A Nation of Speechifiers

Carolyn Eastman, A Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public after the Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

from the press:

In the decades after the American Revolution, inhabitants of the United States began to shape a new national identity. Telling the story of this messy yet formative process, Carolyn Eastman argues that ordinary men and women gave meaning to American nationhood and national belonging by first learning to imagine themselves as members of a shared public.

She reveals that the creation of this American public—which only gradually developed nationalistic qualities—took place as men and women engaged with oratory and print media not only as readers and listeners but also as writers and speakers. Eastman paints vibrant portraits of the arenas where this engagement played out, from the schools that instructed children in elocution to the debating societies, newspapers, and presses through which different groups jostled to define themselves—sometimes against each other. Demonstrating the previously unrecognized extent to which nonelites participated in the formation of our ideas about politics, manners, and gender and race relations, A Nation of Speechifiers provides an unparalleled genealogy of early American identity.

.

Ethics and Politics of Speech

Pat J. Gehrke, The Ethics and Politics of Speech: Communication and Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009).

Graham Spanier - Penn State University - 2009 State of the University Address

2009 State of the University Address
Penn State University

Graham B. Spanier
September 11, 2009

Speaking as a Professor

From today's Chronicle of Higher Education:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held on Friday that a public-college professor’s statements can be considered job-related, and thus not “citizen speech” protected by the First Amendment, even if they were made in connection with activities not specifically covered by the professor’s contract. . . .

The university said it had fired him for doctoring student grades, and the appeals court described his First Amendment claims as “makeweight attempts” to fight his dismissal for violating the university's academic code. It held that he would have been fired even if he had not made any of the statements that he cited in claiming he was the victim of illegal retaliation.

Peter Schmidt, "Court Broadly Defines Job-Related Speech in Upholding Delaware Professor's Dismissal," Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 March 2009.

The court decision in the case is here.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown Speech to U.S. Congress, 4 March 2009

On his visit to the United States to confer with President Obama, Prime Minister Gordon Brown addressed a joint session of the U. S. Congress. The speech has been drawing increasingly enthusiastic attention.

In today's New York Times, Roger Cohen suggested that President Obama could learn something from Brown's example of uplifting and optimistic rhetoric on that occasion. Cohen alludes to a Jon Stewart story on the Gordon Brown speech.

We invest so much importance in presidential speeches -- to which most people don't actually listen -- that for decades there has been a thriving industry of creating hypothetical presidential speeches, and writing letters and columns urging the president to speak out. It's a mystery.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Brown in the USA

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Economic Crisis

Health Rhetoric

In The Economist this week, an interesting analysis of the rhetorical and policy wisdom of appointing Tom Daschle Secretary of Health and Human Services and putting him in charge of persuading Congress to pass comprehensive and universal health care for the United States. Such a program was originally to have been part of the package that gave us Social Security in 1935, but health was dropped because of Congressional resistance. Congress has been resisting ever since, with the notable exception of Medicare, passed under Lyndon Johnson. The Economist appears to argue that the problem is partly a matter of policy, partly a matter of politics, and very much a matter of rhetoric. The choice of Daschle is itself read in partly rhetorical terms.

This looks like a pretty shrewd pick, and the fact that it is the first cabinet job to be sort-of-announced is an indication that Barack Obama is in deadly earnest about one of his main campaign promises: comprehensive health-care reform. . . .

By appointing a big cheese to the health job, Mr Obama seems to be defying the gloomy view that the state of the economy rules out such an expensive initiative. His proposed plan has been costed at anything from $50 billion to $100 billion a year, which many people argue can not be afforded in the current environment. He could, of course, make the opposite case. The deepening recession is likely to have dreadful consequences in health-care terms, as people lose their jobs and the health insurance that goes with them, and as companies scale back or even abandon the packages they offer their workers. So reform is more urgently needed than ever.

In addition, there is such widespread agreement on the need for fiscal stimulus at the levels of hundreds of billions that it might, paradoxically, become politically easier to slip another large programme into the mix, especially one that benefits ordinary people rather than bankers. Last, stressed American companies are actively backing radical reform, because the burden of health insurance costs is crippling their ability to compete abroad. In the early 1990s, they opposed it, and helped to kill it off.

This last observation is perhaps crucial -- American business is crippled by its health care obligations. A comprehensive and universal federal program could make American business more competitive and might even reduce the incentive to send jobs abroad. If businessmen pressure Congress for reform, that may at last make it happen. The time is right, and the rhetorical forces that have stalled reform may now be aligned to create change.

The photograph that accompanies the article in The Economist abstracts Tom Daschle in the act of speaking, with an operation apparently in progress behind him. The positioning places him in the apparent role of speaking for doctors, nurses, and patients--a switch on the traditional opposition of the American medical and insurance establishment to universal health insurance.

See "A Shrewd Choice: Can Tom Daschle and Barack Obama Fix American Health Care?" The Economist, 21 November 2008.

photo credit: AP, from The Economist

Timothy Zick, "Speech Out of Doors"

Timothy Zick, Speech Out of Doors: Preserving First Amendment Liberties in Public Places (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

For those interested in rhetoric and free speech issues. I will be putting this on my reading list.