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Podcast: New Books in Law
Episode: Kristin A. Olbertson, "The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Description: The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Kristin Olbertson is the first comprehensive study of criminal speech in eighteenth-century New England, traces how the criminalization, prosecution, and punishment of speech offenses in Massachusetts helped to establish and legitimate a social and cultural regime of politeness.Analyzing provincial statutes and hundreds of criminal prosecutions, Dr. Olbertson argues that colonists transformed their understanding of speech offenses, from fundamentally ungodly to primarily impolite. As white male gentility emerged as the pre-eminent model of authority, records of criminal prosecution and punishment show a dis...