The New York Sophist

Finished with my grade submission, so I’ve been doing some reading and watching these amazing bird feeder videos. They are so great, and I get to see a lot of birds I wouldn’t normally see. I don’t have a yard, or really any good scenery here in my New York City apartment, so this is the next best thing. It’s probably better, honestly than the wildlife I could attract with a feeder of my own.

Done with grades, but what’s my grade? What’s my mark for the term? I seriously failed, and I think the reason is that I have a strange, compartmentalized view of public speaking.

I think public speaking should be the performance of a certain kind of discourse that is marked for me with the signs of caring about audience. I don’t really know how else to do it, but what I need to figure out is how to get students to create, and how to evaluate, compositions not marked for me.

One way I was thinking of doing this was to mire the students in some discourse about an issue. The task would be to learn what the tropes, commonplaces, and other features of the discourse are, and try to extract or determine principles from the discourse.

I see this in three levels:
Deriving principles from a question

Deriving principles from a statement

Deriving principles from a discourse

All three are very different in my mind, and might require some future writing here about each one. For this post, I think it’s sufficient to say that we would try to trace back to whatever supports, or is assumed to be real, that is being articulated at the point of the creation of the discourse. We could call it perspective; many from the American rhetorical tradition might call this grounding, or backing, after Toulmin’s work.

The point is to find grounding for things like facts and evidence, not to teach these concepts in the abstract, like so many people in my field do. Something a communication scholar should never say is “The reason that speech is unpersuasive is because you didn’t have good facts in it!” This is ideological and unsupported by research in persuasion, argumentation, communication, et. al. Go down the list, you’ll see that nobody supports this view, even if they want to, because ironically, the research doesn’t support it.

Giving the students the tools of being able to articulate whatever the beliefs are of a discourse group and find handholds in that group seems like a practice they can carry around with them so they can ensure, or at least give themselves a chance to give their words purchase in a situation. Public speaking is an art, a situational art, that is derived from the moment when one interjects and has to speak, or calls a group of people together under the term audience, either implicitly or explicitly. It is not a formal set of skills and rules where one ensures one has 3 book sources for an “informative speech,” whatever the hell that is.

The future is not looking good right now for the university, so all fields should do some soul searching to find out their own principles and practices, what keeps their field alive and interesting; what makes it something that someone would want to be a part of, be included in, and think about for the rest of their lives. In rhetoric you’d think we would have a huge advantage here – but then you look at our public speaking pedagogy, you look at who directs public speaking programs, and you look at research faculty who regularly call public speaking “punishment” and think of it as a waste of time. We are our biggest obstacle in this.

Joined a friend’s podcast and did all the things I know shouldn’t be done when you are giving a talk in an online format, but it was still a pretty good time. Used it as an excuse to put off all the actual work I need to be doing, yet again. Good times. 

The podcast is a good idea, merging science fiction, fantasy, and critical thought about technology and the world together in one place. I’m lucky to have the chance to be on it, and I hope to be on it more in the future. Great shows, you should have a listen.

Public-facing rhetoric instruction is exceedingly difficult, always a lot more difficult than teaching in the classroom. The dominance of psychology, philosophy, and other fields mean that whatever we rhetoricians offer, the audience always turns to familiar claims from these feilds or the tropes of these fields. I think Aristotle has a good line about that – rhetoric is best when it is invisible, or “less about itself” – something like that, I don’t have the exact words right here in front of me, but the point is that if someone detects rhetoric they are less likely to be moved by what you are saying. They are less likely to be caught up in what you are moving them to think or do. Instead, they then use their detection of that structure to scurry up the scaffolding and watch your persuasive attempt from the meta. Best seats in the house, but they are not in the best position to say “I agree” from up there. They usually say, “I agree,” But mean it in the terms of “I agree with what you are trying to do here to other people who are not me.” This is to be avoided if you want to move the audience, not have them comment on an imaginary audience somewhere that “might have been moved.” Not an enviable position, but also pretty cool because people have a lot of defenses up for being persuaded these days. Not something to decry, honestly. 

This is really just me working out my ideas about how to approach the public with rhetorical theory, or rhetoric as it is practiced and taught by scholars now. As of this writing, I’m deeply concerned with the combination of two things: 1) how critically consumptive the receptive public is about what they take in and 2) how shallow the field of rhetoric is when it comes to such criticism. 

