-
Lyceum or Chautauqua:
The Lyceum was founded in 1837 and was a form of entertainment and
education that travelled from community to community presenting
programs. The Chautauqua was founded in 1874 to provide the same
function. In the early years of each the performances were at camp
meetings, in large clearings that often became known as "the
Chautauqua Grounds." In later years the performances moved
in doors and even charged admission. The Lyceum and Chautauqua were
important aspects of public life and provided a type of education
for Americans of the 19th century.
- Mass Communication:
A technology for communicating marked by its one-directional quality
and its disempowerment of receivers. Typically a few persons communicate
with many people through the technology. Contrasts to public communication.
- Material spaciousness.
A characteristic of the sentimental style of discourse in which the
speaking draws verbal images that stress large expanses of space.
See sentimental style.
- Motivation: The strategy accepted by a community as justification
for public action. Achieving the support and participation of the
community in pursuit of some action requires that speakers motivate
the action in terms that the community recognizes as legitimate. When
a public situation occurs in the community, discourse describes the
situation in such a way that we can deal with it. This understanding
becomes the grounds for the legitimacy of action in response to the
situation. We can study these motivations in different communities
to understand the strategies that succeed in the public life of the
community and those that fail.
- Narrative: A strategy for dealing with an idea by telling
a story. Typically in the narrative strategy the story has a hero
the public should admire and emulate, or it has a moral that should
be followed. Also the narrative style.
- Narrative
of Success: A narrative that tells the story of humble beginnings
and the rise of wealth and power. The narrative led to the drawing
of the moral of the story as the power of hard work and diligence
to lift a person to success. The narrative turned on the ideograph
of <success>. The obverse narrative told the story of the poor
as lacking in hard work and determination and thus deserving their
low station in life.
-
National American Women's
Suffrage Association: Organization created by the merger
of the National Women's Suffrage Association and American Women's
Suffrage Association in 1892.
-
National Women's Suffrage
Association: Founded in 1869, became one wing of the split
Women's Movement in the 1870s and 1880s. Under the leadership of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony the NWSA differed from
its counterpart because it sought to address a broad range of Women's
issues and because it preferred a rhetoric
of individualism.
- The Parlor.
A room of a house in which people meet to discuss public affairs.
The parlor was an important arena in the Cavalier community where
the men of the cavalier South met for their insular discourse of race
and difference. Parlors were also important, however, in the
reform communities as places where reformers (male and female) gathered
to talk about the events of the day.
- Populist or People's Party:
The product of the merger of the Farmer's Alliance and the Knights
of Labor to form a reformist political party in 1892.
- Pragmatic Rhetoric:
A strategy for motivating change that justifies actions as appropriate
and efficient means to acheive agreed upon ends. Problems considered
from the perspective of a pragmatic strategy are analyzed for causes
of the problems and solutions that remove the causes.
- Public: This
complex term lies at the root of our study. The key to understanding
it is to: (1) understand the contested line between public and private
concerns ; (2) understand the difference between public communication
and mass communication; and (3) understand how the term then serves
in concepts like public address, public life, public sphere, public
situation, public space, public place, etc. The term does not
mean "outing," the process of revealing some lewd or private
matter for mass consumption.
- Public Address:
Speaking about public matters. The term is often defined merely as
a speech that many hear, a speech in public. Our meaning is
much more precise.
- Public Life:
That part of everyday activity which is conducted with other people
concerning matters that we believe are properly addressed in conjunction
with others. Contrasts with our private life and our family life.
- Public Sphere:
The place where a community can conduct communication about matters
the community considers of common interest rather than private interest.
Not to be confused with the political sphere nor the governmental
sphere. Governments may justify their power by claiming to be
the public sphere, and in some cases the political or governmental
may be the place where such communication is conducted, but a public
sphere is generally much broader than either the political or the
governmental.
- Radical Abolitionist.
Those who attacked slavery based on the promise of equality contained
in the Declaration of Independence. Their rhetoric focused on
the ideographs of <rights>, <equality>, and <humanity>.
- Republican
Motherhood. Prior to the revolution the colonists had
thought of themselves as "republican" more than "democratic."
Republican beliefs held that leaders were not sent to govern their
fellow citizens to represent their viewpoints so much as to represent
what was right and best for the community. This sense of what
was right was known as "public virtue" and the citizens
role was to elect those with public virtue to office. After
the revolution as democratic ideas spread, expectations developed
that public virtue was a part of the training of the young.
The dilemma was how to reconcile the reality of the rough and tumble
of democratic politics (such as the partisan arena of the early 19th
century) with the disinterestedness and moral restraint represented
by public virture. The answer was to gender politics.
The role of active involvement in the rough and tumble of democratic
politics was assigned to men and the task of instilling public virtue
was thought to be the contribution of women to government. See
Cult of True Womanhood.
- Rhetoric: The dimension of human symbolic behavior (including
and dominated by language use) through which social community is accomplished
and shaped. A rhetor is someone participating in public life
through the use of language. The term rhetoric refers not only
to this dimension of symbolic behavior as an object of study but also
to the artifacts generated by communities in conducting their public
life. Thus we refer to the speech of a community on public matters
as rhetoric.
- Rhetoric of Business:
A frame for discourse employed by the American Federation of Labor
and the craft union movement to motivate their share of the labor
movement. The rhetoric of business argued that labor could improve
its lot by acting like business. Thus, the craft union movement sought
to restrict the supply of labor to increase the wages. The rhetoric
also featured a theme of pride in one's craft and shared a theme of
success in hard work and diligence with the narrative of success.
-
Rhetoric of Class:
Generally, a rhetoric that justifies social hierarchy based on the
superiority of one class over another. Specifically, a frame
for discussing the problems of labor that polemically contrasted
the working and the capitalist class. The rhetoric often employed
a war metaphor, and when not doing so, substituted other strategies
of extreme division. The working classes were seen as victims and
were motivated to organize to confront the power of capital. The
Knights of Labor were an initially secret labor organization that
built the rhetoric of class. Differed from the Rhetoric of Socialism
and Anarchism by believing that organizing the working class
into a counter-force to the capitalist class would rectify the problems
of labor. Socialists believed that government should be captured
to counter the power of capitalists; anarchists believed that government
should be destroyed as the tool of the capitalists.
- Rhetoric of Difference. A rhetorical form that converts
differences among humans into justification for superiority and hierarchy.
A rhetoric of difference may justify a power structure that gives
one group power over another, or may simply justify superiority of
one group over another.
