Archive for September, 2006

The narrative (or “telling”) type of talk is akin to the short short story in the literary world. Book reviews are the most commonplace narratives, and story tellers come within this classification. What signifies a good narration? The same thing that makes a good short story. It must relate to an interesting incident or episode; its characters must be interesting; and the teller of the tale must be interesting. If the incident is insipid, the characters are drab, or the narrator is a poor raconteur, no amount of good grammar or fine rhetoric can save the speech.

If a yarn clicks as soon as you hear it, that good quality of material may overcome much ineptness in the telling; but no amount of verbal atmosphere, dialogue or detail can compensate for a tale that doesn’t jell. The narrative technique includes other aspects of the modern novel for it, too, is a story of events, each of which makes the listener want to know “What happened next?” This sequence of incidents is identified as the plot, and the plot has to keep on the move to keep audience interest in the groove.

The Argumentative Type

The argumentative (or “selling”) type of talk is the commonest kind. It pre-supposes a theme which might identify a definite need, or a wrong in which you can build an appeal for action-a cause that can run the range from auto accidents to zoning laws.

The argumentative type of talk may cover a self-centered “sell” by a Hartford, Connecticut insurance man with a policy to cover all loopholes in all other policies; or the Salinas, California, lettuce and celery grower who urges his audience to eat more salads. A totally selfless plan might deal with an Israeli bond appeal or a campaign for funds for a Legion home.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

To arouse interest, your speech must necessarily follow some recognizable sequence that your listeners will readily grasp and be able to follow. If your talk is a travelogue, outline the entire itinerary by following the geographical steps-then develop each site in its order.

We also noted in Chapter 6 that a description of the “good old days” is trivia unless those times are compared with the present. So also is a speech on your home town, your business, profession, political views or economic thinking meaningless, unless it is compared with a former era or a future potential. “There was a time when . . .; but today those conditions are changed and as we look into the future. . . .”

A travelogue has a tendency to fall flat unless it is accompanied by pictures, but if they are not feasible then another means employed for making travel talks worth while is a tie-in with a patriotic appeal. Foreign countries may be interestingly described by comparing their customs, habits and government with our own. The special blessings of being an American are well eulogized by pointing out how the fate of the average European, for instance, is determined by his birth: When his father owns a book stall on the banks of the Siene, his fate is sealed; he too will grow to be a book vendor.

When his father is a waiter in a French cafe, his father will one day pay the owner for the privilege of letting his son serve in his stead. A traveller returning to our native shores sees the monuments of industry built in steel and stone, and becomes aware of a restless throbbing nation of people wherein each man’s future is measured not by his birth but by his own efforts. No matter how humble his beginning, he may one day be the mayor of a vast metropolis, governor of a great state, or even grow up to be the most powerful man in the world-President of the United States.

As his ship nears the pier or his plane hits the runway, he probably says to himself that he’s glad he lives in a land where the bounds of man’s ambitions are limitless. He understands why the naturalized immigrant said, “Ah, you Americans! You don’t appreciate democracy because you don’t know what it ‘ain’t.’” He realizes sincerely what it means to possess God’s greatest heritage-as an American citizen!

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

You are now ready to prepare a principal speech-the biggest problem for public speakers. Bill Shakespeare, the best bard in the business, put actors in their place when he said, “The play is the thing”.
Similarly when speakers are put on a common conversational basis, the speech is the thing not the speaker.

What Do You Want to Talk About?

Your choice of a subject is of course bounded by the subjects with which you are familiar. Personal knowledge acquired from personal experience is preferable to any enlightenment gleaned through research. Ask yourself: Is my subject timely? Will it interest my listeners? Can I speak confidently because I know whereof I speak? Will my pleasure in speaking on it radiate enthusiasm?

This criterion should help you determine whether you can speak with sufficient authority, and whether you can engender sufficient vim and vigor to be convincing and interesting. The best test of a good subject is not whether it interests you-but whether you can make it interesting to the audience. A speech on child culture would hardly be of interest to the Business Womens’ League at their annual banquet. Every speech should be fitted to the group that lends you their ears.

Select your subject with all convenient speed and then spend your time in preparation rather than procrastination. The topic you pick will determine your presentation of it. In Chapter 6 we pointed out the two principal types of talks; the informative which may be descriptive or narrative; and the argumentative.

Should your subject be a person, a place, or a thing it is informative and descriptive. Should action and a plot or design be added, it becomes narrative. Should you seek to sell your audience a program or a particular point of view, your speech is classified as argumentative.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Wonder druggers

Death went into the White House when Willie Lincoln died. Today’s antibiotics would have saved the lad’s life. Coming closer, death again entered the White House when Calvin Coolidge Jr. developed an infection. A shot of sulfa might have healed him in a week. With our wonder drugs even President McKinley might have been spared despite an assassin’s bullet, and it’s quite likely that Harding’s pneumonia would have responded to penicillin. So, today’s humblest sufferer is better off than yesterday’s most important patient.

As recently as the horse and buggy era, appendicitis was known as a boil in the belly, and about the only prescription for what they called “consumption”, was a trip to a high dry climate. Both diphtheria and pneumonia were considered fatal, but today medical science controls them quickly. Such are the marvels of the antibiotics, wonder drugs . . . and polio vaccine. The enigmas of life within the human cell are being solved and a cancer cure might be as close as the next test tube.

