I covet the spoken word. The spoken word has got me this far; I know it shall take me further. I am fascinated by the verbal form. It profits rhythm, makes a man a music, makes a mouth an orchestra. The word, Holy Word, captivates the senses. It does not just perk the ears, but seduces the visual, the political, and the divine. The Question: What is the state of rhetoric today? What is its state at Yale?
The English language lends itself to speech. Something of its vulgar flavor; its mechanical syntax, its rough, commanding consonants; and its tensed vowels invites not just the essayist but the orator. Latin is the language of the lawyer; German the philosopher; Greek the poet; French the lover; English is the language of them all. “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature,” tells Whitman in Leaves of Grass. Their tool is English. English is the spirit of American poetry, politics, law, and love.
Our university used to worship rhetoric. The Yale Political Union was founded in 1934 (stolen from the Englishmen of Oxford and Cambridge): devoted to the swell of speech, political fervor, and rhetorical consciousness at the English-speaking world’s greatest university. As interested in the spoken word as I am, I sought out this Union. Over a year out, I have some observations. I believe the Political Union, the most historic of Yale rhetorical societies open to all students, might serve as an analogy for the state of the spoken word at Yale, and the spoken word as an analogy for the Yale student.
Rhetoric is alive in the Yale Political Union. It is alive in that I am unsure an organization structured around Parliamentary debate can ever fully break with rhetoric. As the linguistic which we employ to persuade others, rhetoric will be “alive” so long as argumentative discourse exists. However, should you look around for the rhetoric studied by the university’s linguists and humanists, particularly that of the classicists, you will not find it on the floor of the Yale Political Union. You will find little meter, littler verse, littlest rhyme—these go without saying. After all, the orators of the Political Union are afforded only five minutes of oration, and there is little time for old forms in such a meager allowance.
The speeches of the Yale Political Union exhibit sprezzatura: that is to say, they exhibit calculated apathy. Their speech is calculated, because they care to present intelligently for the educated audience of friends. Their speech is apathetic, because they do not care all that much. Somehow, the YPU speaker has managed to shove intellectual ambition into an organization toward which they feel little love. This is true for both sides of the aisle.
On the left, most speakers present (and, perhaps, live) with less frequent bouts of stringency; their oration is more relaxed, less formal, and thus more honest. One gets the sense of little apostrophe to the old forms of rhetoric. However, without appeal to the rhetorically antique, all that is left is for them to say what’s on their mind—the speakers on the left come across with much authenticity. They instead gear their content toward un-assumption and sensitivity. As such, they find themselves strewn between rhetorical authenticity and sensitive limitations. These attributes, combined with the general indifference of Union members to the Union, make for speeches which appear calculated in their content, yet apathetic in their form.
On the right, speakers are more likely to adhere to the rhetorical forms of Old Yale. They are more old-fashioned, more antique, and more upright. Their speech, therefore, is presented with greater diction but less authenticity and spontaneity. Their content does not differ from the conformity of the left; they just conform to alternative standards of social presentation. Of course, the speakers on the right realize they are speaking to an audience that is largely unconcerned with rhetoric. To convince them of their argument, they feel they must loosen their ties a little bit, and appear more apathetic to the old way. On top of all this, they are themselves also relatively indifferent to the flourishing of the Union as it is. They are rhetorically calculated but apathetic nonetheless.
In short, members of both the right and left coalitions are careful to project the popular sentiment of the Union in their speeches: relative ideological conformity and rhetorical apathy. In fact, the speech on both sides of the aisle is overwhelmingly similar, in that it sounds as though none of the speakers really want to be there. And yet, I must believe that the membership does want to be there; why would they spend so much time in the Union if they did not have a love for it?
Alexis de Tocqueville, grand high minister of patriotic observation, admired of Americans their unprecedented spirit of liberty and puzzled at how easily this people forsook such liberty for conformity: “I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America,” (Democracy in America). The tide of democracy, though freed from mores and dams, issues forth in one direction. The Political Union, in all its rhetorical and substantive conformity, epitomizes this sentiment. This is not a criticism of the students of the Political Union, but rather an observation about Yale students as a whole. Nor is it a conservative’s whine for antique forms, or a radical’s longing for vitality. It is, hopefully, a vindication: very few YPU members, like Tocqueville’s Americans, actually enjoy such conformity. Contrarily, though they are often unsuccessful, they seek to impress their peers and sway some minds, but the slowburn of institutional decay and democratic myopia has got them down. Here is what I will offer: whether it be toward old or new forms, to apostrophic invocations or revolutionary outbursts, rhetoric benefits the divergent.
The best rhetoricians, practiced and particular though they be, are at heart not classical players but jazz musicians. The jazz band rivals the orchestra in intensity and preparation, but their intensity aspires toward calculated spontaneity, the product of the precise rehearsal of the apparently improvised. They conform to little form, but they present little apathy. They employ, if you will, the element of surprise is an ammonia to the ear. To me, jazz works for its rejection of the common tone: it wakes up some of the slumbering attendees of piano recitals: perhaps it too could wake up those in the back of Union debates. It is up to the Union orator to take up this musical form: to conform their form only to their idea and allow for their own rhetorical spontaneity.
The Yale student of today is not reactionary. The Yale student of today is not radical. They are not Tea partiers, and they are not hippies. As it is with the Yale students of times past (and the youth in general), the Yale student of today largely, barring some outliers, conforms to the motion of the other Yale students of today. As Tocqueville observes, such singular motion is often an outgrowth of a democratic spirit. The citizenry must have faith in its institutions and resolve not to sacrifice the liberty of their thought. So let it be in the Political Union. It is the burden of the rhetorician, of the jazz musician, of the Yale Student, and of the democrat, to diverge in thought and speech from the common form. The Political Union ought to adopt spontaneous and original forms, those which match their form to their content, and it must restore its faith in the value of the spoken word. This is the only way to stave off its apathetic decline.
If we are to fulfill Whitman’s prophecy of an unprecedented poetical nature, if we are to sway the minds of conforming peers and indifferent speakers, if we are to deliver to the English spoken word the fanatical reverence and holy sanctity which it so deserves, then it is time to let slip the tongue of the authentic: to embrace original oration and meet with glorious zeal the opportunity to speak against the crowd.
If such a task presents too high a risk, there will always be room in Tocqueville’s tide.
