User:AlextheHistoryMajor/Elocution

Key passages:

• Miller for his part, discusses the significance of the elocutionary movement to the establishment of standards for English usage and taste in eighteenth-century Britain, noting that the elocutionists are "the best example of how early English teacher worked to unify the nation by eradicating the dialectical differences that distinguished provincials".^[1]
• ... Sheridan and Walker affirm the disciplinary status and functions of elocution in significantly different ways. As two of the key members of the community of elocutionary writers, Sheridan and Walker can be seen as engaging in an implicit rhetorical debate about what elocution is and why it is important.^[1]
• ...my main purpose is not to investigate the views that Sheridan and Walker present about these three modes of persuasion as part of the subject-matter of elocution, but rather to examine how these writers- or rhetors, if you will- employ the persuasive strategies of ethos, logos, and pathos to construct their cases for the importance of elocutionary study."^[1]
• However, unlike the elocutionists, other eighteenth-century rhetoricians did not of course make delivery the sole focus of their rhetorical treatises and teachings; nor did they entirely support the elocutionary attempt to codify and regulate delivery according to a prescriptive or “mechanical” set of rules, advocating instead an ostensibly more “natural” approach to the study and performance of effective delivery.^[1]
• Elocutionary publications such as Sheridan’s Lectures and Walker’s Elements, which combined theoretical and scientifi􏰜c treatment of the principles of elocution with instructions for proper practice, took advantage of this market for educational books in two ways: as part of the growing trade in instructional manuals and textbooks, and of the increasing popularity among educated members of the reading public in scholarly works of philosophy, science, history, belles lettres, and so on.^[1]
• The eighteenth-century attention to education in polite accomplishments was connected with the simultaneous growing scholarly interest in standardizing the English language. According to Ulman, one key aspect of the process of standardizing the English language in eighteenth-century Britain was “the codifi􏰜cation of the standard in dictionaries and grammars”. These practices of codifi􏰜cation constituted no less than a“growth industry”during the latter half of the century.^[1]
• the opening sections of the Lectures and Elements of Elocution attempt, in different ways, to defi􏰜ne the fi􏰜eld of elocutionary study as a contextually significant􏰜 space of scholarly and practical interest. In other words, the opening sections work to establish a credible ethos both for the writers themselves and for elocution as a fi􏰜eld of study.^[1]
• These efforts, which I call “disciplinary ethos”, correspond to the exordium’s function of making the audience attentive by showing the importance of the matter the speaker is addressing,as well as its relevance to the audience. Thus, the introductory sections of Sheridan’s Lectures and Walker’s Elements work to defuse the suspect disciplinary character of elocution by constructing it as a legitimate fi􏰜eld of enquiry.^[1]
• Sheridan in particular stresses the disciplinary ethos of elocution as a scholarly and educational 􏰜field of national signi􏰜ficance in two main ways: by basing the value of elocutionary study on an appeal to classical authority and, at the same time, situating elocutionary theory as a vital contribution to enlightenment philosophies of human nature. Appealing to an eighteenth-century commonplace, he argues for the credibility of elocution on the basis of classical authority by claiming that a revival of the art of speaking will reinstate the glory of classical culture in eighteenth-century Britain.^[1]
• That is, Sheridan’s personal ethos can be inferred from the disciplinary ethos that he constructs for elocution: if the study of elocution is an undertaking of philosophical importance and of national moral signi􏰜ficance, then Sheridan himself, by implication, is an important philosopher and moral leader for the British nation. But if readers fi􏰜nd his campaign for elocution enthusiastic to the point of extravagance, then Sheridan’s personal ethos suffers accordingly.^[1]
• Likewise, by associating the study of elocution in his “Introduction” with the burgeoning 􏰜field of grammatical study rather than with the philosophical study of human nature, Walker carves out a narrower but perhaps 􏰜firmer and more acceptable disciplinary identity for elocution.^[1]
• According to Miller, “[o]ver four hundred editions of English grammars and some two hundred and 􏰜fifteen editions of English dictionaries were published in the eighteenth century, with 􏰜five times more new dictionaries and grammars appearing after 1750 than had been published in the fi􏰜rst half of the century”.^[1]
• Though Sheridan does provide some specifi􏰜c rules for learning effective delivery in his Lectures, these rules are slimly developed; instead, he continues throughout the Lectures to provide a variety of arguments that support his educational project. Walker, by contrast, seems to take for granted that the case for the study of elocution has already been persuasively made; he therefore undertakes in the body of Elements precisely the kind of detailed and systematic enumeration of rules for elocution that Sheridan promises but does not fully deliver.^[1]
• Insofar as the emphasis is on logos as reason, logical appeal is to the substance of premises and/or presumptions and not to logical form”. Logos as formal logic, by contrast, emphasizes the formal consistency and rules of formation that bind and relate terms.^[1]
• [Sheridan makes 2 arguments that contradict each other] Paradoxically, Sheridan represents the regulation of written language as an ideal towards which spoken language should strive, while at the same time arguing that “living speech” possesses far greater communicative potential and importance than the “dead letter” of written discourse.^[1]
• Taking for granted, therefore, that the scholarly and educational value of elocution has already been suffi􏰜ciently established, Walker’s objective, as we have seen, is to provide “plain practical rules in a scholastic and methodical form, that convey real and useful instruction”. In Yoos’s terms, this method attempts to demonstrate how the diverse elements of elocution bind and relate to each other in a rule-determined, systematic manner.^[1]
• To the extent that Walker wishes to make new contributions to the fi􏰜eld of elocutionary enquiry, his treatise would seem to appeal to the contemporary community of scholars involved in the critical study of language and discourse. That is, Walker clearly wants to be recognized as a scholar and to have his publication valued as a learned treatise—not simply a practical handbook—on elocution.^[1]
• At the outset of Lecture VI he argues that the achievement of truly graceful and forceful delivery requires mastery of “tones, and gesture: upon which all that is pleasurable, or affecting in elocution, chie􏰝fly depends” (p. 94), yet he provides virtually no practical instruction for acquiring emotionally powerful delivery. Instead, his discussion in his fi􏰜nal two lectures on tones and gestures primarily develops a philosophical-theoretical rationale for the importance of the language of emotions (also called the language of nature) to human communication. Bringing together within this discussion his ideas about classical oratory with contemporary philosophies of human nature...^[1]
• In particular, these texts seem to participate in the larger eighteenth-century project to standardize and regulate the communicative practices of an increasingly heterogeneous educated public concerned to learn the proprieties of polite discourse and social conduct.^[1]
• Sheridan’s text provides an inspirational, if at times excessive, foundational justification for the importance of elocutionary study within eighteenth-century society whereas Walker’s treatise—composed some twenty years later—eschews this kind of theoretical and deliberative discussion in favour of a systematically detailed explication of prescriptive rules for proper elocution.^[1]

