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VIDEO:
Special Occasion Speeches
by Richard L. Weaver II, PhD

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Chapter 8 - Rehearse Your Speech

Rehearsing a speech is no different than test driving a new vehicle.  Would you ever think of going into a car dealership and purchasing a car off the floor without first test driving it?  A test drive is the best way you have of thoroughly checking out a vehicle before buying it.

A test drive doesn’t obligate you to buy or even make an offer on a new car,  just as rehearsing a speech doesn’t obligate you to accepting every idea and all the wording you have selected.  You are simply trying them on to see how they feel.  Just as you want to thoroughly check out the vehicle, you want to thoroughly check out your speech to see how comfortable you are with it.

A car’s major systems are the brakes, engine, transmission, lights, and the other electrical systems.  A speech’s major systems are the introduction, transitions, main points, sub points and supporting material, visual support, and conclusion.  How do they feel individually as you rehearse them?  How do they hold together as a complete unit?

In a test drive of a new car, you also want to check out the other functioning parts such as doors and windows, trunk, engine, and locks.  The functioning parts of a speech are those revealed in your delivery of the ideas.  What about your facial expressions, gestures, and body movement?  How dependent are you on your notes?  Or, to put it differently, how well do you know your information?  This ties into another relevant question:  how much will you be able to connect with your listeners, notice their feedback, and respond and adapt as necessary?

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How do you give “the speech of your life”?

Let’s just say that as things have worked out in your life, that what you would like to have more than anything else comes down to giving what must be considered the speech of your life. How you come across, how you present yourself, and how you affect a group of people, is going to determine whether or not you get what you want.

The speech of your life comes from you, and your success depends on your message, you the messenger, and your magic. You can think about your message being the meat, you the messenger being the potatoes, and the magic being the spice. Let’s look at each factor.

The meat of your message depends first on study. Study is what makes greatness. Whether it is based on your own background, the experiences you’ve had, or research and investigation, great speeches reveal a depth of knowledge and understanding.

When your message comes from deep within you, it reveals your soul. Soul is that animating essence that we associate with your life. A great message is not just words; it is emotion, body language, and passion or spirit. People listen to your soul.

Finally, in a great message speakers share their scars. They reach into their storehouse for the blemishes, faults, and sores that make them human. Sharing their scars makes them human.

The important aspect of you as the messenger is that you be yourself. Know who you are. To know who you are, be a self-monitor. Examine why you do the things you do, why you say what you say, and why you think what you think. Look at your behavior.

Be introspective. Examine your thoughts and feelings. This involves self-searching, self-reflection, and self-contemplation. Know yourself, and show yourself. Tear away the veil, and reveal the true you—who you really are.

As a messenger, you must be sincere. This means being open, candid, frank, honest, and truthful. When the covers of your book are opened, are your contents thin, superficial, and shallow? Then enrich yourself by reading, listening, observing, and experiencing.

Finally, as the messenger, be direct with your audience. Let your audience understand what you know. Develop and polish rich, personal, soul-wrenching stories that will grab, hold, and bind your audience’s attention to your message.

As the messenger, you must project confidence (positive self-assurance), credibility (an authentic, believable, convincing, and trustworthy nature), comfort (that you are pleased and satisfied with your ideas), success (accomplishment, achievement, attainment, and victory), and polish (that you have spent some time perfecting, refining, and improving your ideas).

In public speaking, nobody asks for perfection; they can, however, expect polish!

Your magic represents the spice. It can be revealed in your writing, in your delivery, and in your embellishment. “Magic” does not come from supernatural powers or slight of hand. It comes from careful, thoughtful, planning and preparation.

Write out some of your ideas. Use antithesis (opposites), or the setting of one clause or other member of a sentence against another to which it is opposed. “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” “What counts is not the number of hours you put in, but how much you put in the hours.”

Effective writing, too, utilizes parallel structure. Sometimes referred to as continuums, serializing, or stacking, it occurs when ideas of equal worth are given the same syntactical form. From the famous poem constructed in parallel form, “Children Learn What They Live,” by Dorothy Law Nolte, just two lines as examples: “If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn. If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight....” At the end of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream,” speech: “So, let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York....”

Effective writing utilizes triplets, or, a list of three things. A list of three is always better than either two or four. Three is always more than four! “People are born, people live, people die!” “If you want to enrich today, plant flowers. If you want to enrich years, plant trees. If you want to enrich eternity, plant ideas.”

Your delivery, too, contributes to the magic. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Delivery is a tool for expressing clear, interesting ideas without distracting the audience. Effective delivery is conveyed by your voice, language, and body.

Your voice is the sales tool that can sell your feelings and emotions. It is the most powerful, persuasive, professional tool you own. Vary your pitch (the highness or lowness of your voice), select the best rate (it depends on your personality, the mood you’re trying to create, the nature of your audience and the occasion), and avoid vocalized pauses (uhms, and ahhhs). Pauses are for time to breathe, for messages to sink in, to give listeners time to breathe, and for emphasis.

Language is important, and effective word choice can be magic. Study all your life to be a wordsmith—one who knows, works with, and shapes words. Pronounce words correctly, because incorrect pronunciation strips away credibility. Use proper grammar; it is a key indicator of who you are and what your background is.

Your body is an important part of your delivery. Pay attention to your posture, personal appearance, facial expressions, eye contact, and hands (forget your hands, but don’t forget to use them). And, never give your ideas to an audience; give your speech to individuals in your audience. Connect with one individual at a time. Weak eye contact looks insincere, insecure, and uncomfortable.

