Speech genres and cultural value in the Anglo-American public speaking course as a site of language socialization

ABSTRACT

Speech genres have a significant role in socializing children and adults not only to speak in culturally appropriate ways but also to present desirable identities. We analyze narratives of self-transformation collected in an undergraduate public speaking course in the United States to learn how the acquisition of public speaking as a speech genre contributes to U.S. students’ language socialization. Our study contributes to two traditions of intercultural communication research, one interested in the context-bound, culturally situated character of Anglo-American speech, and another that seeks to explain how local communication resources, including speech genres, travel across cultural boundaries.

KEYWORDS:

• Speech genres
• language socialization
• cultural value
• public speaking
• mobility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Associate Professor David Boromisza-Habashi studies the cultural foundations and global circulation of particular forms of public discourse such as public speaking and hate speech. His first book, Speaking Hatefully: Culture, Communication, and Political Action in Hungary, is an ethnographic study of public debates surrounding hate speech in Hungary.

Doctoral Candidate Lydia Reinig researches cultural forms of community engagement, focusing on how local communities use shared linguistic resources to enact social action. Her ethnographic studies explore cultural understandings of public participation in energy democracy and local strategies for coming to terms with rural youth migration.

ORCID

David Boromisza-Habashi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3235-5813

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS) at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2014, for which we are grateful.