internal noise Physiological or psychological interference with communication

feedback Verbal and nonverbal responses provided by an audience to a speaker

context The environment or situation in which a speech occurs

rhetoric The use of words and symbols to achieve a goal

8 CHAPTER 1 Speaking with Confidence

The fourth century B.C.E was a golden age for rhetoric in the Greek Republic, where the philosopher Aristotle formulated guidelines for speakers that we still fol- low today. As politicians and poets attracted large followings in ancient Rome, Cicero and Quintilian sought to define the qualities of the “true” orator. On a lighter note, it is said that Roman orators invented the necktie. Fearing laryngitis, they wore “chin cloths” to protect their throats.12

In medieval Europe, the clergy were the most polished public speakers. People gathered eagerly to hear Martin Luther expound his Articles of Faith. In the eigh- teenth century, British subjects in the colonies listened to the town criers and impas- sioned patriots of what was to become the United States.

Vast nineteenth-century audiences heard speakers such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster debate states’ rights; they listened to Frederick Douglass, Angelina Grimke, and Sojourner Truth argue for the abolition of slavery, and to Lucretia Mott plead for women’s suffrage; they gathered for an evening’s entertainment to hear Mark Twain as he traveled the lecture circuits of the frontier.

Students of nineteenth-century public speaking spent very little time devel- oping their own speeches. Instead, they practiced the art of declamation—the de- livery of an already famous address. Favorite subjects for declamation included speeches by such Americans as Patrick Henry and William Jennings Bryan, and by the British orator Edmund Burke. Collections of speeches, such as Bryan’s own ten-volume set of The World’s Famous Orations, published in 1906, were extremely popular.

Hand in hand with declamation went the study and practice of elocution, the ex- pression of emotion through posture, movement, gesture, facial expression, and voice. From the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, elocution manuals— providing elaborate and specific prescriptions for effective delivery—were standard references not only in schools, but also in nearly every middle-class home in the United States.13

In the first half of the twentieth century, radio made it possible for people around the world to hear Franklin Delano Roosevelt decry December 7, 1941, as “a date which will live in infamy.” In the last half of the century, television provided the medium through which audiences saw and heard the most stirring speeches: