Speaking Like Intelligent Men

Abstract

This article focuses on the acoustic aspect of parliamentary government in nineteenth-century Britain, demonstrating the continued importance of speech and audibility for representatives in the reformed House of Commons. Notions of what constituted a proper parliamentary voice changed as electoral reforms, the rise of the “fourth estate,” and scientific discoveries in laryngology influenced evaluations of political speech. Most notably, rhetorical brilliance and a theatrical delivery lost legitimacy and were increasingly replaced by a “polite” and conversational style. The vocal sounds of modern, polite representatives were extensively transcribed and commented upon by journalists and satirists. By the end of the nineteenth century, the rise of the written press made the careful management of the vocal organs more, rather than less, politically relevant.

Finding a scientific voice: performing science, space and speech in the 19th century

“…A weak voice suggested a lack of conviction. This was made apparent in speech manuals and in press reports of prominent public speakers (Hoegaerts ). It was a view shared by one of Britain's most celebrated and controversial evangelical orators, Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Ellison ).…”

“…But Huxley was by no means exceptional in this respect and his approach to lecturing tracked a shift in oratorical culture, particularly as seen in parliamentary address. As Josephine Hoegaerts () has argued, in an era of political reform, some parliamentarians adopted a controlled and less dramatic performance marked by a studied lack of verbal and gestural artistry in order to secure perceptions of authenticity and accessibility. The liberal MP John Bright was singled out as a particularly prominent example of this ostensibly new style.…”

“…Mayhew ), the embodied nature of spoken scientific discourse has received less attention. Of course, the circuits inevitably overlapped and interacted in ways that transformed both (see Hoegaerts ; Wright forthcoming). It is nevertheless possible to foreground the clusters of practices – vocal, paralinguistic, ritualistic and inter‐medial – involved in platform performances in order to fill out accounts of the geographies of communication crucial to the changing public meaning and cultural authority of Victorian science.…”

‘Intelligent Strangers as well as Members’: Enlightening Maps and Social and Political Spaces for Cartographic Conversations

“…Much of the research has been on political talk, whether forging communities of conviction in an era of mass politics or providing roles for the otherwise disenfranchised such as women (e.g. Reynolds, 1998;Meisel, 2001;Hewitt, 2002;Good, 2007;Hoegaerts, 2015). Elsewhere, talk is considered in religious settings where the intellectual, the programmatic, and the affective meet (e.g.…”