Rhetoric Society Quarterly Jan 1997

Heteroglossia, polyphony, andthe federalist papers

James Jasinski University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Abstract

I n last few decades historians have devoted significant attention to language used by political actors during American revolution and founding. The ground-breaking work of Bailyn, Pocock, and Wood established importance of language as a motivating force, conceptual filter, and constitutive process.' The concept of ideology as a paradigm or organizing conceptual framework figured prominently in these early studies. Initially, (re)discovery of situated language led to recovery of a republican ideology at core of early American political imagination.2 The claims of republican historiography were, of course, contested by other historians who located alternative ideological frameworks such as liberalism or protestant Calvinism in language of early American politics.3 More recent historical scholarship challenges the assumption that there is but one language-one exclusive or even hegemonic paradigm-that characterizes political discourse of a particular place or moment in time.4 Historians of political discourse (including rhetorical critics and public address scholars) now face challenge of studying interaction of, and interrelationship between, multiple ideologies, idioms, or languages in early American public culture. This recent interest exhibited by historians in language of revolutionary and founding period is part of a broader in historiography and humanities scholarship generally.5 Part of this turn has involved problematizing status of language and historical documents or texts. Whereas pre-turn scholarship commonly approached language as a transparent medium for transmitting ideas and treated text as an unproblematic vessel that transported idea, first, to an historically proximate audience, and then, to succeeding generations, post-turn scholarship (in rhetoric, history, literary studies, etc.) explores cognitive and constitutive capacity (and limits or incapacity) of linguistic representation as well as internal and external dynamics of discursive text. This shift in attitude regarding language and text generates a particular dilemma that I term problem of contested text.6 Put simply, certain texts (most notably in philosophy and sciences, but in political realm as well) seem to resist linguistic turn. These texts invite and/or demand, their defenders inform us, a pious, respectful reading. Texts of this sort, opponents (mainly on right) of linguistic turn commonly argue, have escaped perishable or ephemeral fate that awaits vast majority of discursive products because they contain and transmit timeless truths or universally valid principles and must, therefore, be read in a manner that acknowledges and respects this achievement. Contested texts challenge critics and historians to

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
1997-01-01
DOI
10.1080/02773949709391086
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical criticism discourse analysis archival research public rhetoric
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (5)

  1. McCann (2019)
    Dialoging with Bigger Thomas: A Reception History of Richard Wright’s Native Son
    Advances in the History of Rhetoric
  2. Haskins et al. (2010)
    Totalitarian Visual “Monologue”: Reading Soviet Posters with Bakhtin
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  3. Grano (2006)
    Wise Ignorance and Socratic Interiority: Recovering a Dialogic Rhetoric
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  4. Horner et al. (2001)
    The Changing Culture of Rhetorical Studies
    Rhetoric Review
  5. Phillips (1998)
    Unmasking buffalo bill: Interpretive controversy and the silence of the lambs
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly

