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The “Good Speech Movement” at Smith: A History of the Spoken English Department: About

Guide to the history of the Spoken English department and its college-wide voice correction campaign. Written by Sonia Carroll '24, Reference Assistant.
page from a paper journal depicting the anatomy of speech, including the mouth and throat
Speech mechanisms diagram from phonetics notebook. Spoken English - Lecture notes, undated. Ethel Hale Freeman papers, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00058.

Overview of the Spoken English Department at Smith

The Spoken English department at Smith College, formerly known as the Elocution department, existed from 1877 through the late 1960s. Its primary focus was voice and speech training for theatrical and social purposes with an emphasis on prescriptive “voice correction.”(1)

 

The Spoken English department was unique in that it not only served an academic purpose, but also a clinical one. Up through 1928, all incoming first-year students at Smith were required to either complete an elementary Spoken English course or take a voice and speech test administered by two members of the Spoken English department and one member from another department.(2) If this faculty panel deemed a student’s voice “inadequate,”(3) the student was then required to either enroll in a Spoken English course or attend a corrective speech clinic for an hour once per week, without academic credit, until they could pass the voice and speech test.(4)  

 

In addition to correction-oriented courses and speech clinics, there was an alternative departmental emphasis on dramatics and play interpretation. These kinds of Spoken English courses focused on theater study and methods and emphasized the voice as an instrument that can be manipulated for different effects.

  1. Letter from Helen W. Landon to William Allan Neilson, February 11, 1919. Departments- Spoken English, 1919-39, undated. Office of President William Allan Neilson Files, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00013, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
  2. Special Assistance in Written and Spoken English, Jan. 11, 1938. Speech Department Courses: descriptions, exams, and notebook, 1925-1968. Department of Theatre records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01079, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
  3. Vera Sickels Obituary, Smith Alumnae Quarterly Digital Winter 1985, pp. 69-70. Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
  4. Summary of informal meeting of members from the Department of Speech of the Seven College Conference, 1954. General: theatre articles, enrollment in Speech/Dramatic Arts courses, 1907-1953. Department of Theatre records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01079, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.