Epistemic and Pedagogical Assumptions for Informative and Persuasive Speaking Practices: Disinterring the Dichotomy

Because our descriptions participate in the reality they describe, a true description of what is is also a claim of what ought to be. (Anderson, 1996, p. 197) Appraisal underlies all speech, and therefore all knowledge. (Grene, 1966, p. 172) It is uncertain when the informative speech was introduced into public speaking pedagogy but it is difficult to find a public speaking textbook that does not presume its existence and that does not imply that informative and persuasive speeches are distinct types. I contend that our public speaking categories posit assumptions and practices with which ancient and contemporary scholarship disagrees. The current pedagogical taxonomy presumes that it is possible to know and to present information in a neutral, objective, or unbiased way and that either the presentation form or the audience effects are sufficient to categorize a speech as informative or persuasive. Thus, this taxonomy bifurcates speech content from the understanding that all data are interpreted, separates the need to convey data from the need to present that data in a convincing manner (Rowan, 1995), and diminishes the requirement to tailor presentations to a specific situation and audience. This essay briefly overviews the informative speech, examines arguments against neutral speaking and neutral knowing, reviews current pedagogical practices of informative and persuasive speaking as found in three popular textbooks, and explores the potential impact of asking students to present a neutral, "informative" speech. I conclude that we should replace the informative-persuasive typology by returning to a treatment of presentations as arguments. THE INFORMATIVE SPEECH Most of the research on explanatory writing or speaking agrees that the scientific, theological, and epistemological presumptions that became its foundation arose during the 18th century (Connors, 1984, 1985; Olbricht, 1968; Rowan, 1995; Sproule, 1988, 1997a, 2002a). Connors (1984, 1985, 1991) thoroughly reviews the development of the explanatory written presentation but touches only briefly on oral communication. He dismisses study of the informative speech because explanatory discourse, he contends, favors written over oral transmission (Connors, 1984, p. 191) and departments of communication developed from a commitment to oral persuasion. Thus, speech departments taught rhetoric as argumentation while English departments taught composition as explanation (Connors, 1985, pp. 60, 63). Connors (1985), Rowan (1995), and Sproule (1988, 1997a, 1997b, 2002a, 2002b) contend that the epistemological basis for explanatory presentations developed from the notion of "scientific" discourse as objective and factual. Rowan (1995) contends that these 18th-century epistemological presumptions encourage contemporary speech teachers to view informative speaking as merely a matter of adherence to a certain kind of organization or to the speaker's goal rather than a matter of effective explanation that ensures understanding (pp. 238-239). Sproule (1988, 1997a, 2002a, 2002b) posits a shift in rhetoric's focus from an emphasis on good reasons to a managerial rhetoric aimed at a mass audience. This sea change occurred during the 1920s, when the practice of oratory was influenced by the "plain speech" movement, "born after the turn of the century when commerce (rather than community) became the chief context of speaking and when business meetings seemed to call for briefer, simpler talks.... College textbooks picked up on the new plain-speaking mode," so much so that "the advice given in most of today's textbooks of public speaking is based upon the practical, business-talk approach popularized since the 1920s" (Sproule, 1997a, pp. 17-19). Similarly, Olbricht (1968) contends that shared a priori assumptions formed the basis for information, business, and science pedagogy. It appears that these coordinate trends spawned presumptions about "neutral facts" and the informative speech, which public speaking textbooks incorporated into their prescriptions for oratory. …