Elocution, or expressive speech, is traditionally associated with archaic and obsolete habits in the United States. Often, elocution lessons are conflated with public speaking classes. However, this should not be the case.
There is a notable difference between the two practices. The Cambridge Dictionary defines elocution as “the art of careful public speaking, using clear pronunciation and good breathing to control the voice.” Essentially, elocution lies at the foundation of being an effective speaker. In this way, elocution is a lost art.
The study of elocution focuses on “articulation, diction, pronunciation and communication skills” and improves one’s abilities as a more coherent communicator.
Still, elocution has waned in the shadow of public speaking or speech courses, which many argue should be mandatory at the collegiate level — and, for many institutions, they are.
Florida State University (FSU) has an Oral Communication Competency Requirement, which translates to undergraduates needing a public speaking credit to graduate. The goal of completing this requirement is that students “generate, develop, organize and convey original ideas orally, using language, presentation skills and/or other media (for example, digital texts, images and graphs) to present those ideas clearly, confidently and in a manner appropriate to different audiences and specific communication situations.”
Introducing an elocution pre-requisite to a middle school curriculum, after students have grasped reading comprehension skills, would be extremely beneficial. Introducing elocution to students early can also help reduce anxiety about public speaking.
An article from the University of Florida references that 72% to 75% of the U.S. population is afraid of public speaking. Taking elocution classes before public speaking slowly introduces students to what may be a nerve-wracking practice.
It is also important to emphasize another true difference between speech and elocution, especially when evaluating why both should be commonplace in academia. Elocution is focused on pronunciation, clarity, grammar and diction, while speech is more about the expression of ideas and the structure of arguments. In this way, public speaking cannot exist without elocution.
Unclear expression can undermine a speaker’s intentions. Elocution provides a baseline for speech. Educators claim that both elocution and public speaking are useful, with elocution building oration confidence that makes public speaking more comfortable. A useful analogy is seeing elocution as the foundation and public speaking as the bridge that takes the speaker further.
Some may argue that the skills of elocution are learned as a byproduct of social and academic interactions, from introducing oneself to strangers to reading aloud in class and thus deem elocution classes useless or redundant.
However, the targeted training of elocution classes on diction, pacing and voice modulation offers skills beyond what is learned through these interactions. Through its focus on word choice and perception, elocution also enhances rhetorical awareness, a crucial aspect of reading comprehension.
Some also argue that, particularly in the roots of British elocution, when a specific accent is taught, accent reduction (an approach to modifying speech that aims to make one’s accent “more understandable to a broader audience”) seems backward. Modern understandings of elocution, however, do not have the intention of the speaker losing their original accent, but to improve the clarity and confidence of those with accents. This is extremely beneficial for English learners, who are estimated to be 10.6% of United States pubic school students.
Elocution is not only a lost art but an important and life-altering skill that works in tandem with the already prioritized skills of the U.S. education system. In this sense, dismissing elocution as a dated practice is an immense disservice to future generations.
Alaina Babb is a political science and media and communications studies major at Florida State University and a Staff Writer for the Views section of the FSView & Florida Flambeau, the student-run, independent online news service for the FSU community. Email our staff at contact@fsview.com.
This article originally appeared on FSU News: Reviving elocution: Why it belongs in today’s classrooms
Reporting by Alaina Babb, Staff Writer / FSU News
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