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2: What Is a Speech?

The simple question of "what is a speech?" typically stumps attendees at his workshops on public speaking - it seems like something that should be obvious, but people have only a vague idea of what it means.

Most speeches are truly awful because the speaker never considered the reason he would be speaking. He gathered information and organized it, prepared slides, and presented the information to the audience, without a single thought to why the audience needed the information, or what he was himself attempting to accomplish.

With this in mind, the author posits that the lack of purpose is one of the main reasons people have trouble delivering good presentations and speeches. His experience as an instructor has been that if he can get his students to think about this question, they will become more effective and purpose-driven in their approach to public speaking.

Let's Learn From History

Speech precedes the written word, and for many centuries orators were used to pass along information - whether from a central source in the present time or from the past. For most orators, the skills of a speaker consisted largely of the ability to memorize what should be said and the ability to speak, preferably loudly and at length.

It seems highly likely that the process of oratory improved speech itself: in memorizing a speech, an orator would seek to understand the core of its message and give great attention to the parts of the speech that were germane to its purpose, and likely forget parts of the speech that were not. Or he might, in delivering the speech, notice the parts to which his audience paid the greatest attention and those which seemed to lose their interest and tailor his next repetition to emphasize the former and omit the latter.

Naturally, this also made speech less accurate, as orators might confabulate details that were not clearly remembered and embellish parts to keep his audience engaged. This is likely the way that accurate historical accounts were transformed into legends that contained a mix of fact and fantasy.

The emergence of written history, generally reckoned to be around 500 BCE, made it possible for stories and directives to be written down exactly and delivered exactly as written - in all their boring and meandering completeness, given that the speaker who reads from a script is unable to modify the message. It is at that point that it became important for speechwriters to take on greater responsibility in preparing a speech that would stick to the point and be engaging to their audience.

One of the first references that emphasizes the importance of communication is in Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" in which it was written that "if words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, then the general is to blame." This is interpreted to emphasizes the importance of clarity over eloquence, and stress that success of a message is in its ability to be understood by its intended audience.

Another early reference is Socrates, who explained that rhetoric is practiced not only by public speakers, but by common people in their everyday life - and even in trivial matters the success of communication is critical to the success in achieving the desired outcome.

Two generations later, Aristotle developed the "Rhetoric," which was a comprehensive treatise on public speaking that offered "many amazing insights" but was based upon the premise that all speech is inherently persuasive: the goal was to convince someone to do something and doing so meant distinctly conveying (1) what they were to do and (2) the reasons they should be interested in doing it.

The Romans largely followed in the Greek traditions, refining and augmenting Aristotle's basic approach. Quintilian, a Spanish philosopher, was among the first to look at the process of developing a speech (as opposed to an analysis of the speech itself) as a five-step process:

  1. Inventio - Discovering the arguments
  2. Dispositio - Arranging the arguments
  3. Elocutio - Determining the style of expression
  4. Memoria - Memorizing the speech
  5. Pronuntiato - Delivering the speech

As old as these arguments may be, they remain highly relevant to the modern world of communication.

How is the author certain that these ancient ideas still work? Largely because what people are saying about good communication in the present day either directly quotes from or paraphrases on these basic ideas. While technology has greatly changed the method by which communication is done, it has not changed the very nature of the act of communication, which remains the same today as it has been for millennia.

Moreover, the lessons of history are relevant to more people in the present day than the time in which they were written. We live in an age in which information is not filtered through a series of orators who can purify and improve upon the message. Now, the exact words written by the speaker are delivered directly to the audience - it is therefore incumbent upon every person who communicates to make sure his message is clear, relevant, and engaging to the audience.

And the advice of the past has clearly been forgotten or ignored, given the volumes of unclear, irrelevant, and boring information communicated by speakers in the present day.

My Definition of a Speech

During the time when the author engaged in competitive speaking, he developed a working definition of a speech: "an emotional roller-coaster ride for the speaker and his audience."

Granted, this definition was based on the competitive environment, in which multiple speakers would address a panel of judges and had to make a strong impression in a small amount of time. But the principle carries over well to non-competitive speech.

A speech is not often memorable for the information it conveys, but for the emotional impact it has upon its audience. And in that sense it is far more important to consider the emotions you expect the audience to have before you begin speaking, the emotions you want them to feel at the end of your speech, and then plot a course to transport them from one emotional "place" to another.

The speech the author used to win the world championship of public speaking was "The Swami's Question" which told the story of his struggle to succeed in academics. He designed the speech to play upon the emotions of the audience, and leave them with a deep, profound final emotion. (EN: He provides no specific details on the emotional script at this time.)

He has used this approach to speaking because it is highly effective for most of the situations he has encountered, in personal and professional life.

There's a brief bit on method acting: the only way to take an audience on an emotional journey is to go through that journey yourself, and to

"live" the emotions you are trying to convey. Emotions are contagious, which is the reason that dead-pan delivery is often boring and un-engaging to the audience.

Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, which requires you to help them understand why you are excited (or whatever emotion you feel).

This means that not everything is a good subject for public speaking. Unless emotions are engaged, choose another channel. Said succinctly: If all you want to do is convey facts and figures, then cancel the speech and send them a report.

It's also important to note that a speech is a crafted emotional journey. It is not effective to deliver a speech in a manner that the audience brings their own emotions to the table and reacts of their own accord - the emotions they feel should follow the pattern that you have designed.

And the "pattern you have designed" must be a pattern. A speech that arouses emotions at certain parts can be engaging, but it will not be effective unless those emotions make sense as a while - it's the difference between a "story" that has a carefully prepared plot and a random series of events that have no connection to one another.

That being said, the author does not wish the reader to take the extreme view that facts and information are unimportant. Whereas the emotional content gets people involved in a speech, the informational content gives these emotions a direction. There is no point in getting a person excited about doing something without telling them what that "something" might be. The facts must be good and valid, but they must also be supportive of the emotion to which they are associated in order to have resonance. But that said, the facts alone come to nothing without an emotional engagement.

The Speech and the Mechanics of Speaking

The author suggests there has been considerable confusion around the difference between speech and the mechanics of speaking, even among those who give advice to speakers.

A good speech leaves the audience with a strong emotion. They may not remember the simplicity of the presentation, the concreteness of thought, the structure of the argument, or the credibility of the speaker. All of these are valuable only to the degree that they support and enhance the emotional experience of listening to a speech.

This lack of clarity leads speakers to focus on the wrong things. The various tips and tricks like including stories or padding a speech with humor merely confuse the issue - these things will not save a poor speech. Moreover, a speaker who isn't good at telling stories or jokes will seem all the more awkward and uncomfortable, and be unable to connect with his audience.

Another disadvantage is that those who provide tricks to speakers seldom provide much clarity on how to use them. Those who emphasize the importance of humor never reveal how much humor is needed, or how it should be interwoven, or when it is even appropriate or possibly counterproductive.

The difference between a trick and a tool is understanding its purpose and putting it to good use. A good speaker, who knows the impact he wants to make on his audience, can likely tell where humor would best serve his purpose - because he has a purpose and is not interspersing humor randomly to attempt to add flavor to a bland and pointless speech.

The same can be said of all the various tips that are offered to speakers: in the hands of a speaker who knows his purpose, they can be powerful tools. In the hands of a speaker who doesn't have a purpose, they are just cheap tricks that deceive no-one.

Conclusions

The author recognizes that this chapter may have provided an insight: that speech is much deeper and more complex than most people think, but reassures the reader not to be intimidated by this.

Delivering a speech when your purpose is unclear or when it is not appropriate to deliver a speech at all is impossible even for accomplished speakers - and conversely, delivering a speech is relatively simple when it is the appropriate means of communicating and your purpose is clear.