Appealing to the “intelligent worker”: Rhetorical reconstitution and the influence of firsthand experience in the rhetoric of Leonora O'Reilly

Abstract

This article examines the rhetoric of labor activist Leonora O'Reilly for the ways she reconstituted her audience through a second persona of “intelligent workers.”; By balancing concrete contextualization with abstract visions of a future democracy, O'Reilly established identification with her audience of young, uneducated, poor women while simultaneously encouraging them to become a group of outspoken agents capable of transforming their oppressive circumstances. This article also explores the ways firsthand experiences influenced the process of reconstitution. To recognize the influences of extra‐verbal phenomena does not downplay rhetoric's role in the creation of an audience but rather calls attention to the dialectical relationship between language and an extra‐discursive reality and encourages scholars to examine a number of factors which can precipitate, impede, or otherwise shape the process of reconstitution.