A fundamental challenge that all public speakers face is getting and keeping the attention of audiences. Because audiences absorb large amounts of talk with little chance of taking the floor, the potential for inattentiveness and boredom is significant. In conversational interchanges, the brief duration of speaking turns and regular transfers of…

Digital oratory can be described as thesis-driven, vocal, embodied public address that is housed within (online) new media platforms (and that ideally takes advantage of the developing/flux-laden conventions that the online video context provides). This new form of public address lies somewhere between traditional speech-giving and media…

Most every writing teacher can relate to the curse of reading yet another incoherent essay, the contents of which resemble an unorganized junk drawer of thoughts. Such essays cry out for a main idea. The remedy is a thesis, and teachers rightly take pains to help students discover this. Yet in spite of this, writing teachers ought to bear in mind…

This study investigates the outcomes of two novice preservice teachers' (PSTs') attempts at taking up the roles of critical guides (Damico & Apol, 2008) to mediate discussions about racism in response to President Barack Obama's (2008) campaign speech "A More Perfect Union." With the objective of teaching for social justice, these…

It seems to happen every day. A meeting is called to outline a new strategy or sales plan. Down go the lights and up goes the PowerPoint. Strange phrases appear--"unlocking shareholder value," "technology-focused innovation," "maximizing utility." Lists of numbers come and go. Bullet point by bullet point, the…

Parody and related forms of political humor are essential resources for sustaining democratic public culture. They do so by exposing the limits of public speech, transforming discursive demands into virtual images, setting those images before a carnivalesque audience, and celebrating social leveling while decentering all discourses within the…

This article presents a public speaking assignment that takes the study of rhetoric seriously. First, it shifts the approach from the common typology of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speeches toward forensic, deliberative, and epideictic rhetoric. Second, this assignment takes rhetoric seriously by generating the understanding that all…

Argues that presumption represents a multidimensional concept, not a monolithic one. Claims that in reaching a decision on a nonpolicy debate, the decision rule "one who asserts must prove" ought to be given primacy over the predispositions of a given audience or of society at large. (JD)

Intrinsic justification in academic debate focuses on the essential characteristics of the terms in a topic. The technique, advocated by Ken Bahm, works with very few Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) topics. It gives rise to counterwarrants, which create more confusion than clarity, while its counterplans destroy affirmative grounds. In…

Maintains that John Quincy Adams'"Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory" and Adams Sherman Hill's "Principles of Rhetoric" reveal significant differences in what their authors perceive to be the most salient environmental conditions facing their students. (JK)

Analyzes speeches in which Reagan challenges the following convention: science will continue to create technologically advanced weapons against which no effective defense will be developed, making deterrence through an assured retaliatory capability the only possible defense. Textual analysis reveals how public discourse can achieve unities of…

Views Reagan's "Star Wars" address as part of the culturally evolving myth of the New Frontier. Discusses how the speech creates the illusion of both preserving and transcending science by (1) subordinating technical reasoning to prevent nuclear holocaust and (2) using technoscience to rescript history and remove temporal and spacial…

Reproduces portions of the first lecture given to the Philosophical Society of Aberdeen, Scotland--George Campbell's discussion of eloquence of 1758. Explains the importance of this document, asserting that it reveals the "belletristic" roots of Campbell's theory, and proves that his differentiation on the "ends" of speaking…

Analyzes selected speeches by feminists active in the early Afro-American protest, revealing differences in their rhetoric and that of White feminists of the period. Argues that a simultaneous analysis and synthesis is necessary to understand these differences. Illustrates speeches by Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell. (JD)

This essay grows out of a Short Course the author helped to teach called "Back to the Future: An Exploration of Public Communication Pedagogy, Past and Present, With Inventive Applications for the Future" presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago. The author presents an activity that focuses on mimesis…