• I, however, agree with scholars advocating that elocution pedagogy legitimized women's rhetorical practice in the 19th century in a way that other modes of rhetorical education, like traditional public speaking, perhaps did not or could not.^[2]
• For instance, the small liberal arts college where I teach indicated, in its 1894-1895 bulletin, that elocutionary training focused on voice formation, articulation, flexibility, gesture, voice training, literary studies, expression, pantomime, reading, and recitation. The bulletin also explained that the function of elocution was to discover possible meanings of a reading, to learn how to express those meanings, then to discover the intended purpose.^[2]

• Wollstonecraft presents numerous topics that are absent from Enfield’s work including direct advice to women regarding their duties, obligations, demeanor, and appearance. Also, unlike Enfield, Wollstonecraft includes extensive selections from devotional and Biblical literature. And, in particular, The Female Reader includes numerous passages from various women authors. The Speaker, in contrast, contains only one excerpt from a single female writer.^[3]
• But the possibility of “the female reader” emerging from the parlor and on to the platform would be deferred by the significant structural changes affecting nineteenth-century English society. There is a scholarly consensus, says Robert B. Shoemaker, that between 1650 and 1850 “there was an increasing separation of spheres, a sharpening of the differences between male and female social roles. Thus, historians argue that this was the period in which the pattern of gender roles which dominated modern life until very recently was formed” (6).^[3]
• Like her predecessors, Wollstonecraft, Cresswick, and Barbauld, Ellis maintains that social reading contributes to “the formation of character” and is “an important means of refining and elevating the mind, of cultivating the sympathies of our nature and of improving those habits of perception and adaptation which are so valuable to all, but especially to women” (9). Reading aloud “is most especially important to women, because of the amount of time usually occupied by them in quiet and sedentary employments. Mind has so very little to do with a vast proportion of these employments” (13). Elocution, then, among its other benefits, offers relief from the mind-numbing work expected of Victorian women.^[3]
• Ellis’s decision to include oratory in a reader for young women is both surprising and remarkable. She had, of course, just reminded her readers of the superiority of narration and description over other modes of discourse. Yet she concedes that oratory is the form of address that has “called forth more study, more preparation, and more knowledge of the grace which captivates, and the art which persuades, than any other style of speaking or writing” and thus deserves the attention of young women (127).^[3]
• It appears, then, that Ellis advocates the study of eloquence in The Young Ladies’ Reader not to train female orators but rather to assist in preparing wives for the more effective management of their husbands. For Ellis, therefore, the female elocutionist is not merely an accomplished declaimer but an “artful woman” who is adept at employing social reading and surreptitious persuasion in the interests of improving “domestic associations.”^[3]
• Elocution performs this function by assisting the English wife and mother in achieving family stability and moral clarity. And although precluded from political debate, women may nevertheless use their elocutionary skills to persuade those in their domestic circle—including, most particularly, husbands.^[3]
• Thus, Ellis may have believed that by domesticating elocution she was offering women a “real expansion of their power.” Yet by situating elocution more firmly than ever in women’s “little sphere” Ellis may have delayed female elocutionists’ emergence from the parlor to the podium.^[3]

