• Inventing Public Speaking: Rhetoric and the Speech Book, 1730–1930

• J. Michael Sproule
• Rhetoric & Public Affairs
• Michigan State University Press
• Volume15, Number 4, Winter 2012
• pp. 563-608
• Article
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Formerly a synonym for oratory and elocution, “public speaking”after 1900 signaled, instead, a paradigm shift wherebyextemporaneous-conversational speechmaking replaced declamation andoratorical composition. This study of more than 200 key titlespublished between 1730 and 1930 demonstrates that the modernpublic-speaking book emerged, not as an innovation in whole cloth,but rather from a generation-long process of selectivelyrecombining materials extracted from preceding text genres. As apractical revolution, the new public speaking contributed todemocratic, argument-rich public affairs and, as an intellectualmovement, furthered the emergence of speech as a separate academicdiscipline.