Frederick Douglass and The Eloquence Of Double-Consciousness

ABSTRACT

Frederick Douglass was unquestionably an orator of the first magnitude whose rhetorical eloquence has been widely recognized. This article argues that one important measure of Douglass's eloquence was his inventive application of double-consciousness. Beyond simply asking his White audience to understand the doubled perspective that African Americans experience, Douglass rhetorically invited his White audience to participate in a double-consciousness of their own. Through antithetical framing, sylleptical framing, and the ironic use of humor, Douglass confronted his White audience with being American citizens and not American citizens, consubstantial with groups they usually thought of as “other.” For audiences of all races, through its doubled perspective, ironic humor inverted the accepted social order. Through these many-layered perspectives, Douglass, like many talented African American rhetors, challenged his White audiences' hegemonic, standard point of view, and thereby invited them to undertake significant social change.

KEYTERMS:

• Frederick Douglass
• African American Oratory
• Double-Consciousness
• Equal Rights
• Rhetoric