The discourse of conflict and resistance: Elizabeth Cellier and the seventeenth-century pamphlet wars.

Abstract

Elizabeth Cellier, an English satirist and political activist, was one of the most intrepid women of the late seventeenth century. Her investigation of subversive activities of political factions during the Exclusion Crisis of the reign of Charles II led to her arrest for high treason. After she successfully defended herself, she wrote Malice Defeated. The vindication threatened cultural ideologies concerning the role of Catholics and women and incited a vociferous war over words: the Meal-Tub Plot pamphlet war. In my study, I examine how the pamphleteers exploited language in order to sustain social power and maintain control over the cultural text. Employing functional linguistic and socio-semiotic analyses, I show how attempts to stabilize or destabilize cultural ideologies may be traced to systematic textual decisions by writers. I argue that, by casting Cellier as the petulant woman, male pamphleteers futilely aspired to reestablish authority over the language of politics. In the first and second chapters, I discuss the socio-historical context of the Meal-Tub Plot. I investigate the interface between the linguistic and non-linguistic cultural text to substantiate a theoretical notion of language as social activity and the discourse collective as a system of "doings.". The third chapter is based on a statistical analysis of transitivity systems (as defined by M. A. K. Halliday) in the pamphlets. I suggest that specific configurations of verb processes characterized the pamphleteers as a rhetorical community and formed the basis for the marginalization of Cellier's language. The fourth and fifth chapters concern rhetorical strategies used to stabilize or destabilize cultural ideologies. I investigate the ways choices within the verb system conflate with other textual choices, creating a chasm between Cellier's language and the language of other pamphleteers. Along with the state, male pamphleteers attempted to isolate and erase Elizabeth Cellier's language in order to maintain social control. However, linguistic conventions may inadvertently create the possibility for significant change in socio-political systems. I suggest the vulnerabilities of the language of the pamphleteers and the strength of Cellier's language of negotiation facilitated cultural change. The study concludes with a discussion of the treatment of the Meal-Tub Plot by commentators and historians. I propose a reassessment of Elizabeth Cellier's socio-political contribution based on a better understanding of how her language fit into the flux and flow of a dynamic meaning system.