Contradicting and complicating feminization of rhetoric narratives: Mary Yost and argument from a sociological perspective

Complicating claims about the decline of oratorical culture in the nineteenth century, this article demonstrates that rhetorical training was integral to the coeducational literary societies at California State Normal School in the 1870s and 1890s and that women benefited from such education. The societies were based on assumptions of relative equality between the sexes, fostering the development of teachers who would serve as powerful public speakers and leaders within their communities. This study also challenges arguments concerning the feminization of argumentation in the nineteenth century by highlighting the centrality of debate to the societies and the ways this argument overlooks such activities.

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Inventing Public Speaking: Rhetoric and the Speech Book, 1730-1930

Sproule¹

2012

Rhetoric and Public Affairs

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Formerly a synonym for oratory and elocution, "public speaking" after 1900 signaled, instead, a paradigm shift whereby extemporaneous-conversational speechmaking replaced declamation and oratorical composition. This study of more than 200 key titles published between 1730 and 1930 demonstrates that the modern public-speaking book emerged, not as an innovation in whole cloth, but rather from a generation-long process of selectively recombining materials extracted from preceding text genres. As a practical revolution, the new public speaking contributed to democratic, argument-rich public affairs and, as an intellectual movement, furthered the emergence of speech as a separate academic discipline.

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Contradicting and complicating feminization of rhetoric narratives: Mary Yost and argument from a sociological perspective

Cited by 3 publications

References 12 publications

Feminist Research Methodologies in Historic Rhetoric and Composition: An Overview of Scholarship from the 1970s to the Present

Feminist Research Methodologies in Historic Rhetoric and Composition: An Overview of Scholarship from the 1970s to the Present

“Resolved That the Mind of Woman Is Not Inferior to That of Man”: Women's Oratorical Preparation in California State Normal School Coeducational Literary Societies in the Late Nineteenth Century

Inventing Public Speaking: Rhetoric and the Speech Book, 1730-1930

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