Language and Political Meaning in Revolutionary America.

• Author: Bass, Jeff D.

Language and Political Meaning in Revolutionary America. By John Howe. Andover: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004; pp. 1-288. $39.95.

John Howe sets out to uncover how eighteenth-century American revolutionaries and their British opponents understood the functioning of language in political society. The result is a cogently argued and well supported analysis of a neglected aspect of the discursive constitution of the American polity in the era encompassing the revolution and the ratification of the Constitution.

Howe's study charts the progress of two divergent views regarding the nature and function of political language. The earliest view of language developed during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. During this period, English grammarians sought to "normalize" the English language. These theorists conceived of language as "a fixed and unvarying medium of expression existing apart from the changing contexts of history, a medium stable in its grammar and vocabulary, certain in its meanings, and unambiguous in its capacity to express universal truth." Standardization of the English language, it was believed, would free discourse from ambiguities in meaning and allow it to function as an "instrument of political discipline and control" (5). Not only would such a language obviate the discursive problems associated with a rapidly expanding administrative and commercial empire, it also would satisfy the juridico-political desire for a language of politics that was "simple and clear, exact in its meaning and capable of regulating human behavior, and [existing] as an autonomous system of communication independent of its immediate historical context" (38). "Normalized" English thus would solidify the political gains of the Whig-dominated Parliament following a century of conflict with the Crown by rendering sacrosanct and self evident the meaning of Magua Charta, the Revolutionary Settlement of 1688, and the English common law.

However, the attribution of a self-evident meaning to political language failed to provide the political stability its proponents promised. Instead, ironically enough, this conception functioned as an important form of empowerment to American discontents and enabled the growing radicalization of American politics. Colonial opponents to British policies were quick to employ this conception of language to charge the imperial Government with violating the "clear and unambiguous" meaning of its own...