On the first: Most intellectually-oriented publics are engaging with ideas and texts from a critical mindset: How does this interact, gel with, engage what I already know and experience about and in the world? So people are looking at new insights in terms of how they fit with what is already confirmed. Not a big insight by any means here, but it’s important. The most receptive people are only going to accept what you are saying if they can find hooks, or handholds that they expect will be there from previous insights. Everything taken in is compared and contrasted to life experience and other things that have a strong narrative power (explanatory power). They want to take something in (consume it) and have it robustly interact with their own understandings and also supercharge those understandings in the making of an orientation or perspective on things. 

Audiences are interested in new perspectives that help them make sense of their experiences. They are using criticism to forge, create, establish new linkages out of what they hear and read for the purpose of creating new narratives about the meaning of those experiences. 

So the second concern enters here – if we simply offer the simplistic criticism “look at how unstable meaning is,” this is not going to seem deep, interesting, or helpful for people who are looking to craft a narrative that “makes sense” out of the world and gives some guidelines on how to approach it. Instead, we should abandon our critical efforts and return to the rhetorical tradition of production, invention, and crafting of argument. I think that might be a lot better and received a lot better than the critical tradition that would be our first go-to when addressing the public. 

Something to think about and perhaps connected to why rhetoricians don’t appear in the media too often. I think we consider ourselves critics of meaning and can only point to meaning’s constructed nature, or its instability. Justified, right, but not helpful to audiences. Rhetorical criticism seems more interested in the scope and scale of meaning’s instability rather than the prescriptive construction and creation of stability (even in the strange possibility that one wants to create a very stable understanding of instability in some situation, i.e. “We cannot get involved because we don’t really know what’s happening; the situation is always changing”).

Instead, giving them the tools to worldbuild might be the way to go. Lots of good, rich stuff in the history of rhetoric to play with here about making stuff. That’s what rhetoric is really about, making meaning.  

The classical tradition of the progymnasmata (preliminary rhetoric exercises) or stasis might be more interesting than the contemporary rhetorical critic’s take for most audiences. Even really great, deep, and insightful rhetorical criticism will be understood and articulated as “history” by most public audiences. Give them some tools to make something or ideas for what to make out of what they already have, and we’ll have a lot more of the kind of traction we might want.

Did I just describe a TV cooking show? Somewhere Socrates must be pleased with that.

What will it take for us to accept that the public speaking course is a composition course, and we should be in frequent, deep, constructive dialogue with those who teach composition and work in writing centers?

The pandemic, and the quarantine, have shown that public speaking instructors who have not invested in, or looked at, composition theory or discussions of composition pedagogy are in real trouble. They rely on discipline and modality, and call it content. This is not content. These are rules. We have rules for outlining. We have podium rules. We have rules about note card use. We tell people not to lean. And we have little more than disdain for the topics that students choose – lots of rules about that.

Modality is set forms – not even genres which at least would be kind of interesting. The How-To speech. The Persuasive speech. The Informative speech. The Ceremonial speech. Teaching these modalities helps no one. Where is the theory, where is the method, where is the process? How can they draw on this course when they are thinking about an idea in order to reach other people? 

The only thing that is taught is fidelity to form, fidelity to types of information, and fidelity to a conception of audience as a flat, stable, construct with very little critical thought behind it. We have some good theories about audience; they don’t make it into the textbooks, and those who understand the theories best, and could teach the theories well, refuse to teach public speaking – it is seen as punishment by most people in communication departments.

Discipline is teaching people comportment; the famous refrain of the bad public speaking teacher: “If they can’t write a proper outline how are they going to have a job?” “If they can’t stop looking at their phone, how can they have a job?” I bet if we spent half the time we concern ourselves with these imagined job aporias on actual method and process for composing thoughtful orations for real people, our students would be just fine in whatever job they get.

Public speaking is teaching what someone who is a public speaking instructor thinks that all jobs require. This sounds disastrous. Why is there such little attention on the art of speech?

The entire course is based on outlining correctly, doing visual aids correctly, and paying attention correctly. Note that the definition of correctly, and the corresponding grades and point values for correctly are not there to help anyone, they are just easy to evaluate. It’s easy to put a point value on the number of times someone looks at a phone. It’s easy to count someone late after minute X has expired. But it’s very difficult – and controversial – to tell someone “you didn’t provide enough evidence to make that claim believable for people who don’t share your life experiences.”

