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Public Speaking

I >> Irvah Lester Winter >> Public Speaking




In this style of discourse the liability to failure lies in the
direction of dullness, monotony, lack of vitality and warmth. This is
because the feeling is deep and still; is an undercurrent, strong but
unseen. This restrained, repressed feeling is the most difficult
fittingly to express. In this kind of speech some marring of just the
right effect is difficult to avoid. Simplicity, absolute genuineness,
are the essential qualities. The ideas must be conveyed with power and
significance, in due degree; but nothing too much is particularly the
watchword regarding the outward features of the work.


THE PUBLIC LECTURE


In the public lecture the element of entertainment enters prominently.
The audience, at first in a passive state, must be awakened, and taken
on with the speaker. Probably it must be instructed, perhaps amused.
The speaker must make his own occasion. He has no help from the
circumstance of predisposition among his auditors. He must compel, or
he must win; he must charm or thrill; or he must do each in turn.
Animation, force, beauty, dramatic contrast, vividness, variety, are
the qualities that will more or less serve, according to the style of
the composition. Aptness in the story or anecdote, facility in graphic
illustration, readiness in expressing emotion, happiness in the
imitative faculty, for touching off the eccentric in character or
incident, are talents that come into play, and in the exercise of
these, gesture of course has an important place.

The lecture platform is perhaps the only field, with possibly the
exception of what is properly the after-dinner speech, wherein public
speaking may be viewed as strictly an art, something to be taken for
its own sake, wherein excellence in the doing is principally the end in
view. This means, generally, that individual talent, and training in
all artistic requirements, count for more than the subject or any
"accidents of office," in holding the auditor's interest. An animated
and versatile style can be cultivated by striving to make effective the
public lecture.


THE INFORMAL DISCUSSION


Informal discussion is the name chosen for the lecture or talk in the
club or the classroom. It implies a rather small audience and familiar
relations between audience and speaker. While the subject may be
weighty, and the language may be necessarily of the literary or
scientific sort, the style of speaking should be colloquial. It ought
to bring the hearer pretty near to the speaker. If the subject and
language are light, the speaking will be sprightly and comparatively
swift.

Since the occasion for this kind of speaking is frequent, and the
opportunity for it is likely to fall to almost any educated man,
proficiency in it might well be made an object in the course of one's
educational training. The end aimed at is the ability to talk well.
This accomplishment is not so easy as it may seem. It marks, indeed,
the stage of maturity in speech-making. Since authoritative opinion
from the speaker and interest in the subject on the part of the
audience are prime elements in this form of discussion, little
cultivation of form is usually given to this kind of speaking. The
result is much complaining from auditors about inaudibleness, dullness,
monotony, annoying mannerisms, or a too formal, academic tone that
keeps the audience remote, a lack of what is called the human quality.
A good talker from the desk not only has the reward of appreciation and
gratitude, but is able to accomplish results in full proportion to all
that he puts into the improvement of his vocal work. An agreeable tone,
easy formation of words, clear, well-balanced emphasis, good phrasing,
or grouping of words in the sentence, some vigor without continual
pounding, easy, unstudied bodily movement without manneristic
repetition of certain motions, in short, good form without any
obtrusive appearance of form,--these are the qualities desired.


ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH


In the case of the forensic, we come nearer to the practical in public
speaking. The speaker aims, as a rule, to effect a definite purpose,
and he concentrates his powers upon this immediate object. Since the
speech is for the most part an appeal to the reason, and therefore
deals largely with fact and the logical relations of ideas, precision
and clearness of statement are the chief qualities to be cultivated.
But since the aim is to overcome opposition, and produce conviction,
and so to impress and stir as to affect the will to a desired action,
the element of force, and the moving quality of persuasion enters in as
a reënforcement of the speaker's logic. Generally the speech is very
direct, and often it is intense. It has in greater degree than any
other form the feature of aggressiveness. Some form of attack is
adopted, for the purpose of overthrowing the opposing force. That
attack is followed up in a direct line of argument, and is carried out
to a finish. In delivery the continuous line of pursuit thus followed
often naturally leads to a kind of effective monotone style, wherein
the speaker keeps an even force, or strikes blow after blow, or sends
shot after shot. The characteristic feature of the forensic style is
the climax--climax in brief successions of words, climax in the
sentence, climax in giving sections of the speech, climax in the speech
as a whole.

