The Politics of Oracy and the Post-Literacy Panic
We look forward to welcoming Dr Tom F. Wright to the English Faculty to talk on 'The Politics of Oracy and the Post-Literacy Panic' in this News UK lecture. The event will take place in Seminar Room - 00.063 at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities on 11 March at 5pm.
All welcome. Tickets are free, but registration is required.
Abstract
The concept of ‘oracy’ (speaking and listening skills) has become one of the key buzzwords in contemporary British education. Embraced as a priority by the Starmer government, oracy education looks set to shape the lives of millions of young people in the UK. But what is this new enthusiasm for voice and communication really responding to? And what might it mean for the future of humanities education? This talk answers those questions in two steps. First, it places oracy in a longer contentious history of efforts to shape how the British public speaks and listens, showing how it has involved not just top-down control but also grassroots empowerment. Second, it connects this history to today’s “post-literacy” panic and asks what it means for schools and universities when public life shifts towards voice, video, and performance.
Speaker biography
Tom F. Wright is Chair of the Department of English at the University of Sussex and a historian of political language and rhetoric. His most recent book is Oracy: The Politics of Speech Education (Cambridge University Press) and he leads the UKRI-funded project Speaking Citizens on voice, democracy, and communicative inequality.
This event is funded by News UK.
