scholarly journals Seventeenth-Century Pamphlets as Constituents of a Public Communications Space: A Historical Critique of Public Sphere Theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-62
Author(s):  
Pascal Verhoest
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Complex Network ◽  
Building Block ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The Public Sphere

A public sphere in which people can freely discuss worldly affairs is arguably an essential building block of deliberative democracies. As a theoretical and historical concept, however, the public sphere concept is far from unequivocal. This article reviews Habermasian public sphere theory and particularly his failure, according to critics, to establish the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ as an historical category. It provides a more realistic historical account that helps to reframe contemporary conceptions of the public sphere. It argues that the 17th century’s culture of pamphleteering created the space for a proto-public sphere, characterized as a complex network of discursive practices mixing commercial doggerel, state-sponsored propaganda and reasoned argument. These practices were part of contradictory but mutually constitutive processes in the context of religious and political struggles that coincided with the gestation of parliamentary democracy.

In Search of “Fellow Pilgrims”: Radical Protestants and Transconfessional Exchanges in Europe and the British Atlantic, c. 1670–1730

2014 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 590-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Bouldin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
British Isles ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
The Public ◽  
Geographic Boundaries ◽  
The Public Sphere

The mobility and literacy of many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century dissenters allowed for the circulation of people and ideas throughout Europe, the British Isles, and colonial North America. This article focuses on the interactions of dissenting groups who flourished in the half century between the Restoration and the Great Awakening, such as English Philadelphians, French Prophets, radical German Pietists, Quakers, Bourignonians, and Labadists. It considers how a push for further reforms, particularly those arising from the context of late seventeenth-century millenarianism, served as a catalyst for radical Protestants to seek out other dissenters with the goal of uniting communities of reformers across linguistic, confessional, and geographic boundaries. Dissenters facilitated their endeavors through the development of new sites of sociability, a reliance on implicit codes of expected behavior, and the circulation of manuscript and printed texts. By relying on mechanisms of the public sphere, they carried out esoteric conversations and critical debates about radical Protestantism.

Linguistic Decolonization in Jamaican Radio

2015 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Westphal
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Power Distribution ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Framework Conditions ◽  
Jamaican Creole

AbstractThis article illustrates the value redistributions of Jamaican Creole (JC) and Standard English (StE) in the public sphere of radio by investigating changes in the discursive practices of language use, norms and other framework conditions of radio production, as well as listeners’ perception of linguistic variation on air. JC was marginalized and stigmatized in pre- and early post-independence Jamaican radio but has subsequently acquired an important role, mainly in dialogic and informal contexts. Despite its increased value, JC has not substantially challenged the prestige position of StE, which has remained the unmarked choice for formal broadcasting. However, there has been a localization of StE on the air away from exonormative standards and towards Jamaican English (JE) while British and American influences remain in place. In this linguistic decolonization process both JC and JE have acquired new values, but remnants of an unequal power distribution linger on.

scholarly journals Angry tweets

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-145
Author(s):  
Ruth Breeze
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
Semantic Domain ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Self Defence ◽  
Qualitative Analyses

Abstract The rise of populism has turned researchers’ attention to the importance of affect in politics. This is a corpus-assisted study investigating lexis in the semantic domain of anger and violence in tweets by radical-right campaigner Nigel Farage in comparison with four other prominent British politicians. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses of discourse show that Farage cultivates a particular set of affective-discursive practices, which bring anger into the public sphere and offer a channel to redirect frustrations. Rather than expressing his own emotions, he presents anger as generalised throughout society, and then performs the role of defending ‘ordinary people’ who are the victims of the elites. This enables him to legitimise violent emotions and actions by appealing to the need for self-assertion and self-defence.

Representations of Wales and the Welsh during the civil wars and Interregnum

2004 ◽  
Vol 77 (197) ◽  
pp. 358-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Charles I ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
High Politics

Abstract This article examines how Wales and the Welsh were represented in the pamphlet literature of the civil war and early Interregnum. It considers the historical construction of the Welsh image in English minds, and traces how this image came to be politicized by Welsh support for Charles I during the sixteen-forties. An examination of the public controversies surrounding the state-sponsored evangelization programme in Wales during the early sixteen-fifties shows how the contested image of Wales in the public sphere interacted with high politics at the centre. This study contributes to our understanding of the interplay between ethnicity, identity and politics during the sixteen-forties and fifties, and demonstrates how imagery and representation informed political discourse in the mid seventeenth century.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document