocative turn: David G. Levasseur and Diana B. Carlin, "Egocentric Argument and the Public Sphere: Citizen Deliberation on Public Policy and Policymakers," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4 (2001): 407-31.
21. Robert Hariman, "Afterword: Relocating the Art of Public Address," in Rhetoric and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Centuy America, ed. Thomas W. Benson (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997), 163-83, specifically 171.
22. Richard Sennett captures the tenor of this opposition: "The mass media infinitely heighten the knowledge people have of what transpires in the society, and they infinitely inhibit the capacity of people to convert that knowledge into political action." Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 283. Christopher Lasch voices similar set of arguments in "Journalism, Publicity, and the Lost Art of Argument," The Gannett Center Journal 4 (1990): 1-11.
23. Richard Sennett captures the tenor of this opposition: "The mass media infinitely heighten the knowledge people have of what transpires in the society, and they infinitely inhibit the capacity of people to convert that knowledge into political action." Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 283. Christopher Lasch voices similar set of arguments in "Journalism, Publicity, and the Lost Art of Argument," The Gannett Center Journal 4 (1990): 1-11.
24. Raymie McKerrow, "Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis," Communication Monographs 56 (1989): 91-111, specifically 101.
25. In arguing that "the everyday critic may create discourse in response to discourse" and "the professional critic always creates formal discourse in response to discourse," as McGee does, one would not so much attenuate traditional speaker - audience scenarios as displace them. Agency merely shifts from the professional orator to the professional critic, implicitly reinforcing audience passivity. Michael Calvin McGee, "Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture," The Western Journal of Communication 54 (1990): 274-89, specifically 282.
26. Hariman, Political Style, 4-5.
27. James P. McDaniel, "Figures for New Frontiers: From Davy Crockett to Cyberspace Gurus," Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 91-111.
28. The study of "naturally occurring talk" (still a hotly debated term among interpretive social scientists) dates back to the early twentieth century, when the oral practices studied by speech departments were expanded to include group discussion, communication among intimates, and interaction in work-related or institutional environments in addition to public speaking and debate. Tracy, "Discourse Analysis in Communication," 725-28.
29. This is not to suggest that in its use of recorded and documented moments of social interaction (that is, transcriptions) the field of discourse analysis offers a methodology capable of placing interpreters into immediate contact with the object of critique (cf. endnote 6). Realizing this as a basic fantasy of interpretive social science, however, some scholars advocate a reinvigorated emphasis on the role of philosophy in establishing and arbitrating limits of validity for the methodologies of social scientific disciplines. John B. Thompson, Critical Hemeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 68-70.
30. Hariman, "Afterword: Relocating the Art of Public Address," 179.
31. McDaniel, 92.
32. Hariman, Political Style, 141.
33. McDaniel, 91-2.
34. Hariman, Political Style, 12.
35. Leff, "Hermeneutical Rhetoric," 201-3.
36. Although architecture and the de/reconstruction of central and eastern Europe is his topic, Fredric Jameson offers a theoretical backdrop for this perspective in his "History Lessons," in Architecture and Revolution, ed. Neal Leach (London: Routledge, 1999), 69-80, specifically 78.
37. This process of "origination" is not confined to everyday talk. Fredrick Douglass's "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" (1852) captures this point well. As Kirt H. Wilson notes in a working paper entitled, "Repetition and Difference: The Racial Politics of Imitation," Douglass reads the principle that "all men are created equal" alongside the acceptance of slavery in U.S. civic life as a powerful resource for alienating European Americans from the history established by their forefathers. Laying claim to the internal and transcendent spirit of Republicanism, Douglass situates himself as the rightful heir of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Similar examples at the level of highly stylized public discourse can be found in the relationships between Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and (somewhat ironically) George Wallace; Malcolm X, Patrick Henry, and Lyndon Johnson; Stokely Carmichael and Sir Walter Scott; Jesse Jackson and George Bush; Duke Ellington, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt.
38. This experiment mirrors the doll tests conducted by Kenneth Clark and his wife Dr. Mamie Clark in the late 1930s and early 1940s. For a summary of these precursor tests, see John P. Jackson, Jr., "The Triumph of the Segregationists?" History of Psychology 3 (2000): 239-61.
