This paper aims to outline the main rhetorical and pragmatic strategies that occur in the speeches of Native Americans as reported by nineteenth-century commentators, in an attempt to highlight the ways in which recurring patterns may be indexical of both attitude on the one hand, and of expected communication models on the other.
The materials under investigation range from reports in journals to speeches published in books: among these, special attention is given to McIntosh (1853) on account of the homogeneity of the texts it presents. While such speeches cannot of course be discussed as authentic materials, it is actually the editorial interventions that can be assumed to have been carried out that may help us investigate what attitudes were conveyed to readers. At the same time, the patterns that can be identified in the ways in which specific moves are encoded may shed light on what pragmatic schemata were deemed to be acceptable.
The investigation will combine a corpus-based approach with a qualitative study of the documents under discussion. The analysis will consider forms of address and (self-)reference, and evaluative vocabulary in both representation and peroration.
The fact that the speakers whose words are reported are – for both the reporters and their readers – representative of what was perceived to be a highly exotic culture, makes the texts particularly interesting for the study of the way in which rhetorical constructions show a certain degree of ambivalence: on the one hand they tend to reflect the ‘quaintness’ of certain turns of phrases, thus highlighting their supposed authenticity; on the other, their persuasive quality is made acceptable to the readers through skilful use of expected rhetorical models.
McIntosh, John 1853. The Origin of the North American Indians […] with a copious selection of Indian speeches, […]. New York: Nafis & Cornish.