Oral tradition and oracy

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Hello and welcome to the Arts and Ideas podcast with me and Michele Boy.

This week is the War Rages in the Middle East.

I sat down for an interview with the UN General Secretary

Antonio Guterres about how it could end.

What struck me was the way he curved questions back to a narrative,

the traits of a veteran message crafter.

And yet he wasn't a showy orator.

Guterres is Portuguese and functioning in his second language

with lots of quirks all of his own.

And that set me wondering about how the spoken word works on us so powerfully

from this radio program we hope to a speech on the stage

or maybe just a personal conversation we never forgot.

It somehow never leaves us.

Which oral cultures have thrived in the ancient world

and today around the planet and does it make a difference

if things are said rather than written?

Over the next hour or so we're going to be tracking ideas

about sharing knowledge, the art of public speaking,

and a buzzword in education about what skills we should be teaching these days

oracy.

To begin, I'm going to ask my guests about their relationship with public speaking

and the spoken word and maybe what was a memorable occasion for them.

Edith Hall, professor of classics at Durham University

and a champion of classical rhetoric and the spoken word,

I imagine you must be a dab hand at it.

I spend all my time conversing with ancient Greeks who did write down

at a certain point everything that they thought

but that was building on at least six, seven hundred years of a very sophisticated

oral culture.

So I'm highly skeptical whenever I hear a pearl clutching about children

not reading long books because he's incredibly sophisticated

and intelligent people operated their sophisticated intelligent society without

ever reading any continuous prose.

More as we have it on that, Edith.

Philip Collins, you are a former speech writer to Tony Blair, who was never short of a word or two.

Now you're editor of Prospect Magazine, written publication,

but presumably some very talkative editorial meetings.

Extremely talkative, mostly dominated by me talking all the time.

As no doubt that's the starter for this program.

I enjoy public speaking a lot and I teach it quite a lot and so I'm intrigued by that

relationship between telling other people how to do it and the capacity to do it myself

and it's a skill that you can get better at and this was one of the great classical insights

of course the office regarded this as a teachable skill which I think it is.

Tom Wright, you're a historian of rhetoric at the University of Sussex,

lecturing to students must give you ample opportunity to hone that speaking craft.

Yeah well and you've hung out with enough academics in this studio to know that we

don't need much encouragement to grab the microphone, but you know,

growing up and way into adulthood I was terrified of public speaking and now I do it for a living

like Edith and like other people around this table but I think you're fascinated by the things

you're scared of and I've managed to turn that into something that I talk about all the time.

Eritica Subramanian, you're based at the University of East Anglia,

you're currently a researcher in residence with BBC Radio 4.

Oh nice gig. You also hosted a podcast, so a seasoned broadcaster.

I need to ask everyone if they had a memorable occasion about public speaking. Does one spring

to mind for you? I think so too. I mean in terms of like as of now I also teach and you know

I'm a lecturer but at the same time I also run this podcast and you know that's given me ample

opportunity to speak to different people and you know use my podcast or voice, use my lecture

or voice and you know sort of navigating that has been quite an interesting experience overall.

Do you have a podcast voice? I think I do, I mean I think I'm a little more serious in some way

but more than that I am as a teacher so yeah that's something I'm still exploring and figuring out.

I like that idea that we have different voices depending on the medium so we might touch on that as

we go along tonight and Stephen Bachelor you're a secular Buddhist teacher and writer the author

of Buddha, Socrates and us ethical living in unsanitary times. You're on the line from France.

How much do you like to project in public as a teacher and yes do you have a Buddhist teacher voice?

I probably do but I'm not really aware of what it is. I've spent many many years

speaking in public both to smallish groups as to largeish groups and it's something I've

become entirely at ease in. I remember initially I had a lot of stage fright and so on

but once I get into the in into the swing of it I find the words pour out almost to my surprise.

I don't even know what I'm going to say sometimes next and I find that very revealing

but also I find it taps into the direct communication I'm having with the audience.

So I can't think of a particular experience in particular but it's certainly been a

very rich way not only of communicating my own ideas but also about learning. I think public

talking leads to coming to experience and feel what you're saying from another perspective.

Philip Collins we've seen in the news this week the impact of a speech Angela Rainer addressing

a selected bunch it must be said of the Parliamentary Labour Party in a pub in Westminster and

that led to huge amount of analysis of her speech and what she said there we're running out of time

the Labour Party is best when it's bold there were lots of sort of talking points put together there

some of which to be honest didn't strike me as the most elegant speech making and yet there's

something in the fact of where it's delivered how it's delivered I mentioned Antonio Guterres again

at the top of the show it's not necessarily all the most beautifully crafted speeches which

get the most attention can you give us some ingredients that maybe Rainer was using there to get

the impact. Yes I mean you're right it wasn't the most elegantly constructed speech but what you've

just pulled out there are the essential components of what makes for a good speech which is to say

can you summarise for me quickly what you're trying to say do you have something that at Roots

you're trying to get across and Angela Rainer did share two thoughts one is we're not doing very

well and the second is by implication we do a whole lot better if I was in charge and so you're

the very fact that you were able to summarise that speech without doing violence to it tells you

that it was therefore quite a good piece of communication lots of speeches fail even though they're

more elegantly constructed because at bottom there's nothing in them so most of the speech

we I have a company we do a lot of corporate writing corporate speeches and most of those fail

because the speaker in the end really doesn't have anything to say and we are the masters of

elegant nothing we can speak at length and say nothing really beautifully and yet that the

no act of communication takes place because the speaker is not concerned to say anything and

