In the November 1987 issue of Management Communication Quarterly, Frank E.X. Dance concludes that behaviors for public and presentational speaking overlap, and any differences between them must be differences not of genre but of situation or setting. In response to Dance, this article examines pedagogical and linguistic literature to recommend the validity and value of adopting “presentational speaking” as a distinct genre or speaking type. In conclusion, the author suggests that treating public, presentational, and conversational speaking as distinct genres may spawn the development of theoretical models and pedagogical approaches more relevant to particular business speaking events.
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