top
US
US
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

What is “Elocution” and how does it emphasize asshole-ism?

by WEndy
What is “Elocution” and how does it emphasize asshole-ism?
What is “Elocution” and how does it emphasize asshole-ism?

In Western classical rhetoric, Elocution was one of the five core disciplines of pronunciation, which was the art of delivering speeches. Orators were trained not only on proper diction, but on the proper use of gestures, stance, and dress.

Elocution emerged as a formal discipline during the eighteenth century. One of its important figures was Thomas Sheridan, actor and father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Thomas Sheridan's lectures on elocution, collected in Lectures on Elocution (1762) and his Lectures on Reading (1775), provided directions for marking and reading aloud passages from literature. Another actor, John Walker, published his two-volume Elements of Elocution in 1781, which provided detailed instruction on voice control, gestures, pronunciation, and emphasis.

Elocution, for political stump speeches, migrated to Elocution for elitism, because rich white people wanted to use language forms as a barrier to people of color.

Few people, from other countries, aside from England, have elocution lessons as a part of their culture. Their rough speech dynamics make it easy for elite yuppies, and socialites to denigrate those who are not “well-spoken”. Elocution and Ebonics are arch enemies.

Instead of wearing the overt badges of Gucci purses and Izod shirts, to say: “ I am rich, and better than you”. The elite have but to only open their mouths and speak in the high-toned, prissy, hyper-accentuated, close-teethed, affected, talking style known as “Elocution”. To do it properly, you need to pronounce every consonant and syllable, with half lidded eyes, turned up nose and an air of disdain about everything.

Employees for Google are often chosen for their symmetrical facial structures, their white-ness and their male-ness, but especially for their “I am one of you” ivy league Elocution.

It really helps to stir the Kool Aid, when everybody, around you, talks the same and looks the same.

Typical Millennial, Elocuted-types have infested the Bay Area. This story, in the local paper, optimizes the type:

From the Chronicle in San Francisco

"It was close to 9 p.m., and I was waiting at a bus stop on an island in the middle of Market Street. Next to me stood a tired-looking middle-aged woman who had clearly just left work. While we waited, up cruised the big white pod. It paused right in front of us. The door at the front slid open to discharge a few Googlers, and the luggage door on the lower right side of the bus also slid open to allow them access to their belongings.

One gentleman bounced down the bus steps and pushed his way in front of us to get his bicycle from beneath the bus. As he hurled it out onto the bus island, it hit the woman standing next to me. She glanced at me, mute and horrified, and in that moment I sensed that she didn't feel able to confront him. So I did.

"Excuse you," I said loudly.

>No response. He was busy fumbling with his messenger bag

"You hit her," I yelled.

He glanced up in no particular direction, as though suddenly troubled by the buzz of an insect. Circling his head around, he finally noticed where he was - the bus stop, the night, the fact that there were other people around him.

"Sorry?" he asked the air, in a tone of confusion. Then he climbed on his bicycle and pedaled away. He never looked at the woman he had hit."

There's a sense of entitlement about the rich, and the young rich are often the worst. And that's one reason why the logic of the Google bus -- it's better to have a single luxury vehicle haul all those people to work than have them all drive cars -- doesn't register with a lot of us. They're too good for Caltrain. They're too good for Muni. And they're too damn good to bother to notice that they've hit an old lady.”

Arrogance is the key to proper Elocution.


We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$110.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network