Special notice should be taken of the fact that, in earnest argument,
sentences have, characteristically, a different run from that in
ordinary expository speaking. Whereas in the expository style the
sentence flows, as a rule, easily forth, with the voice rising and
falling, in an undulatory sort of way, and dropping restfully to a
finish, in the heated forensic style, the sentence is given the effect
of being sent straight forth, as if to a mark, with the last word made
the telling one, and so kept well up in force and pitch. The
accumulating force has the effect of sending the last word home, or of
making it the one to clinch the statement.

The dangers to be guarded against in debate are wearying monotony,
over-hammering--too frequent, too hard, too uniform an emphasis--too
much, or too continued heat, too much speed, especially in speaking
against time, a loss of poise in the bearing, a halting or jumbling in
speech, nervous tenseness in action, an overcontentious or bumptious
spirit. Bodily control, restraint, good temper, balance, are the saving
qualities. A debater must remember that he need not be always in a
heat. Urbanity and graciousness have their place, and the relief
afforded by humor is often welcome and effective.

In no form of speaking, except that of dramatic recitation, is the
liability to impairment of voice so great as it is in debating. One of
the several excellent features of debating is that of the self-
forgetfulness that comes with an earnest struggle to win. But perhaps a
man cannot safely forget himself until he has learned to know himself.
The intensity of debating often leads, in the case of a speaker vocally
untrained, to a tightening of the throat in striving for force, to a
stiffening of the tongue and lips for making incisive articulation, to
a rigidness of the jaw from shutting down on words to give decisive
emphasis. Soon the voice has the juice squeezed out of it. The tone
becomes harsh and choked; then ragged and weak. The only remedy is to
go straight back and begin all over, just as a golfer usually does when
he has gone on without instruction. The necessity of going back is
often not realized till later in life; then the process is much harder,
and perhaps can never be entirely effective. The teacher in the course
of his experience meets many, many such cases. The time to learn the
right way is at the beginning.

Among the selections here offered for forensic practice, examples in
debate serve for the cultivation of the aggressiveness that comes from
immediate opposition; examples in the political speech for acquiring
the abandon and enthusiasm of the so-called popular style; in the legal
plea for practice in suppressed force. In the case of the last of
these, it is well that the audience be near to the speaker, as is the
case in an address to a judge or jury. The idea is to be forcible
without being loud and high; to cultivate a subdued tone that shall, at
the same time, be vital and impressive. The importance of a manner of
speaking that is not only clear and effective, but also agreeable, easy
to listen to, is quite obvious when we consider the task of a judge or
a jury, who have to sit for hours and try to carry in their minds the
substance of all that has been said, weighing point against point,
balancing one body of facts against another. A student can arrange
nearly the same conditions as to space, and can, by exercise of
imagination, enter into the spirit of a legal conflict.


THE AFTER-DINNER SPEECH


After-dinner speaking is another form that many men may have an
opportunity to engage in. It can also be practiced under conditions
resembling those of the actual occasion, that is, members of the class
can be so seated that the speaking may become intimate in tone, and
speeches can be selected that will serve for cultivating that
distinctive, sociable quality of voice that, in itself, goes far in
contributing to the comfort and delight of the after-dinner audience.
The real after-dinner speech deals much in pleasantry. The tone of
voice is characteristically unctuous. Old Fezziwig is described by
Dickens as calling out "in a comfortable, rich, fat, jovial, oily
voice." Something like this is perhaps the ideal after-dinner voice,
although there is a dry humor as well as an unctuous, and each speaker
will, after all, have his own way of making his hearers comfortable,
happy, and attentive. Ease and deliberation are first requisites.
Nervous intensity may not so much mar the effect of earnest debate. The
social chat is spoiled by it. Humor, as a rule, requires absolute
restfulness. Especially should a beginner guard himself against haste
in making the point at the finish of a story. It does no harm to keep
the hearer waiting a bit, in expectation. The effect may be thus
enhanced, while the effect will be entirely lost if the point, and the
true touch, are spoiled by uncontrolled haste. The way to gain this
ease and control is not by stiffening up to master one's self, but by
relaxing, letting go of one's self. Practice in the speech of
pleasantry may have great value in giving a man repose, in giving him
that saving grace, an appreciation of the humorous, in affording him a
means of relief or enlivenment to the serious speech.


THE OCCASIONAL POEM


The occasional poem is so frequently brought forth in connection with
speech-making that some points regarding metrical reading may be quite
in place in a speaker's training. Practice in verse reading is of use
also because of the frequency of quoted lines from the poets in
connection with the prose speech.

To read a poem well one must become in spirit a poet. He must not only
think, he must feel. He must exercise imagination. He must, we will say
it again, see visions and dream dreams. What was said about vividness
in the discussion of expressional effects applies generally to the
reading of poetry. One will read much better if he has tried to write--
in verse as well as in prose. He will then know how to put himself in
the place of the poet, and will not be so likely to mar the poet's
verses by "reading them ill-favoredly." He will know the value of words
that have been so far sought, and may not slur over them; he may feel
the sound of a line formed to suggest a sound in nature. He will know
that a meter has been carefully worked out, and that, in the reading,
that meter is of the spirit of the poem; it is not to be disregarded.
Likewise he will appreciate the place of rhyme, and may not try so to
cover it up as entirely to lose its effect. In humorous verse,
especially, rhyme plays an effective part; and in all verse,
alliteration, variations in melody, the lighter and the heavier touch,
acceleration and retard in movement, the caesura, or pause in the line,
and the happy effect of the occasional cadence, are features which one
can come to appreciate and respect only with reading one's favorite
poems many times, with spirit warm, with faculties alert.




THE MAKING OF THE SPEECH


Although the use of selected speeches is best for effective drill in
delivery, yet a student's training for public speaking is of course not
complete until he has had experience in applying his acquired skill to
the presenting of his own thought. Thinking and speaking should be made
one operation. The principles of composition for the public speech
belong to a separate work. A few hints only can be given here, and
these will be concerned with the informal, offhand speech rather than
with the formal address.

The usual directions regarding the choosing of the subject, the
collecting of material, and the arranging of it in the most effective
order, with exceptions and variations, hold in all forms of the speech.
The subject chosen should be one of special interest to the speaker,
one on which it is known he can speak with some degree of authority,
because of his personal study of it, or because of his having had
exceptional personal relations with it. It must also be, because of the
nature of it, or because of some special treatment, of particular
interest to the audience to be addressed. Either new, out-of-the-way
subjects, or new, fresh phases of old subjects are usually interesting.
The subject must be limited in its comprehensiveness to suit the time
allowed for speaking, and the title of the speech should be so phrased
as to indicate exactly what the subject, or the part of a subject, is
to be. To this carefully limited and defined subject, the speaker
should rigidly adhere.

How to find a subject is generally a topic on which students are
advised. Though it is often a necessity to hunt for a suitable special
topic on which to speak, the student should know that when he gets
outside the classroom, he will find that he will not be invited to
speak because he is ready at finding subjects and clever in speech. It
is not strange, in view of the many advertisements that reach young
men, offering methods of home training, or promising sure success from
this or that special method of schooling, that they may come to believe
that any one has only to learn to stand up boldly on a platform, and
with voice and gesture exercise some mysterious sort of magical control
over an audience, and his success as an orator is secure. They will
find that their time and money have been wasted, so far as public
speaking is concerned, unless, having at the start some native ability,
they have secured, in addition, a kind of training that is fundamental.
A man is wanted as a speaker primarily because he stands for something;
because he has done some noteworthy work. His subjects for discussion
arise out of his personal interests, and, to a large extent, his method
of treatment will be determined by his relation to these subjects. A
young man may well be advised, then, not simply how to choose and how
to present a subject, but first to secure a good mental training, and
then to find for himself an all-absorbing work to do. The wisdom that
comes from a concentrated intellectual activity, and an interest in
men's affairs, both directed to some unselfish end, is the essential
qualification of the speaker.

In considering the arrangement of a speech, the student will do well to
ask himself first, not what is to be the beginning of it, but what is
to be the end of it; what is the purpose of it; and what shall be the
central idea; what impression, or what principal thought or thoughts,
shall be left with the audience. When this is determined, then a way of
working out this central idea or of working up to it--in a short
speech, by a few points only--must be carefully and thoroughly planned.
Extemporaneous speaking is putting spontaneously into words what has
previously been well thought out and well arranged. Without this state
of preparation, the way of wisdom is silence.

