Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part 1 THE RHETORIC OF POLITENESS
- Part II ELOQUENT RELATIONS IN LETTERS
- Part III A PROSAICS OF CONVERSATION
- Chapter 6 The pragmatics of repair in King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing
- Chapter 7 “Voice potential”: language and symbolic capital in Othello
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 7 - “Voice potential”: language and symbolic capital in Othello
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part 1 THE RHETORIC OF POLITENESS
- Part II ELOQUENT RELATIONS IN LETTERS
- Part III A PROSAICS OF CONVERSATION
- Chapter 6 The pragmatics of repair in King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing
- Chapter 7 “Voice potential”: language and symbolic capital in Othello
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Before Brabantio complains to the Venetian senators of Othello's marriage, Iago warns Othello that “the magnifico is much beloved, / And hath in his effect a voice potential / As double as the duke's.” Brabantio's words will exert power – the power to “divorce you [Othello], / Or put upon you … restraint and grievance” (1.2.12–15). Their power, however, will depend not upon Brabantio's rhetorical skill but instead upon his social position – that is, both on his aristocratic status (“magnifico”) and on the accumulated credit he has with his auditors (“much beloved”). How his speech is received will depend less on what he says than on the social site from which it is uttered. Othello rebuts Iago's position, but he does not dispute Iago's presupposition that linguistic competence counts for less than rank or otherwise attributed status in this matter of “voice potential”: “My services which I have done the signiory,” he responds, “Shall out-tongue his complaints” (1.2.18–19). In the event, Othello's voice does outweigh Brabantio's, with an unanticipated element affecting the reception of their discourse and the outcome of the scene: that is, the exigency of the military threat to Cyprus.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shakespeare and Social DialogueDramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters, pp. 163 - 182Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999