https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/language-work-of-speechwriters/935FF2C17010D71BC33C9BA0C9603779

Adam Jaworski: Why is it useful to conceptually distinguish between elite language workers (Thurlow’s 2020 “wordsmiths”) and low-salaried ones, despite your claim in the final chapter that all language workers, no matter how privileged or not, are subject to neoliberal precarity?

Gwynne Mapes: Foundational scholarship on language work in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology focused entirely on contexts which were markedly low-paying and low status. Cameron’s (2000) study on call center workers in the UK, for example, demonstrates the exploitation of workers’ linguistic labor, while others explore similar processes unfolding in multilingual contexts (for example, Heller 2003). Relatedly, recent work in applied linguistics documents the precarious working contexts of irregular employment (for example, Park 2022) and online teaching (such as Curran and Jenks 2023). Thurlow’s (2020) turn to more high-end examples of linguistic labor and thus represents an important step for understanding a different dimension of people’s working lives and language. Wordsmiths are not only well-remunerated, but their work is also prestigious, and thus laden with symbolic (social, cultural) capital. That said, throughout my research on speechwriters I was mindful of Duchêne’s (2020) concern that our scholarly labeling of these hierarchies in language work must not be approached uncritically. While I did not set out to draw a specific parallel between the various precarities experienced by lower-status language workers and high-status speechwriters, I think the book neatly exposes how the structures of neoliberal capitalism necessarily foster exploitation and inequality across a wider range of contexts than we might expect.

In the final chapter of The Language Work of Speechwriters, I discuss elite precarity. This phrase is meant to capture how those who benefit from the material privileges of capitalism are still subject to the rather damning effects of commodification. In other words, just as a call center worker is alienated from the products of their labor and estranged from their peers, so too are speechwriters, and other high-end language workers like academics, for that matter (see Chun 2022: 26-27). However, I don’t wish to downplay the differences between a person who struggles to feed their children or pay their bills, and someone whose metadiscursive reflections reveal the impacts of competitive (dis)empowerment. The degree to which lower-salaried workers experience inequality and suffering is certainly a world apart from the exploitation of speechwriters. But my point is that all this reflects the ultimate failure of the free market – while capitalism sells individual prosperity and meritocratic achievement, even its most successful workers are reduced to “bundles of skills” (see Gershon 2011) whose personal worth is alarmingly blurred with their market value. Ultimately, neoliberal capitalism breeds discontent across the full hierarchy of language workers.

Adam Jaworski: Your book can be considered a genre analysis of political speechwriters’ professional discourse oscillating around three keywords: invisibility, craft, and virtue. What are the profession’s dominant or distinguishing language ideologies and emblematic (meta)discourses?

Gwynne Mapes: I use invisibility, craft, and virtue to describe the primary rhetorical strategies speechwriters orient to when describing their work, but importantly, these motifs also crop up in speechwriting texts (such as archives and drafts) and education materials (such as courses and textbooks), as well as in their naturally-occurring talk (that is, a virtual happy hour meeting). While invisibility, craft, and virtue serve as thematic categories to structure the book, I ultimately argue that they are key for establishing value, representing ideological positionings which are avowed and disavowed strategically in the service of status production.

Invisibility is rooted in the classic tension which speechwriters must always manage in their work – they are the authors, but never the animators nor necessarily principals of their labor (see Goffman 1981 on “production format”). This unique professional context demands their self-erasure, which speechwriters routinely reclaim as a point of professional pride and skill. Their ability to remain backstage and disappear behind the façade of the speaker not only signifies an admirable sense of humility; it is also an act of power, and key for establishing their overall success and advancement in the profession.

Likewise, speechwriters’ particular craft is rooted in their role as exceptional creatives. On the one hand, this entails a metadiscursive orientation towards poetics – speechwriters see their writing as beautiful and refined. On the other, their expertise relies on skillful language use (for example, an ability to distill difficult material) as well as persuasion (such as constructing a compelling story). Their work is thus complicatedly caught between rhetorical responsibilities and the principles of artistry – skills which are wielded for claiming professional and personal worth. Following Thurlow (2012), speechwriters’ markedly creative labor thus guarantees their status vis-à-vis other kinds of more undervalued language workers.

Lastly, virtue, or behavior deemed especially ethical or moral in the context of speechwriting, serves as a “moral meaning-making” strategy for practitioners (Montiegel 2021). This was showcased by one speechwriter’s use of the phrase “quiet power” to describe his work: speechwriters may receive no public credit, but their linguistic labor is uniquely positioned to influence. In other words, the cultural indexicalities associated with so-called impact mark speechwriters’ work as especially beneficial – both politically and socially. Here, micro-linguistic details (such as word choice and prosodic cues) assist speechwriters in actively moralizing their profession amidst the complicated task of asserting their own status and prestige.

What comes to the fore is how invisibility, craft, and virtue serve as discursive resources for engaging in the status competition characteristic of contemporary capitalism. Speechwriting discourse of all kinds articulates practitioners’ real value in terms relevant to the commodification of knowledge and linguistic skill.

Adam Jaworski: I was particularly taken by your approach to the redacted archives of speech drafts by President George W. Bush, housed at the George W. Bush Library and Museum in Dallas, Texas (Chapter 3). In your analysis, you – of necessity – relied on what Genette (1997) calls “paratexts”. Are paratexts an underappreciated and understudied genre in sociolinguistics?

