Borrowed Authority

Abstract

Rhetorical use of citation is a means of indirectly reaffirming authority while avoiding the appearance of argument. It is therefore an especially useful strategy for people and institutions with compromised public images. This article compares the American Catholic bishops’ written citational patterns in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ presidential year voting guides issued before and after the clerical sexual abuse scandals. To investigate these changing citational strategies, work on entextualization by linguistic anthropologists is integrated with micro-rhetorical methods to provide a socially situated, fine-grained English language analysis of citation within a religious discourse community. Findings suggest that the bishops’ new citational patterns work to obliquely erase the authorial presence of the American bishops, to show deference to the Vatican, and to avoid challenges from lay Catholics. Religious aims are advanced through typographical and grammatical strategies that are specific to written discourse.