Angela Rainer clearly was and so that's why it did work even though it's probably not Winston

Churchill I remember an editor daily mail used to say to the terror of anyone in conference

if you didn't think it was clear enough for when you've said that what have you said

she seems to be exactly what you're saying for it is all back in November the government

announced plans for a new oracy framework to ensure more young people could become confident

and effective as speakers as part of a revamped national curriculum with the emphasis on communication

is a core part of the classical world you said something really nice in your intro but you were

sort of in conversation you said with ancient Greeks the way that some of us might think we had to

chat with our neighbour over the the war do you think the ancient world could help us think about

what oracy a phrase that I think some people are still struggling with but you know the idea is

maybe getting clearer would they get some help there from your ancient friends of course they

would the first surviving and still by far the greatest textbook on how to persuade other people

is called the art of persuasion is Aristotle's rhetoric I do not understand while we can't have

a national rhetoric program this word oracy I do not like however Aristotle wrote an extraordinary

treatise he's been living in the Athenian democracy where every single Athenian citizen had to be

able to defend and prosecute himself his own voice in court you know you could hire a speech

writer but you had to deliver it and he came up with this one magic triangle which everything

always comes down to you've got to have a good speech what you were talking Phil was talking about

Philip was talking about the logos you've got to have a kind of authentic and trustworthy personality

get over your ethos your character but crucially and I think the most important is pathos

which is gauging the emotional state of your audience if you don't gauge the emotional state of

your audience no amount of good speech content no amount of authentic character will come over if

you misjudge that it will fail is that what pathos yes I didn't know that yeah you learn a lot

on this program and and that is free thinking is such good value that is literally what it is originally

yes the emotional state and I have seen so many speeches in every conceivable environment fail

through not my little recent thing was a appalling situation in child-of-goal airport when because

of bads getting through security 50 of us had missed a runner plane and we were told we would have

to go back through security we should take three hours and buy a new ticket and I just saw that

the actual ticket ladies were as distressed as everyone else and I managed to gauge a tone and I

said to everybody look we're all suffering we're all in this together it's just as hard on the

airline employees let us all sit down and figure out a way and because I was conciliatory to those

ladies when other people were shouting out to them it worked and you got a chance but I got home

we have to gauge the emotional state of everybody and then bring in an inclusive hegemonic we

quick one from Tom do you think rhetoric is the same as what we would now call oracy or the

desire to teach fluency in the modern world do you go without analysis well I was down the road

this morning as it happens at a conference of 300 teachers and two government ministers who would

disagree because they love this word oracy they think it's answering a new problem it's actually

quite an old word it's from the 1960s and it's waxed and waned in and out of fashion I grew

vivid though it it sounds like something that happens in a dentist chair and like most new ideas it

names something that's very old so I think we can look back to the history and see rhetorical

traditions, electrocutionary traditions ideas about conversation and discourse that really

underpinning all of the powerful ideas that all of those teachers down the road were talking about

but there's something really powerful about about the idea and we'll come back to that.

We will indeed at Rita Subramanian you've been conducting interviews with women in India who

use songs to share their experience and document environmental change around them you've written

a postcard for us about that work so let's have a listen to that.

On the same rock anyway. Across rural Maharashtra,

invest in India women once sang such couplets known as Novi while turning heavy stone mills.

Greens became flour beneath their palms time became rhythm voices rose together in the slow

companionship of work. Across the world women have long sung their labour into sound.

In South Asian courtyards at dawn song traveled from house to house as green was ground and water

drawn. Invest African fields women sang to keep pace with pounding stones and bending backs.

In Caribbean Cain landscapes shaped by storm and plantation histories work songs carried endurance

edged with wit. Along cold Nazi coasts fish workers sang while gutting catch and bending tone

nets salt stiffening their sleeves. Separated by oceans and languages they were linked by repetition

by the gestures that kept households alive. Their songs eased fatigue they created fleeting

sisterhoods they turned necessity into something shared and they noticed. Women sang of clouds that

gathered and passed without rain of the earth cracked like an old mother's heel of rivers that had

gone to sleep. Seasons became mirrors of the self and of the world's women were expected to inhabit.

Without rain the salt does not get moisture without a husband the woman does not get happiness.

Environmental change surfaced in these songs as pressure and politics in longer walks for water

in rising green prices in the fragile negotiations that held households together.

These songs also carried movement young men leaving with a dry season wind flooded rivers

separating families. In Colombia's San Basilio de Palenque women sang as they coaxed peanuts

from rain softened soil gathering food language and memory in the same gesture.

In the American South enslaved women's call in response songs turned fields and washed

stubs into spaces of shared endurance. Keep your eye on the sun don't let her catch your work

undone. Taken together women's labor songs from a hidden archive knowledge carried in voice

rather than text passed from hand to hand and breath to breath. Yet the work that shaped them

was rarely recognized as work at all often performed by women mug by cast class and colonial hierarchies

grinding gathering hauling tending essential labor that seldom entered official records.

