Public speaking and presentations a critical review: The caring speaker

Aims. It is assumed that the vast majority of the presentations we attend in our daily work leave much to be desired, due to the lack of a structural, methodological and professional approach. This thesis examines whether it is possible to improve individual performances in public speaking through a gradual, incremental, self-training approach. Methods. Over 100 sources (articles, books, papers, websites, video and audio material) have been reviewed to establish best practice in public speaking. A qualitative insight into how professionals (non-professional speakers) approach public speaking has been conducted. Finally a practical approach and tools for the improvement of nonprofessional speakers skills have been developed. Findings. Overall, the literature on public speaking fails to make the link between oratory performances and the personality and the context in which non-professional speakers operate. Objectives and salaries of non-professional speakers are rarely linked to their proficiency at the podium, with consequently very little time and opportunity for training or even preparation. Conclusion. Merging the good practice that emerge from the review of the literature, with the experience from the interviews with non-professional speakers, may have allowed us to find a practical approach to turn non-professional speaker into caring speakers.Objectivos. Supõe-se que a vasta maioria das apresentações públicas que presenciamos diariamente nos nossos contextos laborais não são totalmente satisfatórias, devido à falta de uma visão estruturante, metodológica e profissional. Esta tese procura aferir se é possível melhorar os desempenhos individuais em discursos em público utilizando uma perspectiva de auto-aprendizagem gradual e progressiva. Métodos. Mais de 100 fontes (artigos, livros, páginas Web, vídeos e material áudio) foram revistas para estabelecer as “boas práticas” de discursos em público. Foi conduzida uma análise qualitativa focalizando em como oradores não profissionais perspectivam discursos em público. Finalmente foram desenvolvidas ferramentas e uma perspectiva prática para uma melhoria do desempenho de oradores não profissionais. Resultados. Em geral, a literatura falha ao não encontrar a ligação entre a capacidade oratória em discursos em público e a personalidade e o contexto nos quais os oradores não profissionais estão inseridos. Raramente os objectivos e os salários de tais oradores estão relacionados com a sua performance, que reflectem consequentemente o pouco tempo e oportunidade para treino e preparação. Conclusão. Conseguindo combinar as “boas práticas” que emergem da revisão da literatura, com a experiência das entrevistas realizadas com oradores não profissionais, possibilitou-nos encontrar uma perspectiva prática para tornar oradores não profissionais em oradores empenhados

Conversations : computer mediated dialogue, multilogue, and learning

The purpose of this dissertation is to argue in favor of a "pedagogy of textual conversation," a pedagogy made possible in large part by electronic technology, by computer mediated communication. Informing the argument is a deep philosophical commitment to conversation itself as the primary mode of meaning-making in both social and personal life. Material presented in support of the main argument is drawn from current and past pedagogical and communications theory as well as from ethnographic research conducted in the fall semester of 1994 in which students in an English composition class were linked to students in an education class via a single VAX electronic conference. Actual experiences in the electronic medium are forwarded to suggest that those who engage in extensive textual conversation with one another benefit from improved rhetorical skills, understanding of course content, the ability to make connections between ideas, and a liberalization of ideological views

Podcast Rhetorics: Insights into Podcasts as Public Persuasion

Asserting that professional podcasts serve as an important platform for arguments regarding issues of public importance, Podcast Rhetorics advances rhetoric and writing studies scholarship by moving beyond the dominant focus on the medium’s utility for multimodal composition pedagogy to address podcasting’s rhetorical dimensions outside the classroom. Seeking an overarching theory of podcasts as public persuasion, I identify technology, sound, and conversation as the medium’s central rhetorical components. Drawing on philosophy of technology, rhetorical sound studies, and theories of demagoguery and circulation, I analyze these elements as they function in a variety of popular podcasting platforms, shows, and episodes, including content that grapples with the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic. In shaping how podcasts are regulated, recorded, produced, delivered, received, organized, promoted, played, discussed, and monetized, technology, I argue, may be unmatched as a prevailing rhetorical force on the medium. Listening multimodally for both affect and argument, I find sound contributes structure as well evidence, builds persuasive immersion, and guides a listener’s relationship to rhetorical content in highly produced podcasts, potentially impacting audiences’ points of view on public issues. As with other elements of podcast rhetoric, conversation can both support and undermine democracy—deliberative-style conversation foregrounds complexity, while demagogic conversation flattens complex public issues into simplistic narratives of right and wrong that appeal to audiences’ preexisting beliefs

Personal effects : education in the age of personal-industry technology

This work explains and models a "personal" way of doing education in the current era of personal-industry electronic technology represented by the computer. Seeing how powerful the now-fading mass-industry technological paradigm (represented by the factory) has been in terms of promulgating a one-size-fits-all, quasi-personal and quasi-social education, this work explicates and models a way of doing education which is instead highly-personal and highly-social, in accord with the potential of the new technological paradigm of personal-industry. The question of whether or not this new personal mode of education will promulgate itself as successfully as the former mass-industry model did is addressed, and resistances to the explicit and implicit changes the new paradigm represents are outlined and discussed

A multimodal approach to persuasion in oral presentations : the case of conference presentations, research dissemination talks and product pitches