Finally, embellish your speech by telling key stories, using power phrases (“Attitude, not aptitude, determines altitude”), and using humor and quotations. Don’t use humor to get a laugh; use it to revitalize your audience. The best humor occurs naturally.

The speech of your life comes from you. Now, when you are faced with giving the speech of your life, you know you have control over the message, the messenger, and the magic. The real greatness within you awaits your recognition.

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A Testament to the Power of Speech

It is a principle I have taught for over thirty years. It is basic to speech-communication courses, and it is essential to understanding what should be the foundation of public-speaking effectiveness. In judging the success of a public-speaking effort, you must look at the substance — support, evidence, and ideas — of the speech, not just the delivery. Delivery is merely a vehicle for conveying the substance. When I learned to put delivery in its proper perspective, it was within the context of Plato’s attack on rhetoric as “mere cookery.”

Plato was critical of the idea that rhetoric should be called an art, while Aristotle argued in On Rhetoric that it was indeed an art. Plato’s perspective on rhetoric has not been uncommon throughout the ages, namely, that rhetoric is no art at all but merely practiced flattery. The “fantastical banquet” of words is “mere cookery in words”; words that are plain and to the point are all that are needed. Through the character of Socrates he concludes it is no art. He goes on at length to explain that rhetoric is merely a form of flattery, and more comparable to cookery than to medicine.

Plato’s perspective was well supported in a column entitled, “Obama is the candidate of passion rather than substance,” (The (Toledo) Blade, Jan. 13, 2008) in which Kathleen Parker
argues that “it’s easy to be seduced by a charming idea with a dazzling smile....It’s all about hope, really.”

Of course, Obama isn’t the first to depend on “grandiose prose and inspiring rhetoric” to supply his political pitch. Speech that depends on rhythm and refrain is alluring. It can make anything, even a simple chair, seem magnificent.

It is important to understand here how easily and willingly the public is seduced by the power of speech. Remember that the Nazis put enormous effort into public speaking. A. E. Frauenfeld, a Nazi Gauleiter (leader), wrote in “Die Macht der Rede” in 1937, about the power of speech, “We connect the spoken word with thoughts of the person who spoke it, with his appearance, the sound of his voice, the persuasiveness and passion with which he spoke the words....Speaking is communal; many hundreds or thousands share the enthusiasm.”

Ronald Reagan, a former actor and baseball announcer, understood this. Not only did he speak “in warm, velvety tones that enveloped listeners and made them feel good,” but, too, writes David Gergen, a Reagan speechwriter, in Essence of Power (1984), in his speeches he evoked what America had been and could be again, using terms, stories, and images embracing liberty, heroism, honor, a love of country, and a love of God. These values went deep with Reagan who discovered them from years on the speaking circuit.

There is no doubt that there are times that call for seminal speeches when substance matters less than delivery. Lory Hough and Aine Cryts, in their online essay, “The Power of Speech,” cite Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” that commemorated the most devastating battle of the Civil War, or his “Emancipation Proclamation” that called for an end to slavery. They cite Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats that helped pull America out of the depression and Ronald Reagan’s speech in 1986 following the Challenger disaster that soothed a stunned nation. President George W. Bush provided one voice following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Hough and Cryts also mention Robert Kennedy’s 1968 impromptu Indianapolis announcement that Martin Luther King, Jr., had just been shot and Richard Nixon’s 1952 “Checkers” speech.

Nixon’s “Checkers” speech, according to Hough and Cryts, is “considered to be one of the most successful political speeches in history. Just chosen as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s running mate, Nixon had to clear his name from charges of having a secret campaign fund. With his wife sitting beside him, he apologized and called on people’s emotions, using these words to end his emotional appeal after explaining that a Texas supporter had sent a cocker spaniel to the family as a gift. “Our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids,” Nixon said affectionately, “loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”

There are times that call for the rhetoric that unites or soothes or commemorates. There are times, as well, that call for impromptu comments that explain or clarify. The bulk of a politician’s rhetoric, however, is carefully planned.

Barack Obama is a powerful speaker. Biblical cadences come naturally to him, just as if he is a great preacher. He has extraordinary rapport with ordinary Americans, and he possesses, as well, a unique ability to articulate, in a generous way, their polite but burning anger at the state and their country. Obama certainly has the potential to “unite” the American public in ways that few, if any, politicians have since Bobby Kennedy.

Obama’s appeal, however, is to the soul (hope). He preaches the politics of “not-yet-here,” and it resonates deeply with his listeners. There is no doubt that his rhetoric soars and takes flight, but it alights nowhere. There is no doubt that he declares that together we can do anything, but he doesn’t mention any of the things we can do. What is missing from his repertoire is a clear articulation of his intentions. Avoiding detailed policy prescriptions, which bore many voters, leaves him open to attacks.

To depend on delivery and high-flown language alone, to the near exclusion of any substance, is an example of what Plato complained about. Obama’s speeches are a “fantastical banquet” of words or “mere cookery in words.” It may be what Americans want, but in no way is it what Americans need. Although some may say this is a time for seminal speeches when substance matters less than delivery, but I claim, as Kathleen Parker does, “Hope is not a policy.”

“Mr. Obama isn’t just the inevitable dream candidate,” writes Parker, “He is the self-object of Oprah Nation [referring to Oprah Winfrey’s campaigning on his behalf], love child of the therapeutic generation. What he brings to the table,” Parker continues, “no one quite knows. But what he delivers to the couch is human Prozac.”

To be seduced by delivery with little or no substance is to miss what is significant, meaningful, and important. It is to be seduced by the icing and overlook the cake, to judge a book by its cover and ignore its contents, and to be persuaded by facial expressions without noticing what the speaker is saying. It is, however, a testament to the power of speech!

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