Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England

by Jane Kamensky

Governing the Tongue explains why the spoken word assumed such importance in the culture of early New England. In a work that is at once historical, socio-cultural, and linguistic, Jane Kamensky explores the little-known words of unsung individuals, and reconsiders such famous Puritan events as the banishment of Anne Hutchinson and the Salem witch trials, to expose the ever-present fear of what the Puritans called "sins of the tongue." But even while dangerous or deviant speech was restricted, as Kamensky illustrates here, godly speech was continuously praised and promoted. Congregations were told that one should lift one's voice "like a trumpet" to God and "cry out and cease not." By placing speech at the heart of New England's early history, Kamensky develops new ideas about the complex relationship between speech and power in both Puritan New England and, by extension, our world today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Katherine Addison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted this book mostly because she has a long chapter on the Salem witch trials, but the whole thing was excellent. Puritans were obsessed with speech laws---who gets to say what to whom---so Kamensky has buckets of primary source material: trials for heresy, trials for witchcraft, transcripts of sermons (and their interruptions), public apologies, the ubiquitous Cotton Mather...And she uses her source material to show both how speech was SUPPOSED to work and what happened when someone like Anne Hutchinson refused to follow the rules. And this is all interesting in its own right, but it's also building to her discussion of Salem.

It's appropriate that I just finished The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, because that's what Kamensky says happened during the Salem witch trials (I think she uses the actual phrase once or twice), people---girls, goodwives, slaves---who were normally supposed to be silent (and disregarded if they did say something) were speaking AND BEING LISTENED TO, and not just by people of their own status, but by the magistrates. Men, once accused of witchcraft, were not listened to, no matter how high status they were. People who confessed were spared; people who insisted on their innocence were hanged. And even after the trials had stopped, she points out that the world stayed upside down and we get the spectacle of a minister apologizing to his congregation.

Kamensky doesn't have answers for WHY the Salem witch trials exploded the way they did, but she does a great job of analyzing HOW.

Four and a half stars, round up to five.

[Freya Abbas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well-written analysis of the weight that Puritan society placed on the spoken word. I liked the chapter on women's speech. There was also an analysis of speech acts where sons defy their fathers and of the Salem witch trials. All this brought us to a thought-provoking epilogue about our current society's value of freedom of speech. We do not place the same importance on words and do not believe that freedom can be undermined by an "unbridled tongue."