Esta tesis presenta un estudio multimodal y etnográfico del uso de estrategias persuasivas en tres géneros orales: presentaciones en conferencias, charlas de divulgación científica, y presentaciones de productos. Estos géneros comparten un importante componente persuasivo: los tres se dirigen a una audiencia tratando de convencerles del valor de un producto, servicio, o investigación. Sin embargo, se usan en dos contextos profesionales diferentes: el académico y el económico, por lo que cabe esperar que consigan su propósito comunicativo de forma diferente. Por otra parte, recientes estudios muestran como distintos discursos, tienden a adoptar cada vez más rasgos promocionales (promocionalización del discurso). En vista de ello, es factible establecer como hipótesis que los tres géneros están relacionados interdiscursivamente, y un estudio multimodal y etnográfico del uso de la persuasión en dichos géneros puede ayudar a clarificar las relaciones existentes entre ellos, así como sus diferencias.This thesis is a multimodal and ethnographic study of the use of persuasive strategies in three oral genres conference presentations, research dissemination talks and product pitches. These presentations share a strong persuasive component in their communicative purpose: the three of them address an audience to convince them of the value of a product, a service or a piece of research. However, they are used in business and academia by different discourse communities in different contexts, and therefore they can be expected to achieve their communicative goals in different ways. In addition, research suggests that there is a trend towards promotionalization of different discourses, among which academic discourse is included. In view of this, I hypothesize that these three genres are intertextually and interdiscursively related, and that a multimodal and ethnographic study of the use of persuasion in them can help to shed some light on these relationships and differences

From Orators to Cyborgs: The Evolution of Delivery, Performativity, and Gender

@font-face { font-family: Cambria ; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times New Roman ; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } The purpose of this project is to provide a thorough account of delivery by tracing the history and evolution of delivery from antiquity to the present day in order to expose the spread and transmission of proto-masculine ideologies through delivery. By looking at delivery from an evolutionary perspective, delivery no longer becomes a tool of rhetoric, but the technology of rhetoric, evolving over time in the same way the system of rhetoric itself has evolved. Contemporary scholarship on delivery continues to look at delivery as a tool—as the ink, the paper, the computer screen, the keyboard, the font, the hypertext, the web design, and so forth—of communication. Contemporary scholarship re-works the classical definition of delivery to fit into a contemporary context, and consequently ignores the proto-masculinity embedded into classical delivery and its spread from public speaking to all speaking situations—and the larger consequence of this approach is that proto-masculinity remains embedded and idealized. Focusing specifically on delivery’s history and evolution into a post-human, cyborg technology demonstrates how proto-masculinity has operated within delivery and how proto-masculinity has been spread through delivery instruction. The importance of re-situating delivery within the rhetorical canons affects rhetoric as a whole because it demonstrates that not only is delivery still crucial to rhetoric, and possibly still the most important rhetorical canon, but also because it de-naturalizes the proto-masculine imperatives embedded within delivery and conveyed through delivered language performances

Stories of single mothers : narrating the sociomaterial mechanisms of community literacy.

In light of the increasing significance of community activist scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition and given the overwhelming nature of institutional educational inequity, this dissertation takes a close look at specific literacy practices and the corresponding networks that shape these literacy practices at a community literacy organization. Based on interviews with participants and staff at a local nonprofit called Family Scholar House (FSH), this project paints a complex picture of each stakeholder’s perspective on successful literacy. First, I employ Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to analyze three specific literacy moments at FSH: an application for government assistance, a financial aid appeal letter, and a fundraising luncheon. I identify the various actors/actants involved in the networks that surround these literacy practices in order to understand the relationship work that helps students navigate these literacy practices successfully. I then use narrative theory to analyze three FSH students’ literacy narratives to demonstrate how students use their own singular writing identity as well as relationships within their lived networks to improve their literacy practices. The resulting new literacy narratives become actants within students’ networks, thereby allowing students to imagine different futures for themselves and for their children, for whom they model these changed literacy habits. I end by arguing for a hospitable approach to literacy research and pedagogy, discussing how to balance the predictability and unpredictability of narrative that are necessary for students’ literacy growth

The Conversational Dynamic in American Public Life

A confluence of factors has sparked a sustained, public preoccupation with conversation. Brewing since the fifteenth century and overtly public since the middle of the nineteenth century, the explosion of public models of conversation that emerged in the European and American rhetorical traditions is significant—without precedent—in the history of rhetoric. This interest in conversation is so pronounced as to penetrate not just public speaking practices, but subtler interpretations of law, philosophy, commerce, and government. I identify this as the conversational turn. The extent to which this saturation was truly conversational is the subject of much debate. However, the contours of this debate are little understood. This is both a historical and theoretical problem. While the art of face-to-face conversation is said to be either irrevocably in decline or in desperate need of reclaiming, practically every modern communication invention has conspired to make the rhetorical metaphor and structure of conversation not just possible in public life, but desired and expected. In an effort to understand how and why the public conversational dynamic rose to prominence in the way that it did, this study brings together underlying social and political dynamics that animate the conversational turn, particularly as they developed in the United States. By doing so, this project recasts the dominant narrative about the public shift away from oratory and toward conversation in contemporary, democratic societies