Now the world's that's a stench such singing are changing. Motor driven mills replace grinding

stones. Collective rhythms grow quieter. Songs once born from necessity drift into ritual life

sung at weddings or childbirth gatherings. Fragments of memory echoing older days when women worked

side by side. These voices remind us that environmental change has long been lived before it was

measured. Felt in aching wrists uncertain seasons restless stites. Long before climate science

named the crisis women across different worlds for already marking transformation as it unfolded

around them. They were singing their work. They were singing their weather. They were singing the storm.

Ritaka fascinating how did you first come across these songs and chance and explore why they were

used in the way they were and are? Yeah I think it actually began when I grew up in Maharashtra

in the same state that these songs were once produced. As part of my doctoral research I was looking

at data around drought and looking at experiences of marriage in this region. One thing that I was

quite shocked to see was that there were no voices of women in official records whether it was

government records, newspaper archives or data around drought itself. That's when I stumbled

upon this archive called the Grand Mill Songs Project which is also now managed by the People's

Archive of Rural India and there are 100,000 such couplets which have been recorded and what's

interesting is that these songs and like what we've been discussing so far were not songs meant

for performance. They were songs meant for conversation which were conversed by women while at work

in a way to get through the drudgery of labour or just to build some form of kinship in sisterhood.

So they became really interesting reflections because they represented metaphors that came from

everyday material realities and in a way became very rich resources around how people really

experienced drought, experience scarcity and build some collective voice around it.

It tells a bit more about the messages the songs deliver. You made that link there between

the big picture of climate change and suggested that the songs get there to communicate it ahead

of there being a formal language to do. So you had a wonderful metaphor that I just picked up there

about the earth cracking like the heel of an old mother. You can see that, you can see that dry

that skin and then imagine what that looks like when there is drought and when the earth is arid.

So what are they trying to say a lot of the time in the songs?

So it actually is quite interesting because these were couplets. So they were talking about it

as more like a conversation set to the beat of the grinding stone itself and what's interesting

is that these messages actually traveled with marriage. So with women getting married they would

move villages, move away and you know carry some of these songs as traditions and some of the

messages I mean I worked on sugar cane migration in this region and the metaphor of sugar kept

appearing in different ways. So for example, sacks of sugar a sack of sugar would probably mean

you know like a woman for instance who's being you know given in marriage where her father was

described as a merchant or crushed sugar cane would refer to gender based violence for instance

or you know so basically sugar as a metaphor was very interesting because it sort of brought

together some of these experiences around drought labor and scarcity. And what's happened to

these songs now you referenced that they were dying. Are there parts that still remain or get

adapted as a live traditional that people actively want to hang on to because it has some

emotional connection for them? Yeah, I think your technology is played a big role in because you

know on the one hand the tradition in the way it was has been dying because you know people are

no longer collectively grinding grain to flour for instance. There are motri systems at work

but having said that there is a digital archive that was created by these two ethno music

colleges back in the 80s and 90s who documented these songs you know with recordings. So today we

have an archive of 100,000 such songs and we have it's classified in a very compelling manner with

details around caste around names around villages and that's where you can really use this as a

richer resource or a source of for academic research. Let's bring an edith hall and turn to

the ancient world where oral culture also thrived. Can you tell us something perhaps about

poetry of Homer another way that we can look at the way that language is used, chanted, spoken

or even sung? Yes, absolutely. It's not just Homer that's there's two names it's attached to

Homer and he's sealed but these guys are these are just named attached to at least 500 year oral

tradition before the phonetic alphabet was introduced we know that. So for at least 500 years you

had numerous professional bars often they were the people with bad eyesight or the blind people in

the village who were chosen as children who learnt off by heart tens, 20s, hundreds of thousands

of examatverses is very special meter it's a bit like I can hear the rhymes coming through

from your thing so it's easy to remember and the entire wisdom of the ancient Greeks is packed

into this and it's just called the epos it's where we get the word epic from epos you have your

ordinary life and then you go into your hive mind cultural encyclopedia which will tell you

everything you need to know about how to animal sacrifice, how to farm, when to farm, when to cook

there were women's epics we sadly haven't got there they're reflected in Odyssey 11 and

this was it carried Greek civilization the only reason it had to get written down was with colonisation

the phonetic alphabet some people think was actually introduced to allow a Greek emigrating from

the Peloponnese to the north shore of the Black Sea to take the world of the epos with them.

Stephen let me bring you in because you've written about the ancient world and also that sort of

connection between Buddhist tradition and the Greek tradition tell us there where the spoken

word fits alongside the literary tradition because there's perhaps just a bit of a bias towards

thinking if it's not written down it's not it's not as important or it's not the real thing.