39. I thank Karen Tracy at the University of Colorado at Boulder for sharing her transcription of Simmons's speech and allowing it to be reproduced here.
40. Each of the public speeches surrounding Barbiegate, including that of Simmons, will be published in transcribed form along with corresponding rhetorical and/or discourse analyses in Rhetoric, Discourse, and Ordinary Democracy, ed. James P. McDaniel and Karen Tracy (Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press, forthcoming, August 2003).
41. Although many researchers have developed transcription systems to document the sounds of talk, the system developed by Gail Jefferson is most often used in discourse analysis. Some of the most commonly noted symbols include. (period) Falling intonation. ↑ (arrow pointed up) Rising intonation, (comma) Continuing intonation. - (hyphen) Marks an abrupt cutoff. :: (colon[s]) Prolonging of sound. never (underlining) Stressed syllable or word. WORD (all caps) Loud speech. >word< (degree symbols) Quiet speech. >word< (more than and less than) Quicker speech. hhh (series of h's) Aspiration or laughter. .hhh (h's preceded by period) Inhalation. [ ] (brackets) Simultaneous or overlapping speech. = (equals sign) Contiguous utterances. (2.4) (number in parentheses) Length of a silence. (.) (period in parentheses) Micropause, 2/10 second. ( ) (empty parentheses) Nontranscribable segment of talk. (word) (word or phrase in parentheses) Transcriptionist doubt. ((laughter)) (double parentheses) Description of nonspeech activity or sound quality.
42. Some scholars argue that the relationship between integrationist and nationalist ways of speaking is one of mutual exclusion. For a compact summary of this position, see James L. Golden and Richard D. Rieke, The Rhetoric of Black Americans (Columbus: Bell & Howell, 1971), 279. The position taken here is that instead of positioning the two perspectives as mutually exclusive, we might more accurately characterize them as two ends of a continuum within African American public address. Philip Gleeson, Speaking of Diversity: Language and Ethnicity in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992); John Brown Childs, Leadership, Conflict, and Cooperation in Afro-American Social Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); and David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
43. Some scholars argue that the relationship between integrationist and nationalist ways of speaking is one of mutual exclusion. For a compact summary of this position, see James L. Golden and Richard D. Rieke, The Rhetoric of Black Americans (Columbus: Bell & Howell, 1971), 279. The position taken here is that instead of positioning the two perspectives as mutually exclusive, we might more accurately characterize them as two ends of a continuum within African American public address. Philip Gleeson, Speaking of Diversity: Language and Ethnicity in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992); John Brown Childs, Leadership, Conflict, and Cooperation in Afro-American Social Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); and David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
44. Some scholars argue that the relationship between integrationist and nationalist ways of speaking is one of mutual exclusion. For a compact summary of this position, see James L. Golden and Richard D. Rieke, The Rhetoric of Black Americans (Columbus: Bell & Howell, 1971), 279. The position taken here is that instead of positioning the two perspectives as mutually exclusive, we might more accurately characterize them as two ends of a continuum within African American public address. Philip Gleeson, Speaking of Diversity: Language and Ethnicity in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992); John Brown Childs, Leadership, Conflict, and Cooperation in Afro-American Social Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); and David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
45. Some scholars argue that the relationship between integrationist and nationalist ways of speaking is one of mutual exclusion. For a compact summary of this position, see James L. Golden and Richard D. Rieke, The Rhetoric of Black Americans (Columbus: Bell & Howell, 1971), 279. The position taken here is that instead of positioning the two perspectives as mutually exclusive, we might more accurately characterize them as two ends of a continuum within African American public address. Philip Gleeson, Speaking of Diversity: Language and Ethnicity in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992); John Brown Childs, Leadership, Conflict, and Cooperation in Afro-American Social Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); and David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
46. Arthur L. Smith (post-1977, Molefi Kete Asante), "The Black Revolution, 1954-1973," in America in Controversy: History of American Public Address, ed. Dewitte Holland (Dubuque: W.M.C. Brown Company Publishers, 1973), 371-390, specifically 372.
