Another Speech Anthology

The appearance of Ben Rhodes’s new book All We Say is a boon to those who have a difficult-to-buy-for-dad this Father’s Day. As a rhetoric professor, I fully expect to be given at least one copy of this book as a gift soon. Speech anthologies are great! They look great on a corporate bookshelf, coffee table stack, and other obvious places. The appearance of Rhodes’s book begs the question of why we would need such a collection today.

The easy answer is All We Say isn’t really an anthology; it’s an argument about the question of American identity. But the question remains, what good are speech anthologies in the age of the internet? I can go look up any speech from anywhere, and possibly hear and see it—why do I need it sitting on my shelf?

The answer is you are doing it wrong. Speech anthologies aren’t meant to be owned they are meant to be engaged. Speech anthologies are synonymous with American education. They were the first textbooks. In 1797, Caleb Bingham wanted a portable library he could carry around—so he created the most significant anthology we have: The Columbian Orator. To Bingham, and many others, speeches were information, research, something to have on hand. Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln both praised Bingham’s anthology for helping them learn to orate. 

How can an anthology serve as reference material? It’s not just facts and accurate transcripts. You are meant to read it out. You are meant to ask it questions, such as, “Why did he say it like that?” or “What is this supposed to mean?” Speech, or as I call it, rhetoric, is critical thinking. When we see a speech in print we assume it matters. If we can’t figure that out, we ask questions after it. That sends us down what we might call today a research rabbit hole. We wind up learning a lot about the speaker, speech, occasion, situation, audience, and time. 

To this day, high school students participate in declamation contests, performing political or culturally significant speeches from memory that someone decided should be in the kind of anthology Rhodes does not offer. Some of you might remember having to memorize a Presidential speech, or part of one, as a civics assignment in school. We speak; therefore we are. Participation in speech is an exercise in collective identity. 

Records shouldn’t sit on a shelf; they should be played. Same with anthologies. They should be given breath by you in your living room or kitchen. The physical production of speech not only connects us to our American identity, but to our human identity, using the oldest tool we have to make things happen—our voice. David Blight, introducing his 1996 re-edit of Bingham’s anthology wrote in that version’s introduction: 

In an age when there is good reason to lament the decline of oratory and to fear for the future of the book in the face of the power of visual and electronic media, this elocution manual/reader lends us reassurance from the past. Like lost treasure, some old books can reemerge in the present and matter as much now as they did when they were new commodities in American classrooms. The image of young Frederick Douglass hiding in his loft practicing reading and speaking from his Columbian Orator is far more inspiring than it is quaint. Indeed, those concerned in American society today with how young people garner and practice good habits and virtues in the face of so much popular culture vying for their attention might benefit from a slow examination of Bingham’s reader. They might even wish to make the book talk by reading the dialogues and speeches out loud, as a family no doubt did in the pre-visual, pre-electronic age of the early nineteenth century. As Douglass did, they will find both music and political meaning in the language.

Admiring the anthology means opening and speaking the anthology. It gives us insight into language and words. It also might boost our confidence if we find a phrase we could improve on. Speaking the ideas of others might give us cause to speak our own more often. Speaking our minds is vital in the maintenance and long-term health of democracy. Anthologies encourage that practice if they aren’t just paperweights.

Consider William Safire’s hefty Lend me Your Ears, where the history of global public address is sifted for those speeches that meet his ten-part (!) rubric: A good handshake with the audience (metaphorical of course); give them some structure (he calls this ‘shapeliness’), a pulse or movement, occasion, forum, focus, phrase, purpose, theme, and delivery. If a speech exemplifies these categories, it’s in. But this isn’t a clear-cut process. We can disagree with Safire based on his own transparent rubric. And we can list a few honorable mentions. But to do so, we need to read—really read—the speeches, not consider them priceless art to be hung on the wall or kept under a heavy glass lid. Safire is offering us his understanding, his version of a speech (well, a lot of examples in a hefty tome). Putting together a speech is like preparing a dish: You need the right ingredients, mixed well, cooked properly, and served in an appealing way. There are some essential things about that, but most of it is subjective. But when it’s done just right, a great speech can inspire you to the point where you were not sure what you thought about the issue before you heard it. A legendary speech can make you usure you knew how to think about the issue.

Great speeches come from great engagement both with the mind and the voice. The speech anthology exists for that reason. It’s an invitation to take a breath and loan your voice to someone else’s words for a bit. With our super sweet 250^th coming up, there’s no better time to immerse yourself in our legacy of public address. Pick up an anthology and give it a go. You will appreciate America in ways you just can’t from the grill or the pool.