Well I think that's very much the case and I think because we come from such a literary culture

and we take it for granted that the written word is somehow carrying the authority of the

tradition we tend to sort of disparage orality that people who don't write stuff down are maybe

not taking their tradition seriously as we do I think there's a bias that comes in there but in

the Buddhist tradition from the outset the Buddha never wrote anything there wasn't really much

writing going on in India at that time about 500 BC and the tradition was continued for 400 years

where the Buddhist texts and teachings which amount to you know several you know hundreds of pages

were repeated and recited by people who were again as Edith Wall said singled out for this

ability probably as kids or for some other reason and this tradition was systematically memorized

they had skills in India not just the Buddhists obviously but the Vedas also were memorized for

hundreds of years before they were first written down in the Buddhist tradition you have

appeared about 400 years where different groups of monks and nuns would memorize different parts

of the canon and the whole monastery would then have the whole body of material at their fingertips

and then about the first century BC this material was eventually written down in Sri Lanka

but so but orality the power of the written word of the spoken word continues to be the life

breath of living Buddhist traditions today that a text is not something written on a piece of paper

a text consists of a body of articulate sounds it's it's the sound it's the voicing of these texts

that is the real thing the written version is just a kind of reminder or kind of a gloss that

help remember what you've internalized so we've got another word on the gain out orality and what

do we think Tom speech does whether or not it gets a nice big word around it that writing can't

yeah I mean orality is a much older word than some of these buzz words that we've been discussing

today and Edith's been tracing it right back to the classical world and I think the kind of vitality

the kind of presence that we associate with orality is is one of the central reasons why it's such

an important part of education and educational reform today and much literature from the past has

been as much about the expression of the voices as the expression of the text and usually the way

that's understood in history is that there's a transition from orality to literacy I think one of

the most fascinating things about what's going on now any of us who got here on the tube today if

we were looking round looking for in vain for anyone under 30 who was reading a book everyone

is consuming voices they're listening to short form video they're listening to audiobooks they're

listening to podcasts they're living in a world of orality that's come back and I think lots of

the claims that are being made about the post literate world avid listeners to radio forward but

will have heard lots of stuff about reading recently and it's all about the return that we might

be making to the power of the spoken word and how education systems might need to change to

reflect that you touch on something very interesting there but I think is it is a bit of a third

rail at the moment it has a big book prize this week and people talked about podcasts and audio

books it's also put in inverted commas as if this was this is the sort of barbarian at the door

in terms of the publishing industry but also you know was it in some way inferior to me of course

there's a podcast right I struck back but James Marrett has a very interesting show at the

mental series on radio for about are we losing or we sacrificing something if we lose the literary

tradition which I think is really interesting but there's also that question as you say you can't

resist trends in which people are going back to perhaps to an older tradition of spoken word

and listening so I'm sorry I was going to push that to you and say you will have heard so much

of the spoken word in the room from politicians trying to get their point across what does it

mean that is different from them crafting something really well written and then briefing it out

to newspaper journalists as you've been for many years well of course the the act of speech writing

combines the two disciplines because we're writing for speech but the thing that speech can do

which the writing can't is of course it's a performance it's also a moment that takes us right

back to where Edith was with the setting and the connection between the speaker and the audience

which you are there for well of course if you write something and it's it's read invisibly

and silently that's a very different transaction with an audience but it's crucial to think of the

setting and the audience which is there before you and that's part of the act and I mean I've

I've lost count of how many labor and peas have come to me and said could you make me a bit like

Barack Obama and I have to say to them names names I can't you know but they'd be known to you

and I have to say to them let me tell you the ways in which you're not like Barack Obama the first

of which is you're not Barack Obama but the most important is of course that you're not present

to the United States and you're also not a black man who's present to the United States with all

of the history that stands behind him which is to say his ethos is character as a speaker and his

relationship is pathos is relationship with the audience you don't have any of that so if you're

on just after lunch at the Investors Chronicle Housing Summit don't come on like Barack Obama

because you're getting all of those things wrong and all of that is what the speech does which

the written word doesn't do. Edith you've got another I think from your classical backpack to bring

to us which a lot of us will think we remember well that you can tell us whether we really do

ESOPS Fables. Oh well ESOPS Fables is after the Bible and the Odyssey the third most translated

and published book in the world quantitatively true ESOPS Fables originated entirely in oral culture

but they're pros they are quite formulaic pros you know there's certain kinds of sentence structures

that go on and there's a little bit of personnel you've got your different animals and your

different workers and so on but these can be traced right back to Sumer these are not Greek

invention there are Egyptian Fables there are the Sumerian Fables of Akikar and the short

pithy moral tale with a lesson which technical Greek term is a new set except it's got a little

bundle of advice in it is absolutely as old as the metrical epos that I was talking about

and the very fact that it is now so pervasive all over the world like everybody in any language

can get hold I mean even indigenous languages that publish practically nothing else can get hold

of a children's copy of ESOPS Fables do I find completely fascinating.

Richard do you recognize any parallels there and what you'd be working on?

I think just to talk about just the idea around the audience for instance or you know even in terms

of like pushing it forward what is very interesting is that these songs that I've been working on

were not songs meant for you know it is meant for singing to each other in a way so it's like a

gender safe space like a safe space where women you know spoke to each other which is where they

were very vulnerable they were talking about experiences which they potentially couldn't sing outside

so I think and what's very you know one thing that I was reading about is rituals were very

important you know the songs were also a ritualistic act where in the grindstone grinding stone

was also treated as god for instance or like a friend so the kind of conversations that they were

having the songs that they were singing in a way brought in that kind of you know the metaphors

they used also sort of a very deeply personal but also deeply political. In Edith I was trying

to pat myself a kind of one hour degree court here but if we look at they have a great the people

will be familiar with Aristotle Plato do they broadly have the same view that you've laid out

about the merits of the spoken verses written language or are they kind of all a little bit you

know a bit like people having arguments here about whether you should be really more into podcasts

or it only counts if it's written down are there differences in the in the ancient world?

Oh well does this entire degree cause that I could be but it really just comes down to the

fact that Plato was Aristotle's tutor and Plato thought that rhetoric the art of persuasion was

deeply deeply deeply dangerous and it should not be available to be taught because it meant that

people with bad moral ideas could persuade people and it's because he says they're so often so

loudly throughout all of his treatises basically slugging off the surface because he's not a

democrat you know it's the democrats who think that everybody ought to be able to speak up for

themselves. Plato doesn't want hyperloids speaking up for themselves. His student Aristotle

wrote the rhetoric to put two thinkers up to his tutor. Which is always tempting.

I feel like if you see we're nodding then I've got just a bit of a provocative one to throw

in. Is that why people who don't like Donald Trump don't like listening to Donald Trump speaking?

Oh well Donald Trump I knew he'd have to get to him. I think he's some form of the oral tradition.

He's a very powerful community. He is a very powerful communication. It's very interesting

to inquire into why actually because he if we take the Aristotelian trinity which I agree is

absolutely the gold standard when we're analysing anything like this. And it's worth noting that

there's probably there aren't many disciplines where the the standard analytical framework has

survived for that long. I mean we're not reading Aristotle's science anymore but we absolutely are

still beholden to his analysis of rhetorical discourse. And Trump's rational apprehension is

virtually nonexistent. And I say that not to I don't simply saying Donald Trump is irrational

as an insult. I'm saying he isn't trying to do rational arguments. That's not the method of

communication he's employing. He's very good on the other two counts because he's very Donald

Trump like all the time. He's never not Donald Trump. So does he pass your test that you set

him out about? Do you know what you're saying and how you want to say it? I think he passes the latter

test very handsomely whether the former test. I think he's so good at the characterisation and

at making emotional connections that it overrides the fact that if you were to pass his prose it

wouldn't make the slightest sense at all. Thank you for your attention in this matter as he always

ends his truth is social. It's like putting a being felt here. You know read this, listen to this.

Stephen you mentioned something earlier which is just stuck in in my mind which is what's

a sort of a sense within the Buddhist tradition that the written form is a less perfect form of the

true nature of the message and that is the sound and the communication. So I wanted to dive

into that with you just in a little bit more depth. Does that make then a very big difference

about I think you use the phrase a heartbeat of the ideas that communicate it? Does that then

change? Does the message in the medium then change if that is the emphasis that the tradition puts

on it? If you're teaching, if you're observing. Well I think in some ways today it's become rather

formalistic and when for example if you study a particular treatise with a Tibetan lama then

if you miss one or two of the lessons you have to go back to the lama and you have to get him to

to recite the text that you missed. In other words if you don't hear the whole thing spoken by another

human being you somehow have not received it in some crucial way and this I think places the

emphasis not just on the importance of the spoken word but also how the spoken word somehow embodies

a living human person's actual experience of something rather than just an idea written down

on a piece of paper. So in practice I think this has become a formality you just quickly recite

the text but I think it's harkening back to a sense that only when you speak and particularly when

you're speaking about things that matter to you existentially like religion or philosophy or

something then the meaning of that speech is very much to do with how you as a creature as a

human being have internalized and made that idea your own in some way. Another other cultures that

you've taken an interest in that rely on speaking rather than writing that we might be less familiar with.

Well in Zen Buddhism for example you have this they make a distinction between what they call

live words and dead words. In other words the oral is still very crucial but there's a recognition

that you can repeat standardized beliefs and phrases as long as you like but they may not come

alive for your listener there's somehow flat there's somehow dead it's a bit like when you go to

a lot of conferences you hear people reading their texts and almost inevitably I fall asleep.

It's the death of the soul isn't it? The death of the soul so when they break from their prepared

text and start speaking you know as they would speak to a friend it suddenly becomes alive

and I think that quality too there's a living vital quality to the spoken word that is often lost

in the written text. Do we know just looking around at the table here I mean picking on you

Tom is it something about speaking or song that makes information easier to remember the rhythm

as well as the flow of the words? Yeah absolutely you can I think as Ed if we're saying it's

language is functioning through memory in that in that case but I want to bring it back to

this idea about articulacy which is what Stephen used this idea earlier bringing ideas together

and to turn it around to really the shadow of what we're all talking about we're talking about

eloquence we're talking about expression whatever we want to call it but I think you can

understand an idea best by thinking about its alternative what's in articulacy? The inability

to bring things together who is in articulate is Donald Trump in articulate even though he's

weaving these things together Biden famously described Barack Obama in 2007 when running against

him as articulate because he was inheriting this tradition we have for demonizing the inarticulate

and I think that's a really interesting way of thinking about what speech does bringing things

together and how we can demonize those who don't possess it. For you think you've come across

particular catchphrases it can be from politics or what we now call politics adjacent to it and

as soon as I use that phrase I just think like what has happened to my use in the English language

but now we've got so much this politics policy social environmental that all comes together all

the words or phrases in a nutshell that you're thinking in in these areas that you think yeah that

really has pulled something together for me to be a campaign could be something that a party

or an individual yes there are I mean they are absolutely dominated by those which in Stephen's

term are dead so I absolutely recognize what he was saying that distinction between the

live and the dead I think it lives on into our time and it's very very important in our politics

but there are examples of good practice still I'm not entirely pessimistic a really very obvious

