| "Signs Performing: Language and Politics in 1790s Britain" explores a chapter in the history of British radicalism that unfolded around the players and events of the parliamentary reform movement, and specifically around the London Corresponding Society which was its primary mover during the decade. This context reveals a quickly spreading awareness, in both high and popular culture, of the mutually constitutive relationship of language and politics. Authors like John Thelwall, John Horne Tooke and Charles Pigott, for example, stressed the connection between inequalities in parliamentary representation and the abuses of linguistic representation. Secondly, and relatedly, theoretical writings, popular discourse and material practice alike produced a heightened understanding of the connection between language (and signs in general) and action, or between representation and performativity. The present work thus focuses on issues of orality and literacy as they relate to radical preoccupations with persuasion, specifically examining the figure of John Thelwall through the lens of Thomas Sheridan and the elocution movement, and subsequently extending this discussion to the material practices of the London Corresponding Society and various forms of government resistance that led to the Treason Trials of 1794. From a critical perspective, this study operates a synthesis between two strands in late eighteenth-century studies: (1) the revaluation of early Romantic culture as performative because of its engagement with the "theatrical," its frequent representation of politics on stage, and its correlated portrayal of politics as a theater; and (2) studies in historical linguistics and linguistic politics that defined the peculiar terms of language theorization and use during the period. In highlighting radicals' self-conscious performance of linguistic-political categories, this dissertation argues that the concept of performativity---and more accurately, metaperformativity---lies at the root of the formation of class consciousness during the period, and allows for a revaluation of the importance of a sub-cultural phenomenon of much larger proportions than have generally been recognized. |
