when those goals are met. The potential of a given style to provoke any number of responses appears to be subdued once the explanatory narrative directs conceptions of how to negotiate what can be known with what is impossible to know about any motives propelling where an act of representation is headed. When we believe that style helps us assess whether a speaker has fulfilled an intangible aim such as “taking responsibility,” we are effectively tasked with deciding if a contemporary representational act is in accord with past models and preestablished standards that exhibit stylistic forms that have earned cultural regard because we’ve already seen them circulating in public discourse. But this method of comparison can also prompt us to glide past the speculative question of how precisely representative styles communicate purposes in ways that will be recognized.
The shortcomings of this interpretive framework were evident in one of the more notorious public moments in 1998—when Clinton testified (via satellite) before a Grand Jury, the first sitting President who was called upon to do so. Grand Jury testimony is one discursive practice that seems capable of achieving the goal of converting an idea of accountability into a reality. When Clinton met on August 17 with Deputy Independent Counsel Solomon L. Wisenberg, many believed that the legal proceeding would create the conditions that would force the president to be held accountable—finally—for his words. Clinton’s detractors most likely hoped that putting him under oath in this context would compel him to come clean about having perjured himself when he denied his relationship with Lewinsky during the Paula Jones proceedings. That goal appeared to guide the direction of the questions posed by Wisenberg, which included the following memorable exchange:
PROSECUTOR: Mr. President, I want to . . . briefly go over something you were talking about with Mr. Bittman. The statement of your attorney, Mr. Bennett, at the Paula Jones deposition . . . “Counsel is fully aware that Ms. Lewinsky has filed—has an affidavit which they are in possession of saying that there is absolutely no sex of any kind in any manner shape or form, with President Clinton.” That statement was made by your attorney in front of Judge Susan Webber Wright, correct?
CLINTON: That’s correct.
PROSECUTOR: That statement is a completely false statement. Whether or not Mr. Bennett knew of your relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, the statement that there was “no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form, with President Clinton,” was an utterly false statement. Is that correct?
CLINTON: It depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is. If the–if he—if “is” means is and never has been that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.25
Derision, seemingly universal, followed. This was testimony? Under oath? By elaborating on multiple ways of reading the “if-then” clause, Clinton seemed to violate the basic obligation to speak directly and purposefully and then be held accountable for a prior misdirected act of representation. In posing a question of definition, Clinton seemed to rebuff the expectation that he take responsibility for the confusion caused by a prior act of speech (which also failed to responsibly convey what really happened) and hence he indicated an unwillingness to abide by the communal rules overseeing linguistic comportment in a legal proceeding. So loathed was the “is is” phrase, it has been immortalized in Bartlett’s Famous Quotations to connote insufferable equivocation. Those two simple words became a lightening rod for everything that seemed wrong about Clinton and what his presidency represented. It was referenced by U.S. Rep Howard Coble (R-NC) in his opening statement at the impeachment hearing to justify Coble’s vote to impeach: “When I return to my district, I sometimes motor south on Highway 29 through the fox and the wine country of Virginia. And as I approach the North Carolina boundary line, my mind begins to clear, as I am at that point removed from the Beltway spin. All of a sudden I am aware of the definition of ‘sex.’ All of a sudden I know the meaning of ‘alone.’ I know what ‘is’ is, as do the majority of my constituents” “(soft laughter).” Journalists joined in the mockery. As Timothy Noah of Slate.com observed, “Years from now, when we look back on Bill Clinton’s presidency, its defining moment may well be Clinton’s rationalization to the grand jury about why he wasn’t lying . . . Bill Clinton really is a guy who’s willing to think carefully about `what the meaning of the word “is” is.’ This is way beyond slick. Perhaps we should start calling him, ‘Existential Willie.’”26
By failing to deliver a response that clarified a meaning that could be grasped for immediate review, Clinton also failed to meet other expectations about what form linguistic participation should take. Arguably, his apparent refusal to abide by the anticipated obligation to explicate rather than muddle provoked the Prosecutor’s follow up question, conveyed with what might be called a sarcastic tone:
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,
