Constitutive Rhetoric as an Aspect of Audience Design: The Public Texts of Canadian Suffragists

Abstract

This article offers a way of using the theory of audience design—how speakers position different audience groups as main addressees, overhearers, or bystanders—for written discourse. It focuses on main addressees, that is, those audience members who are expected to participate in and respond to a speaker’s utterances. The text samples are articles, letters, and editorials on women’s suffrage that were published between 1909 and 1912 in Canadian periodicals. In particular, the author analyzes noun phrases with which suffrageskeptical women are addressed, relying on the theory of constitutive rhetoric to highlight the interpellative force with which the audience design of this public political debate operates.

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