VERNACULAR DIALOGUE AND THE RHETORICALITY OF PUBLIC-OPINION

Discussions of public opinion are dominated by visions that regard it as a rational ideal or as an objective datum. The evident differences between these interpretations reflect distinct ideologies and disparat e scholarly and research interests. Without gainsaying their consequen ces, attention to these differences has muffled their shared illuminat ion of public opinion as a product of discourse. Even when they give d iscourse thematic priority, rhetorical norms become buried amidst the rationalism of ideal communication or the instrumentalism of degenerat e manipulation. Neither characterization shows satisfactory empirical fidelity to the complex process whereby public opinion is formed and c ommunicated because neither accounts for the dialogical engagements by which an active populace participates in an issue's development; the contours of the public sphere that color their levels of awareness, pe rception, and participation; the influence an opinion formation of sha ring views with one another; and the terms of expression warranting th e inference that a public has formed and has a dominant opinion. This essay develops a rhetorical model that emphasises the discursive endea vors of those whose symbolic formations in everyday ''talk,'' or verna cular rhetoric, authorize public acts and conduct taken in their name.