The Functions of Epideictic:
The Boston Massacre Orations
as Exemplar
Celeste Michelle Condit
Existing theories of epideictic focus on the content ofthe speeches as "praise
and blame," on the speaker's uses of the event or, more recently, on the
audience's uses of the event. This essay argues that three pairs of functions
define the epideictic experience for speakers and audiences and produce
their characteristic message contents. Those pairs include definition/understanding, shaping of community, and display/entertainment. The utility of the
perspective is indicated through an exemplary case of such "communal
definition."
KEY CONCEPTS Epideictic, Boston Massacre orations, Boston Massacre,
ceremonial address, functionalism, genre, rhetorical criticism, community
identity, declamation, occasional address.
CELESTE MICHELLE CONDIT (Ph.D., University of Iowa, 1982) is Assistant Professor in the
Department of Speech Communication at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801.
T
he term "epideictic" often conjures up images of hollow bombast and
gaudy verbal baubles, but epideictic is clearly not synonymous with
"excess" and "artifice." Speeches such as Douglas MacArthur's "Duty,
FHonor, Country," Barbara Jordan's "Keynote Address," and Martin Luther
King's "I Have a Dream" indicate that the macro-genre of epideictic rhetoric
remains vital and important. In the face of the pervasiveness, variety, and
significance of the genre, our understandings of it are inadequately complex.
Because students of epideictic have directed their efforts towards identifying a
single, simple, and essential characteristic that might uniquely distinguish
such discourse, each of the several existing explorations has been inadequately sensitive to the variety of functions epideictic serves for its speakers
and audiences. This essay examines current conceptions of epideictic and
offers a synthetic perspective, defining epideictic as public communication
that serves a three-fold set of paired functions for audiences and speakers.
These functions include understanding and definition, sharing and creation of
community, and entertainment and display
Contemporary Theories of Epideictic
Aristotle's tri-partite division of the types of oratory into judicial, legislative and epideictic spawned a long and blustery tradition (Aristotle, Bk. I, Ch.
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III). As early as the period of the Roman empire, Quintilian reported
widespread dissent on the classification system (Quintilian, Bk. II, Ch. IV).
Those disagreements have extended to the present and have expanded to
include arguments about the nature of genre itself (Jamieson and Campbell,
1982; Miller, 1984). Most of these efforts at classification have nonetheless
attempted to retain the concept of "epideictic" or "ceremonial" discourse
(Beale, 1978; Chase, 1961; Oravec, 1976; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca,
1969; Rosenfield, 1980), and the term has continued to be productive in
critical analyses (Crable and Vibbert, 1983). A survey of recent theoretical
discussions of epideictic will indicate three basic perspectives shared by the
studies, and thereby provide a basis for synthesis.
Message-Centered Perspectives
In 1961, Chase summarized the ancient discussions of epideictic, concluding that the central defining characteristic of epideictic through history
had been "praise and blame." This description of epideictic relied on a
message orientation to rhetoric. If a message's content consisted primarily of
praise or blame of an object, event or person, then the speech occasion could
be identified as "epideictic." There is a major difficulty with the imprecision of
such a definition, however. As Michael McGee (1971) has pointed out, all
speeches contain praise and blame, judicial speeches praise and blame acts
and actors, while legislative speeches praise courses of action. Perhaps
epideictic is distinguished by the quantity of praise and blame it includes. If so,
one eventually might develop a quantitative measure of the "amount" of
praise and blame necessary for a speech to be labelled "epideictic." Given
the variation in percentages of description among epideictic speeches,
however, such a workable measure seems unlikely. Simply put, while
message orientations are useful—epideictic speeches often contain distinctive elements of praise and blame—they do not reveal all of the important
facets of the genre. Often we must understand function as well as form in
order to interpret content. Other orientations to epideictic have added such
functional perspectives to our repertoire, focusing either upon the goals a
speech serves for a speaker or upon the uses to which it is put by its
audiences.
Speaker-Centered
Perspectives
The two major speaker-centered orientations to epideictic discourse
incude an argumentative, perspective and a performance theory. Perelman
and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) offered an argument-centered perspective on
epideictic that may be dominant today (see, e.g., Crable and Vibbert, 1983).
