Postcoloniality and the Speaking Body: Revisioning the English Oral Competency Curriculum

Abstract

In this article the authors focus on the potentiality of postcolonial discourses to revision English oral competency courses that form a part of the general education and communication studies curriculum at numerous universities. The authors use as a case, the basic course in public speaking, which is often a mandatory course toward baccalaureate graduation at many universities. The authors offer the beginnings of an outline to help revision the public speaking course and propose that this outline can serve as a conceptual scheme to revision communication studies in ways that reflect and draw upon postcolonial frames and devices. The authors’ broader goal is to show one way that postcolonial work can make a practical disciplinary intervention. Leaning on key themes in postcolonial discourses, the authors outline the ways that this course can be pedagogically revised and suitably historicized. The authors also discuss various ways that a revised course can enlarge the capacity to engage a rapidly changing and evolving world that is laden with both peril and promise, and thereby allow them to more constructively enter and engage political economy, identity, culture, space, place, and history.