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When Congress Debates A Bakhtinian Paradigm
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Theodore F. Sheckels
Book Code: C6667
ISBN: 0-275-96667-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-96667-6
176 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 9/30/2000
List Price: $106.95 (UK Sterling Price: £59.95)
Availability: Out of stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
  • Endorsement From Janette Kenner Muir
    Associate Professor of Communication
    George Mason University
    :     Professor Sheckles approach to the study of Congressional debates is both innovative and insightful. By focusing on Bakhtinian literary theory, he offers a critique that manages to be both flexible and inclusive....When Congress Debates makes an important contribution to the study of political communication and to the advancement of rhetorical criticism. It will be an important read for rhetorical critics and theorists alike.
  • Endorsement From Carole Blair
    Professor of American Studies
    University of California, Davis:     This book offers a much more nuanced and complex account of congressional discourse than anything in rhetoric before.
Description: Sheckels provides the first book-length study of Congressional debating. The limited work on the topic in the communication discipline has argued that such debating is tedious and inconsequential. Sheckels, however, offers a new paradigm, derived from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, that counteracts this assumption. This paradigm also counters the often unvoiced assumption that debates are inherently biopolar with the initial premise that they are instead polyphonic. The polyphony, however, goes beyond the recognition of the multiple speakers who participate and the drama they enact, to the awareness of the voices these speakers introduce within their discourse. These voices range from the words of "authorities" to the narratives of average Americans, from classical prosopopoeia to what Bakhtin terms "stylization." Speakers also sometimes enact what Bakhtin terms double-voiced discourse; furthermore, there are moments of what Bakhtin terms "carnivalesque" energy. Bakhtin's work finally alerts the critic to the illusion of finalizability in Congressional debates. After outlining this paradigm, Sheckels uses it to examine six Congressional debates, ranging in date from a 1960 Senate filibuster on a civil rights matter to the 1999 House debate on articles of impeachment and includes analyses of such flash points as the Confederate flag, sexual harassment in the military, and partial-birth abortion. These case studies reveal both the utility and the flexibility of the Bakhtinian perspective. Thoughtful analyses that will be of great interest to scholars and researchers involved with rhetoric and political communication.
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
  • Congressional Debating--A Neglected Subject
  • A Bakhtinian Paradigm
  • Carol Moseley-Braun Defies the Confederate Flag
  • The Women of the Senate Remember Tailhook '91
  • Bob Smith and Barbara Boxer Duel
  • Southern Senators Resist
  • Senators Reject Clement Haynsworth
  • The House Impeaches William Jefferson Clinton
  • Index
LC Card Number: 00-036708
LCC Class: JA85
Dewey Class: 328
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