Chapter 1 Building Confidence in the Craft - Speech Craft PDF

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Chapter 1 Building Confidence in the Craft...

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Chapter 1: Building Confidence in the Craft Intoduction

Have you ever listened to a speaker and lost track of time? Have you ever been persuaded to do something you’ve never considered before because of a speech? Have you ever been moved to tears by the heartfelt words of a friend at a wedding or a funeral? However much we are separated from each other physically in our changing social landscape — especially by screens — we still have the ability to move each other with speech: we entrance, we inform, we console, and we love, both in person and from afar. In a variety of contexts, the craft of public speaking is about the many and varied rhythms and movements of hearts and minds. Across centuries, teachers of public speaking have argued the reason to study the craft is its primary purpose: the creation of relationships with others and the strengthening of community bonds. This textbook was written and designed as a conversational guide to help you conquer your jitters, with practical tips for speaking in different kinds of situations. This text was also undertaken to center public speaking as an art that concerns community building. Rather than focusing strictly on public speaking as a civic mission, or on vocational or business speaking, or on the complexities of platform speaking so popular in our time (public lectures, TED talks, preaching, and so on), the thesis of Speech Craft is to demonstrate how building relationships with other human beings is the common core of every type of speaking in public.

The Celebrated and Feared Power of Speech The power of speech has been studied, celebrated, and even feared since the beginning of its formal study about two thousand years ago. Because human speech movespeople, because it can influence how people think, act, and feel about the world around them, it has incredible power.

Throughout human history, public speaking has been regarded as a robust skill or tool — like a painter’s brush or a chef’s cooking techniques — that can both magically enchant or enflame anger. Some of the first teachers of public speaking, such as the ancient Greek orator Gorgias, compared the exciting and fearful effects of a good speech to “witchcraft” or “spell binding,” which references public speaking’s exciting and fear-inspiring power. Gorgias’s old analogy can be explained this way: in varied cultures around the world, shamans and spiritual guides have used “spells” or rituals to heal people of physical or psychological pain, while in other cultures, those who use incantations are feared as sinful or harmful. Similarly, the craft of speaking, or “speech craft,” can be used as an artful tool to soothe or hurt, to help or harm (see “A First Teacher of Public Speaking” on page 5).

We tend to celebrate public speaking as a right and honorable thing, which is the message behind this book. We can easily think of great civil rights leaders or politicians in American history, such as Congresswoman Barbara Jordan or President John F. Kennedy, whose moving speeches helped change the minds and hearts of citizens, as well as U.S. laws and policies. But the craft of speech can also be used for wrongdoing and deception. We can think of many historical instances when large numbers of people were moved by the speeches of misguided leaders to support discrimination, hatred, and even warmongering (Joseph McCarthy, Adolf Hitler, and Osama bin Laden to name a few). Whether speech inspires the “divinest works,” like bringing communities together to do or think constructive things, or the most depraved deeds, like deceiving others or promoting destruction, usually depends on the motives of both the speaker and listeners. Moral character is something that Isocrates — another early teacher of oratory from ancient Greece — insisted that the craft of public speaking cannot teach. The study of public speaking can help you “more speedily towards honesty of character,” he said, but it cannot make you a good person. You have to be a good person on your own. Make no mistake about it, argued Isocrates, “there does not exist an art” of any kind that can “implant sobriety and justice in depraved natures.”2 For this reason, public speaking is almost always taught with a study of ethics, even though learning about ethics or morality will not make you ethical or moral (again, you have to will that for yourself). Nevertheless, because an understanding of ethics and morality goes hand in

hand with the risks of public speaking, it is an important issue for us to address, which we will do so together in the next chapter.

Freedom of Speech In the centuries-long study of public speaking, its teaching has never flourished outside of democratic societies. In some cultures, particularly nondemocratic cultures, leaders and influential citizens sometimes feared the craft of public speaking: if people are moved by speech, then they can be persuaded to think, do, believe, or feel things that are contrary to the interests of those in power. Influential speaking can be perceived as threatening to those in power because a community could be persuaded to disobey laws or, for example, the will of a dictator. Throughout history, rulers and other leaders have sometimes feared or outright banned the study of public speaking simply because it is founded on the ideal of free speech — an ideal that makes it possible to criticize, critique, and disagree with others without fear of punishment. Not surprisingly, then, the formal study of public speaking has rarely flourished outside of a democracy because the precondition of being moved by speech is the freedom to be moved in the first place. In a society in which people are not free to listen to others and speak their minds, there is no need for public speaking and certainly few opportunities for public persuasion, because speaking freely in such a culture could result in punishment or even death. There are many historical examples of the suppression or banning of speech due to a fear of its power. The fact that you are reading this book at all means that you are in a society and culture that protects the right to speak freely. Viva la public speaking!