They subsumed epideictic within argumentation by claiming that, although
they do not directly mention specific action, epideictic speeches are preparatory to action (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, pp. 49-52). They
indicated that epideictic functions by increasing adherence to values that
might later support legislative and judicial arguments (p. 52). The New
Rhetoric thus subordinated immediate ceremonial functions to more distant
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285
argumentative purposes. In doing so, it apparently focused on the speaker's
long-term intentions rather than on the immediate interests ofthe immediate
audience. Such an orientation is reflected in the specific claim that epideictic
speeches would only be delivered by established community leaders (p. 51)
who presumably have other argumentative goals. From the perspective of a
theory of argumentation, therefore, epideictic speeches are given by leaders
in order to make the populace more amenable to later arguments on more
focused topics.
Such an analysis is instructive but incomplete. Not all speakers of epideictic are established community leaders with long-term argumentative goals for
their speaking. For example, in the Boston Massacre Orations, which will be
more fully examined below, the speakers were often very young and were,
relatively speaking, not well-established political leaders (Loring, 1852).
Moreover, at least one of the speakers later acted contrary to the "revolutionary" goals that argument-centered analyses tell us were being bred in the
Orations (see Loring, 1852, and Ritter & Andrews, 1978, pp. 5-29).^ Hence,
even the speaker may not intend that the speech function to serve later
argumentative interests. In the face of such historical evidence, epideictic
theory needs to account for the characteristics of ceremonial speeches noted
by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, but to provide a frame appropriate to
immediate epideictic functions, rather than always to subsume them under
judicial and legislative rhetoric.
An alternate speaker-centered approach has been offered by Walter Beale
(1978). Applying speech acts theory, Beale suggested that the distinguishing
element of epideictic was its nature as a "performative" mode of discourse.
He noted that in judicial and legislative rhetoric the speaker seeks external
ends through the discourse, but that in epideictic the performance itself often
seems to constitute its own end.
Beale's approach moves us away from the precarious brink of a hyperrationalizing view that would swallow all rhetoric into the univocal goals of
propositional argument. Nonetheless, the definition of epideictic as "pure
performance" is perilously close to a kind of "art for arts sake" perspective
and thus rushes us toward another abyss. Even when applied to literature, "art
for art's sake" threatens to be an empty abstraction (see Lentricchia, 1983),
but applied to rhetoric, it suggests practical powerlessness. Clearly, that is not
an apt description of the activity held in mind by a MacArthur, a King, or a
Jordan. The performative view thus gives us one more useful insight into one
major aspect of epideictic, but it provides an incomplete definition.
Audience Perspectives
Helping to fill out our picture of the functions served by epideictic are two
audience perspectives. One focuses on the "judgment" performed by the
audience, the other on the "experience" had by the audience.
Christine Oravec (1976) suggested that the unique and central defining
characteristic of epideictic was to be found in the important role of the
"observer" of occasional address. Following Aristotle, she argued that the
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audience for epideictic carried out the crucial function of "judgment" and
was informed or educated about the world through hearing the speech.
Oravec's perspective, though presenting a major move toward concern about
the audience's goals in auditing a speech, remains dominantely speakercentered.
According to Oravec, the audience's "judgment" is primarily a judgment
of the speaker and the speaker's ability to present appropriate materials. She
says, "the judgmental function is the audience's critical apprehension of the
artistic and intellectual abilities of the speaker in his [sic] presentation of
praiseworthy and blameworthy objects" (p. 163). The audience here is
important, but only as a judge of the speaker's performance. The speaker
remains, in the last analysis, the focus of attention. The reasons for which the
audience might seek to judge the speaker are not addressed in much detail.
To be thorough, we should note that Oravec also indicates that the audience
"learns about the world" in epideictic, but her explanation of this function is
subordinate to that of judging the speaker. Shortly, an elaboration of this
learning function will suggest that it is not at all subordinate. First, however,
we need to consider a final contemporary perspective.
To this point, the most fully elaborated audience perspective has apparently been provided by Lawrence Rosenfield's (1980) eloquent argument that
the essence of epideictic is to be found in the chance the audience has to
share with the speaker in the "Radiance of Being." Rosenfield's enchanting
conception, however, seems to be somewhat vague and narrow. He suggests
that epideictic always seek what I would label a religious level of experience
found only in a very few epideictic speeches. Although such an experience of
the "Radiance of Being" is rare, it is nonetheless one important subset of the
types of experiences for which audiences seek epideictic and, in a broader
form, we will shortly suggest that it provides one major component of most
epideictic.
Having briefly detailed several available partial descriptions of epideictic,
we now have the ingredients to formulate a broad description of the wider set
of functions which bring about the epideictic experience.
