After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, “Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.” Then he began to curse... - Matthew 26:73
One thing this story makes clear: if you want to maintain anonymity and not be seen as an outsider from a dominant group, (an Other,) then you might wanna keep quiet in their company.
For those of us who study issues related to discourse communities and language groups, neglecting the impact of "accent" can leave a lot of meat on the research bone. You might appreciate this clip from the BBC's Channel 4. (It might be considered a companion piece to my blog entry on the ESPN commercial on Manchester slang.)
This could enhance discussions of language as an instrument of: power, segregation, ethnic identification, character assessment, etc. It may even tie-in to teaching about RP (received pronunciation), conformity and globalization, etc.
And, no, I am not a Southerner. Why do Y'all ask?
DOH! Dadgum it! *&^%#!
This week, the Baltimore Ravens meet the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl. One of these teams boasts the player who has what may be the most emotional pre-game speech/dance combination in NFL history. I'm speaking of the Ravens' Ray Lewis. Ray's pre-game activities could be a valid artifact for communications and speech classes - it seems to be perfect for talking about occasion and the place of emotion in speech-making.
But what about all those weeks when Ray was injured? Did you ever wonder who did the pre-game speeches during his absence? Well Sports Friends offers a humorous take on that situation. In this (fictional?) situation Ray Rice approaches Joe Flacco to give the speech, and the results are a sort of Communications/Speech Class workshop on what NOT to do. I played this clip for my class and asked them to respond with comments on what went wrong with Joe's attempts - and to suggest fixes.
Watch the clip and see what you think.
Some student responses were:
" Joe shouldn't have shown that he was nervous and that he wasn't happy about giving the speech."
"To make his speech more effective, Joe should have used more passionate
words that male sports men can relate to and that trigger the right
emotions. Sentences like, 'You only have this one moment to show that
you are powerful, that you have worked, sweated and bled to achieve
success.'"
"He started quoting a movie that no one would know. He should consider his audience and what they would watch."
"Joe was referencing things his audience couldn't relate with. To be more
effective he should have related more to his audience by referencing
things he knew they were familiar with..."
"Joe was not enthusiastic enough to boost the morale of his teammates..."
"He didn't need to introduce himself to people who already knew him."
You might build on these and other comments to talk about ethos, pathos, logos, kairos, audience, culturally-sensitive speech (the last remarks crossed the anti-semitic line, ouch.)
And, depending on the outcome of the game, you might let the students guess whether Joe or Ray Lewis gave the pre-game talk.
If saw "Elf" over the holidays, then you will remember this scene - Buddy the Elf is preparing to go to New York City to find his father when Santa offers him some advice, including the following:
"Well, there are some things you should know.
First off, you see gum on The street,
Leave it there. It's not free candy."
Of course, when Buddy arrives in NYC, he can't resist the "free candy" on the streets, the handrails, etc...Funny!
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If you've taught a class that involves research, you will remember this scene - Students are preparing to complete a class to earn their degrees, and we offer them advice, including the following:
"To do good research, you should know some things.
First off, just because you can cut and paste something,
that doesn't mean it is good information.
Find reputable sources and cite them."
Of course, when your students actually get to writing the paper, they sometimes find random "free candy" on the internet to be irresistible. Not so funny.
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I ran across an informative, if less-than-encouraging, article titled "The Top 10 Internet Sources College Students Us May Discourage You." Oh, yeah, it does discourage us - especially after we've introduced them to the wealth of scholarly online resources that are available through our college or university libraries. I mean - millions of dollars worth of resources at their finger tips, peer-reviewed articles from the most erudite experts in every subject, ground-breaking studies in every field, and they "Google" for info on "steroids?"
(Thankfully, there are no sharp objects nearby as I write this. Anyway - take deep breaths and remain calm, Randy...)
So, I remind myself - and if it helps, you can remind yourself, too - our students are sort of like Buddy - this is their first trip to the big academic city. I will try to help them understand research and intellectual integrity from a broad view that deals with credibility, critical thinking, ethos, and what it means to be a "collegial" member of their new academic community. I will use a variety of approaches ranging from our official plagiarism statements to the story of Buddy the Elf. And I will keep telling myself that it's a process, and that it is my job to help my students (and colleagues) to develop an integrated approach to 21st-century digital literacy.
And I may or may not pass along this tidbit shared with me on Facebook recently:
I recently attended a large conference where a number of very famous speakers were on the agenda. The conference was designed as a motivational event for area business people, community leaders, etc. Each of the speakers was known for some attribute or accomplishment. That is to say, each had a unique appeal of "ethos" to the audience.
(Annie Olson, in her webpage at LeTourneau University, describes Ethos as being "all about your credibility, reliability, and authority as a speaker or writer. Essentially, ethos is your reputation with your audience and the strategies you use to convince your audience that you should be believed or taken seriously.")
One of the speakers was Steve Forbes. I anticipated that his ethos might be questioned by some who saw him as just the son of a very rich father who left him a thriving financial empire. This concern had not escaped Mr. Forbes. He opened his talk with something like the following: The best piece of advice I can give you regarding success is this: Choose rich and successful parents!
Forbes practiced wise rhetorics here - by acknowledging the perceived objection, and by dealing with it up front so he could move on with his speech.
If indeed, rhetoric is anything like "finding the available means of persuasion in a given situation," (and let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it is something like that,) then some things are both obvious and important:
know who you are talking to (audience)
know the situation and setting of your communication (kairos)
know the network of cultural & communicative exchange of your audience (language)
It is sometimes easier to see how important these considerations are when they are done wrong, than it is to see when they are done right. For example, suppose you were to speak to a group of 11-year-old school kids - would you communicate the same as if you were speaking to a group of university faculty? No? I didn't think so.
You'd think this would be obvious. You'd be wrong.
You know how much 6th graders love to meet bureaucratic heads of various government departments....
A couple of "rules of thumb" for rhetorically sound communication:
1) Don't bring a knife to a gun fight.
2)Don't bring teleprompters to a middle school classroom.
In our Accelerated Composition class, we are learning to "read rhetorically," or to perform rhetorical analyses on "texts" of all type - written, film, video, visual, aural/oral, etc. Keeping in mind Aristotle's idea that "Rhetoric is the art of discovering the available means of persuasion in a given situation," we look at communication artifacts in terms of their logos (logical argument), pathos (emotional argument), ethos (ethical/relational argument), and their kairos. Kairos, the Greek word often translated as "time," represents the time, occasion, context - that is to say - the rhetorical situation of a speech, text or other composition. Is it possible to use our rhetorical evaluation to predict, as well as to analyze, texts? I think it's worth a shot...
Much has been made (and will be made) about the upcoming Inaugural address of President-elect Barak Obama. The New York Times has an interesting video about the occasion. Pearson's DK Handbook (p. 114) has some interesting analytical questions that may be applied to the upcoming speech. For example:
Who is included in the target audience? Who is excluded? Why?
Toward what will the speaker draw the audience's attention? What might be overlooked as a result of this "directing?"
What will be the guiding purpose of the speech? How explicitly will it be stated?
What events at the time of the speech's production are likely to shape the audience's expectations? How will these events shape the writing of the speech?
Where will this speech be delivered? (Specifically, how will the physical staging be set?)
Can you presciently answer these questions about Obama's inaugural speech? I bet you can. Weigh in with your prognostications, and then check back to follow-up after the speech is delivered.
