PROSECUTOR: I just want to make sure I understand, Mr. President. Do you mean today that because you were not engaging in sexual activity with Ms. Lewinsky during the deposition that the statement of Mr. Bennett might be literally true?
CLINTON: No, sir. I mean that at the time of the deposition, it had been . . . well beyond any point of improper contact between me and Ms. Lewinsky. So that anyone generally speaking in the present tense, saying there is not an improper relationship, would be telling the truth if that person said there was not, in the present tense; the present tense encompassing many months. That’s what I meant by that. Not that I was—I wasn’t trying to give you a cute answer, that I was obviously not involved in anything improper during a deposition.
Ridicule might seem like a natural response to perceptions of language users who fake it—who, for example, parse terms as if doing so actually answers a question. Conventionally, we would likely agree that when a person testifies, he should not be cute. But that “given” is indicative of a chain of associations that precede expectations about how one should stylize one’s speeches in order to conform to whatever contextual demands are made in a given speech situation. In Clinton’s case, that meant comparing what he said to a preestablished idea of what constitutes “responsible testimony” and then jeering at his invocation of grammar rules when addressing a question about his possible culpability. But standards are also narratives, not neutral signifiers of equitable interpretive processes. They can impose potentially unfair interpretive constraints, especially when standards seem to authoritatively steer how speech acts get situated within that spectrum of idiosyncratic and conventional language uses.
Too often, the chains of associations that inform assessments of a speaker’s aims lose their speculative status and come to be regarded as actual evaluative methods. Testimony tends to be regarded as a “concrete” and actual practice that involves a bona fide act of retrieval—as if those who testify actually take a step back to the past and find a way to deliver the content of the prior experience in terms that accurately carry the past into the present. When testifying, one is expected to deliver one’s statement by subtracting any complicating desires such as taking pleasure in the act of speaking, attempting to seduce the jury, or expressing a will to triumph over an a perceived opponent. A (clever) linguistic “dodge” that asks, well, what does “is” reference? does not appear to communicate that one aims to helpfully render an accurate version of “the truth and nothing but.” It would seem only natural to disparage a witness who not only failed to engage dominant codes but also indicated an apparent refusal to do so by manifesting a lack of enthusiasm to follow protocol.
But the putatively natural derision that followed Clinton’s act of speech exposes not its inherent problems but the ways in which audiences are encouraged to internalize the idea that when speakers do not adhere to discursive expectations, the rest of us are given permission to disengage and be dismissive. Such assessments are authorized when mimetic models are marshaled to endorse judgments about whose language choices fail to match idealized standards. And this applies to both the Platonic versions of how to participate with language as well as rhetorical ones that reference standards to authorize speculations about whether a given speech aspires to act responsibly. In effect, we are given permission to overlook and devalue those speech acts that fail to engage our judgments in ways that we expect them to, whether they act to uphold community standards or, as in Clinton’s case, use language to challenge a coercive prosecutorial strategy. The dissonance of the “is is” phrase is remarkable not because the phrase deserves either derision or praise but because it offers an illustration of the meeting point between a speech act and the expectations that inform a collective sense of what language is supposed to do to constitute legitimate purposefulness. When we don’t question the legitimacy of the idea that we should speak with purpose and make use of recognizable styles to clearly represent purposes, then the demand that we be purposeful and show that aim by adopting normative styles will stand as legitimate, inevitable, and not itself abusive. Clinton’s “is is” phrase did not easily fit into any preestablished identity category that would legitimate its articulation. It was not especially witty. Few would likely regard it as a courageous example of “speaking back to power.” As President, Clinton was not being oppressed in any conventional sense of the word; his words continue to be influential. Evaluating his “is is” phrase according to a preestablished hierarchy of values that has staked out what counts as a salient purpose gives “the community” permission to disregard and effectively render insubstantial any locution that refuses to go along with enforced institutional conventions.
When we are speculating about a speaker’s purposes, we not only make judgments as if we have, indeed, identified those purposes, we also make judgments about whether identified purposes seem to be significant (or have “substance”). But given that ways of reading and evaluating significance have been shaped by cultural imperatives—including the one that effectively counsels rhetors to show significance by obeying discursive protocols—the answer to the question of whether and what kind of significance actually appeared will carry the imposition of cultural ideologies. And while that observation may be itself familiar to readers of critical theory, what may not be as common is a more specific meditation about how rhetorical technologies of evaluation that promise access to all instantiate biases by conflating particular acts of representability with accountability and then drawing upon that conflation when converting speculation about motives into judgments of who is credible.
When engaging in rhetorical analyses of who is doing what with language, we should not lose sight of the ways in which rhetorical responses to Platonic logocentrism also counsel punishments for speakers who fail to represent viable purposes and that these punishments also include acts of expulsion, albeit in more subtle ways—expel by rendering insignificant. Much of the exchange between Clinton and the Independent Counsel involved skirmishes about the way that Clinton responded to questions and included the complaint that Clinton’s responses were too long, as if to suggest that his responses were designed to distract listeners and turn their attention away from the heart of the matter. In the following exchange, the President and the Independent Counsel interrupted each other but eventually, Clinton began to offer the short responses requested from counsel, and those responses followed legal protocol that allowed him to exercise his right to refuse to incriminate himself. On the other hand, that wrangling also included what is perhaps the most merciless exchange of the entire impeachment proceedings:
PROSECUTOR: I want to go over some questions again. I don’t think you are going to answer them, sir. And so I don’t need a lengthy response, just a yes or no. And I understand the basis upon which you are not answering them, but I need them for the record. If Monica Lewinsky says that while you were in the Oval Office area you touched her breasts, would she be lying?
CLINTON: Let me say something about this—
PROSECUTOR: All I really need for you, Mr. President—
CLINTON: I know—
PROSECUTOR: is to say—
CLINTON: But you—
PROSECUTOR: I won’t answer under previous grounds, or to answer the question, you see, because we only have four hours and your answers . . . have been lengthy. . . .
CLINTON: I know that. I’ll give you four hours and thirty seconds if you let me say something general about this. I will answer to your satisfaction that I won’t – based on my statement, I will not answer. I would like 30 seconds at the end to make a statement, and you can have 30 seconds more on your time, if you’ll let me say this to the grand jury and to you. And I don’t think it’s disrespectful at all. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. But go ahead and ask your questions.
PROSECUTOR: The question is, if Monica Lewinsky says that while you were in the Oval Office area, you touched her breasts, would she be lying?
CLINTON: That is not my recollection. My recollection is that I did not have sexual relations with Miss Lewinsky, and I’m staying on my former statement about that.
PROSECUTOR: If she said—