Three Functional Pairs in Epideictic Speeches
In order to understand the range of functions epideictic speeches might
serve for audiences, we need to add to our survey of epideictic theory a list of
the broad range of types of epideictic speeches.^ Central to the set would be
funeral orations. Fourth of July addresses and other bccasionals such as the
Boston Massacre Orations, welcomes and farewells, dedications, commencement addresses, introductions and inaugurals. More peripheral, but perhaps
still more "epideictic" than not, we might add acceptance speeches, convention keynotes, campaign rallies and after-dinner speeches. Stretching the
genre further, we might even include such performatory addresses as declarations of war.
In many of these rituals it is clear that the audience does not seek primarily
to judge the speaker (as in funeral addresses or introductions) or to get at the
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287
"Radiance of Being" (e.g. introductions, the Boston Massacre Orations and
acceptance speeches, among others are directed at being, not Being). Nor do
all of the occasions offer speakers a chance to lay groundwork for later
arguments (e.g. humorous after-dinner speeches and the previously cited
Boston Massacre Oration) or require the speakers to limit themselves to pure
performance (e.g. inaugurals, funeral orations and convention keynotes).
Finally, although these speeches include praise and blame, "praise and
blame" hardly provides a differentiating or adequate description of the
speech content.
Each of the contemporary defining elements alone, then, is incomplete.
Yet, no speech in the list fails to contain one or more of these elements to
some degree, and generally, each speech contains some significant measure
of many or most of them. Consequently, we cannot fence in the territory of
epideictic with a single definitional criterion. Rather, we must assemble a set
or "family" of characteristics shared by epideictic speeches.^
Epideictic discourse can be located by its tendency to serve three
functional pairs—definition/understanding, display/entertainment, and
shaping/sharing of community. The first term in each pair indicates the
function the speech serves for the speaker. The second term indicates the
corresponding function served for the audience. An epideictic speech will
feature one or a combination of these functional pairs, but rarely will be
completely devoid of any one of the pairs. These epideictic functions can be
contrasted ideally with the more narrowly argumentative and decision
oriented functions served by legislative and judicial addresses, which are
directed at more specific policies and goals.
Definition and Understanding Functions
The "definition/understanding" functional pair refers to the power of
epideictic to explain a social world. Audiences actively seek and invite speech
that performs this epideictic function when some event, person, group, or
object is confusing or troubling. The speaker will explain the troubling issue in
terms of the audience's key values and beliefs. Through the resultant understanding, the troubled event will be made less confusing and threatening,
providing a sense of comfort for the audience. Meanwhile, the speaker has
gained power through the power to define. Such definitional authority may
serve later argumentative purposes, or merely provide immediate or pastoral
gratification. It may also help the speaker to feel comfort in a world publicly
tamed by her or his explanations.
Speeches in which this definitional/understanding function play a dominant role include commencement addresses, declarations of war, introductions, and funeral orations (see jamieson, 1973, 1978). At commencements,
for example, the audience seeks an understanding of the value of what has
been completed and a hint at how they might judge what is to come. The
commencement speaker has earned the right to define the meaning of the
past experience and thereby to wield the power of emphasizing the values
and meaning in the paths opened for the future.
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Shaping and Sharing Community
Interlaced with the definitional/understanding function is the need to
share community. Because human beings are symbol-creators, they need
forms of symbolic sharing. A sense of community is developed and maintained in large part through public speaking and hearing of the community
heritage and identity. Although all speeches may help to build community to
some extent, epideictic plays a special role in this function. Legislative and
judicial rhetoric, by definition, pit two sides against each other. While such
competition-through-communication is possible within a shared community, the focus ofthe event is inevitably on division, not upon unity and sharing.
In deliberative and legislative address, interests and individuals in the community openly compete. The inclusion of "refutation" in these speeches is a
content-sign of such competition.
In epideictic, such a focus on partial interests is anathema. When speakers
violate this rule and make arguments which do not gain general assent,
audience members feel a sense of misuse of an occasion (see Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 53). For, we create epideictic occasions, attending
and giving ceremonial speeches, in order to have opportunities for expressing
and reformulating our shared heritage.