References (70) · 4 in this index

  1. Bailyn Bernard (1967)
    The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
  2. Pocock J.G.A. (1975)
    The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition
  3. Wood Gordon (1969)
    The Creation of the American Republic
  4. Shalhope Robert E. (1982)
    10.2307/1918756
    William and Mary Quarterly  ↗
  5. Rodgers Daniel T. (1992)
    10.2307/2078466
    Journal of American History  ↗
Show all 70 →
  1. Appleby Joyce (1984)
    Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s
  2. Diggins John Patrick (1984)
    The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self‐interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism
  3. Kramnick Isaac (1988)
    William and Mary Quarterly
  4. Pocock (1971)
    Politics, Language, and Tune: Essays on Political Thought and History
  5. Skinner (1969)
    10.2307/2504188
    History and Theory  ↗
  6. (1974)
    10.1177/009059177400200303
    Political Theory  ↗
  7. LaCapra Dominick (1983)
    Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language
  8. Kelley Donald R. (1987)
    10.2307/2709616
    Journal of the History of Ideas  ↗
  9. Montrose Louis A. (1989)
    The New Historicism
  10. Morson Gary Saul (1990)
    Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics
     ↗
  11. Emerson, Caryl and Holquist, Michael, eds. 1981.The Dialogic Imagination, 268–69. Austin: University of Texas…
  12. Halasek (1992)
    Starting the dialogue: What can we do about Bakhtin's ambivalence toward rhetoric?
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  13. Bernard‐Donals (1992)
    Mikhail Bakhtin, classical rhetoric, and praxis
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  14. Bialostosky (1992)
    Bakhtin and the future of rhetorical criticism: A response to Halasek and Berna…
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  15. Zebroski (1992)
    Mikhail Bakhtin and the question of rhetoric
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  16. Bakhtin (1984)
    Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics
     ↗
  17. Hauser Gerard (1986)
    An Introduction to Rhetorical Theory
  18. Hamilton Alexander (1961)
    The Federalist Papers
     ↗
  19. Epstein David (1984)
    The Political Theory of The Federalist
  20. Furtwangler Albert (1984)
    The Authority of Publius
  21. Jensen Merrill (1950)
    The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation 1781–1789
  22. Main Jackson Turner (1961)
    The AntiFederalists: Critics of the Constitution 1781–1788
  23. Onuf Peter S. (1983)
    The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States
  24. McDonald Forrest (1985)
    Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution
  25. Lienesch Michael (1988)
    New Order of the Ages: Time, the Constitution, and the Making of Modem American Political…
  26. Bakhtin M.M. (1979)
    Estetika slovesnogo tvorchestva
  27. Emerson Caryl
    Problems
  28. Farr James (1988)
    Conceptual Change and the Constitution
  29. 1993.Representative Words: Politics, Literature, and the American Language, 1776–1865, 30Cambridge: Cambridge…
  30. 1990.Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, …
  31. Kamberelis George (1992)
    10.1016/0898-5898(92)90008-K
    Linguistics and Education  ↗
  32. Jordan Cynthia S. (1988)
    10.2307/2712999
    American Quarterly  ↗
  33. Leubsdorf (1987)
    10.2307/1228829
    Stanford Law Review  ↗
  34. Wills, Garry. 1981.Explaining America: The Federalist, 171NY: Penguin Books.
  35. Fliegelman Jay (1993)
    The Federalist Papers. In Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, and the Cu…
     ↗
  36. Zulick Margaret D. (1992)
    10.1080/00335639209383986
    Quarterly Journal of Speech  ↗
  37. Onuf Peter S. (1989)
    10.2307/1920259
    William and Mary Quarterly  ↗
  38. Bloch Ruth H. (1987)
    10.1086/494385
    Signs  ↗
  39. Kloppenberg James T. (1987)
    10.2307/1908503
    Journal of American History  ↗
  40. Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1967.The Concept of Representation, 190–98. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
  41. White Morton (1987)
    Philosophy, The Federalist, and the Constitution
  42. Aune, James Arnt. “Candor, Rhetoric, and Interpretation in The Federalist”. Spheres of Argument: Proceedings …
  43. Pocock.Machiavellian Moment352
  44. Rahe Paul A. (1994)
    Republics Ancient and Modem, II New Modes and Orders in Early Modern Political Thought
  45. 1788. “Cato” VII.New York Journal, 3 January
  46. Storing, Herbert J., ed. 1981.The Complete Anti‐Federalist, Vol. II, 125Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
     ↗
  47. 1787. “Centinel” II, [Philadelphia].Freeman's Journal, 24 October
  48. Complete
  49. 1787. “Poplicola,”.Boston Gazette, 24 December
  50. Complete
  51. 1787. “Cincinnatus” III.New York Journal, 8 November
  52. Complete
  53. Matsen P. (1990)
    Readings from Classical Rhetoric
  54. Derrida Jacques (1981)
    Dissemination
     ↗
  55. Stout Harry S. (1977)
    William and Mary Quarterly
  56. Kramer, Michael P. 1992.Imagining Language in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War, 119–136. Princet…
     ↗
  57. Howe (1987)
    William and Mary Quarterly
  58. Mason Alpheus T. (1952)
    10.2307/1844351
    American Historical Review  ↗
  59. Adair Douglas (1974)
    Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair
  60. Warner, Michael. 1990.The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth‐Century Am…
  61. North, Sir Thomas, ed. 1941.Plutarch's Lives, Vol. I, 274–307. NY: Limited Editions Club.
  62. Fliegelman Jay (1982)
    Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority 1750–1800
  63. Robinson, Donald L. 1971.Slavery in the Structure of American Politics 1765–1820, 236–38. NY: Harcourt Brace …
  64. Storing Herbert J. (1976)
    The College
  65. Horwitz, R.H., ed. 1986.The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, 3rd ed, 321Charlottesville: Universit…
CrossRef global citation count: 14 View in citation network → Build reading path →

Related Articles

  1. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Dec 2024
    American Kairos: Washington National Cathedral and the New Civil Religion ↗
    Randall Fowler
    rhetorical criticism discourse analysis argument archival research race and writing gender and writing public rhetoric body and rhetoric place and space editorial matter
  2. Rhetoric Society Quarterly Oct 2023
    “Our Hidden Revenge”: Anti/Colonial Rhetorics at a Korean Women’s College Graduation, 1918 ↗
    Nathan Tillman
    rhetorical criticism discourse analysis decolonial rhetorics teacher development archival research digital rhetoric multimodality grammar and mechanics gender and writing public rhetoric place and space
  3. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Mar 2023
    Informing a Nation: The Newspaper Presidency of Thomas Jefferson ↗
    Brandon M. Johnson
    rhetorical criticism discourse analysis argument archival research social media public rhetoric
  4. Pedagogy Jan 2022
    Contributors ↗
    modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism genre theory discourse analysis african american rhetorics decolonial rhetorics first-year composition writing pedagogy basic writing writing across the curriculum graduate education teacher development argument collaborative writing transfer assessment portfolios writing program administration writing centers peer tutoring technical communication professional writing archival research digital rhetoric social media grammar and mechanics literacy studies race and writing gender and writing disability studies public rhetoric community literacy literary studies editorial matter
  5. Rhetorica Jan 2020
    The Rhetoric of Mao Zedong: Transforming China and Its People by Xing Lu ↗
    Luming Mao
    rhetorical criticism discourse analysis revision archival research public rhetoric editorial matter