THEORY IN THE IRONIC MODE: A REVIEW OF HAUSER'S VERNACULAR VOICES.

• Author: Hogan, J. Michael
• Position: Review

Gerard Hauser's Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres is an ambitious, wide-ranging, and thought-provoking theoretical discussion of public opinion and the public sphere. Hauser rightly disputes the "authority" we grant to opinion polls, and he aspires to develop a "rhetorical" alternative for discovering and communicating public opinion. Regarding "discourse as the predominant and authoritative data" from which we should infer how publics, public spheres, and public opinion "form and function" (11), he concludes with four case studies illustrating how we might "listen" to "vernacular voices." In so brief a response, I cannot begin to summarize the intricate argument of this challenging book, much less engage all of the issues and controversies it touches upon. Instead, I will comment on just a couple of the gaps, biases, and provocations that I perceive in the book, not so much in judgment as in hopes of encouraging further discussion and research.

Rather than challenge polling's claim to science, Hauser seems to concede to polling the epistemological status of "science" and to reject science per se as he develops a "rhetorical perspective on public opinion that places rhetoric, not survey research, at its center" (189). This, it seems to me, is not only contrary to Hauser's professed interest in how "publics" and "public opinion" are rhetorically constructed in "actually existing democracy" (55), but also a strategic mistake. Easily dismissed as a sort of Neo-Luddite utopianism, Hauser's position leaves untouched the popular folklore and mythology that sustains polling as the dominant influence upon socially constructed public opinion. It fails to engage polling as a "rhetoric" of public opinion. If one's goal it to challenge the tendency of scholars, politicians, and even the public itself to equate "public opinion" with polling results, one must demonstrate the limitations of polling as a mode of public expression and show how the rhetoric of pollin g distorts or even silences other "rhetorics" of public opinion.

At the most basic level, challenging polling's claim to "science" means illuminating how its basic procedures rest upon rhetorical rather than empirical processes. From the determination of polling's agenda, to the phrasing and ordering of survey questions, to the interpretation of results, polling is a rhetorical "art," not a legitimate "science"--a fact that even many pollsters are finally beginning to concede. Beyond that, polling's cultural status-the ubiquitous presence of polls in contemporary political discourse-- rests upon a historical folklore, a misleading...