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Lead

Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone as well as the idea and practice of effective speech and its forms. It stems from the idea that while communication is symbolic, sounds are final and compelling.^[4][5] It came into popularity in England from the eighteenth and nineteenth century and in America during the nineteenth century. It benefitted both men and women in their different ways but overall the concept was there to teach both how to become better, more persuasive speakers, standardize errors in spoken and written English, as well as the beginnings of the formulation of argument were discussed here.

Article body

In Western classical rhetoric, elocution was one of the five core disciplines of pronunciation, which was the art of delivering speeches. Orators were trained not only on proper diction, but on the proper use of gestures, stance, and dress. There was a movement in the eighteenth century to standardize English writing and speaking and elocution was a part of this movement, with the help of Sheridan and Walker.^[1] (Another area of rhetoric, elocutio, was unrelated to elocution and, instead, concerned the style of writing proper to discourse.)

Elocution emerged as a formal discipline during the eighteenth century. One of its important figures was Thomas Sheridan, actor and father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Thomas Sheridan's lectures on elocution, collected in Lectures on Elocution (1762) and his Lectures on Reading (1775), provided directions for marking and reading aloud passages from literature. Another actor, John Walker, published his two-volume Elements of Elocution in 1781, which provided detailed instruction on voice control, gestures, pronunciation, and emphasis. Sheridan had a lot of ground to cover with having to be one of the first to establish great ideas about this subject, speaking more vaguely on subjects, but promising to explain upon them further. While Walker's approach was an attempt to put in place rules and a system on the correct form of elocution. A reason these books gained traction was because both authors took a scientific approach and made rhetorically-built arguments in a time period where manual-styled, scientific, how-to books were popular.^[1] Including these were "over four hundred editions" of grammar and "two hundred fifteen editions" of dictionary books that became available to the public in the 1700s, "five times more ... after 1750" than prior.^[1] This was because education held a heavier weight in social status so therefore upper-class, higher educated people were reading these books as well as who wanted to have the appearance of more gentleman or lady-like.^[3] The era of the elocution movement, defined by the likes of Sheridan and Walker, evolved in the early and mid-1800s into what is called the scientific movement of elocution, defined in the early period by James Rush's The Philosophy of the Human Voice (1827) and Richard Whately's Elements of Rhetoric (1828), and in the later period by Alexander Melville Bell's A New Elucidation of Principles of Elocution (1849) and Visible Speech (1867).

In her recent book The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word (University of Illinois Press, 2017), Marian Wilson Kimber addresses the oft-forgotten, female-dominated genre of elocution set to musical accompaniment in the United States.

In his recent article, ""The Artful Woman": Mrs. Ellis and the Domestication of Elocution" (Rhetoric Review 39, 2020), Don Paul Abbott writes about Sarah Stickney Ellis and her work Young Ladies Reader (1845) and its impact on women's lives in the nineteenth century. Ellis' work, as well as others that were published around the same time, had compilations of other authors' works. Ellis had intended her work to be for other women, therefore she complied a number of women's writings in her work, as did other authors more or less dependent on specific ones.^[3] This was still during a time where it was well believed that women and men lived in "separate spheres".^[3] Ellis had not gone to the lengths that Sheridan and Walker did when it came to developing theories and rules for elocution but she made it clear through her writing that she believed that the spoken word was powerful and mastering it "deserves the attention" of ladies all around.^[3] She comes to this idea of "The Artful Woman", a concept of a lady who is able to persuade others, specifically mentioned her husband. According to Abbott, Ellis believes that she had empowered women in their own sphere, so much so he argues in his journal article that it is possible she delayed women stepping "from the parlor to the podium".^[3]

Modern elocution

Jason Munsell, a communications and speech professor, theorizes that part of elocution is strategic movement and visuals. This is suggested due to a major portion of communication occurring digitally.^[6] In his journal article from 2011, he wrote that the writings of elocution during the mid-nineteenth century aided women in becoming rhetorically empowered.^[2] Munsell, when examining a bulletin from the time period, makes an argument that elocution may have been the beginnings of the rhetoric concept of Literary theory, "The bulletin also explained that the function of elocution was to discover possible meanings of a reading, to learn how to express those meanings, then to discover the intended purpose."^[2]

References