Epilogue: a manifesto for teaching public speaking

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Joshua Gunn and William Keith for providing helpful feedback on this essay.

Notes

1. Janet Lyon, Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 2–3.

2. Lyon, 3.

3. Some of these syllabi came from the National Communication Association's database of instructional materials, while others were found through a Google search for “public speaking syllabus.” I only analyzed syllabi from colleges and universities where the communication or speech programs are well established. The set included syllabi from programs such as College of Charleston, Kansas State University, Louisiana State University, North Carolina State University, University of South Carolina, University of Southern California, and the University of Washington.

4. I used the following texts in this analysis: Steven A. Beebee and Susan J. Beebee, Public Speaking: An Audience-Centered Approach, 9th ed. (New York: Pearson, 2014); Isa N. Engleberg and John A. Daly, Think: Public Speaking, 1st ed. (New York: Pearson, 2012); William Keith & Christian O. Lundberg, Public Speaking: Choices and Responsibility, 2nd ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, 2016); Stephen Lucas, The Art of Public Speaking, 12th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2014); Dan O’Hair, Rob Stewart, and Hannah Rubenstein, A Speaker's Guidebook: Text and Reference, 6th ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2014); Michael Osborn, Suzanne Osborn, Randall Osborn, and Kathleen J. Turner, Public Speaking: Finding Your Voice, 10th ed. (New York: Pearson, 2014); and David Zarefsky, Public Speaking, Strategies for Success, 7th ed. (New York: Pearson, 2013).

5. Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric: Comprising an Analysis of the Laws of Moral Evidence and Persuasion, with Rules for Argumentative Composition and Elocution (New York: Sheldon & Co, 1871); Henry Coppée, Elements of Rhetoric: Designed as a Manual of Instruction (Philadelphia: E.H. Butler & Co., 1859); and A. D. Hepburn, Manual of English Rhetoric (Cincinnati, OH: Wilson, Hinkle, & Co., 1875).

6. Winifred Bryan Horner and Kerri Morris Barton, “The Eighteenth Century,” in The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric, ed. Winifred Bryan Horner (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 114–50.

7. Donald C. Stewart, “The Nineteenth Century,” in The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric, ed. Winifred Bryan Horner (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 151–85.

8. Frances A. Shaw, The Art of Oratory, System of Delsarte (Albany, NY: Edgar S. Werner, 1882); Delsarte System of Oratory, 4th ed. (New York: Edgar S. Werner, 1893); Genevieve Stebbins, Delsarte System of Expression  (New York: Edgar S. Werner, 1885); Henry Davenport Northrup, The Delsarte Speaker, or Modern Elocution Designed Especially for Young Folks and Amateurs (Cincinnati, OH: W.H. Ferguson Co., 1895).

9. Suzanne Bordelon, “Embodied Ethos and Rhetorical Accretion: Genevieve Stebbins and the Delsarte System of Expression,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46 (2016): 105–30.

10. James Rush, The Philosophy of the Human Voice: Embracing Its Physiological History; Together with a System of Principles, by which Criticism in the Art of Elocution May be Rendered Intelligible, and Instruction, Definite and Comprehensive. To which is Added a Brief Analysis of Song and Recitative, 7th ed. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1879), 240. Spellings reflect original text.

11. Proceedings of the First National Convention of Public Readers and Teachers of Elocution, held at Columbia College, New York, June 27 to July 2, 1892, Public Readers and Teachers of Elocution, 1893, pp. 22–30.

12. Paul M. Pearson, “A Paper Read at the Public Speaking Conference of Instructors in the Colleges of Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, District of Columbia, and Southern New York,” The Speaker 5 (1910): 385–88.

13. For a more detailed institutional history of the National Communication Association, see Pat J. Gehrke and William M. Keith, ed. A Century of Communication Studies: The Unfinished Conversation (New York: Routledge, 2014), particularly the Introduction and chapters 2 and 3. For an intellectual and political history of the discipline, see Pat J. Gehrke, The Ethics and Politics of Speech: Communication and Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009).

14. Joshua Gunn, “Speech is Dead; Long Live Speech,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94 (2008): 343–64.

15. Albert Mehrabian, Nonverbal Communication (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1972). Researchers now largely regard this ratio as incorrect and the studies upon which it is based to be flawed; for example see Antonietta Trimboli and Michael B. Walker, “Nonverbal Dominance in the Communication of Affect: A Myth?” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 11 (1987): 180–90.

16. Obviously, I am using a restrictive sense of “civic” and “political” in this analysis. Of course, all these channels carry some social, civic, and political sense or dimension, as does all public culture. The distinction I am making here uses the more vernacular sense of the political and the sense of civic speech most often reflected in the textbooks of our first-year courses.

17. Special Issue: Performance and Rhetoric, Text and Performance Quarterly 34 (2014): 1–122.

18. Samuel McCormick & Mary Stuckey, “Presidential Disfluency: Literacy, Legibility, and Vocal Political Aesthetics in the Rhetorical Presidency,” Review of Communication 13 (2013): 3–22.

19. Joshua Gunn, Greg Goodale, Mirko M. Hall, and Rosa A. Eberly, “Auscultating Again: Rhetoric and Sound Studies,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 43 (2013): 475–89.

20. Marcel M. Robles, “Executive Perceptions of the Top 10 Soft Skills Needed in Today's Workplace,” Business Communication Quarterly 75 (2012): 456–57.

21. Some competitive academic debaters also use this technique to retain their ability to be clear while speaking at an absurdly high rate.

22. Wytse Keulen, “Vocis Immutatio: The Apuleian Prologue and the Pleasures and Pitfalls of Vocal Versatility,” in Seeing Tongues, Hearing Scripts: Orality and Representation in the Ancient Novel, ed. Victoria Rimmell (Groeningen: Barkhuis & Groeningen, 2007), 106–37.

23. James E. Porter, “Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric,” Computers and Composition (2009): 207–24.

24. Jeffrey Walker, The Genuine Teachers of this Art: Rhetorical Education in Antiquity (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2012), 168–712.

25. Walker, 188–90.

26. Walker, 198.

27. Rhetorical education in ancient Greece was almost exclusively limited to men and especially to men of some means. Robin Osborne and Josiah Ober offer much evidence that even the democratic assembly in Athens and rhetorical education in the age of the sophists were dominated by the leisure class. See Robin Osborne, Athens and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).

28. Derek Collins, Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 84–86.

29. I particularly recommend the work of communication scholar Jonathan Rossing. See Jonathan P. Rossing and Krista Hoffman-Longtin, “Improv (ing) the Academy: Applied Improvisation as a Strategy for Educational Development,” To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, forthcoming.

30. See Terry Barrett, “Studio Critiques of Student Art: As They Are, as They Could Be With Mentoring,” Theory Into Practice 39 (2000): 29–35; and Colin M. Gray, “Informal Peer Critique and the Negotiation of Habitus in a Design Studio,” Art, Design, & Communication in Higher Education 12 (2013): 195–209.

31. See, for example, Andreas C. Lehmann and K. Anders Ericsson, “Research on Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice: Implications for the Education of Amateur Musicians and Music Students,” Psychomusicology: A Journal of Research in Music Cognition 16 (1997): 40–58.

32. I especially recommend the excellent collection edited by Amos Kiewe and Davis W. Houck, The Effects of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Effects: Past, Present, Future (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2015).

33. James Milton O’ Neill, Classified Models of Speech Composition: Ninety-five Complete Speeches (New York: Century Company, 1921); James Milton O’Neill, Modern Short Speeches: Ninety Eight Complete Examples (New York: Century Company, 1923).

34. William M. Keith, “We are the Speech Teachers,” Review of Communication 11 (2011): 90.