The easy answer to this is: Who cares if they have a job? Not my field. My field is speech, rhetoric, oratory. I’m teaching that. This would provide some orientation back toward the art we are supposed to be teaching, that of making compelling, interesting speeches.

Another easy answer: Anyone who has spent 5 minutes in a corporate meeting knows that everyone is on their phone and tablet the whole time, because that’s how we get information, take notes, and pay attention these days.  Some research and attention into the actual requirements of jobs would be nice. Also, maybe we could teach students how to recognize and adapt to corporate cultures when they find them? The tools of rhetoric are quite good at helping people identify and adapt to cultural practices. 

A third: What exactly is the value of public speaking? What’s the course about? It can’t just be about following rules, can it? What is it that speech courses should be about? What perspective, what chance do they offer for students? This is the heart of the issue. I think that the answer is that public speaking is one of the few creative, generative, and inventional courses left on campus. It is rare that a course, by design, is meant to take what a student beliefs and make that belief easier to understand and maybe even compelling to those who might dismiss it at first hearing. 

These questions should be on the minds of everyone who teaches public speaking because the essence of the course is expression. We don’t discuss it; little is published on the pedagogy of public speaking courses (but lots of assignment tips are out there and textbooks about outlining). There isn’t anything really on the art and value and essential need, value, and act of expression. Every single public speaking course instructor out there assigns work that involves expression of ideas with the human voice in front of others. They have to do it at least once during the semester. I would hope that this statement would be true. It seems hard to imagine a public speaking course without speeches. 

But we do have courses with no philosophy, no content, no matter, they don’t matter. If you can’t have someone stand at a podium, if you can’t have someone in front of a group of disheartened people who feel obligated to clap, if you can’t have them stand in the “front” of a classroom, you can’t have public speaking. This is the level most public speaking instruction lives at. It lives at the level of “you’re not following the rules.” But in a world where all the rules are non-functional, save stay-at-home and wear a mask when you go out for essentials, that’s not helpful. This should be rupturing our normal practices, but it’s not. We don’t have practices. We have rules for students to follow when going through the motions in the classroom. We don’t have a process. If we did, that would be evident in how to move a course away from the classroom into some other space, some other form of the “classroom.”

The only elements that survive the online shift are elements that help nobody with the art and practice of speech: Formal outlining (again, discipline), standing in a way that communicates the authority and confidence of someone who doesn’t exist (university created models of authority, i.e. “authorized” modes of expertise). Formatting and turning in arbitrary documentation that should prove that work was done, handed in at arbitrary times, and all that. 

What public speaking, without the guidance of colleagues in composition, becomes is an exercise in individual self importance. “These are my words, this is my belief on topic X, I have the freedom to express it, and you have to sit there.” In this environment, the only ideology reinforced is the one where we believe we can’t persuade our opponents, and we just have to hope, or wait, for them to die. Our public speaking practices encourage the belief that persuasion is more ritualistic than it is achievable. It’s something we have to go through, that we have to do as political ritual, but in the end people “are as they are” and can’t be convinced otherwise.

 Professors regularly ban topics that are too controversial, or that feel like minds can’t be moved on them. This very act indicates the vapid futility of the typical public speaking course. If you assume minds cannot be changed, what is the purpose of giving a speech? If you take the most controversial topics away, what exactly are we practicing with? I always imagine cooking class with the plastic foods that come with preschool kitchen sets, or entering a chemistry lab where the students are conducting experiments with pieces of paper labeled “sodium” and “sulfur.” In these courses, the real thing is used. Why not public speaking? Why not something where they will have to engage others at some point in their lives, when the stakes are high, and say something meaningful? Something important? Something that has the capacity to move?

In composition’s rich pedagogical literature we can find the conversations that will help us realize this, if a global pandemic can’t do the trick. I hope so. We need to. We can’t keep going on just teaching outlining and the master’s transitions. At some point our students are going to want to say something to move other minds, to impress, to get people thinking, and they should be able to pull from the experiences we shared in public speaking courses in order to draw upon some process, some moment of or with expression, to find a way in and a way through that desire. We owe them much more than that, but this might satisfy a minimum ethical obligation of a professor who is assigned a group of people under the pretense that they are going to help them learn how to form their thoughts into public address.

I write this out of disappointment not with anyone in particular, other than myself. I thought I had managed to avoid a lot of this. But the pandemic, and the move online, shows that I am mired in it. A much more radical approach to public speaking must be discovered, and my cursory engagement with composition theory is hopeful if unrealized in my own pedagogy. 

