A few weeks ago the Dean of Kabarak Law School, Prof John Ambani Osogo, apologised to the members of the university community for titling an introductory speech during an inaugural lecture by Prof Justice Willy Mutunga.
He had titled his speech The leopard has given birth. Osogo said he took note of the unique nature of the occasion, that it was as auspicious as a leopard giving birth.
According to Luhya mythology, he recalled his mother repeatedly saying, whenever a leopard gave birth, it was marked by the sun shining brightly, and the rain falling at the same time.
Normally, speeches don’t have titles, unlike novels, poems, plays and nonfictional works.
I believe it is this that made the young dean feel shy about giving his speech a title.
However, the history of rhetoric—the art of effective and persuasive speaking and writing—shows that a large body of speeches has titles. The speeches were originally so named or popular opinion gave them titles based on certain aspects of the speeches.
Students and practitioners of public communications, speech writers, political and religious leaders and policymakers who take public speaking seriously know about widely recognised speeches with titles.
Political and religious history is dotted with such speeches. Politicians and their speech writers know some of the greatest speeches of all time by name. We have Pericles's Funeral Oration. We have Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Martin Luther King Jr's I have a dream. Then there is President Woodrow Wilson’s The Fourteen Points speech that helped define the period after Word War I and World War II.
Winston Churchill gave us Blood, toil, tears and sweat, We shall never surrender, Iron Curtain has descended, This was their finest hour—all responding to the exigencies of the Second War II and its aftermath. German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck gave us The Blood and Iron speech.
Political communication is saturated with compelling speeches addressing timeless issues. We have Barack Obama’s Yes we can speech that he made immediately after being announced winner of the 2008 US presidential elections.
We have hundreds of titled speeches made by politicians that we cannot exhaust in this article.
The Bible has lots of speeches too. Like in all speeches, every speech in the Bible has a speaker, an audience, and a brief description of the rhetorical situation that stimulated the speech action.
A significant number of speeches are titled. We have Moses' Farewell shortly before the Israelites crossed the River Jordan. We have The Sermon on the Mount by Jesus Christ as well as His Farewell speech at the Last Supper.
Fictional works—novels, plays and poetry—have equally incisive speeches with titles. It should not surprise those who have never given thought to literature. Literature imitates or reflects reality or life. It is not about idle stories to amuse people or to enable them to while away time.
William Shakespeare gave us memorable speeches with distinct titles. We have To be or Not to be from Hamlet, Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow from Macbeth and Mark Antony’s Funeral Oration from Julius Caesar.
Sadly, Kenyan politicians don’t take as much interest in their public speaking engagements so as to carefully prepare memorable utterances. They also hardly take care of preserving and publishing some of the arguably very good speeches some of them have made—for future reference and for posterity.
I have in mind, for example, Tom Mboya who is reputed to have been a very good orator. His speeches are not as readily available as the speeches of his contemporaries in the West. Older Kenyans saw what a powerful public speaker Vice President Kijana Wamalwa was. I particularly remember his stirring speech at the burial ceremony of the doyen of opposition politics in Kenya, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga in 1994.
Wamalwa quoted a line from Oliver Goldsmith’s poem The Deserted Village, talking about the Grand March to State House. For some short period, the speech was referred to as the Grand March in the newspapers.
And we have the famous two-word speech former Prime Minister Raila Odinga made in 2002: Kibaki Tosha!
Speeches can and do have legitimate titles. A speaker who meets the demands of the rhetorical moment—the demands of the occasion—can perfectly give a title to his speech or the audience can, over time, give a name to it—picking striking words from the speech or from the symbolic character of the place the speech is made.
Prof Osogo should take comfort in the fact that in daring to give a title to his public speaking engagements, he is in good company. He is in the company of those who knew the central place speeches have in a democratic society. That is, to communicate information, to persuade an audience, to challenge assumptions, and to uplift or calm down people as the occasion demands.
An appropriate response to the situation or the emergency involves clear thinking and clarity of thought in words—about the promises and constraints at stake. Such will almost always give forth an utterance, a speech with a name or a title.
