‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels…’: Rhetorical Practice in Nineteenth-Century Religious and Medical Discourse

Abstract

Examines a variety of medical and religious texts from mid-nineteenthcentury Spain to determine the degree to which the writers were allied to other social authorities, and specifically to the Church, in a power structure sealed by language. Claims these texts demonstrate that professional writing intended for popular dissemination had common elements of approach and expression that transcended disciplinary or confessional boundaries; both medical and religious texts reveal a high level of concern with maintaining positions of authority. Explores ways the two fields of discourse converge, so that the Church speaks of matters of health while medical texts borrow theological terminology; this convergence is revealed further in the authorities they cite, and in their approach to linguistic register. Concludes the project to control the readership through rhetoric is made evident as a prime reason for using it. At the same time, as revealed in late-nineteenth-century texts, the emotive powers of rhetoric contain the potential for a counter-control movement that stands in tension with the initial use of rhetoric to assert social power.