Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CALLIOPE (voCAL articuLations Of Parliamentary Identity and Empire)

Teaser

CALLIOPE addresses the issue of ‘voice’ in politics. It focuses, on the role sound has played in making and breaking political careers, in the process of decision making in politics, and in the exchange of knowledge and information between the colony and the metropole in...

Summary

CALLIOPE addresses the issue of ‘voice’ in politics. It focuses, on the role sound has played in making and breaking political careers, in the process of decision making in politics, and in the exchange of knowledge and information between the colony and the metropole in the 19th century. This is a period of important changes and great modernization (including the rise of the printed press), but also one in which ‘live speech’ was very central to political practice. As voices could not yet be amplified, nor acoustically recorded, debates, election speeches, statements of monarchs etc were always unique events, which resulted in a vast number of transcriptions, descriptions and critiques: not only politicians cared about the ‘sound’ of a political debate. Reporters as well as their readers payed close attention to them as well.

CALLIOPE aims to do two things:

1. Research and explain how vocal characteristics (such as pitch, timbre, accent) helped or hindered speakers to influence political decisions. What made someone a ‘good’, convincing speaker – and what allowed them to put forward their ideologies more effectively than others? We therefore study how boys and young men were taught how to speak well. We also look at how particular speakers were received: what did journalists and satirist write about the voices of various politicians? Who were praised, and who were mocked for their delivery? And we look at how ‘newcomers’ learned to fit in: how did South Asian speakers learn to speak ‘like Englishmen’ in Cambridge and Oxford, for example, or how did former slaves adapt to the French Assemblée Nationale? (see attached image: a depiction of the first freed slave to sit in the French Assembly, Louisy Mathieu, published in Auguste Lireux, Assemblée nationale comique, Michel Lévy Frères, Paris, 1850.)

2. Place the practice of representative politics in Britain and France in their global, colonial context: issues of vocal delivery show how colonial contact and exchange helped to change cultural practices. We are particularly interested in the fact that this exchange was a two-way street: not only did Indian and Algerian learn the language and style of the British and French parliamanent. The skills that both colonial subjects and travelling colonizers learned in places like Kolkata and Algiers, contributed to a global vocal culture. Sophisticated practices of discussion and debating culture had developed in Bengali and Muslim communities long before they were colonized, and these cultures continued todevelop throughout the 19th century.

Work performed

The research team consists of:
Mr. L. Marionneau, who researches the oratorical performances and practices of representatives in the French assembly.
Dr E. Sil, who studies the interaction and political transfer between Westminster and the Bengali political and oral culture of Kolkata.
Dr K. Lauwers, who will study the links and tensions between the French metropole and its Algerian colony.
Dr J. Hoegaerts, who is coordinating the project and focusing on the interaction between the two empires.



So far, the most significant research results have been made in studying ‘newcomers’ in both the French and British world of political debating culture. Our research on case studies of the first black representatives in the Assemblée and the first South Asian speakers in British University debating clubs, shows how

- different debating ‘styles’ travelled between colony and metropole. This could help to mark out newcomers as ‘outsiders’ who sounded unconventional and out of place, but often also contributed to their success as speakers, as they had access to two traditions of speech and oratorical skill. This is, e.g., the case for Yusuf Ali, a South Asian member of the Cambridge Union who became known as one of its best speakers whilst still being marked out as deploying ‘oriental vigour’.
- unspoken rules and regulations were being upheld through the policing of the ‘sound’ and spoken word of these newcomers in particular. The case of Victor Mazuline, for example, reveals some explicitly ‘acoustic’ understandings of the role of the representative in the 1840’s
- the process of the ‘standardization’ of language was interwoven with ethnic ideas of who could be ‘really’ French or English. If a speaker who looked like an outsider spoke the language of the metropole, he (or very rarely she) was heard with ‘colonial ears’: their sounds were immediately imagined in a context of linguistic ‘purity’ and its opposite, the ‘adulterated’ language (with an ‘accent’, faulty pronunciation, a noisy delivery, grammatical errors). Studying their ‘voices’ in conjunction with the content of their speeches is therefore important to understand their impact on the composition and practical organization of the assembly (and their lack of impact on legislation and policy)

Final results

We expect to further develop this work on ‘newcomers’ into a new understanding of the daily ‘practice’ of representative democracy, but we also hope to

- demonstrate the impact of non-European vocal/oratorical practices such as adda, majili and Kabyl orality on the organization and cultural development of representative democracy in Europe. This history has, by and large, been written as one of changing ideologies and ideas driven by European thinkers and political actors, but we expect to find signs that even the chambers of high politics were influenced by daily practices in both the metropole and the ‘colonies’, particularly on the practical level of ‘speech’
- contribute to a more inclusive understanding of the histories of representation of democracy, not only by drawing attention to groups of political actors that have largely been neglected so far, but also by paying attention to the almost invisible, day-to-day practices of assimilation, tension and exclusion in which political representation has taken place.

Audiovisual media have changed the way we see and hear politicians, but speech is still central to most practices of democracy (including legislative debate and electioneering). Understanding how these practices have developed over time, gives us a unique insight into how modern democracies ‘work’ (or how they seem to collapse). What CALLIOPE can do most concretely and usefully, is provide a context and history to the political ‘soundbite’. This may seem like a very new phenomenon, but as our research is increasingly showing, the current ‘soundbite’ is very much part of a long history of learning to speak well, convincingly and with ‘charisma’. The development of acoustic technology, which made the recording and repetition of vocal utterances possible, is only a small part of the history of the soundbite, and one that crucially only arose after the practices of debating, electioneering and orating had been cultivated into forms they largely still have today. Current democracies have not invented a mediatized culture of quick soundbites, in other words, but inherited it from a long cultural practice of political speaking. Secondly, our research also places the idea of ‘global’ politics in its historical context, showing that colonial legacies play an important part in the way we think, and above all speak, about intercultural communication and international politics.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/vocal-articulations-of-parliamentary-identity-and-empire.