Despite all these medical marvels, doctors consider the most difficult cases are still trying to get women past forty!

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Realtor

Every successful business man has to have a lot behind him, but a Realtor needs lots and lots! He has an earthy interest in his work, whether he’s the developer who stakes out farms for city lots, swaps industrial sites or barters business buildings. The Good Lord isn’t making any more land, but as long as He keeps making more people, Realtors will live in clover. Real estate people are boosters who never feel afraid of a big bad boom. They’re a strong link in the building program’s chain of expansion that reaches clear across the country … a rising boom that began in the war years when there weren’t enough houses for families, nor buildings enough for industry.

Realtors are confident that any frustrations will level off under our present economy, because half of our people now own their own homes. Depressions are based on doubt, primarily doubt about the future and so long as these people can keep their feet in the dirt-they’ll have no part in lowering that boom. From any angle, they’re a clever lot … just the type to offer a corner on a busy intersection as, “An ideal spot for doctors and lawyers.”

Servicemen

Our boys in service overseas arouse both common credit and common complaint: Their esprit de corps was admirably displayed when a general inspecting paratroopers asked each recruit whether he liked to jump from a plane. One rookie snapped to attention with a “No, sir,” so the general asked him why, then, he was in this outfit? “Sir, I don’t like to jump, but I like to serve with the kind of men who do”. The common complaint from all overseas areas is that these boys are “overpaid, overfed, oversexed-and over here!”

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Public relations

Behind many successful men today, is a hard-working propaganda mill operated by public relations people . . . capable of making a well-heeled opinion more popular- and able to do the same thing for any personality above a gorilla’s. Two decades ago these facts might have shocked the public, but since TV exposures and now that politicians admit they rarely write their own speeches, the public recognizes that all things are not what they seem. Public relations people maneuver public opinion to the advantage of their free-spending clients.

A few press agents are still on the payroll-those guys who get their noses into other people’s business, but most of these crafty boys have upped themselves to public relations counselors. On the street they’re known as bra boys for politicos . . . they cover up their busts. When a junior executive marries a wealthy widow, he frequently seeks a little fame for himself and a bit of flame for his frau’s ego. With the help of a public relations man who thinks big, entertains big, and charges big, public opinion can be pushed to the point where mediocre Joe is built up to look like a big man.

In today’s business world, whether the need is for legislation to curb competition or to cut the tape ’round a government regulation, these brisk traders know the right climate for sowing seeds of dissatisfaction, when to start a proxy fight, and no matter which side of an issue they are paid to promote-they can make it sound lily white.

Railroaders

The genial man who controls the throttle, toots his whistle at the crossroads, and waves to all his farm friends, isn’t the only engineer working for the railroad. Casey Jones’ cousins have advanced to chief engineers, division engineers, maintenance of way, signal and communication, bridge and building engineers-all railroad men with one-track minds on the business. Railroading has been revolutionized by the miracles of machinery so that many scenes along the right-of-way in Casey’s day are now just memories. Mexican section gangs are all but gone since today’s ties are moved or placed mechanically, and earth moving necessary for underpasses, overpasses or fill, is mechanically controlled.

The track worker who pumped so hard on his heavy handcar that he was too worn out to work when he got there, now putt-putts back and forth in a hurry. Kids in the country miss lots of fun in these changing times-especially shower baths under drippy water tanks where steaming engines once stopped to drink. Silver diesels that streak cargoes across the country don’t stop for the pause that refreshes. Railroading’s gone soft since those early corn-shuck mattress times-presently the chief concern revolves around feather-bedding!

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Picklers

Pickle packers get into a pickle just like the rest of us, but they know how to make the most of their “predicament.” They poke fun at their products and make a profit on the laughs. When canned corn took second place in customer-consumption, the cucumber curers turned “dill-erious.” They adopted trade mottoes about “Tickle your palate with a pickle for a nickel.” The mottoes promoted an interest in their briney food by the barrel, thus making more people pickled-or should that be more pickled people?

Gherkin gobblers are proud of the history behind their prickly product. Cleopatra served them as a royal relish; Caesar dished dills to his legions; Pepys’ diary mentions a glass of gherkin; and in Hamlet, Shakespeare asked “How comest thou in such a pickle”? America was named for Americus Vespucci… a pickle packer. The pedigree continues through the centuries down to the country store with the old familar smell, that pickle barrel everybody had a hand in!

Pitchmen

Barnum was the world renowned founder of modern showmanship. Some of his methods stay so fresh and current that it’s difficult to realize they began when New York housed less than three hundred thousand, and Martin Van Buren had just been elected President. Barnum has become the patron saint of press agents, sideshow pitchmen, and used-car salesmen.

Fakery and show business have worked hand in hand since sorcerers duped the public on the mall at Alexandria. They have a hoary history in this country from the days when Huckleberry Finn watched fakers peddle their pap on the Mississippi-to the feigned grunt-and-groan agonies of television wrestlers.

But never before have so many been fooled by so few as in the quiz shows of recent inquiry. The collective talents of TV networks stretched clear across the country . . . esteemed individuals in high positions playing pitchmen . . . and a gullible public lavishing worship on new personalities made a combination fit to bring envy to Barnum.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking