Oratory

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Madness

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« on: July 23, 2013, 03:13:48 pm »
Is anyone interested in the practice? Since reading Rhetoric for Radicals last month, I've decided it's something I'm going to work at.

I'm working my way through the first two pages of The Art of Manliness' 35 Greatest Speeches in History (unfortunately, history is skewed as just what remains for our perusal). Just rote memorization and practice (perhaps, peoples also have some speech memorization tips too).

If interested, anyone know of any other good speeches?

Cheers.
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Jorge

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« Reply #1 on: July 23, 2013, 07:33:39 pm »
I've always felt that the key to delivering a good speech is to have a good speech to give in the first place. What I mean is: the writing is important.

In the show The West Wing Toby Ziegler and Josh Lyman obsess over every word and turn of phrase, not just because of political implications but because wordcraft is a little like mind-control: if you say the right things with the right timing, you can actually yoke the listener's brain into a particular emotional state.

Some of the best orators in contemporary times are comedians. A lot of George Carlin's later stuff was just political rhetoric dressed up with some humorous asides. He was a master of repetition, timing and cadence.
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Madness

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« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2013, 03:11:00 pm »
In the show The West Wing Toby Ziegler and Josh Lyman obsess over every word and turn of phrase, not just because of political implications but because wordcraft is a little like mind-control: if you say the right things with the right timing, you can actually yoke the listener's brain into a particular emotional state.

+1. Traditional linguistics and neurolinguistics are two subjects very close to my brain ;).

Some of the best orators in contemporary times are comedians. A lot of George Carlin's later stuff was just political rhetoric dressed up with some humorous asides. He was a master of repetition, timing and cadence.

+1 for Comedy Oratory.

They say Obama is one of the last of the great orators but I'd say he's just one of the few orators remaining at all.

Though, Occupy would have been interesting for opportune oratory.
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Duskweaver

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« Reply #3 on: July 25, 2013, 06:32:22 pm »
A problem I've found is that, once you really understand how each word you speak (or write or type) can influence your audience, it can become hard to restrain yourself from purposefully manipulating people. And most people are so damn easy to manipulate.

Eventually, you start to feel a bit like Inrilatas: when every word, every gesture or expression, every subtlety of tone and cadence, becomes a potential tool (or even a potential weapon), how can you really be said to mean anything you say? Even if you feel like you're being honest and "speaking from the heart", how can you be sure you're not just manipulating yourself in order to more easily manipulate others? After all, the best liars and conmen are the ones who really, genuinely believe the lies they're telling while they're telling them. There is nothing so convincing as conviction.
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Meyna

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« Reply #4 on: July 25, 2013, 09:34:09 pm »
+1 Duskweaver

It would be like Usain Bolt trying to let a young cousin beat him in a race. As far as social interaction goes, I would imagine that people fall into one of two categories: either they are attempting to "speak from the heart" when, in fact, no such objective personal state exists, or they forgo trying to resonate with their "true self" (which doesn't exist) and act/speak how they think they should in order to accomplish a certain goal (manipulation, simple acceptance, etc.)
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« Reply #5 on: July 27, 2013, 08:30:25 pm »
A problem I've found is that, once you really understand how each word you speak (or write or type) can influence your audience, it can become hard to restrain yourself from purposefully manipulating people. And most people are so damn easy to manipulate.

Just rapping.

I might argue that few yet - with the knowledge to manipulate in comparison to the subsequent "ideal" set by the Dunyain - have such restraint and expertise with oratory to do so, specifically. While it may be an aspiration, not personally, for those who practice with such linguistic mechanisms in mind, a la abstract, few, if any, have cultivated such acutely focused levels of attention.

As Jorge suggested, many of the historical examples remaining are the result of collective noospheres working to hit as many of those mechanism as possible, in tandem with one another.

Duskweaver may be talk about diction, or manner of articulation - even taken to Dunyainic extremes) on the other hand but this is simply the result of biological predisposition and embodiment practice, which does not allow for any significant communicative advantages in manipulating particular behaviorial outputs (at least, until such a point that research, dissemination, and practice happens towards those ends - see, Neurolinguistic Programming, which I think disregards critical aspects of effective oratory).

Eventually, you start to feel a bit like Inrilatas: when every word, every gesture or expression, every subtlety of tone and cadence, becomes a potential tool (or even a potential weapon), how can you really be said to mean anything you say? Even if you feel like you're being honest and "speaking from the heart", how can you be sure you're not just manipulating yourself in order to more easily manipulate others? After all, the best liars and conmen are the ones who really, genuinely believe the lies they're telling while they're telling them. There is nothing so convincing as conviction.

+1 Duskweaver

It would be like Usain Bolt trying to let a young cousin beat him in a race. As far as social interaction goes, I would imagine that people fall into one of two categories: either they are attempting to "speak from the heart" when, in fact, no such objective personal state exists, or they forgo trying to resonate with their "true self" (which doesn't exist) and act/speak how they think they should in order to accomplish a certain goal (manipulation, simple acceptance, etc.)

Might I offer a third category by which a person engages in a relentless disassembling of their own linguistic utterances for purposes of self-understanding?

For instance, behavioral psychology might hazard a further statement, that certain constitutive criteria, either endogenously (within the body-mind) or endogenous (within the environment) stimuli are biologically inherent or conditioned resulting in specific sonically coded, information packets, depending on the sounds one makes. In which case, Kellhus or the World, you do not own your communicative expulsions, regardless, and all linguistic practice may be inherently inseparable from manipulation, as far as communication attempts to always leverage some environment reaction.
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Meyna

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« Reply #6 on: August 04, 2013, 12:27:57 am »
Said third category is certainly possible, and should be included, yes. I'd be interested to see a linguist's view on the assertion that language is inherently manipulative!

Though, the same could be said for any action; not just language, no?
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Madness

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« Reply #7 on: August 04, 2013, 02:54:46 pm »
Though, the same could be said for any action; not just language, no?

Yeah, that distinction is pretty novel, if available, in linguistics. The same could be said for sensorimotor function but the linguistic possibility really became clear to me when studying emotions, which, in many cases, seem to simply be patterned responses to stimuli.
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