Disciplinary and bodily decorum in eighteenth-century British elocution, a rhetorical study of works by Thomas Sheridan, John Walker, and Gilbert Austin

Abstract

This dissertation undertakes a rhetorical reading of three treatises (Thomas Sheridan's Lectures on Elocution, John Walker's Element s of Elocution, and Gilbert Austin's Chironomia) from a neglected episode in rhetorical history, namely the eighteenth-century British elocutionary movement. By attending to the intellectually marginalized but socially significant domain of bodily rhetoric (i.e., delivery), the elocutionary writers simultaneously seek cultural capital for themselves and their field of enquiry within the dominant disciplinary hierarchy, and offer limited opportunities for aspiring public speakers to improve their social status. Guided by the concepts of "decorum" and "status aspiration," his study investigates how Sheridan's, Walker's, and Austin's works negotiate the problems of disciplinary and bodily decorum within a context of social mobility and efforts to standardize language use. Specifically, it analyzes the rhetorical strategies of persuasion these writers use to address a mixed implied readership of critical scholars and both adult and adolescent students. This analysis draws on recent theories of "politeness" discourse, argumentation, and visual rhetoric to elucidate the appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos which dominate, respectively, the opening exordia and narratives, the middle confirmations, and the closing perorations of Sheridan's, Walker's, and Austin's rhetorical treatises.