a first teacher of public speaking: gorgias Way back in time — over two thousand years ago — there was an itinerant, or “wandering,” teacher named Gorgias. He taught various subjects, including philosophy and oratory (“public speaking” in today’s lingo). As a kind of paid tutor termed a “sophist,” Gorgias traveled around the Mediterranean world looking for work. He advertised his craft by delivering fancy, rhythmic speeches that reportedly entranced his audiences. A particularly famous speech, which has been described for centuries as one of the most eloquent speeches of

all time, is about Helen of Troy. In Greek myth, Helen is described as the most beautiful woman in the world, “the face that launched a thousand ships.” In his speech about Helen, Gorgias creates an analogy to persuade his audience to study public speaking, one of the subjects he taught for payment. Gorgias considered public speaking the most important of all the arts. The myth that Gorgias uses to describe the power of oratory has many versions: Helen either left with or was abducted by a hot dude named Paris, ending up at his home in Troy (presently in the area that is currently called Turkey), thereby causing the famous Trojan War. Contrary to popular Greek accounts that describe Helen’s departure as a betrayal, Gorgias provocatively insinuates that the power of oratory was responsible for her leaving. In his speech, Gorgias compares the powers of persuasion to seduction. “Speech is a powerful lord,” argues Gorgias, because it can cause the “divinest works: it can stop fear and banish grief and nurture pity.” 3 Gorgias argues that the power of the spoken word can be compared to an irresistible passion or even intoxication (e.g., that Helen was overcome by her passions for Paris just like audiences can be overcome by a passionate orator). Finally, Gorgias compares the power of persuasive speaking to “spell binding” and “witchcraft.” The title of this textbook is something of a playful joke on Gorgias’s analogy: Speech Craft is meant as a reference to the ways in which a good speech is spellbinding as well as the ways in which speech making is a craft or an art.

The lofty ideals of free speech and democracy, however, register the highest aims of public speaking and their associated fears in ways that may seem far removed from where you sit and read at this moment. So let’s cut to the chase: another reason why public speaking is feared is that you might be asked — even required — to do it. Unlike many other subjects of formal study that you will take in college, public speaking is one that many of your classmates, maybe even you, do not want to be required to take. Many public speaking teachers will tell you that public speaking is one of the hardest subjects to teach because so many students dread it. In this respect, the study and craft of public speaking is not simply about appreciating the talents of gifted speakers and trying to learn from them, but also working through the apprehension or fear many of us feel when anticipating the prospect of speaking in public ourselves. We begin our study of public speaking, then, with a joke about death, courtesy of stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

High Anxiety: The Fear of Public Speaking Like heights, bugs, drowning, and clowns, students report that speaking publicly in front of a group is among their biggest fears — and yes, even more than death itself.5Although Jerry Seinfeld’s joke is based on a dated study from the early 1970s, more recent research has demonstrated that public speaking remains a persistent and common fear for most people. In part, we are apprehensive about public speaking because of what we imagine it to be: a solitary figure in formal attire approaches a podium, and before her is a sea of people — hundreds of people, no, thousands of people! She must move them all, and she hopes her antiperspirant is working. She opens her mouth and prepares to speak but nothing comes out. All she hears is the sound of the silent scream in her head. This nightmare image makes for great film or television, but it is not very realistic. Most of the times you will be asked to speak publicly will not resemble the grand images of political leaders or movie stars addressing thousands. Rather, you will be speaking in a home or a place of worship, in your workplace, online, or, of course, in a classroom.

Looking to Your Audience for Support

The term “public” is something of a contradiction, because it connotes a large group of people; in reality, public speaking is often a performance before a small group of people in a private setting (like your classroom). Whether you are speaking to inform, entertain, or persuade, public speaking is about bringing a group together, or constituting a “public,” at the moment of speaking. We tend to remember those speakers who have an ability to encourage audience members to feel like a group or experience a sense of togetherness. If you think about public speaking as a group effort, which means it is as much about listeners as it is speakers, then the challenge of giving a speech may seem much less daunting. In most public speaking situations, an audience wants to hear the speaker and can empathize with the task of speaking. When we are listening to a public speaker, many of us imagine ourselves — however briefly — standing in the speaker’s shoes. This empathy is often shared by those who assemble to hear you speak. Most people are respectful when they congregate to hear a speech, even when they disagree with what the speaker says.

Navigating Speech Anxiety

Simply defined, public speaking is the craft of speaking to a group of people. Still, let’s be honest: what we fear about public speaking is the judgment of others. We worry about what others think about our speech, of course, but also about our style, our appearance, and even how our voice sounds. We get nervous because we fear messing up or forgetting our words, or that we are speaking in front of a group wearing unfashionable clothes. All these worries are normal, are widely shared, and contribute to what scholars of public speaking term “speech anxiety” or “communication apprehension.” Communication apprehension concerns fears that we all have about verbal communication with others. Speech anxiety is communication apprehension specific to making speeches (it is sometimes termed “stage fright” in popular culture). Most beginning public speakers tend to feel anxiety because of a lack of experience, which is precisely what a public speaking class is designed to help you with. Here’s a little secret: even advanced public speakers still feel anxiety because they want to do a good job. In general, speech anxiety or nervousness when speaking is something all speakers, from the beginner to the expert, contend with as the “center of attention.”6One trick is to tell yourself that your anxiety is actually just excitement. Research has shown that the mental reframing of stress can improve performance in sports and speaking alike.7 Another trick is to channel your nervous energy into planning and preparation. Those who teach public speaking tend to focus on reducing speaking anxiety in two ways: (1) by teaching you how to prepare and plan your speech, and (2) by getting you to practice public speaking. These are the basic tenets of the craft of teaching public speaking, and they will be what this course will focus on for the rest of the quarter or semester. When we are listening to a public speaker, many of us imagine ourselves — however briefly — standing in the speaker’s shoes. This empathy is often shared by those who assemble to hear youspeak. Most of the time we experience speech anxiety as we anticipate making a speech, not when we are actually speaking. We tend to obsess on our own speaking abilities long before we stand up to speak.8 Once we start speaking, many of us become lessnervous the longer we speak. Our tendency to obsess on “what ifs” prior to speaking goes back to antiquity and the first formal studies of public speaking by Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece. Perhaps the oldest image of the public speaker is that of a man imploring a public while wearing a toga.

