Showing posts with label orality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label orality. Show all posts

Tuesday, 9 July 2013

Performance and communication orientation

The speech teacher James Winans famously said, "A speech is not an essay on its hind legs." Speaking and writing are just different. What is defferent?

Writing is learned and invented, but language and speech are acquired by person naturally. Writing emerged in Sumer (modern day - Iraq) 6000 years ago. 


Writing is not ubiquitous. There have been thousands (maybe ten of thousands) spoken languages in the human history. But only about 106 languages have been written to a degree sufficient to have produced the literature.


Writing involves longer sentences, clauses, punctuation and other such grammatical nuances. It appeals to the eye of the reader and hence needs to contain paragraph breaks, different fonts, and bold and italicized text. On the other hand, oral presentations involve shorter sentences, slightly more colloquialisms (such as, you know, you see etc) and appeal to the ear.

Performance and communication orientation

Performance orientation

Performance orientation tends to be more literary (full manuscript). It's going to be completely read or memorized. It focuses on the show, not the audience. The performer speaks at the audience. The Hamlet performance will be the same for the audience of 10 or 100 people, because it is not an active factor at the stage. It used to be more faster and monotone, than natural speech.
Communication orientation

Communication orientation is mostly oral (minimal outline). It focuses on dynamic interactions with the audience. The audience should be active in participation and creation of the communications. The communicator speaks with the audience.


Analyses of four samples of speeches