Hallway encounters bring historical gifts

I ran into my emeritus colleague Joe Wenzel the other day. When I mentioned that this week in my seminar we were reading several essays from the early years of the speech communication field, his eyes brightened. "Remember that phrase attributed to Winans, that a 'speech is not an essay standing on its hind legs'?" Yep, I said, I did. "Well, I may have something for you," he said. "Let me rummage around and get back to you."

Yesterday I got an envelope from Joe. The envelope contained five letters written by James A. Winans, one of the founders of the field of speech communication, to Richard Murphy, then a professor at Illinois. Most of them date to 1953-54.

Apparently Murphy was trying to determine where exactly Winans had first said the speech/essay thing. Winans, initially, wasn't sure himself. In a letter dated Sept. 25, 1953, he writes, "I hope it is mine. I know I used it; but how can one know? Does one ever know where his expressions come from. Or his ideas?" He then goes on to elaborate a bit about what he meant:

The expression you ask about seems just a little joke and I wasn't quite sure it was a good figger. But I was trying to say something striking against the notion some have that you can write a nice essay, stand up and say it and have a speech. ... a speech has to have some qualities not too common in literature. Clearness; that is clearness for the hearers. ... A speech should appeal to the interests of the hearers, and to their motives; and, in general, have directness in matter as well as in delivery. All this you know, but I am just trying to get at my own idea. Or what I think was my idea. Maybe it was the expression of a feeling and not based on analysis. ... Now where I uttered those tricky words, I do not know.

Eventually it appears that Murphy was able to track down the citation, a lead article by Winans in the April 1923 issue of The English Journal called "Aims and Standards in Public Speaking Work." According to Murphy's notes (also in the envelope from Joe), what Winans actually said was this:

I deny that there is any place for the new hybrid called oral composition. Speeches may be read, spoken from memory, or extemporized; even essays and papers may be read on occasion. But where in the world is there a place for a thing neither speech nor essay, but a composition standing on its hind legs?

One of the letters also contains a marvelous description from Winans explaining why the national convention ain't what it used to be, but I'll save that for November when we're all thinking about our 2007 national convention.

After Murphy died, Wenzel was given the letters for safekeeping. And now I guess Wenzel's given them to me for safekeeping. If so, it's a pleasure to take on that job. 

Comments

[dhawhee]

coool!

[Daniel Anderson]

What a cool post. Illuminates the yearly hubub about whether one should read a paper or deliver a presentation at conferences. I'm not sure I get everything about the problem with the hybrid, though. I see the need to be one thing or another, but also am intrigued by a speech that might be both.

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