Communities of any size—nation to family—need to have explicit definitions of major shared experiences, because "to be a part of a community"
means in large part to identify oneself with the symbols, values, myths, or
"heritage" of that community (McGee, 1975). Indeed, the reference to
"heritage" is usually very explicit in epideictic speeches. The community
renews its conception of itself and of what is good by explaining what it has
previously held to be good and by working through the relationships of those
past values and beliefs to new situations. Such renewals will occur on a
periodic basis (e.g. independence days), but may also occur at specially
problematic events—war, death, farewell, etc. Whenever change intrudes
into the community's life, the epideictic speaker will be called forth by the
community to help discover what the event means to the community, and
what the community will come to be in the face of the new event.
This cozy picture of rhetorical sharing, however, carries a dark side.
Definitions of community are often advanced by contrast with "others"
outside of the community. Hence, a sharing of community may not include all
individuals who, territorially, might live within the boundaries of the community. In giving a speaker the right to shape the definition of the community, the
audience gives the speaker the right to select certain values, stories, and
persons from the shared heritage and to promote them over others. Such
selection implies exclusion and there will never be complete unity about the
values selected, or about how those values might be applied. Nonetheless,
the promotion of individual values in the abstract is generally seen to be
noncontroversial because we are trained to accept a wide range of values, and
to see conflict only in their relationships to each other and to specific
decisions (only the ideologically aware might object to praise of "order" or
"family" or "tolerance"). Consequently, there is usually no overt conflict of
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289
ideas and values internal to an epideictic speech. In fact, for those who
actually feel an objection to particular values in a speech (or usually, a set of
speeches), the result is likely to be a sense of alienation from the community.
A major function of epideictic speeches, therefore, is the shaping and
sharing of community. This not-entirely-benign function is most evident in
speeches such as Fourth of July orations, campaign rallies, opening ceremonies, and inaugurals. In inaugural speeches, for example, the speaker spends
some time establishing a public persona and general goals. However, she or
he will spend more time defining the shared importance of the occasion,
linking the audience to its past and the groups in the audience to each other,
and indicating the boundaries of the hopes and expectations of the community for the future. Outstanding presidential inaugural addresses (such as
those of Lincoln, Kennedy, and Nixon in 1969) are memorable not for their
policies and presidential personae, but for the vision of the United States of
America that they spoke to their audiences and still speak to us.
Display and Entertainment Functions
Epideictic speeches have very often been thought of as speeches of
display. The definitions offered by Oravec and Beale reflect that orientation
clearly, as does that of Chase to a lesser extent. The declamations of the
Roman Empire and the school exercises of later periods perhaps popularized
that sense. In addition, a disrespect for and misunderstanding of the epideictic
potential may have led us to feature and disparage this aspect of epideictic.
When a scientific particularizing ideology leads us away from an appreciation
of the importance of synthetic judgment and understanding (see Gadamer,
1975) and when academics grow to distrust their community, we are likely to
see in epideictic only display and a dangerous display at that. Display and
entertainment, however, are only one of three functions of epideictic, and
they serve important human needs.
Many ceremonial occasions invite the speaker to display her or his
eloquence. "Eloquence" is the combination of truth, beauty and power in
human speech, and is a unique capacity of humanity. Through language we
have identity and a range of capacities unknown to other animals. Through
the eloquent practice of our language we can stretch our capacities and
identities in the human quest for improvement, if not Burkean perfection
(Burke, 1968). The epideictic experience offers speakers the opportunity for
creativity by releasing them from concern with specific issues and charging
them to take on broader vistas. The audience is "entertained" by such speech
in a most humane manner. They are allowed to stretch their daily experiences
into meanings more grand, sweet, noble, or delightful. In addition, however,
the audience also judges the display of the speaker, because the speaker may
well present eloquence as a means of self promotion.
Why might an audience wish to judge a speaker's eloquence? Surely not
for creative capacity alone. Just as ordinary persons enjoy art, while only art
critics painstakingly assess artists, so the judgment of the speaker is not related
solely to an artistic capacity. Rather, the audience judges the fullness of the
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speaker's eloquence, because audiences rightfully take eloquence as a sign of
leadership.
The person who knows truth, recognizes and wields beauty, and manages
power stands a good chance of being a desirable leader for the community.
Eloquence is a manifestation of those qualities, and hence a sign of them. If we
were to be so bold as to proclaim presidential debates to be epideictic
speeches, we would recognize their importance, not as policy arguments, or
even as opportunities for aligning interests, but rather as one of our best
chances to judge the eloquence—the broad humane capacities—of a wouldbe leader. More traditional speeches of display such as keynote addresses,
acceptance speeches, and after-dinner talks similarly provide the speaker a
chance for a unique and important form of display. Epideictic oratory may
thus provide the most humane of human entertainments and a most important public display.