47. In his "Stride Toward Freedom," Martin Luther King, Jr. accents his integrationist leanings when he warns African Americans not to gloat in the wake of the Montgomery bus boycott victory, advising them instead to "act in such a way as to make possible a coming together of white people and colored people on the basis of a real harmony of interest and understanding." He encourages African Americans to "turn their enemy to a friend" and "move from protest to reconciliation." John T. McCartney, Black Power Ideologies: An Essay in African American Political Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 91-110, specifically 107. A similar, yet more compact position is charted in C. D. Lillibridge, Images of American Society, Vol. II (Atlanta: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), 324-5. Despite numerous studies suggesting that King never veered from this political orientation (see, for instance, Golden and Rieke, 3), recent scholarship argues that he later found value in certain features of the nationalist attitude. James H. Cone, "Demystifying Martin and Malcolm," The African American Experience, 2nd ed., ed. Cottee J. White and Obidike Kamau (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1997), 236-47.
48. In his "Stride Toward Freedom," Martin Luther King, Jr. accents his integrationist leanings when he warns African Americans not to gloat in the wake of the Montgomery bus boycott victory, advising them instead to "act in such a way as to make possible a coming together of white people and colored people on the basis of a real harmony of interest and understanding." He encourages African Americans to "turn their enemy to a friend" and "move from protest to reconciliation." John T. McCartney, Black Power Ideologies: An Essay in African American Political Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 91-110, specifically 107. A similar, yet more compact position is charted in C. D. Lillibridge, Images of American Society, Vol. II (Atlanta: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), 324-5. Despite numerous studies suggesting that King never veered from this political orientation (see, for instance, Golden and Rieke, 3), recent scholarship argues that he later found value in certain features of the nationalist attitude. James H. Cone, "Demystifying Martin and Malcolm," The African American Experience, 2nd ed., ed. Cottee J. White and Obidike Kamau (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1997), 236-47.
49. In his "Stride Toward Freedom," Martin Luther King, Jr. accents his integrationist leanings when he warns African Americans not to gloat in the wake of the Montgomery bus boycott victory, advising them instead to "act in such a way as to make possible a coming together of white people and colored people on the basis of a real harmony of interest and understanding." He encourages African Americans to "turn their enemy to a friend" and "move from protest to reconciliation." John T. McCartney, Black Power Ideologies: An Essay in African American Political Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 91-110, specifically 107. A similar, yet more compact position is charted in C. D. Lillibridge, Images of American Society, Vol. II (Atlanta: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), 324-5. Despite numerous studies suggesting that King never veered from this political orientation (see, for instance, Golden and Rieke, 3), recent scholarship argues that he later found value in certain features of the nationalist attitude. James H. Cone, "Demystifying Martin and Malcolm," The African American Experience, 2nd ed., ed. Cottee J. White and Obidike Kamau (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1997), 236-47.
50. In his Autobiography, Malcolm X stresses his nationalist leanings when he argues that, "notwithstanding those few 'good' white people, it is the collective 150 million white people whom the collective 22 million black people have to deal with!" Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 76. A similar, yet more compact position is charted in James R. Andrews and David Zarefsky, Contemporary American Voices: Significant Speeches in American History, 1945-Present (New York: Longman Publishing Company, 1992), 82-3. Note that Malcolm X was not purely nationalist in his political orientation. The early Malcolm X empathized with integrationist attitudes. Cone, 241-3; Golden and Rieke, 3. In 1965, although still privileging a somewhat nationalist attitude, he no longer advocated a black state and even condoned interracial marriage. Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites, "Malcolm X and the Limits of the Rhetoric of Revolutionary Dissent," The Journal of Black Studies 23 (1993): 291-313, specifically 304.
51. In his Autobiography, Malcolm X stresses his nationalist leanings when he argues that, "notwithstanding those few 'good' white people, it is the collective 150 million white people whom the collective 22 million black people have to deal with!" Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 76. A similar, yet more compact position is charted in James R. Andrews and David Zarefsky, Contemporary American Voices: Significant Speeches in American History, 1945-Present (New York: Longman Publishing Company, 1992), 82-3. Note that Malcolm X was not purely nationalist in his political orientation. The early Malcolm X empathized with integrationist attitudes. Cone, 241-3; Golden and Rieke, 3. In 1965, although still privileging a somewhat nationalist attitude, he no longer advocated a black state and even condoned interracial marriage. Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites, "Malcolm X and the Limits of the Rhetoric of Revolutionary Dissent," The Journal of Black Studies 23 (1993): 291-313, specifically 304.
