engleski

Epideictic oratory as educational tool

Throughout history, the term epideictic oratory stood primarily for praise and blame, and secondarily for display (Chase, 1961). This paper wants to examine a further potential of epideictic, especially in the field of education and activism of college students of non- communication programs. Students that are not studying communication sciences have communication courses in their curriculum with the goal of preparing them for communication in their professional career. Zanola (2016) points out that public speaking studies and programs should be targeted for the audience they are taught to and not standardized or copied from models which are suitable to a non-business context, such as politics or law. In other words, those courses should prepare them for various contexts they will experience in their career but also for various speaking forms. Furthermore, Hodson (2014) sees education as a key component that can spur engagement among youth through the promotion of democratic activism. There are several reasons for choosing acceptance speeches of Nobel laureates. Firstly, because they are given by scientists who are not vocal professionals such as actors or musicians, so students can relate more with them regarding speech performance. Moreover, ceremonial speeches are a great way for students to perfect their public speaking skills since they heavily depend on speech performance. An additional reason is that ceremonial speeches are a good way to teach students how to express themselves metaphorically. The third reason is the activist potential of the Nobel rhetoric which has already, to some extent, been explored. Biočina (2019) analyzed acceptance speeches of Nobel laureates in literature (N=6) and economics (N=10) and showed that as many as 15 laureates didn't hold a typical acceptance speech (content wise) but used the opportunity and attention to express some sort of criticism towards the Nobel prize. Several ways of refusing the Nobel Prize were noted, some of them already mentioned by Salazar (2009): refusal by not coming, sending someone on their behalf, and giving the speech but not thanking the Nobel Foundation or the Committee. The corpus will be expanded with banquet speeches from other Nobel prizes winners (for peace and chemistry) and an analysis of speech performances will be included. Exposing students to a diverse set of speakers and speaking styles can help them become better speakers but also better citizens.

Epideictic Rhetoric ; Nobel prize ; acceptance speech ; education

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