The voice in the ARs bene dicendi in Brazil: an analysis of the discourses about the voice in rhetoric compendia and public speech manuals (19th and 21st century)

Abstract

This project seeks to identify what is said about the human voice and how these statements are formulated in the field of public speaking, from a discursive and comparative approach. We aim to describe, interpret and compare the discourses about the voice in works of rhetoric and oral communication, produced in two different historical contexts. Based on the theories of Discourse Analysis, derived from Pêcheux's and his group's work, to which contributions from the History of linguistic's ideas will be aggregated, we intend to identify discourse regularities on the subject voice and uncover differences in the constitution, formulation and circulation of these sayings over its uses and effects, through the comparison between two historical contexts and two different discourse genres. More precisely, our purpose is to answer the following questions about the discourses produced and/or reproduced in Brazil about the voice: what, how and why we speak of the voice in the Nineteenth Century's rhetoric textbooks and manuals of public speech of the Twenty-first Century? What are the statements that circulated in the past and what are the statements that are currently circulating about the voice? Are the sayings about the voice in different times, ideologies and genres the same? Are there any and which are the ruptures and continuities in the discourse about the voice and its use? Are there any variations in the treatment given to it in works of the same historical period? In order to answers these questions, we will analyze three textbooks about rhetoric of the Nineteenth Century and three public speaking manuals of the Twenty-first Century.