Less direction; more reflection – this phrase comes into my head a lot when thinking about the next public speaking course. I should direct less, and reflect more. Students should be directed less, and reflect more. Multiple iterations on a topic for a variety of contexts. Three or four people engaging the same question. Have the students generate the questions from the realms of doubt, not from the realm of “appropriate speech topics.” Spend less time on outlining (hopefully no time) and instead encourage note taking. Teach production for various netcasting modes. 

Lots of ideas, but nothing yet that seems to have the power needed to chip away at this ideology, this ritual practice of teaching oration in the terms of “what oration is supposed to look and sound like at the college level.” Hopefully soon.

What has quarantine done, and what did you expect it to do?

Quickly approaching the start of month two, and I have little to show for it.

A lot more hours logged in video games, a lot less reading done. Writing promises and obligations have been furloughed, by me, so that I can stare at the television, wall, out the window, etc.

Computer screens get a lot of time with me, mostly expectant stares. My students have evaporated, but a few still complete assignments and turn them in. I look at these and they show some good thinking, good thoughts, good stuff. For me it makes me wonder though the point of higher education in general? What are we evaluating here?

I have been completely redesigning my classes to focus on one or two assignments, and steer clear of all the nonsense. It’s very hard to ask the question, “Am I assigning this for them or for me?” This question is very upsetting, if you are like me and you consider a class like a good party and you want all your textual friends to be there.

I’m pretty sure that online education is now a permanent element in higher education in a very central way, and I was hoping for this during my career at some point, I just really don’t like the way its happening. It’s going to make it more difficult to sell during difficult times, and really harm the ability of higher education to defend itself from all the upcoming challenges.

I’m wondering how the role of professor got so detached from everyday life to the point that students write me apologetic emails about late work due to the death of a family member. What can I do to hedge against this view? Does this view have any advantages? What is good about seeing your teacher (yes, we bristle at that and shouldn’t) as a cold defender of the arbitrary deadline? What good does that do for others, for us, for our world?

With the removal of the classroom and the material symbols of power the classroom most depend on, we can see that the majority of college instruction is about disciplining students and evaluating their ability to follow directions. Most have no idea what to do in the absence of parading around the front of the room for 90 minutes, carefully watching for mobile phone use.

I wonder if publication and conferences are going to change at all. I think graduate education will have to change significantly due to the incredibly low enrollments we’ll see in the fall. Publication might not change that much at all, but if it does, I hope that colleagues shift to open access journals run by communities of thinkers, rather than corporate prestige journals edited by people who love getting titles and being in charge of things.

And for speech communication, I hope we come out of this embracing our service role, and start trying to learn from the rhetoricians in composition a lot more. That is serious scholarship where it should be, on the ground, helping people create and produce better than they did. Being a rhetorical critic isn’t valuable at all unless you are also teaching and producing yourself. Criticism only goes so far as rhetorical production. I wonder if our demand for a certain type of scholarly publication is harming our ability to teach audience, the heart of rhetorical studies for the vast majority of the Western tradition.

I also hope that perhaps together we can finally begin serious interrogation of the paper as assessment, looking closely at why we’d assign a paper or an exam rather than something else. I am very interested in audio, obviously, and I wonder if there’s some nice comparative here – composition: crafting text; speech comm: crafting oration? I know they are both texts, in a way, but this seems like the perfect combination for the study of what it means to think in a liberated, critical way. One must learn how to produce texts that can mean for a lot of different kinds of people if you want to influence the motives of others.

We have no idea what waits for us at the end of August, but I know I’ll be prepared to assign a lot less and try to do a lot more with my students on the terms they can understand, and try not to feel that they should be other than they are. I should focus much more on helping them see what kind of people they can be, and that being a critical thinker means you must exercise your freedom in terms of creation, not just consumption, and it is ethically responsible to make well-crafted texts for others in order to try to get them to think about who and where they are in politics, society, life, and all of it.

I was meant to be presenting this idea at the Third International Workshop on Debating at the University of Florence this weekend, but obviously that cannot happen now. I hope you are safe and secure wherever you are as we ride out this pandemic.

Here’s the video version of the presentation – I tried to adapt it for YouTube and make it signal less of an academic tone and attitude. I hope I was able to make it more casual and still keep its intelligibility. I think this is a good practice for conferences, and I’m going to keep practicing it.