Authentication Materials:

  1. Speech title as it is to be printed: “The Great Silent Majority.”
  2. Exact date and place of speech delivery: 3 November 1969. Washington, D.C.
  3. Full name of speaker, with year of birth and year of death: Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994).
  4. Full name of editor of electronic text: J. Michael Hogan.
  5. Date of electronic edition: Summer 2024.
  6. Languages: English (100%).
  7. Indication of editorial functions performed: J. Michael Hogan transcribed and proofread the speech as found in the video of the speech, furnished by the Richard Nixon Foundation.

Bibliographic List of Sources:

Richard Nixon Foundation. “The Great Silent Majority (full version).” YouTube. July 29, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpCWHQ30Do8. [=A]

Nixon, Richard M. “The Great Silent Majority.” In Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches, 1900-1999, ed. Stephen E. Lucas and Martin J. Medhurst, 488-495. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. [=B]

Statement of Editorial Procedures:

This unit relies on a transcription of the video of the speech published by the Richard Nixon Foundationcopy-text A. This speech appears in various forms online, but the video found in [=A] is the most accurate version since it is a direct source.

Copy-text B was used for grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing.

There are also two moments where the video skips, omitting a small portion of the speech. In these instances, copy-text B is used to supplement the missing portion. This occurs in paragraph 15, where “to a settlement” is added from [=B]. This again happens in paragraph 16, where “through an individual who is directly in contact on a personal basis” is added from [=B]. The closing of “Thank you, and goodnight” is also omitted from [=A] because the video ends early, so that has been added from [=B].

In paragraph 52, Nixon stumbles pretty significantly over the phrase “to which Woodrow Wilson,” but this has been omitted in favor of [=B] to improve readability.

The text of this edition has been thoroughly checked and proofread.

All double quotation marks are rendered with “, all single quotation marks with apostrophe ‘.

This copy text is not subject to end-of-line hyphenation.

Special characters and characters with diachronic marks: none.

There are no other departures from the copy-text.