52. In his Autobiography, Malcolm X stresses his nationalist leanings when he argues that, "notwithstanding those few 'good' white people, it is the collective 150 million white people whom the collective 22 million black people have to deal with!" Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 76. A similar, yet more compact position is charted in James R. Andrews and David Zarefsky, Contemporary American Voices: Significant Speeches in American History, 1945-Present (New York: Longman Publishing Company, 1992), 82-3. Note that Malcolm X was not purely nationalist in his political orientation. The early Malcolm X empathized with integrationist attitudes. Cone, 241-3; Golden and Rieke, 3. In 1965, although still privileging a somewhat nationalist attitude, he no longer advocated a black state and even condoned interracial marriage. Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites, "Malcolm X and the Limits of the Rhetoric of Revolutionary Dissent," The Journal of Black Studies 23 (1993): 291-313, specifically 304.
53. Implicit in this claim is a connection between the human body and the body politic, particularly as it appears in the self-ascribed relation of Simmons to Denver's African American community. Simmons draws on his bodily characteristics (race, standing versus sitting, geographic placement) as a powerful means of framing Denver's African American community within an absent or, more accurately, supernatural realm of affairs. Through the optics of Simmons's speech we attain a unique perspective from which to examine various patterns of discourse in which disembodied terminologies shade off into more empirically grounded terminologies, and vice versa.
54. In the PBS documentary, American Visions (1995), director Spike Lee suggests that this tendency is alive and well: "I've never really thought of myself as a spokesperson for 35 million African Americans... All my views have been solely my views, and I think that there are African American people who agree with me, but we also have African Americans who don't agree." A more thorough discussion of African American oratory as portrayed by mass mediated discourses can be found in Smith, 376.
55. McCartney, 95.
56. Another way of understanding "promise" is to say that promises define a purpose and delimit responsible action for achieving it, in effect naming objects currently out of reach. To make a promise is in this sense to encode one's desire or, more accurately, to situate it within a particular fantasy. In a working paper entitled, "Prelude to Promise: Desire-Definition-Order," James Collins Ross elaborates on the theoretical and critical implications of this notion of "promise."
57. The ability to be what one is not is a fundamental issue of all semiotic and political representation. Anne Norton, Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993).
58. Guiding much of this analysis is the assumption that there is no single characteristic by which to distinguish voluntary from involuntary acts. The mentality of a speaker, however likely it may seem in a given case, is not an object to which oratorical influence confidently lays claim. "Intention" is a hermeneutic achievement, depending less on what one intends (an ontological strand-action as a function of intention) than on what one does (a logological strand-the idea of intention as a function of the idea of an act) in the surrounding circumstances of her or his action (cf. endnote 41).
59. Robert E. Terrill discusses the emancipatory potentials of and potential limitations to positions such as this in his "Colonizing the Borderlands: Shifting Circumference in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X," Quarterly Journal of Speech 86 (2000): 67-86.
60. In using the term "repentance," I mean to situate Simmons's discourse somewhere between the term's affinity with the French word "repenter," meaning self-reproach for what one has done (a cognitive function), and the Latin word "rēpere," meaning to creep or crawl along the ground (a behavioral characteristic). Many species of discourse analysis (such as "pure" conversation analysis) suggest a strong correlation between cognition and behavior, particularly the idea that cogito can be induced from observable patterns of symbolic action (a methodological strand of Gadamer's suggestion that "Being that can be understood is language").
61. Michele Wallace, "We Would Have to Fight the World," in Let Nobody Turn Us Around, ed. Manning Marable and Leith Mullings (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 519-23. For an assessment of this cultural phenomenon, see Calvin Herton, Sex and Racism in America (New York: Grove Press, 1988) and Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968). We might also read this revision as a rejection of the infantilizing terms often used to address African Americans. Referring to all children as "ladies" and "men" would in this sense be an antidote to the racist use of "girl" and "boy" to describe African American adults.
62. Michele Wallace, "We Would Have to Fight the World," in Let Nobody Turn Us Around, ed. Manning Marable and Leith Mullings (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 519-23. For an assessment of this cultural phenomenon, see Calvin Herton, Sex and Racism in America (New York: Grove Press, 1988) and Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968). We might also read this revision as a rejection of the infantilizing terms often used to address African Americans. Referring to all children as "ladies" and "men" would in this sense be an antidote to the racist use of "girl" and "boy" to describe African American adults.
