Philosophers and historians often treat fundamental concepts like equality as if they existed only as fixed ideas found solely in the canonical texts of civilization. In "Crafting Equality," Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites argue that the meaning of at least one key word-equality-has been forged in the day-to-day pragmatics of public discourse.
Drawing upon little studied speeches, newspapers, magazines, and other public discourse, Condit and Lucaites survey the shifting meaning of equality from 1760 to the present as a process of interaction and negotiation among...