The Fine Texture of Enactment: Iconicity as Empowerment in Angelina Grimké's Pennsylvania Hall Address

Abstract

This essay describes a theory of enactment and its specialized form, iconicity. Whereas enactment involves rhetors serving as living proof of the claims they make, iconicity occurs in the details of a message's texture, when the text enacts and reinforces its own meaning. I analyze passages from Angelina Grimké's Pennsylvania Hall Address to demonstrate how iconicity works to acknowledge, dramatize, and critique oppression, and simultaneously to empower the oppressed.

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Notes on contributors

Suzanne M. Daughton

Suzanne M. Daughton (Ph.D., 1991, University of Texas) is Assistant Professor of Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the Speech Communication Association Convention, San Francisco, 1989, and the Northwestern Public Address Conference, Evanston, Illinois, 1990. The author wishes to thank Professors Michael Leff, Phyllis Japp, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, and Roseann Mandziuk for helpful critical comments on earlier drafts of this essay.