Gwynne Mapes: The story which precedes Chapter 3 is this: I attempted to gain access to speech production materials through the archives of George W. Bush, which were the most recent presidential records available to the public. I was helped by various library staff members in my selection of materials from the archive website. As I was primarily interested in seeing how final, delivered speeches differ from the initial writing produced by the speechwriting team, I chose an archival box that was described as containing speech drafts.  However, when I received the files by email, nearly all the speech production texts were redacted. In their place I found official lists of items that had been removed (for example, “Labor Day Remarks [Draft 2]”), along with the specific reason for redaction according to the Presidential Records Act. In most cases the coded restriction was labeled P5: “release would disclose confidential advise between the President and his advisors, or between such advisors”. In other words, speech drafts qualify as presidential counsel, and were therefore prohibited from public view. These lists, as paratexts, thus effectively ensure that the speaker (George W. Bush) retains all rights to ownership of his speeches, despite the existing record of their being authored by various others.

Genette’s (1997) literary terminology is new to me, but I do find it useful here for conceptualizing the more secondary pieces of discourse which surround a primary text, and which thereby guide readers toward specific interpretations. In this sense, paratexts are integral to a holistic understanding of the language context – and yes, for this reason I believe they are probably understudied in sociolinguistics. For example, what one gains from analyzing the material redaction of speechwriters’ linguistic labor from public record is a more accurate understanding of their discursive orientations to invisibility and erasure; the paratext provides important ethnographic insight into these processes. Linguistic anthropologist Jillian Cavanaugh has advocated this sort of approach, as well (2017). For example, her work concerning  Bergamasco salami production outlines the various documentary regimes which collectively attribute value to certain practices (and linguistic-cum-material objects) while also ensuring neoliberal worker surveillance. All of this is to say that what we traditionally understand as language in use is often scaffolded by these more peripheral texts which are nonetheless integral for understanding the social role of discourse.

Adam Jaworski: It could be argued that speechwriters act as ventriloquists remotely manipulating their so-called dummies (speakers) in acts of performance (that is, while giving political speeches). Would it be useful for Bakhtin’s concept of ventriloquism to be part of your analytic toolbox?

Gwynne Mapes: Bakhtin’s (1984) conceptualization of texts as dialogic and multivoiced is important for a general understanding of all socially-situated language, I think, and you are right that it is especially fitting for thinking about the material products of speechwriters’ language work. Public speeches are indeed a perfect example of how a multiplicity of voices come to be rather complicatedly tangled together. It is not simply a matter of author (that is, the speechwriter), animator (that is, the speaker), and principal (that is, the larger institution, such as a political party) – rather a whole host of people contribute to the production of a speech, including additional staff members, legal consultants, policy experts, and even historical figures via quoted material. In this sense, the public performance of a speech is intricately polyphonous from its very conception.

However, I find ventriloquism to be less clear in terms of its applicability to the speechwriting context, because of its association with a lack of emotional investment on the part of the speaker. While there were many moments in my fieldwork when speechwriters referred favorably to seeing their own beliefs or political positions come through in speeches, not everything they write is wholly representative of their personal experiences and opinions. A public speech is certainly a performative act, but ideally it is one which captures the authentic voice, character, and genuine intent of the speaker over all else.

References

Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics; ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Cameron, Deborah. 2000. “Styling the Worker: Gender and the Commodification of Language in the Globalized Service Economy.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(3): 323-347.

 Cavanaugh, Jillian R. 2017. “How the Sausage Gets Made: Food safety and the mediality of talk, documents, and food practices.” In Jillian R. Cavanaugh and Shalini Shankar (eds.) Language and Materiality: Ethnographical and theoretical explorations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.105-124.

Chun, Christian W. 2022. A World without Capitalism: Alternative discourses, spaces, and imaginaries. London: Routledge.

Curran, Nathaniel Ming and Christopher Jenks. 2023. “Gig Economy Teaching: On the importance and dangers of self-branding in online markets.” Applied Linguistics 44(3): 442-461.

Duchêne, Alexandre. 2020. “Unequal Language Work(ers) in the Business of Words.” In Crispin Thurlow (ed.) The Business of Words: Wordsmiths, linguists, and other language workers. New York: Routledge. 23-35.

Genette, Gérard. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of interpretation; trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gershon, Ilana. 2011. “Neoliberal Agency.” Current Anthropology 52(4): 537–555.

Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Heller, Monica. 2003. “Globalization, the New Economy, and the Commodification of Language and Identity.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4): 473-492.

Montiegel, Kristella. 2021. “Use Your Words”: Vocalization and Moral Order in an Oral Preschool Classroom for Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing Children.” Language in Society 52 (1): 107-127.

Park, Joseph Sung-Yal. 2022. The Perceiving Subject of Irregular Employment: Applied linguistics, precarity, and capitalism. In Christian W. Chun (ed.) Applied linguistics and politics. London: Bloomsbury. 109-129.

Thurlow, Crispin. 2012. Determined Creativity: Language play in new media. In Rodney H. Jones (ed.) Discourse and creativity. London: Pearson. 169-210.

Thurlow, Crispin, ed. 2020. The Business of Words: Wordsmiths, linguists, and other language workers. New York: Routledge.