notable one recently was Mark Carney's speech Davos when he did what as a speech writer you're

always trying to do and he found a very vivid description of his whole speech in one image which

was the image he borrowed from Vaclav Harval of the of the sign in the window and if you're displaying

the sign in the window you that's a fake a pretence that you're that businesses you is carrying on

as usual it's time to take the sign out of the window he said and the very fact that I can still

remember and we can that's a very good example we can all see it can't we we can all you're all

imagining a shop and a sign now and that pictorial language is it then it works as a parable for the

whole speech who else has got a catchphrase or a slogan that it's just stuck in their mouth he's

it's got a hand up at the front of the class yeah I'd just like to illustrate one of the very

most fundamental ancient ploys which everybody here will be very familiar with which is an Afro where

you kick off every sentence with the same thing is the I have a dream trope you know I have a dream

I have a dream but Greta Tumbergs how dare you speech where she kept saying how dare you blah blah I

leave the planet like this for for my generation how dare you stand there before me with your smart

data sets that was perfect an Afro but for me that pathos was very interesting she was playing an

extremely dangerous grain being quite aggressive was extremely dangerous and she got it just right she

just got them embarrassed enough so yeah I'm slightly chewing my penny I think there's a difference

been getting something right in the moment does that stand the test of time I'm used not to go down

I think it will I think it went in textbooks yes I might do in textbooks but I was also thinking

about how a very good technically sort of good phrase and the remain campaign was better together

but it didn't mean you won and it didn't mean mean that the sort of Greta model carried all before

it and I should lost some people along the way so just one one thing on that I'm going to bring

you me to get in but go okay just one thing on that which is that the climate change you would

think would be the a subject that would be in all the anthologies of great speeches and it isn't

no one's ever done a great climate change speech I won't take up the whole of the program

explaining why but in a nutshell I think it's because no one has executive authority over it you've

got it that's why I think it's hard to to make a great speech on that subject yeah if anyone

thinks they have heard one they can let us know the via any form of social media readily consumed by

by me in our guest retica yeah and I think I do have an example because I was actually going to

think of I was thinking of a slogan which is just it was basically Jull jungles I mean which is in

Hindi and it was coined over a century ago and it really translates to a water forest and land

and this was this actually came from like indigenous struggles back in like eastern and central

India and believe it or not over the last hundred odd years this particular phrasing in slogan has

been used by feminist activists it has been used for grassroots activism it's used for anti mining

struggles for instance something that's so powerful so material and so lived so I think

there are strong examples from history I think you you had just one thought you wanted to chip in

there which is that it has to feel that you have to be able to visualize it it helped we hadn't

touched on very much yeah it really helps if you can if you can provide me with a metaphor make me

think of a bridge you know to use a very well-worn one I'm immediately located there and I literally

have moved you in your brain from one side to the other when I have done that and this is something

very important about speech of course it which is we only say it once it when you're reading a text

you can circle back now it's not great writing if you're forced to read it twice but you can

whereas you hear it once it has to be memorable it has to stay with you and you you get many speakers

lose their audiences and the more pictorial you can be the more chance you've got of keeping your

audience can be said one thing to that which is very rarely said but the voice is actually

something created by the body it is so matic right reading a book you're doing something through

visual perception for the little squiggles but there is a physical length between a speaker

and a listener you are breathing into the other person's ears and the ancients understood that

extremely well that this becomes a whole body link which you can never get with the book

I was maybe just remembering the Ronald Reagan tear down this wall speech to go up and at the time

that was thought well you know it's the wall it's just there order silly speech you know

many people thought I was a sort of silly aura a kind of just Reagan Reagan gonna Reagan call to

think of course in retrospect tear down this wall as in the one I'm here in Berlin standing in front

of looked very predictive so sometimes you don't exactly see the significance in the name of it.

Absolutely a remarkable speech and a great story attaches to that speech because

Colin Powell who was the national security adviser at the time and George Schultz whose defense

secretary both advised Reagan against doing that and they said don't on because it wouldn't happen

they thought because it wouldn't happen and be it would be discertious to your to the Russians

and Reagan on the way to the Brandenburg Gate where he delivered the speech said to Peter Robinson

his speech writer I'm going to say you know and it wasn't in the script but he had an actor's

actor's instinct I'm sure this because he had engaged the emotional manipulation and also the

greatest disconnection between the speaker on the one hand and the writer on the other usually

Peggy Noonan the the world's greatest speech writer she wrote all the words Reagan didn't write a

thing but my he could deliver a line yeah you're listening to free thinking delivered by me and

Mikhail Voyen by my guess Rita Gerser Romani and Stephen Bachelet Edith Hall Tomwright and

Philip Collins we are discussing oral traditions and oracy Tom referred to James Marriott series

How Reading Made Us which is on radio for at the moment and you might like to check that out

