Communication left speechless: A critical examination of the evolution of speech communication as an academic discipline

Abstract

This paper explores several taken‐for‐granted assumptions in the evolution of speech communication as an academic discipline. At one time, the study of speech communication in this country largely focused on the development of one's voice toward an expanded appreciation of the “noble pleasures” of speaking. Through a series of epistemic transformations, the study of speech no longer directly concerns matters of oral performance and bodily gesture; instead, it has taken on the agenda of a social science discipline and has tended to de‐emphasize the significance of the body in human communication systems, concentrating instead on language (langue) systems, ideologies, and communication technologies. The implication of the subdued role of the human body in the process of verbal performance provides the central problem for this essay—becoming thematic in the genealogy of speech communication studies (namely, the series of choices to elevate the discussion of speech communication subject matters over and above the experience and pleasure of the speaking subject). The essay concludes with reflections on the possibility of speech (understood as parole) as a human science—posited as “communicology” or a semiotic phenomenology of parole.