The language of enlightened politics: The Société de 1789 in the French revolution

The Socidtd de 1789 was a political club founded in early 1790 to propagate the ideals of the Revolution and the Enlightenment. A systematic analysis of the language found in the public discourse of the Socidtd using simple quantitative techniques suggests important distinctions in comparison to the language found in a baseline sample, a selection of the General Cahiers de doldances of 1789. It is further argued that these differences represent an Enlightened reforming tradition that carried into the French Revolution.