public speaking
Jay Lemke (JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Mon, 06 May 96 16:05:58 EDT
Relevant to the issues raised about public-speaking as a
more-than-literate mode of communication (though one many of
whose norms are close to those of formal literacy), would be
the large literature on 'performance'. Keith Sawyer has already
mentioned some of this from his own interests, and the field
ranges from dramatic interpretation and performance (where
there is a script-script) to performance in oral cultures
(the work of Dell Hymes is very good on this, but there is
a lot of it across many cultures now), where the relations
between 'text' and 'performance' are many and marvelous.
Public-speaking, or oratory, is an older tradition than
literacy, and there are many interesting connections between
their histories (within say the Hellenic-Roman-WestEuropean-
American constructable continuity). I touch on some of this
in my review of Olson's _World on Paper_, where I fault
some of the arguments for not adequately considering the role
of the oral tradition and so attributing to the literate one
more than perhaps can be justified on the evidence. JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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