ABSTRACT
The goal of rhetorical public speaking is the transformation of a collection of individual hearers into a common and committed audience through the power of the spoken word. Every metaphor, every gesture, and every argument must be directed toward this act of turning the many into the one, at least for a moment. The introduction of even newer electronic media of communication has not refuted this ideal as much as supplemented it. Written speech refers to those objects that people wish to study in private, to dwell over and reflect upon, to use as a reliable guide for judgment. Even in organizational settings, official e-mails are often laced with personal observations, jokes, compliments, or complaints that have a conversational tone. If written speech tends to invite individual cognitive reflection in solitude while online communication heightens the feeling of collective immersion in an immediate event, public speaking generates an atmosphere of shared experience within a dramatic situation.
