Fiona ROSSETTE-CRAKE, Digital Oratory as Discursive Practice: From the Podium to the Screen

Fiona ROSSETTE-CRAKE, Digital Oratory as Discursive Practice: From the Podium to the Screen, 2022, Milton Keynes: Palgrave Macmillan, 323 p, ISBN-10: 3031189833, ISBN-13: 978-3031189838

In an age when there are few studies on digitalized speech, in Digital Oratory as Discursive Practice: From the Podium to the Screen Fiona Rossette–Crake, Professor in Linguistics at Paris Nanterre University, Département des Langues Etrangères Appliquées, aims at offering the results of her research on public discourse in digital settings. Fascinated by digital oratory, Fiona Rossette-Crake offers a comprehensive analysis at the boundary between discourse analysis, digital studies, rhetoric and applied linguistics.

The purpose of this study is to provide answers to the following questions:

• What are the specific interactional variables of monologic speech and the way they are modified within the digital interface?
• How can oratory be modelled as social practice?
• How is meaning construed by the ever-growing list of multimodal resources that is brought into play by oratory?
• How does the discourse enact a presentation of the self and how does it legitimate the speaker?
• What characterizes the speaker-addressee relation that underscores monologic speech and how may this relation currently be evolving under the influence of technological mediation?[1] (Fiona Rossette-Crake, 2022:31-32)

The author’s main focus is on describing the most recent alterations of public speaking and the most recent variables of the key-concept, oratory.  Fiona Rossette – Crake is interested in developing a theoretical framework together with a range of discursive tools in order to assess public speaking. Her main interest is basically descriptive by emphasizing the multiple aspects of public address at the interface between language and social activities of speech giving within the digital medium.

A key concept in this study is that of ‘oratory’ encompassing an entire range including not only the selfie videos but also content posted on social media with a digital background. The main sources of this type of ‘digital oratory’[2] (Lind, 2012, Jaffe, 2016) have been the propensity for video-based content and the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic that amplified the multitude of online communication. We witness an increase of the public address with an audience of digital speakers with Generation Z’s slogan – everyone has a voice – as a revival of public speaking practice.

Fiona Rossette–Crake identifies four categories of oratory[3]: Social Media Oratory, New Oratory, Fully digitalized Oratory and Contemporary Podium, Lectern Oratory, showing the speaker addressing audiences is embedded in institutional contexts where discourse is no more spontaneous. Oratory seems to bring all these four categories together, while the digital medium reunites discoursive communities: e.g. TED talks for academics or social networks for politicians or world leaders. The examples provided reflect manifestations of digitalized practices of speech-giving in social contexts.

Throughout the book the author is interested in making clear distinctions between similar terms and providing definitions of different public speaking practices in order to make the reader grasp the complexity of the digital oratory. From this perspective Fiona Rossette – Crake dissociates between the quasi-synonyms such as ‘oratory’, ‘public speaking’ or ’public address’ emphasizing the fact that oratory is monologic unlike prototypical spoken discourse.  An important feature of this type of discourse is asymmetry: we have one speaker but multiple addressees as tacit players under the pressure of different types of separation, among which we list:

• spatial separation: geographical distances, or the lectern separating the speaker from the addressees
• communication asymmetry: one speaker, many addressees
• the technological separation of communication devices such as phones, TV screens, etc

The reader is invited to explore the “filter’ created by digital communication, contrasting “the second orality”[4] as self-conscious with ‘the tertiary orality’ as a result of the effect of digital media on speech/writing. The author suggests negotiation in order to overcome this filter effect in the form of discourse markers meant to minimize the distance between the speaker and the addressees.

The author claims that this research tries to provide both a description of the multiple aspects of public address and an analysis of their functions.

Fiona Rossette–Crake‘s interest for theoretical description as a discourse analyst becomes relevant throughout the book, with each chapter as an answer to the above-mentioned questions.

In order to get the detailed answers to the questions, the reader is provoked to be alert and make connections between different chapters of the book as in an intricate cobweb of connected topics totally controlled by the author.

Across this study, two common theoretical topics are of interest: firstly the ‘communication setups’ of digital oratory as social practices starting form the first selfie videos posted by PM Boris Johnson and President Zelensky (as quasi-synonyms of public speaking in chapter 1) ending with ‘backstaging’ (chapter 7) where speakers prefer private spaces (the case of influencers) on Instagram or TikTok, as convincing examples of different kinds of oratory discourse supported by digital medium.

Chapters 7 and 8 introduce the concepts of the speaker ethos and self in the digital Neoliberal age: we read about the so-called “self-enterprise[5] stressing on the speaker’s ‘personal branding’ as a result of the intrusion of professional life into the personal sphere;  a further discussion is that of speaker ethos where the digital speaker, when addressing an amateur audience, will resort to personal experiences,  jokes,  even self-depreciation, in order to be seen as authentic and provoke an affable effect (Fiona Rossette–Crake, 2022:221).[6]

A second theoretical issue is the relation between speech and textuality as the result of the effect of digital media on speech/writing, hereby generating orality with a digital format (chapter 2 and 3). The author argues that oratory encompasses both spontaneous spoken practices and the formality of writing practices.

Chapter 4 continues the concept of ‘filter’ (chapter 3) as the effect of the screen/podium on the speaker. Similarly, the analysis of the asymmetrical feature of public speaking (chapter 2) is detailed by elaborating, on the one hand, on the negotiation required to deal with the temporal and spatial barriers under the form of discourse markers or contracted forms in order to minimize the distance between the users (chapter 4) and, on the other hand, on the fully digitalized oratory as a means of contracting spatial space.

In chapter 11, after having completed the entire reading of the book, the reader feels relaxed and pleased to have have been provided with an intricate image of digital oratory from all perspectives.

Surprisingly, the reader is faced with an open ending study as a message that any conclusion would be superfluous as long as oratory and contemporary public debate continue displaying diverse discourse genres in the ages to come given the tremendous progress of digital technology and the changes in social contexts.

Digital Oratory as Discursive Practice: From the Podium to the Screen is both a pleasant and informative reading for all the students and academics interested in public speaking and digitalized oratory as well as in their manifestations generated by technological resources.

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NOTES

[1] Fiona ROSSETTE-CRAKE, Digital Oratory as Discursive Practice: From the Podium to the Screen, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, p. 31-32.

[2] C, JAFFE, Public Speaking: Concepts and Skills for a Diverse Society, CengageLLearning, 2016.

   S.J LIND, “Teaching Digital Oratory: Public Speaking 2.0.” in Communication Teacher, 26(3), 163-169, 2012.

[3] Fiona ROSSETTE-CRAKE, op.cit, p. 13.

[4] W. ONG, Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word, Methuen, 1982.

[5] Fiona ROSSETTE-CRAKE, op.cit., p. 190.

[6] Ibid., p. 221.

University of Bucharest

diana.ionita @ lls.unibuc.ro