Epistemic and pedagogical assumptions for informative and persuasive speaking practices: disinterring dichotomy.

• Author: Gring, Mark A.
• Position: Essay

Because our descriptions participate in the reality they describe, a true description of what is is also a claim of what ought to be. (Anderson, 1996, p. 197) Appraisal underlies all speech, and therefore all knowledge. (Grene, 1966, p. 172) It is uncertain when the informative speech was introduced into public speaking pedagogy but it is difficult to find a public speaking textbook that does not presume its existence and that does not imply that informative and persuasive speeches are distinct types. I contend that our public speaking categories posit assumptions and practices with which ancient and contemporary scholarship disagrees. The current pedagogical taxonomy presumes that it is possible to know and to present information in a neutral, objective, or unbiased way and that either the presentation form or the audience effects are sufficient to categorize a speech as informative or persuasive. Thus, this taxonomy bifurcates speech content from the understanding that all data are interpreted, separates the need to convey data from the need to present that data in a convincing manner (Rowan, 1995), and diminishes the requirement to tailor presentations to a specific situation and audience.

This essay briefly overviews the informative speech, examines arguments against neutral speaking and neutral knowing, reviews current pedagogical practices of informative and persuasive speaking as found in three popular textbooks, and explores the potential impact of asking students to present a neutral, "informative" speech. I conclude that we should replace the informative-persuasive typology by returning to a treatment of presentations as arguments.

THE INFORMATIVE SPEECH

Most of the research on explanatory writing or speaking agrees that the scientific, theological, and epistemological presumptions that became its foundation arose during the 18th century (Connors, 1984, 1985; Olbricht, 1968; Rowan, 1995; Sproule, 1988, 1997a, 2002a). Connors (1984, 1985, 1991) thoroughly reviews the development of the explanatory written presentation but touches only briefly on oral communication. He dismisses study of the informative speech because explanatory discourse, he contends, favors written over oral transmission (Connors, 1984, p. 191) and departments of communication developed from a commitment to oral persuasion. Thus, speech departments taught rhetoric as argumentation while English departments taught composition as explanation (Connors, 1985, pp. 60, 63). Connors (1985), Rowan (1995), and Sproule (1988, 1997a, 1997b, 2002a, 2002b) contend that the epistemological basis for explanatory presentations developed from the notion of "scientific" discourse as objective and factual.

Rowan (1995) contends that these 18th-century epistemological presumptions encourage contemporary speech teachers to view informative speaking as merely a matter of adherence to a certain kind of organization or to the speaker's goal rather than a matter of effective explanation that ensures understanding (pp. 238-239). Sproule (1988, 1997a, 2002a, 2002b) posits a shift in rhetoric's focus from an emphasis on good reasons to a managerial rhetoric aimed at a mass audience. This sea change occurred during the 1920s, when the practice of oratory was influenced by the "plain speech" movement, "born after the turn of the century when commerce (rather than community) became the chief context of speaking and when business meetings seemed to call for briefer, simpler talks.... College textbooks picked up on the new plain-speaking mode," so much so that "the advice given in most of today's textbooks of public speaking is based upon the practical, business-talk approach popularized since the 1920s" (Sproule, 1997a, pp. 17-19). Similarly, Olbricht (1968) contends that shared a priori assumptions formed the basis for information, business, and science pedagogy. It appears that these coordinate trends spawned presumptions about "neutral facts" and the informative speech, which public speaking textbooks incorporated into their prescriptions for oratory.

Despite its widespread inclusion in textbooks since the 1920s, Connors (1985) argues that we lack an adequate theory of explanatory discourse. I agree. Although it is not impossible to transmit information, it is impossible to do so in a way that does not persuade at some level. Presentation of partial and/or biased (rather than complete, objective, or neutral) facts is unavoidable, and implicit (at least) claims regarding their presenter's credibility are inescapable. Facts exist but always are interpreted from a perspective; interpreted facts, once presented, become potentially persuasive. Thus, any symbolic description of reality contains persuasive, evaluative dimensions and cannot be strictly informative (Cherwitz & Hikins, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1990a; Grene, 1966; Hikins & Zagacki, 1993).

Quick study of the rhetorical tradition confirms that the concept of exposition as distinct from persuasion is a modem invention. The ancients clearly believed that participation in the civic arena demanded persuasive skill. Even pedagogy--the training of orators--is viewed as persuasion. Plato's Gorgias declares at one point: "But surely both those who have learned and those who have believed are persuaded" (454e). In fact, the entire pedagogical process in Greece and Rome was conceived as an argumentative enterprise (Marrou, 1956; Olbricht, 1968). Aristotle emphasizes the three modes of proof in order to discover multiple ways to persuade. The Romans follow suit: Neither the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium nor Cicero, nor Quintilian, theorizes presentations that are anything but persuasive. Cicero expands the parts of a speech to include narration but even the information narrated here always is presented with the intent to persuade. Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria remains consistent with Cicero's pedagogical approach to declamation. Several hundred years later, Augustine enjoins the Christian teacher to "conciliate those who are opposed, arouse those who are remiss, and teach those who are ignorant" but grounds these forms of communication in Ciceronian rhetoric (Kennedy, 1980, p. 156). Augustine's distinction between preaching and teaching does not support the modem dichotomy between explanation and persuasion because both preaching and teaching are persuasive activities. Finally, the progymnasmata--the mental gymnastics introduced to train young minds in dialectic, rhetoric, and declamation (Bonnet, 1977; Clark, 1952; Cribiore, 2001; Crowley & Hawhee, 1999; Gwynn, 1926/1964; Hagaman, 1986; Nadeau, 1952; Rainolde, 1563/1945; Vickers, 1994; Wilson, 1560/1994; Wright, 1973)--reinforced the conception of education as persuasive, agonistic interaction. These exercises were employed in some form from ancient times until the late 1700s, when communication instruction either neglected oral for written or de-emphasized eloquence and argumentation in favor of grammar, sentence construction, and diction (Connors, 1984, 1985; Rowan, 1995; Sproule, 1986, 1988, 1997a, 1997b, 2002a, 2002b).

The epistemological assumptions of the Enlightenment, modernism, science (as logical positivism), and faculty psychology changed these pedagogical practices. This is manifest in the influence in the pivotal 18th century of Richard Whately, Hugh Blair, Adam Smith, and especially George Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, which famously distinguishes understanding and persuasion. Although scholarly opinions differ, the superior interpretation, in my opinion, is that Campbell's distinction is merely one of degree, not kind, because he continues to posit "moving the will," that is, persuasion, as the goal of all speech (Bitzer, 1963/1988; Black, 1965).

Moreover, much of 20th century rhetorical theory has revisited, and challenged, the belief in neutral, objective knowledge. The thirty-year "rhetoric as epistemic" controversy explored whether, and how, our talk affects knowledge creation. The relativists in this debate argued that discourse creates our reality (Brookey & Schiappa, 1998; Brummett, 1976, 1990; Scott, 1967, 1976, 1990, 1998), while the realists contended that discourse merely determines our perspective on independent reality...