Communication Ethics and Citizenship: Utilizing the 'Bhagavad Gita' in Western Public Speaking Courses.

Good citizens need good communication skills, and the task is left to departments of communication to give students the communicative skills they need to take part effectively in a participative democracy. This paper presents a short discussion of the pedagogical issue that is of supreme importance for the citizens of democracies--the issue of how to incorporate ethics into public speaking instruction. The paper argues that most western public speaking texts provide students with a typically goal-oriented western approach to public speaking ethics and recounts one educator's efforts to ameliorate this with the inclusion of the Hindu ethical work, the "Bhagavad Gita," into his public speaking courses. The paper initially explores an excellent and representative public speaking text by Beebe and Beebe (2000), paying particular attention to the portrayal of ethics within it. It then gives some general information on the narrative context in which the "Bhagavad Gita" finds itself. Finally, it discusses the uses that the "Bhagavad Gita" can be put to in regard to these typical portrayals of public speaking. The paper ends with some remarks on how to actually employ the text in a classroom setting. Appendixes contain an ethics assignment and in-class discussion questions. (Contains 21 references.) (NKA)