ABSTRACT
The conclusion considers some of the larger implications of the USCCB’s strategies for maintaining authority. In a broader rhetorical context, the textual processes the USCCB deploys provide insight into the larger question of how hierarchical bureaucracies engage with public argument in a representative democracy. As Alexei Yurchak has pointed out, in ossified bureaucratic institutions, authoritative language gradually ceases to function as a way of representing and describing the world, and begins to take on a role akin to what Roman Jakobson called the poetic function, meaning that the structure of the discourse comes to mean more than its content (Yurchak 78). In other words, formulaic official language comes to signify authority through the way it sounds, rather than by the meaning created by its constituent parts (Yurchak 79). The chapter shows that authority and persuasion are instantiated and created through formulaic language: the bishops create the appearance and echo of authority by repeating that which has succeeded before.