63. Michele Wallace, "We Would Have to Fight the World," in Let Nobody Turn Us Around, ed. Manning Marable and Leith Mullings (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 519-23. For an assessment of this cultural phenomenon, see Calvin Herton, Sex and Racism in America (New York: Grove Press, 1988) and Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968). We might also read this revision as a rejection of the infantilizing terms often used to address African Americans. Referring to all children as "ladies" and "men" would in this sense be an antidote to the racist use of "girl" and "boy" to describe African American adults.
64. That the ability to locate such moments of attitudinal transformation is a significant feature of any given critical method is a point on which many scholars agree. See, for instance, Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 142-7.
65. Were this analysis more cognitively oriented, we might speculate that Simmons was not committed to the rage/hurt of lines 9-10 because he was unsure about how many people in Boulder were aware of his group; as Malcolm X knew before him, "segregation is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. But separation is that which is done voluntarily by two equals" (quoted in Jackson, 245).
66. Tracy, Everyday Talk, 89.
67. By Aristotelian accounts, this would be an occasion ripe for interrogation tactics. In the 18th chapter of Book III of his Rhetoric, for instance, Aristotle suggests that interrogation tactics ought to be used when speakers intend to reveal contradictions in their opponent's discourse and/or incongruities between their opponent's discourse and the beliefs of the speech community at hand.
68. Despite the level of stylization inherent in filmic texts, Lee is renowned for his unwillingness to stylize the actors of his films. As Branford Marsalis puts it, "the most that Spike ever tells an actor is, 'Here's the script. Ready? Action!' And it used to be very funny for me to watch the seasoned veterans say, 'Well Spike, what is your vision?' Spike says, 'I paid you good money to act. That's my vision. Now act. Action!'"
69. In his discussion of competing entelechial principles, Kenneth Burke suggests that our fantasies are always already to some extent checked by those of others. Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action (Berkeley: California University Press, 1966), 19-20.
70. Two noteworthy studies of Do the Right Thing are worth mentioning. The title of each essay accurately captures their interpretations. Robert C. Rowland and Robert Strain, "Social Function, Polysemy, and Narrative-Dramatic Form: A Case Study of Do the Right Thing," Communication Quarterly 42 (1994): 213-28; Detine C. Bowers, "Afrocentrism and Do the Right Thing," in Rhetoric in Popular Culture, ed. Barry Brummett (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 199-221.
71. Two noteworthy studies of Do the Right Thing are worth mentioning. The title of each essay accurately captures their interpretations. Robert C. Rowland and Robert Strain, "Social Function, Polysemy, and Narrative-Dramatic Form: A Case Study of Do the Right Thing," Communication Quarterly 42 (1994): 213-28; Detine C. Bowers, "Afrocentrism and Do the Right Thing," in Rhetoric in Popular Culture, ed. Barry Brummett (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 199-221.
72. An outline of the current demand for a full-scale assault on white privilege and the possible strategies being considered to achieve this end can be found in Robin D. G. Kelley, "Integration: What's Left?" The Nation, 28 December 1998, 17-19.
73. This integrationist turn may have resulted from the need to compensate for his use of a more exclusive "we" in lines 24-25. To the extent that he seeks to align himself with the school board, this adjustment of the we/us/our constellation would seem appropriate.
74. This strategy of attitudinal categorization is discussed more thoroughly in Michael Billig, Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 184-5.
75. The full statement appears in Manning and Mullings, 437-441.
76. White avoidance: "... senators and congressmen standing up filibustering and doing all other kinds of trickery to keep the Negro from being able to vote"; black solidarity: "If you don't take an uncompromising stand." Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet," § 16 and 30, respectively.
77. Solidarity among diverse groups: "With this faith [all flesh] will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand for freedom together"; the unifying potential of
78. Incidentally, both groups-the various configurations of black community and the Mesa school board-derive their meaning from what they are not: just as the black community in Denver derives its meaning only through Simmons's discourse (spatial representation), the school board derives its meaning from the decision to remove the science experiment, which it made weeks before (temporal representation).