The language of a speech is largely determined by the man's habit of
mind, the nature of his subject, and the character of his audience.
Students often err in one of two directions, either by being too
bookish in language or by allowing the other extreme of looseness, weak
colloquialism in words, and formless monotony of sentence, with the
endless repetition of the connective "and." Language should be fresh,
vital, varied. It should have some dignity. Much reading, writing, and
speaking are necessary to secure an adequate vocabulary, and a
readiness in putting in firm form a variety of sentences. Concreteness
of expression and occasional illustration are more needed in speech
than in writing, and the brief anecdote or story is welcome and useful
if there is room for it, and if it comes unbidden, by virtue of its
fitness and spontaneity, and is not drawn in by the ears for half-
hearted service. The inevitable story at the opening of an after-dinner
speech might often be spared. Although a good story is in itself
enjoyable, yet when a speaker feels that he must make one fit into the
speech, whether or no, by applying it to himself or his subject or the
occasion, the effect is often very unhappy. A man is best guided in
these things simply by being true, by being sincere rather than artful.
On this same principle, a student may need some advice with regard to
his spirit and manner in giving expression to his own ideas before an
audience. He need not, as students often seem to think they must,
appear to have full knowledge or final judgment on the largest of
subjects. It is more fitting that he should speak as a student, an
inquirer, not as an authority. If his statements are guarded and
qualified; if he speaks as one only inclined to an opinion when
finality of judgment is obviously beyond his reach; if he directly
refers, and defers, to opinions that must be better than his can be,
his speech will have much more weight, and he will grow in strength of
character by always being true to himself. It is a question whether
students are not too often inspired to be bold and absolute, for the
sake of apparent strength in speaking, rather than modest and judicious
and sensible, for the sake of being strong as men.

In the form of delivering one's thought to an audience, it is of the
first importance that one should speak and not declaim. There is, of
course, a way of talking on the platform that is merely negatively
good, a way that is fitting enough in general style, but weak. There
should be breadth, and strength, and reach. But this does not mean any
necessity of sending forth pointless successive sentences over the
heads of an audience. A college president recently said, "Our boys
declaim a good deal, though they're not so bad as they used to be. It
seems to me," he added, "that the idea is to say something to your
audience." That is what a teacher must be continually insisting on,
that the student say something to somebody, not chant or declaim into
space. And the student should be continually testing himself on this
point, whether he is looking into the faces of his hearers and
speaking, though on a larger scale, yet in the usual way of
communicating ideas.

It is not desirable that men should become overready speakers. Methods
of training in extemporaneous discussion that require speaking without
thought, on anything or nothing that can be at the moment invented, are
likely to be mischievous. Thought suggests expression, and exact
thought will find fit form. Sound thinking is the main thing. Practice
for mere fluency tends to the habit of superficial thinking, and
produces the wearisome, endless talker. In this connection emphasis may
be laid upon the point of ending a speech when its purpose is
accomplished, and that as soon as can be. Many speeches are spoiled by
the last third or quarter of them, when a point well made has lost its
effect by being overenforced or obscured by a wordy conclusion. Let the
student study for rare thought and economy of speech.

Books on speaking have repeatedly insisted that after all has been
said, the public speaker's word will be taken for what he is known to
be worth as a man; that his utterances will have effect according as
they are given out with soul-felt earnestness. This has already been
touched upon here, and it is well that it should be often repeated. It
may be well, however, also to consider quite carefully what part is
played in men's efforts by the element of skill. Of two equally worthy
and equally earnest men, the man of the superior skill, acquired by
persistent training in method, will be the stronger man, the man who
will be of more service to his fellows. More than this, inasmuch as
public men can seldom be perfectly known or judged as to character, and
may often, for a time at least, deceive, it is quite possible that the
unscrupulous man with great skill will, at some moment of crisis, make
the worse appear to be the better cause. Equally skilled men are
therefore wanted to contend for the side of right. The man whose
service to men depends largely upon his power of speech--in the pulpit,
at the bar, or in non-professional capacity--must have, either from
gift or from training, the speaker's full equipment, for matching
himself against opposing strength.




REVIEW EXERCISES


For convenience of practice, a few pages of brief exercises,
exemplifying the foregoing principles, are given at the end of the
book. By using each day one example in each group, and changing from
time to time, the student will have sufficient variety to serve
indefinitely. This vocal practice may be made a healthful and
pleasurable daily exercise.




PART TWO


TECHNICAL TRAINING

ESTABLISHING THE TONE


O SCOTIA!

From "The Cotter's Saturday Night"

BY ROBERT BURNS

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
And oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle.

O Thou! who poured the patriotic tide,
That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart,
Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,
Or nobly die, the second glorious part,
(The patriot's God, peculiarly Thou art,
His friend, inspirer, guardian and reward!)
Oh never, never, Scotia's realm desert;
But still the patriot, and the patriot bard,
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!


O ROME! MY COUNTRY!

From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

BY LORD BYRON

O Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts, their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance?--Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day:--
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;--
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchers lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers:--dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!


RING OUT, WILD BELLS!

From "In Memoriam"

BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.


ROLL ON, THOU DEEP!

From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

BY LORD BYRON

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
Stops with the shore: upon the watery plain,
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

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