Delivery in Roman times was dependent on a speakers voice, intonation and body language. A speaker would stand in front of an audience and have to rely on their presentation in order to make an interesting or successful point. It was “lost” mostly to developing technology including the printing press, but much more recently, the internet. The internet erased most of the need for someone to stand in front of an audience and telling them what they need to know. Now we have Wikipedia and social media to do that. Your voice and presentation don’t matter when all your audience can see of you is your user name. It is similarly difficult online to inject emotion or body language into a speech, something the Romans relied on to get their points across. In addition to the advent of technology, the art of oration became a topic of fixed study in the 18th century and led to diminishing interest in delivery as the Romans did it. It became less about emotion and more about precision. It was formulaic instead of compelling.
Body and identity had a major role in rhetoric and delivery in Roman times. “Body” included everything from how you presented to your performance (body language and expressions) and was especially important when conveying ethos in a speech. Your audience wouldn’t be able to relate to you as an orator if you were robotic and stiff, they would relate to you and care about what you had to say if you presented it well. Now, with the internet playing a major role in how we communicate and present to one another, the “body” is something different. It includes how you speak, the images you display of yourself and the emotional connotations within those images, the emoticons you use. Personally, I’d say that your presentation is still important in face to face interactions even when you’re incorporating technology into your presentation, and your presentation is still important over Zoom as well (although from the torso up). Everything from your background to your lighting to whether or not you choose to have your camera on communicates a different image, and can say as much as your body language would in Roman times.
I’m a communication minor so I’m always thinking about delivery in the back of my mind. I notice the “ums” in my presentations and try to leave them as silences instead, I look directly into the camera on Zoom as the equivalent to eye-contact, I correct and re-correct spacing and punctuation in my writing to give off the right tone. Even though we are no longer as often speaking in front of the class, what we do put out will be scrutinized, so it’s important to me to make sure I still think about presentation for anything I do.
Question: How close does the advice in public speaking classes come to the nature of delivery in Roman times? Is it still to formulaic?
Intro to Digital Texts and Media 