public speaking in postmodernity

Music: Kate Havnevik: Melankton (2007)

Let's just go ahead and admit it: public speaking textbooks are incredibly boring. Although many Americans report public speaking is one of their top five fears—right up there with snakes and accidental public nudity—the textbooks designed to confront the fear of speaking advance the instructional equivalent of watching paint dry. For example, examining the introductory chapters of a number of the dominant public speaking texts in the U.S. market, we find a lengthy comparison and contrast of public speaking and conversation (Lucas), inflated suggestions that students are on their way to becoming a powerful public speakers (Osborne and Osborne), or the brittle prose of an instruction manual (O'Hair, Steward, and Rubenstein). If it is truly the case that "the average person at a funeral would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy," as Jerry Seinfeld has suggested, then the last thing an anxious student wants to read is a pile of common sense observations. Do students really care to read about the different ways in which public speaking is similar and different to conversation? Or would they rather read about the ways in which public speaking is like flirting? I gamble the latter.

Public speaking textbooks should reflect the anxiety of students with exciting prose, matching their fears with a homologous high energy. Public Speaking in Postmodernity will change the tone of public speaking instruction, confronting the calm and tired prose of the dominant texts with a sharp tongue, quick wit, and deliberately "racy" content. If I could reduce the aim of Public Speaking in Postmodernity to a bumper sticker motto, it might read: "This ain't your grandma's public speaking!"

In addition to adopting a new, fresh tone, Public Speaking in Postmodernity will tackle the bloated verbosity of dominant texts. Compounding the tedium of most public speaking textbooks, publishers keep making them longer and longer. Those of us who have been teaching public speaking for a decade or more will tell you that one overcomes public speaking anxiety by doing it, not by reading about it. Consequently, at least for students, public speaking textbooks are little more than a kind of rhetorical hand-holding. Indeed, most public speaking textbooks are glorified outlines of common sense. Although every textbook needs to address the basics of audience analysis, speech construction, and delivery, there is simply no reason a public speaking textbook needs to be 500 pages long! Popular textbooks range from 494 pages (Beebe and Beebe) to 560 pages (Lucas), and the longer these books get, the more students have to pay. Do teachers of public speaking actually assign their students five hundred pages of textbook reading each semester? I doubt it. Can today's average student really afford to pay $100 for a public speaking textbook? Of course not. Public Speaking in Postmodernity will trim the bloated public speaking textbook, reducing long-winded, unnecessary discussions of common sense to a basic, need-to-know style in an affordable format.

Public Speaking in Postmodernity (or Pomo-Pub-Spee in shorthand) will be a slimmer, less expensive, high energy alternative to the large and boring public speaking textbook. It will look and read very differently than the texts dominating the market today. Rhetorically, the textbook will be written in the same, conversational style adopted in this proposal. Each chapter will cover the basic, standard topics, but illustrate key points and features with examples from popular culture and internal references to the book's graphic features. Visually, Pomo-Pub-Spee will [secret stuff goes here].