LANGUAGE AS INSTRUMENT: ON RHETORIC AND DIALECTIC IN SHAKESPEARE'S JULIUS CAESAR

This study was triggered by the observation that there must be more to Brutus' funeral speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar than meets the eye. Although it has often been dismissed as a less skilled piece of rhetoric than Antony's, for reasons that seemed to pertain mostly to Brutus' traits of character, we hereby propose a novel perspective on his speech, and demonstrate that the so-called fault lies in a linguistic choice, and that his speech is rather a dialectic piece of communication, fact which determines its inherent unsuitability in the context of delivery. The analysis is achieved by following text clues in the two funeral speeches of Brutus and Antony, respectively, contrasted along the lines of a selection of relevant communication factors such as sender, receiver and message.