The Need for Oratory Skills in the Digital Age. A Phenomenological Approach to Teaching Speech Today

Personal skills in rhetoric and face-to-face communication are not outdated by the development of modern media—on the contrary, the potential power of the efficient speaker is as evident today as it was in ancient Greece or Rome, be it a student at an oral exam, an applicant at a job interview or an upcoming politician on social media. Becoming a good speaker is not just a matter of good luck and talent; it can be taught and developed. The article presents a phenomenological approach to understanding and developing competence in live rhetorical performance, and highlights the didactic benefits of a collaborative, corporeal, and visually oriented perspective on speech and oratory in the digital age.

Paradox as Decolonization: Ali Shariati’s Islamic Lawgiver

This article reevaluates the Iranian polymath Ali Shariati’s most controversial lectures. Scholarly consensus reads 1969’s Ummat va Imāmat as derivative, comprising an imitation of Sukarno’s guided democracy and hence an apology for postcolonial authoritarian rule. Shariati’s rhetorical performance suggests otherwise. The lectures address a postcolonial iteration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s paradox of founding—a call for self-determination alongside the external intervention needed to prepare for it in the wake of moral dispositions accrued during colonization. Shariati proposes to resolve the problem of enduring colonial domination by citing a fabricated French professor, a foreigner, as an authoritative source. He practices a noble lie, believable because it draws from colonized sensibilities but laden with hints encouraging audiences to see past it. If audiences develop the requisite ability to decipher the lie, Shariati wagers, they at once develop the autonomy implied by self-determination. On these grounds, Shariati theorizes the paradox of politics as decolonization.

Shaping Form: Performances as Analyses of Cyclic Macroform in Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, op. 19 (1911), in the Recordings of Eduard Steuermann and Other Pianists

Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke (Six Little Piano Pieces), op. 19 (1911), offer a fruitful case study to examine and categorize performers’ strategies in regard to their form-shaping characteristics. A thorough quantitative and qualitative analysis of 46 recordings from 41 pianists (recorded between 1925 to 2018), including six recordings from Eduard Steuermann, the leading pianist of the Second Viennese School, scrutinizes the interdependency between macro- and microformal pianistic approaches to this cycle. In thus tracing varying conceptions of a performance-shaped cyclic form and their historical contexts, the continuous unfurling of the potential of Schoenberg’s musical ideas in both “structuralist” and “rhetorical” performance styles is systematically explored, offering a fresh approach to the controversial discussion on how analysis and performance might relate to one another.

Cripping Kairos: The Risky Rhetorical Performance of Autism Disclosure for the College Student

This article draws on qualitative interviews with one autistic student about his experiences accessing higher education, focusing on disability disclosure as a time-based rhetorical practice. I explore how Mike exploits the kairotic dimensions of autism disclosure in risky and contradictory ways to pursue his larger educational goals. Autistic students are often assumed to be unacceptably awkward, incapable of intentional stances, and fundamentally not rhetorical. These assumptions, however, obscure the complexity inherent in their rhetorical practices; this complexity is particularly salient in the timing of disability disclosure. I argue that Mike embodies a temporal expertise that expands the concept of crip time – often conceived as a delay or extension of normative time frames – to encompass time as a rhetorical resource for disabled rhetors.

Laying Down Heads in Written and Oral Composition

Chapter Two explores Joseph Smith's personal style of composition in relation to contemporary print conventions, as well as early American education and popular preaching methods and techniques. The chapter focuses on the method of "laying down heads," or the use of preliminary outlines to compose and deliver sermons. The chapter begins with a brief look at John Walker's popular system of composition in early American education, followed by an exploration of the techniques in relation to Congregationalist preaching styles practiced in the Connecticut River Valley, where Smith spent much of his childhood. Smith's older brother, Hyrum Smith, attended Moor's Indian Charity School, an institution created by Congregationalist preacher Eleazar Wheelock in conjunction with the formation of Dartmouth College. The preaching style taught at the school reflected the semi-extemporaneous style of the famous preacher, George Whitefield, and provides evidence of a Smith family member receiving formal instruction in preaching styles, delivery, and rhetorical performance.

Public Speaking in the Age of the State Duma

The main fruit of the 1905 revolution had been the creation of an imperial parliament, the State Duma. Although the status of this body was challenged by the tsarist government and its legislative achievements are sometimes considered modest, it was a formidable rhetorical school for Russia’s new political class. Its debates were recorded by stenographers and brought to an eager newspaper-reading public. This chapter reviews the rhetorical performance and significance of the Duma through its four iterations: the short-lived first and second, which were dominated by outspoken critics of the government; the more conservative third, which nonetheless saw a good deal of rhetorical combat between left and Right; and the chequered fourth, which by late 1916 was producing fierce criticism of the government’s wartime performance. The chapter also explores various forms of extra-parliamentary rhetoric (public lectures, zemstvo and municipal assemblies, preaching).