Pre-Islamic Oratory: An Account of Roots, Characteristics, and Themes

Abstract

Oratory is a sub-genre of public speaking. Oratory is a centuries-aged tradition of speeches, addresses, sayings, verbal improvisations, and orations. Oratory is a speech given by an orator, speaker, figure, or notable before an audience, gathering, or crowd to address certain social, political, personal, or other issues.  Orators often, when giving a speech, use various techniques and strategies of idea-implying words, sentences, and expressions in order to attract the audience’s attention, stir feelings, touch emotions, and impose themes. Persuasion, in this respect, is a key element in any oratory. In pre-Islamic Arabia, many people were known to have given orations and created public speeches. This paper, therefore, addresses pre-Islamic oratory as to the themes, roots, and characteristics. To do this, a brief account of the early beginnings of oratory is elaborated on, then, an analysis of the themes and key structures of oratory is presented. Additionally, the linguistic, semantic, and discursive structures of oration are explained. In pre-Islamic Arabia, orators made not only news-distributing or fun-creating orations and speeches, but they have, also, used rhetoric to move the listeners’ attention to the main issue raised in that speech. An orator, for example, who addresses the masses for a tribal cause, will use fight-boosting words, rather than appealing to joking or wisdom, in order to support that cause or make revenge. In short, the very deliverance of any public oration or speech has not been the only concern of any able speaker.