79. King, "I Have a Dream," § 14.
80. Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet," § 8.
81. A similar fusion occurs in Malcolm X's "The Ballot or the Bullet": "if you don't take this stand, your children will grow up and look at you and think 'shame'" (§ 30). Here, the power of "stand" fuses not with the passivity of "sit," but with the innocence and malleability of the child. As the treatment of children is a central feature of Simmons's address, one wonders how this alternate use of "stand" might have inflected his talk.
82. King, "I Have a Dream," § 10.
83. Gail Williams O'Brien, The Color of the Law: Race, Violence, and Justice in the Post-World War II South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
84. Condit and Lucaites, 292-93.
85. Smith, 379.
86. Relationships between piety, impiety, and laughter continue to be of interest to rhetorical scholars. Based on the thoughts of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Maurice Charland offers an illuminating discussion of this connection in his "The Place of Impiety in Civic Argument," Javnost-The Public 8 (2001): 35-50.
87. At issue here is the establishment of surveillance. It is tempting to problematize this maneuver by noting that surveillance is usually from above, yet Denver is geographically and altitudinally below Boulder. Inconsistencies such as this are the bread and butter of everyday talk. Figures of speech typically emerge in mutilated form, historical facts are often mistaken, logical argument is a rarity, and issues such as the discursive establishment of surveillance are seldom thought out in advance. Such inconsistencies, many discourse analysts suggest, are integral to the curious analytic texture of interpretive social scientific research.
88. For a detailed interpretation of Malcolm X's "Rochester Address" that speaks to this point, see Terrill, 67-8.
89. As quoted from The Souls of Black Folk (1903) in Cone, 239.
90. Radical polysemy represents only one of three distinct types of polysemy. As Rowland and Strain suggest, polysemy can refer to the plurality of meanings in discourse, the dependence of discourse on an interpreting audience, and the ability of discourse to endorse inherently contradictory meanings (214). Were we to fold Simmons's speech into this conversation, a fourth type of polysemy would probably emerge, specifically a hybrid of the second and third definitions. Although Simmons offers a preferred way of reading his message (he's there to support the school board's decision), his message itself is interfused with textual ambiguities that allow his audience(s) to activate its meaning in a variety of ways.
91. Leah Ceccarelli, "Polysemy: Multiple Meanings in Rhetorical Criticism," Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998): 395-415. Although beyond the scope of this essay, Ceccarelli raises questions of "reception" that, in turn, raise methodological questions for the analysis of ordinary political discourse. Unlike traditional forms of public address scholarship, which, by focusing on widely circulated discourse, gain access to relatively fixed and available forms of audience interpretation (for example newspaper articles, letters to the editor, news and radio broadcasts, and so on), the critique of everyday talk, to the extent that it involves interpreting mundane instances of social interaction, does not typically enjoy such access. What this means for the analysis of ordinary political discourse is that access to receptional fragments often remains limited to ethnographic participation in the immediate rhetorical situation (such as through conducting informal and respondent interviews). The intimacy between critic, text, author, and audience to which Ceccarelli links questions of "hermeneutic depth" is in this way less a methodological and theoretical assumption than a practical necessity.
92. This interpretive logic is developed more fully in Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
93. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998), 44-8.
94. Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History," trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 139-64, specifically 143.
95. Bloom, 80. See also Bloom's re/misreading of Derrida's infamous quote, "writing is unthinkable without repression," on 48-9.
96. This notion of rebellion is more an allegorical account than a realist interpretation of the discursive and political articulations occurring between today's speakers and their ancestry. Bloom, 19.
97. John Durham Peters, Speaking Into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999), 3.
98. James Amt Aune elaborates this point (which might be said to stem from Bloom) in his "Lincoln and the American Sublime," Communication Reports 1 (1988): 14-19. For a more rigorous exploration of similar themes, see his "Burke's Late Blooming: Trope, Defense, and Rhetoric," Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 328-40.
99. James Amt Aune elaborates this point (which might be said to stem from Bloom) in his "Lincoln and the American Sublime," Communication Reports 1 (1988): 14-19. For a more rigorous exploration of similar themes, see his "Burke's Late Blooming: Trope, Defense, and Rhetoric," Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 328-40.
100. Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Free Press, 2000), 143.