Virtuous Emotions

In Passion Is the Gale, Nicole Eustace equates power to language by arguing that eighteenth century Pennsylvanians manipulated emotional language to express authority and power, and to simultaneously use the same language to promote submission and convey status.  A great example of this idea is that the colonists in Pennsylvania discovered in Pope's Essay on Man the idea that "passions" could cultivate individual feelings for the greater good of society rather than simply promote selfish emotions which could foster social degeneracy.  This re-casting of passion as a potential virtue gave colonists cause to challenge the existing power structures under which they lived and worked in their every day lives.  Eustace continues the argument and posits that in the run up to the American Revolution, Pennsylvanians strategically manipulated emotional language to challenge political authority, obtain social status for themselves, and mobilize citizen action.  It seems that the elites' strategy was to carefully guard their ability to control emotions (an emotional language) as evidence of their entitlement to power - a strategy they used to great effect, thereby using language and passion as effective agents of great historical change.