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terms apply seasite for details so let's take this into contemporary classrooms and the political

arena now and how some of these oral traditions are playing out now Tom you're going to have to

take us back to basics on oracy and why policymakers and teachers got soaking on promoting this scene

schools yeah so we're all using the word literacy and we're all comfortable with that we understand

that it's two things at once it's reading and writing in the 1960s education lists in the UK

started getting excited about the idea that you needed another word for describing oral communication

so I said that down the road and I was dealing with lots of teachers and government ministers today

that are thinking about oracy education in school it looks like it's going to affect the lives of

millions of school kids so I think we need to think very seriously and critically is it new

does it make sense does it have powerful ideas underneath it and you know what I think it does

and I think it has something that does update the analytical framework that we inherit from

the classical tradition because it has three ideas at the heart of it it's doing three things it's

teaching people how to talk yeah okay that's what Philip's been talking about it's teaching people

through talk which is what Stephen's been talking about I think people talking leads to learning

that classroom shouldn't be quiet they should be full of people exchanging ideas but crucially and

I think this is what we're all doing here today it's teaching people about talk thinking about the

ideas of talk the ideas of accents about prejudices that surround them about sociolinguistics about

the kind of assumptions that we have Aristotle didn't have this either if I'm afraid to say but he

was getting there but we but we have we have ways of thinking about this and I think instead of

oracy let's just say thinking about voice let's just have this idea of placing it at the forefront

of education in ways that it hasn't been for many in the state sector whereas it has been for

the independent sector there was a small cry of pain for me he thought I think it was was a little

a little sort of whimper of disagreements so I thought it'd take that before we we dive in a bit

more about this political divides underneath I'll just say you can only say that because you've

only read the rhetoric not the ethics and the politics if you'd read them you'd see the whole

system of how it is totally ingrained institutionally and in society and Aristotle does talk a lot

about being important is to listen and I was surprised you didn't say that that it also trains people

to listen oracy I thought but the policy was that it was classroom listening training so that you

learned to be civil in interaction what I'd actually like to say though is that I've been teaching

with a colleague at both time my professor Arlene Honderson we've been teaching oracy as she calls

it rhetoric as I call it in HMP's British prisons well English and Welsh prisons and it

is transformative we're teaching Aristotle's ethics but we kick off with a lesson on Aristotle's

rhetoric and encourage people to sit and listen and interchange and you know what the most powerful

statement is that I tell them that if they had in their trials they would have had to defend

themselves they would have had to speak in their own defense they could have got a speech right

if they had some money but they would have had to jolly well do it and I asked them all would they

have done a better job and they all say no but I would have done if I'd had this class first they

said why didn't we have this at school and Aristotle's third sentence in the rhetoric is I do not

understand why in Greek society we teach all young people to defend themselves with weapons but not

with their tongue that is the most moving sentence in ancient literature for me that's what you're

doing so Tom make just take us a little deeper into some of the the thoughts behind this because

it does for some people it can be you it's something they have a strong view out and there are

pros and cons in this argument I mean tell me if I'm roughly right here that for liberals it's often

seen as a part of social mobility quest yeah if people could speak better if they could express

themselves better they'd be able to get into the workplace better they have more confidence in

themselves wouldn't get so left behind there's some there if you go sort of left words into the more

sort of economic determinism or Marxist traditions who say yeah well you're you're sort of fadlin

about here well really what it is you know here is material you know quality in the society that

is holding people back and then you have a lot of conservatives who like the idea because they

think it might be sort of restoring ways of speaking or speaking well in inverted commerce I mean

do you think it is politically inflected this whole idea of oracy well I think you captured it

just really well it it's a raw shack plot people can see in it they can hear in it if you want

whatever they want so if you say hey we're going to teach listening we're going to teach speaking

people get very excited and they see in it what what they want and I think that's why it's such a

powerful and and why it's such a controversial idea because speech is never neutral to try and

control the speech of others is is one the most political acts you can you can make in a society

but it underpins all of the education that already takes place all of the assumptions that exist

within education and all of the ways in which we assess we need to think carefully about how we

can how we can introduce new methods to do that especially in this world of I'm going to mention it

AI and in this post literary post literacy landscape that some are warning us we're entering into

I think some of these ideas whether they come from Aristotle or whether they come from the

teachers down the road I think you're going to be really important in doing that and the

danger is that it becomes coded in a very very political way that it can become a technocratic

skill another thing that we can get young people to fail at and I think trying to avoid that is

the is the paramount you scored 33 on your oracy test what do you reckon that Collins oracy

promotes rhetorical literacy helps people decode I think there's sometimes a bit of a

finger on this scale about is if if people only understood this they don't they'd see through bad

political arguments and then they wouldn't vote for the people I think are really bad are I

being a bit cynical no there's definitely some of that however I'm strongly in favor of all of

this because for the reasons that we've all been giving which is underneath all the skills we're

talking about is the fact of learning and of of subjecting your own thoughts to critical

inquiry and you improve your thoughts in no way is there better than if you subject them to

the scrutiny of an audience and so the things that you learn during the process of going through

these things are so vital so I mean the one the last generations to have a proper rhetorical

education included one William Shakespeare and a grammar school in Stratford there's a great essay

by Kenton Skinow he takes you through the education that Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have

had and he traces that into the plays and says this is why he knows so much about forensic rhetoric

in court for example because he's been taught is at school so one of Tom's people who's talking

about the conference is going to be the next Shakespeare because we're going to teach them these

things which we've stopped doing no no no pressure there then Tom did you like that idea so I

just gonna just gonna come in there I think this takes us learning it in school that's that's

fantastic that I want to bring it right back to where we start at Angela Rainer's speech

one of the things that's most important to understand about oracy and why people who are afraid

of it is that it can be top down it can be imposed in school and by governments it's just powerful

people telling the rest of us how to speak but grassroots oracy let's think about institutions let's

think about what Rita Cooper was saying let's think about the trade union movement let's think

about the chartists and suffragists and the way in which these adult learning institutions have

incubated forms of rhetoric that are still powerful as we've seen from Rainer's speech this week

to this day I would I would trace that all back to to to methodism I would trace it all back

yeah Wesley's preacher training was long before and led to things like the chartists and the trade unions

