《可怕的话语:马萨诸塞州的言语犯罪和礼貌绅士,1690–1776》,Kristin A.Olbertson著(评论)

IF 1.1 2区 历史学 Q1 HISTORY
Anne S. Lombard
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引用次数: 1

摘要

至少自20世纪90年代以来,历史学家就将18世纪英美殖民地绅士阶级意识的发展与英国早期发展起来的绅士风度的文化理想联系在一起。1殖民地中大多数拥有财产和权力的男性都缺乏一个世纪前奠定英国上层阶级地位的绅士或贵族出身。相反,殖民地的精英们以他们对英国上层社会行为、教育和言论理想的接受为基础,声称自己拥有贵族身份。“有礼貌的”殖民地绅士和“粗俗的”下层绅士之间的界限主要由语言和文化决定。一般来说,历史学家将18世纪英属美洲的绅士风度视为特定上层文化的表现。政治和社会精英的成员表现得像绅士,他们的尊严和权威可能会给彼此留下深刻印象。但是,当精英之外的人嘲笑或嗤之以鼻礼貌的新理想时,会发生什么呢?Kristin A.Olbertson在这本经过深入研究、富有煽动性且常常才华横溢的书《可怕的话语》中认为,在18世纪的马萨诸塞州,上流社会的行为准则不仅仅是非正式规范,而是通过法律强加给那些拒绝服从礼貌精英的人。具体而言,礼貌是通过对“不礼貌”(2)言论的监管以及对脏话、诅咒、蔑视权威、诽谤和撒谎等言论犯罪的起诉来实施和颁布的。对言论犯罪的起诉在18世纪并不新鲜。1630年,清教徒首次在马萨诸塞湾殖民地定居,他们大力规范当时在英国法律体系中被容忍的不道德言论和起诉行为。在17世纪,对咒骂、咒骂、辱骂(侮辱或嘲笑某人)、唱歌、在公共场合制造噪音、撒谎和诽谤的刑事起诉无处不在。但学者们长期以来一直认为,在1691年马萨诸塞州根据《马萨诸塞湾宪章》(即《第二宪章》)同意遵守英国普通法后,其法院不再关注无受害者的道德犯罪,而是更关注财产犯罪
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776 by Kristin A. Olbertson (review)
Since at least the 1990s, historians have linked the development of gentry class consciousness in the eighteenth-century Anglo-American colonies with a cultural ideal of genteel refinement that had developed earlier in England.1 Most men with property and power in the colonies lacked the genteel or aristocratic birth that had anchored upper-class status in England a century earlier. Instead, elite colonial men based their claims to gentry status on their adoption of upper-class British ideals of behavior, education, and speech. The boundaries between “polite” colonial gentlemen and the “vulgar” (2) lower sorts came to be marked largely by language and culture. In general, historians have treated gentility in eighteenth-century British America as the expression of a particular upper-class culture. Members of the political and social elite acted like gentlemen, presumably impressing one another with their dignity and authority. But what happened when people outside of the elite scoffed or thumbed their noses at the new ideals of politeness? Kristin A. Olbertson, in this deeply researched, provocative, and often brilliant book, The Dreadful Word, argues that in eighteenth-century Massachusetts, genteel codes of behavior were not merely informal norms but were imposed through the law on those who refused to defer to the polite elite. Specifically, politeness was enforced and enacted through the regulation of “impolite” (2) speech and the prosecution of speech crimes such as swearing, cursing, contempt of authority, defamation, and lying. Speech crime prosecutions were not new in the eighteenth-century. The Puritans who first settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 made vigorous efforts to regulate ungodly speech and prosecute behavior that was by then tolerated in the English legal system. Criminal prosecutions for swearing, cursing, railing (insulting or mocking someone), singing, making noise in public, lying, and defaming were ubiquitous in the seventeenth century. But scholars have long assumed that after Massachusetts agreed to adhere to the English common law under the Charter of Massachusetts Bay in 1691—the Second Charter—its courts became less concerned with victimless morals offenses and more concerned with crimes of property.2 With
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CiteScore
1.40
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12.50%
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