Concept in Definition ABC

A spiel is a typically long, boring, and awkward type of speech. Consequently, this word is used in a clearly pejorative tone. In this way, if someone refers to the words of another and affirms "what a spiel he has told me!" is indicating that it is a intervention very tedious and uninteresting.

By qualifying a speech as a spiel, you are affirming in some way that the speaker has not used the language, since predictably the aspiration of it was to interest the interlocutor but in reality it has achieved the effect contrary.

In language colloquial a spiel would be a roll, a sermon, a rattle, a lash or a hoot. It is worth remembering that listening to someone can be pleasant and instructive or, on the contrary, something heavy and soporific.

The origin of the term

Perorata comes from the Latin word perorare, which means to expose or explain. In the classical tradition, the peroratio was the final part of a speech, usually a political or legal intervention. It was understood that the peroratio should be the most brilliant part of the speech, since in it the speaker had to show brilliance to convince the interlocutors of him. In this way, the use of spiel as a derogatory term is nothing more than an ironic way of referring to boring and little stimulating speeches.

The peroratio in the classical world

Roman civilization adopted an interest in language from classical Greek culture. The Romans understood that it was necessary to know the mechanisms of communication, because this way it was possible to achieve success in the activity politics or literary. The discipline who studied the techniques of expression it was rhetoric and within rhetoric speeches were especially analyzed, because through them it was possible to be persuasive and achieve success.

In this line, according to the approaches of rhetoric, a speech is divided into four parts: the exordium or presentation of the matter, the narratio or exposition of the subject, the argumentatio or set of arguments that support the discourse and, finally, the peroratio, which becomes the conclusion And it is the moment of the speech in which the speaker has to be as brilliant and eloquent as possible.

With the peroratio the speaker has the aspiration to convince someone, be it a judge or an audience

The peroratio had to be rationally effective and, in parallel, with an emotional component, since in this way it was easier to provoke the acceptance of the listener.

It would not be correct to understand peroratio as a matter of the past, since today we continue to use rhetoric for the same purposes as two thousand years ago.

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