Neil Postman‘s Rules of Public Speaking

Best known as a prolific writer of social criticism, Neil Postman was also a master of public speaking, an art he considered worthy of special attention and too often neglected. So dear was public speaking to him that Postman developed a set of ten rules for giving a good speech. Postman never published these guidelines, instead passing them on to his students in classroom lectures. The following is a reconstruction of Postman’s rules of public speaking, based on his own personal notes complemented by notes taken during his lectures. The author originally delivered this reconstruction in June 2005, at the Sixth Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association.