For centuries, the study of oratory characterized the public speaker as an expert authority speaking to the inexpert or ignorant, a burden — and certainly a cause for anxiety for any aspiring speaker. Although the solitary-speaker situation is still common today, speakers don’t always have to be experts, and sometimes a person may be asked to speak as a member of a group or team.

What are the reasons for communication apprehension or speech anxiety? How can speakers manage it?

Public Speaking as a Civic Conversation Over the past century, the formal study of speaking has shifted away from the expert speaker addressing an inexpert audience toward two different but related models. The first is a conversational model, in which the speaker and audience are understood to be in dialogue with each other. The second is a civic model, in which public speaking is understood as a component of a much larger democratic dialogue among communities, or “publics.”Today we tend to think about public speaking as the building, maintaining, or reinforcing of a sense of community — in addition to whatever it is a speaker has to say. The more recent turn toward thinking about public speaking as a civic conversation more equally balances the roles of listeners and speakers. A kind of “we’re-in-this-together” attitude has emerged in the last century, which characterizes public speaking as a transaction, or a kind of give and take, between a speaker and an audience: more convo, less toga. Today, the formal study of public speaking is less focused on unique gifts or skills and more about the study of expectations, or what audiences bring to a speaking situation and anticipate hearing in a speech. Consequently, our focus in this book will be to answer questions like: Who is my audience? What is the best way to address my audience? What kind of message is expected by this particular audience? How is a speech like the one I am going to give supposed to go? What am I having for dinner after I give my speech? While that last question is a joke, it’s an instructive one for understanding public speaking. Humor, the ability to

amuse another (or oneself), is a metaphor for the process of public speaking in general. To amuse someone, you have to have some knowledge of that person and what he or she may find amusing. This is to say that humor often brings people together over something they share in common, which is precisely what public speaking is supposed to do, from the funniest to the most serious topics. Public speaking is not simply about addressing a group of people, but is also about determining what constitutes a group of people or holds them together. While speaking the same language (English, Spanish, French) is what we most fundamentally have in common with an audience, we also share the human condition in all its varieties: common experiences, common feelings, and like-minded thoughts. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges we face as speakers is reminding ourselves that when we address any public, we are actually speaking to human beings, and that we are more alike than we are different. This challenge can be met by first understanding how we are similar and then by planning ahead based on those similarities.

The Craft of Speech The character and function of public speaking have changed as radically as our communication technologies have changed over thousands of years — from oral traditions to parchment paper, the printing press, radio, television, and the Internet. Despite these changes, three elements of the craft have remained the same. Teachers of public speaking in the time of Aristotle as well as today have stressed that a speaker understands and gets better at public speaking by doing three things:

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practicing and having good role models to emulate; studying and understanding the expectations of audiences; planning or preparing speeches in advance.

No textbook can teach you how to be a good speaker. The experience of public speaking — and learning from these experiences — is the best and most fundamental teacher of the craft. A textbook on public speaking can help you prepare for speaking by providing you with an understanding of what different kinds of audiences expectand by introducing you to planning strategies for meeting those expectations. How you practice the craft is up to you and your instructor.

Practice!

Although the formal study of public speaking can help you prepare to speak, it is no substitute for practice, which is why so many of us who write about public speaking struggle to teach it (or, to make the same point by altering a cliché, “public speaking is more easily written about than said and done”). Another fact compounds your teacher’s challenge: there are no hard-and-fast rules for public speaking. There is no absolute right or wrong way to speak. Your instructor cannot teach you universal principles that apply to every context of speaking, because how you speak and what you say depends on the speaking situation and your audience. We describe public speaking as an art or craft instead of a science. Appropriate and accepted ways of addressing publics differ from community to community and from culture to culture. For example, how you learn and practice public speaking in North America will differ from the way you learn and practice it in other parts of the world. The Chicago-based marketing expert Magda Walczak describes her experience listening to speakers in China at a conference. The speakers and listeners were “much different than what I’m used to in the [W]estern world. For example, the audience doesn’t necessarily look at the speaker when he or she is talking. In the [conference] sessions I went to, people were texting, browsing...