The Content of Epideictic
Our survey suggests that epideictic speeches may be located by their
tendency to execute three functions for speakers and audiences—definition/
understanding, shaping/sharing of community and display/entertainment. If
we were required to sum up these three characteristics, we might suggest that
the most complete or "paradigmatic" epideictic is that which features all
three elements and label such speaking "communal definition." In speeches
which define the community and the situations it faces, the speaker displays
leadership and is judged for the humane vision with which the audience is
"entertained." Simultaneously, the audience gains understanding of its shared
self as community is created, experienced and performed. Such complete
forms of epideictic may indeed be rare, and forms containing dominant
components of one or another of the elements are not to be disparaged. Once
we have the concept of a "complete" epideictic—the speech of communal
definition—we can, however, address the final issue of the heritage of
epideictic theory—the message content of epideictic.
As has been noted by several theorists, there are indeed recurring
elements in the form and content of epideictic speeches. The tenuous unity of
functions results in some homogeneity of messages. Epideictic, it has been
recognized, generally features colorful style, praise and blame, noncontroversiality, universal values, and prominent leaders and speakers (Beale, 1978;
Chase, 1961; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969). Each of these characteristics arises because it serves optimally the function of communal definition.
Epideictic speeches routinely incorporate "praise and blame," as Chase
(1961) has suggested, because it is through "appraisal" of the events, persons,
and objects in our lives that we define ourselves. We constitute ourselves as
good (necessarily) by ranging ourselves against "the bad." The community
renews its conception of good and evil by explaining what it has previously
held to be good or evil and by working through the relationships of those past
values and beliefs with new situations. The expression of such judgments
reveals the jurors to themselves as much as it evaluates the situation judged
Communication Quarterly Fall 1985
291
because the community's sense of identity derives precisely from their shared
set of symbols. The epideictic speech expresses and recreates this identity by
expressing and restructuring the symbolic repertoire around special events,
places, persons, or times.
In addition, in order to create a reassuring communal definition that can be
shared by all active members, the speaker must avoid dividing the community
as far as possible. Therefore, the content of epideictic speeches tends to be
relatively non-controversial and to focus on universal (i.e. broad and abstract)
values. This is not to say (as Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca have indicated,
1969) that epideictic must avoid urging an audience to action. The actions
urged must simply avoid major divisiveness.
To insure the power of this shared experience, the speaker must create a
vivid picture ofthe shared definition, not merely a clear and rational case, and
so the epideictic speech may have more pronounced stylistic display than
deliberative or forensic addresses. Finally, the story of the speech is told for
the sake of the ritualistic need for communal sharing, not as preparation for
some other action, and thus it is performative, as Walter Beale indicated: in
the hearing of such self identifying discourse, audience members share, live,
and display their community.
By surveying theories of epideictic and comparing them to a range of
epideictic speeches, we have now advanced a descriptive theory which
locates epideictic in terms of three sets of functions it serves and the message
contents that often arise from those functions. If theory is designed to aid our
understanding, however, it should be testable and useful in terms of its
application to specific cases. While any one "application" does not certify the
"truth" or broad utility of a theory, one of the strongest arguments that should
be made for a theory is an application of the theory to at least one case which
demonstrates its utility (that is, suggests how it adds to our ability to function in
or appreciate the world). We should, I believe, not be satisfied with theoretical arguments which do not demonstrate themselves in a well-developed
unified application. Isolated examples may be drawn to illustrate parts of a
theory without giving us a clue to the appropriateness of the theory as a
whole.
In rhetorical studies, the chief tests of "utility" have always been performance and criticism. I cannot perform an epideictic speech here. In any case,
it is more appropriate that I offer a critique, derived from the research which
helped to develop the theory, as an indication that this multi-functional
approach to epideictic is a useful tool to aid our understanding, appreciation
and eventual performance of this most important genre.
The Boston Massacre Orations
The Boston Massacre Orations provide an appropriate critical object for
several reasons. These speeches are, by the self-proclamations of their
speakers and of the audiences that called for the occasion in public "town
meetings," epideictic in intent. The title pages of the printed versions of the
orations announce that they were requested "To Commemorate" the Boston
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Massacre (see for example, Lovell, 1771; Church, 1773; Hancock, 1774;
Hichborn, 1777; Mason, 1780; Minot, 1782), and the speeches were delivered annually as a ceremonial event from 1771 to 1783. Most importantly,
however, the Boston Massacre Orations present us with a critical puzzle;
several of their features are unusual enough to challenge our understanding.
Even their occurrence strikes us as requiring explanation. Very few public
events are given annual public commemoration, and in the face of the major
events of the Revolution, the "Massacre" hardly seems to have been of
adequate magnitude; why not the "Tea-party" or the battles of Lexington and
Concord as ceremonial foci? In addition, from our distant view, the content of
the speeches seems brushed with a touch of the ridiculous. Rather than
expending their major content on issues of self-government or "taxation
without representation," the speeches expend their major effort belaboring
the maxim "standing armies bring evil." Moreover, they virtually ignore direct
descriptions of the events of the "massacre" that they were to commemorate.
The critical puzzles here can, in part, be answered by good historical
research. We would find, for example, that the "no standing armies" maxim
had been widely used in the immediate rhetorical history ofthe community.
Nonetheless, such historical information on the availability of rhetorical forms
does not yet explain the choices made among forms. It does not explain why
overflowing and enthusiastic crowds flocked to hear these unusual speeches
(Loring, 1852), nor the nature of the massacre descriptions, nor the nonrevolutionary moderation of several aspects of the addresses. To extend our
explanation, we must look to the function the epideictic experience serves as
communal definition.
Simply put, the "Boston Massacre" was an event that needed a clear
communal definition. It was the first mass, public, polarized, non-judicial
bloodshed in the American-British turmoil and it occurred early enough that
there was as yet no clear public understanding that the relationships between
England and the colonies were of a nature to justify the taking of lives. In
contrast, by the time of Lexington and Concord, and even by the "Tea-Party,"
an understanding of the turmoil had been widely established.
The Boston Massacre, therefore, occurred at a pivotal point when events
led understanding. When in time of peace, a military force is stationed in a
city, visibly marching the streets each day, when they begin shooting citizens,
and when these events occur on the background of civil disorders and hostile
argument, we can expect the populace to be confused and anxious. Things of
an importane scale are beginning to happen which the community does not
understand, and so, together they seek understanding. Although, as Kurt
Ritter (1977) indicates, the bare events ofthe night of "the Massacre" might
just as well have been characterized as a "fight between wharf-side rabble
and surly soldiers" (p. 117), the larger context in which the shootings occurred
mandated that the incident pro6a6/x would be treated as more than the story
of a barroom brawl.
The Massacre was an early and threatening event in a general time of
turmoil, and so to define the community's experience of the Massacre and of
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293
the times, public speech was called forth. The orators themselves recognized
this broad explanatory function as a major goal of their speaking; when
considering the broad historical trend. Warren indicated that "we are naturally led to endeavor to search out the causes of such astonishing charges"
(1772, p. 5). Similarly, Austin cited the need to show "the origin of this fatal
catastrophe" and "trace its connexion and effects" (1778, p. 5). Therefore,
the audience packed the Old North Church and the speakers (many of whom
favored revolution, some of whom might then have turned their back on it)
spoke moderately, if passionately, to create a communal understanding of a
set of frightening shootings in a time of confusion.
Given this need for communal definition, the fact that the orations
generally included a description of the killings is far from amazing. However,
the nature of these descriptions provide a mild surprise. The orators did not
dwell on concrete descriptions of the specific actions taken by soldiers and
crowd members on the fifth of March. That is, they did not tell the listeners in
newspaper-like reportorial accounts who was shot and when, or who did the
shooting, or even where. Neither did they dwell on the concrete harms done
to particular citizens. Instead, the orators depicted events on a larger canvas;
they emphasized what had happened in the days and months before the
Massacre and the emotions felt by those at the scene. The images they
developed of actual events, while often vivid, were fragmentary and incomplete. Thacher (1776) provided a typical description of the acts leading up to
the "Massacre":
By their intercourse with troups, made up in general of the most abandoned
of men, the morale of our youth were corrupted; the temples and the days of
our God were scandalously prophaned; We experienced the most provoking
insults; and at length saw the streets of Boston strewed with the corpses of
five of its inhabitants murdered in cold blood, by the British mercenaries (pp.
8-9).
Warren's (1772) description of the evening was also typical in its emphasis
upon the emotions of the citizens wrought upon that "dreadful night."
The FATAL FIFTH OF MARCH 1770, CAN NEVER BE FORGOTTEN—The
heroes of THAT DREADFUL NIGHT are but too deeply impressed on our
hearts—Language is too feeble to paint the emotions of our souls, when our
streets were stained with the BLOOD OF OUR BRETHREN—when our ears
were wounded by the groans of the dying and our eyes were tormented with
the sight of the mangled bodies of the dead—When our alarmed imagination
presented to our view our houses wrapt in flames,—our children subjected to
the barbarous caprice of the raging soldiery—our beauteous virgins exposed
to all, the insolence of unbounded passion (pp. 12-13).
The communal definition perspective can clarify why these descriptions
provided only vivid glimpses ofthe immediate scene. The event could not be
placed in the value hierarchy and understood as part of the community's
history simply by a recounting of the actual events of the evening. Instead, to
be understood, the event had to be subsumed and articulated within the
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communal history and the feelings and values of the citizens. Such placement
helped provide events with motive and meaning.
The descriptions of the night of the Massacre also generally avoided
placing specific blame, especially in the earlier orations. In these recountings,
Preston and his soldiers were simply referred to as "the men" or at most "the
soldiers" (Warren, 1772, p. 14). As for those responsible for stationing the
soldiers in Boston, they were identified merely by nonspecific pronouns, "all
who," or at best, the vague "British councils" (Warren, 1772, p. 14). This
vagueness in the definitional process seems strange coming from the several
ardent young patriots who presumably were anxious to vilify the British more
directly in other discourse arenas. However, the orators were apparently
sensitive to the fact that the citizens had granted them an audience out of a
need for cooperative communal definition in which all members of the
listening community could share.
The ambiguity is therefore quite understandable. At the time of the early
speeches, the community did not share a common assessment of British
wrongs and of the proper American response to those wrongs. The orators
could not comfortably or successfully depict the British as the evil agent.
Instead, they set a vivid scene and a damnable agency (murder and corruption), but neglected the acts and left the agents unspecified so that a broad
range of the community might participate in the explanation. In so doing, they
spoke as the epideictic occasion demanded, rather than as their own strategic
goals urged.
Even though the orators avoided indicting specific agents, they nonetheless had to provide a motive for the crime in order to weave a reassuring and
believable motive account of the Massacre. It is in this need fora noncontroversial but adequately powerful and flexible motive account that we find an
explanation for the puzzling frequency of the "standing armies" maxim in the
Orations."*
The Orations spent a great deal of time arguing against the presence of
standing armies. Thomas Dawes in 1781 claimed "that standing mercenary
troops must sooner or later entail servitude and misery upon their employers
is an eternal truth that appears from the nature of things" (p. 16). Tudor (1779)
was more succinct: "Confusion, murders and misery must ever be the
consequences of mercenary standing armies cantoned in free cities" (p. 23).
Even in the later orations, the principle was central (especially Austin, 1778;
Welsh, 1783). On the surface, such an emphasis seems ill-fitted to the topic oi^
the speeches and it seems to be a highly contrived and weak central focus for
thirteen major speeches in a crucial period of history. However, a return to the
functions served by the speech reveals that the "standing armies" maxim was
well tailored to the events and the needs of the community.
First, the maxim seemed certified by concrete events—the British standing army shot colonists. Additionally, "standing armies" was a devil term
highly salient in the discourse of the time in that culture and thus was
appropriate and available for use. Most importantly, it was flexible enough to
fit either a causal or motive account. In the early speeches, when the
community was not yet willing to assign responsibility to important individu-
Communication Quarterly Fall 1985
295
als, the maxim served as a causal prinicple that explained why the event
happened without blaming any specific group. Later, when the audience was
willing to blame the British, the principle was easily converted to a deliberate
aim on the part of the British; the standing army had been sent intentionally to
enslave.
Finally, the maxim provided a reassuring explanation. "Standing armies
bring evil" provides a clear and relatively simple cause which can be
remedied—eliminate the armies and the problems will disappear. The Americans could avoid standing armies through their own system of militias. The
maxim thereby helped mark out a specific and important difference between
the identities of the mercenaries and the honorable American patriot soldiers.
The maxim identified the community to itself by relating itself to external
events and contrasting itself with other communities.
Conclusion
The apparent oddities of the Boston Massacre Orations function as
beautifully fit adaptations to the needs of a community in an unusual historical
situation. The occurrence and flourishing of this temporary "sub-genre" of
speeches was required by a transient but compelling historical exigence. The
abstract, yet passionate, massacre descriptions were required by the need for
placing the event in the emotional and valuational contexts ofthe community.