Stephen you're listening to this from from from France and I'm wondering whether you like

and with your your expertise hat on whether you like this idea of modern oracy being something

that can be taught but I'm also just curious if you know if you're spending time in France how does

that sense of putting oracy into a curriculum land then in the French speaking world and around

you I'm not really sure we don't have children and I'm really out of touch with what's going on

in French schools I suspect it's very similar to the UK I think we inhabit a very similar culture

but one of the things that I like to pick up on is the it's already been mentioned this idea that

it's not just about speaking it's also about learning to listen and listening is a kind of

contemplative quality as well we often we find when we we're hearing some armats something we're

not really listening to what the person saying we're already preparing how we're going to respond

in reaction we're cluttering up our own mind with our opinions and our views and and our likes

and our dislikes and we're actually closing off really being able to hear what the other person

is trying to say and perhaps some of the strategies that we might not approve of in their rhetoric

so I think to train in in public speaking to in oracies it may be called there also needs to be

account of that of training people how to listen and what they do when they listen to become more

conscious of how they're listening intentional listening as the coach is yeah exactly which basically

is just don't interrupt them say much tommy reviews yeah I was thinking about France so I lived

there recently I was a visiting professor and they've recently introduced into their baccalaureate

in the in the leases a chondoral you know at the end of your education you have to give this speech

to your teachers now I think that's exactly the wrong way to go about this because I'm going to

offend Philip here he's written great books about speech making I'm guilty of having written some too

and the oracy agenda is trying to get away from speech making performance towards conversation

towards listening towards the the intimate exchange that it's what we're doing here it's what

are people are doing in the workplace it's not necessarily the conference hall it's not even the

assembly it's not the senate hall it's something which needs to be far more intimate and needs to be

taken away from the idea that it ultimately culminates in you as Barack Obama on the state

Philip here Tom is suggesting too many speeches gov yeah no I'm not offended by that because I mean

of course my own Bailey Wick is the is the speech but actually what we're talking about here I think

is public language in a much more extended sense and there's lots of places where public language

is good or is bad I mean on the on literally in the lift on the way down to to record this we were

we were listening to the Arctic monkeys and I pointed out that is an example of great public

language you in Gordon Brown we in Gordon Brown he's he loved them too and I think there's really

good public language everywhere and that's what we're trying to do we're trying to make sure

that people speak well not in a way which is sanctioned by anybody either in your turn of

voice or in our diction or in our or the rules of grammar if there were such a thing which there

isn't but public language broadly yeah Rutica and dealing with young people teaching and getting

feedback from young people do you think there is a lively appetite for this as well as deciding

it's a good thing for other people to do do you do you think that your students and there's you

you spend a lot of time with would welcome this I think so and I think for the first time for

instance we did introduce you know we've also been revisiting assignments for instance you know

where you spoke about when AI earlier I think revisiting how you even think of assignments in terms

of you've now introduced a podcast as as a way of you know thinking of developing studies for

instance and you know thinking of topics in terms of how you would engage with as as like a podcast

but one thing that really stuck with me in this whole you know exchange right now was also

the question around translation because you know when you're talking working with Orel Archives for

instance one thing that comes to play is also translating it and you know now thinking of

meaning making and thinking of context thinking of just the visceral aspects of you know writing

and speaking itself and that distinction I think is something which I'm also exploring

Tom someone we might just like to mention is the German philosopher Jürgen Habermass

who died last Saturday, ripe old age just short of a a hundred by a couple of years he was

known for writing about communication and about the public sphere and the way that words and

thoughts land in the public sphere and certainly one of the most significant philosophers and

interpreters of what we now call the public square in the the the post-war period in in

Germany and beyond what did he say that you think he's relevant for this conversation well

like any good speech he wanted you to see an image in the image he wanted you to see was the

London coffee house not far from where we are now in the 17th and 18th century there were

thousands of coffee houses which grew up which he idealized as symbolic of the free flow of ideas

in modernity for the first time in history people in his view were exchanging ideas free of

government control or free of state control now that was partly through print and it was partly

through newspapers and pamphlets and that kind of thing but ultimately it was a world of

orality it was a world of conversation and exchange now on the one level that's really

positive for us sitting around this table we we can see that as as an ideal that we might move

towards but immediately you step back from that and you start thinking who's who's not in the

coffee shop who can get in the coffee shop and more importantly what are the rules of those

conversations within the coffee shop what are those how are the rules that structure the public

sphere in the way we talk the way we listen the way we evaluate each other's arguments structured

and I think he can help us into these questions but I'm not sure that he can necessarily give us

all of the answers well there we must leave our exploration of the power of speech with my

pleasantly licuacious guests and next week on free thinking Matthew sweet will be exploring

another familiar rhetorical strategy the humble brag and asking whether humility is a virtue

or a vice we'll be back next Friday at nine

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