Public Speaking _ Speech Analysis

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS STYLE, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Now that you have figured out the basic thrust of what you want to say and how you want to organize and support it, the next challenge is to figure out exactly how to express the ideas you want to convey—in other words, the considerations of Style , the wording choices you will make to achieve the goals of your speech.

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style Word choices made to achieve the goals of a speech.

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This chapter will give you a set of stylistic techniques for making word choices that you can integrate into your speeches. We can’t tell you how to phrase everything in your speech, because so much about phrasing is unique to you as a speaker and to the audience you are addressing. But we can offer a number of tried-and-true stylistic forms that have been used effectively in great speeches. In the next chapter, we’ll complete our discussion of delivery by discussing the nonverbal parts of speaking; of course, there is sense in which that is a kind of “style,” but for this chapter (and this book), “style” means the choice of words and use of language.

Style exploits one of the most powerful features of language—that there are many different ways of saying the same thing. For instance, you could say, “It ‘s hot outside, and I’m tired.” Or you might say, “It ‘s an oven outside, and I’m beat.” Or perhaps you like more formal expressions: “Oh, this insufferable heat—it ‘s left me feeling fatigued.” If you try, you probably could come up with dozens of different ways of saying the same thing.

Expressing your thoughts in words is an art of making choices. You have choices about how you say what you want to say, and these choices are important because different choices can convey different impressions about your topic. Striking just the right verbal style for your topic and the occasion will help you achieve your speaking goals. Perhaps you want to evoke a straightforward informational tone; perhaps you want to convey some particularly significant material in a playful and even artful way. Whatever you want to achieve, the style you choose matters.1

CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE STYLE

No matter how wonderful a speaker ‘s delivery may be, if she begins her speech, “La oss taler i dag om problemet med nettkriminalitet,” you won’t have any idea that this is a speech about cybercrime—unless you speak Norwegian. No amount of work on topic choice, organizational patterns, or delivery can make up that gap: Language matters. Language matters in another important respect: The word choices that you make in expressing yourself also define the character of your ideas for your audience. Language matters not only in being understood, but also in being interesting, compelling, and in convincing your audience that you’re worth listening to.

The study of verbal style, how to choose and use the right words, is central to communicating effectively. The second part of this chapter will discuss how you can choose words to achieve your communication goals, but, first, we will cover the basics. To be an effective speaker, you will have to use language that is concrete and lively, reduces abstraction and makes ideas come alive for listeners, and is respectful and doesn’t unintentionally exclude some audience members. We’ll talk about each of these characteristics in turn.

Speaking in Images

Evoking strong images is a crucial persuasive technique. Why say, “It was hot outside” when you can say, “It was like an oven outside—if you cracked an egg on the pavement, you could stand there and watch it sizzle on the hot asphalt.” New evidence in cognitive science gives us reason to prefer the second formulation over the first. When you describe a vivid visually rich image, your audience will be able to literally imagine seeing the egg frying on the pavement, and this is much more effective than saying that it ‘s hot outside. Why? Well, studies in cognition now say that when people can call up a visual image of a thing, they are engaging your content in two distinct ways: They’re both calling up the idea of “hot” (they can recall a time when they were hot), and they can picture the egg frying on the pavement.

This is what cognitive scientists call “multi-modal” engagement. Instead of just relying on the concept “hot,” your audience can recall both the physical sensation of being extremely hot, and can call up the visual image of the egg frying on the pavement. This multi-modal engagement, which activates more parts of the brain than just the idea of “hot,” helps your audience to engage your content in at least three distinct ways: the idea, the feeling, and the visual image. Engaging lots of different brain functions is a good way to get your audience to bring to bear ideas, images, and experiences, to really experience an idea in more direct ways than just the concept. If you want to create conditions for maximum persuasion, think about the ways that what you are saying can evoke ideas, experiences, and images that engage the audience with your content.