The extreme emphasis on the "no standing armies" maxim was required
because the lack of initial community consensus mandated an indirect and
flexible villain.
The Boston Massacre orations stand, and can be understood, therefore, as
an exemplary model ofthe full potential of epideictic—speeches that provide
important understandings, allow the sharing of community, and permit future
leaders to display their eloquence for the judgment of the community. Not all
varieties of epideictic will display all three elements as fully. Some will
concentrate on definition and understanding, some upon the shaping and
sharing of community, and some upon display and entertainment. All three
elements will be present to some degree, however, and our understanding of
such speeches will be aided by a study of the texts' responses to these
functions.
Such a broad and use-oriented focus also indicates the value of a certain
kind of theory formation. We cannot adequately define epideictic or other
genres or theoretical constructs based solely on explanations of earlier
theorists (as with Chase, 1961, and Oravec, 1976) nor based upon what our
other theories seem to require (as did Perelman & Olbrects-Tyteca, 1969 and
perhaps Beale, 1978). Rather, we need to work diligently to connect theory
and empirical study. The methodological moral of this essay is that we may
enrich our understanding of discourse types by examining a broad range of
speeches as candidates for a genre and by examining some of these speeches
and their historical situations of use in great detail. Only by combining such
empirical investigation with the clues and traditions of earlier theory will we
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cast a theoretical net adequately wide and complex to capture usefully rich
understandings of human speech.
The study of epideictic as pairs of functions draws our attention to a broad
theoretical moral as well. The perspective gives us an answer to theorists who
would over-emphasize either the dramatic nature of rhetoric or the power of
speakers to propagandize. To those entranced with events such as the Boston
Massacre as social dramas (Ritter, 1977, but more clearly. Burke, 1969, pp.
183-328), the perspective cautions that we should not assign dramatic
qualities to artistic constraints alone. The creation of poetically compelling
public dramas through speech is not governed directly by principles of
polarity, climax, or unity of depiction. Rather, these principles arise from the
functions speech serves for its audiences and speakers. In other words,
although art participates in life, we risk distortion if we view life primarily as
functionless art.
Additionally, to those who emphasize speech as propaganda, the functional pairs orientation suggests that it may indeed be true that speakers mold
audiences and the public destiny through public speech, but it is equally true
that audiences mold speakers and the public destiny as well. The constraints
of the audience's needs, its willingness to call for a speaker and to listen, its
demands that the orator speak for all the people and use the people's values
and heritage place powerful limits on how far the speaker can take the
audience, and how events can be explained.
With the aid of a wide-angle lens, ceremonial address—the epideictic
element of our public discourse—is revealed to be an awesome humane tool.
Epideictic functions powerfully, in real, potent, and even dangerous human
situations, and it functions for audiences as well as for speakers. In so doing, it
works not only to maintain community values (a conservative function
perhaps), but also to accomplish the progressive function of adapting our
community to new times, technologies, geographies, and events.
NOTES
'Although Ritter and Andrews focus on the creation of the community's ideology, their terminology
constantly refers to a speaker-centered view, making "patriot orators" the agents of purposive change.
They also refer to speaker-centered partisan strategies such as "the polar strategy" (p. 7). In addition,
Ronald F. Reid (1978) notes that "ceremonial occasions serve primarily to build unity" (p. 13). We must ask
however, "unity of what, for what purpose"? See also Stephen Lucas's (1976) distinction between the
"Whig" interpretation of revolutionary rhetoric and the interpretation of that rhetoric as "propaganda." I
suggest a third alternative which claims that the "strategies" of the orators were determined by the
immediate needs of the community.
^The definitional process is, of necessity, somewhat circular. We must start with an intuitive definition
of "epideictic" along with the sets of definitions provided by others. Gradually, by working back and forth
between definitions and intuitions and between definitions and potential speech types, we can arrive at a
complex, but somewhat more precise definition and a list of speeches and speech types included in the
macro-genre.
^Strong arguments for such non-unitary and non-totalizing definitional strategies are made by
Wittgenstein (1963, pp. 83, 31e-32e)and Lyotard (1984).
••For a description of the importance of such "flexibility" and development of motive in public
accounts, see Bennett 1975 and 1978.
Communication Quarterly Fall 1985
297
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