The art of effective speaking

Front matter

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Preface

“Eloquence, like every other art,” says Emerson, “rests on laws the most exact and determinate.” Certainly much prog¬ ress has been made during the last twenty-five years in dis¬ covering what these laws are. Nevertheless, though much has been accomplished, much remains to be done.

Whoever would acquire skill in speaking may attack the problem in three different ways: he may study theory; he may study models; he may practice. To ask which of these is the most important is a great deal like asking which is the most important leg of a three-legged stool.

One of my aims in writing this text has been to give parallel treatment to all three. Many years of teaching experience have convinced me that the mere statement of a principle is of little value until it has been (i) thoroughly explained, (2) carefully illustrated, and (3) repeatedly exemplified in practice. Every principle here enunciated is concretely linked, up with the manner of its application by one or more of our great speakers. It is hoped that this abundance of illustrative material may prove welcome in the classroom, especially where library facil¬ ities are limited.

Another aim has been to stress the importance of linking up speaking with the vital interests of the audience. Modern psychology has made it plain that we are essentially creatures of desire, motivated by a never-ending quest for the satisfaction of human wants, material, intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic. The aim of all persuasive speaking, presumably, is to promote a fairer distribution of life’s satisfactions, to mould human envi¬ ronment closer to our heart’s desire.

It may fairly be affirmed that fuller treatment than usual

VI

PREFACE has been given in this book to a number of phases of effective speech. The different forms of support, or the different kinds of speech materials, and their adaptation to the different types of speeches, have been given full and specific treatment. The significant part which illustrations play in speaking has been stressed, for it is largely through illustrations, embodying vivid and familiar experiences, that the new is compared to the old, and new behavior patterns are identified with the old ones. The speaking style has been given a somewhat elaborate treat¬ ment, which I believe its importance easily warrants. The same may be said of suggestion.

An effort has been made to give the argumentative speech a balanced treatment, by which I mean that logical argument has been given only the place it merits. It is often an impor¬ tant form of support in this type of speech, but it is only one form of support out of many. To give it virtual monopoly of the field is to disregard the patent psychological fact that the real “controls” of human lives are lower than our heads. If, in 1863, when he pleaded the Northern cause in his five speeches in England, Henry Ward Beecher had followed, as a model, the traditional college argumentative forensic, one may imagine how disastrous would have been the consequences. Beecher’s addresses in England, and Lincoln’s political addresses in America, afford us as fine examples as we have of popular argumentative speeches. They are good models for study.

A word in regard to the illustrative material used in the text. It has been selected in part from successful present-day speakers, and in part from speakers of the last generation, who exempli¬ fied the conversational type of speaking, and who were acknowl¬ edged masters in the art of communicating ideas to the ordi¬ nary run of audiences — the kind of audiences most persons have to deal with. If objection be made that some of these specimens show too much art for the ordinary person to follow, the answer is, it seems to me, that there is plenty of opportunity for everybody to read and hear the mediocre. We bathe in

PREFACE vu an ocean of mediocrity every day. These models, in which American oratorical literature is rich beyond others, should serve to inspire students to their best efforts by keeping con¬ stantly before them the highest ideals. When we study other forms of art — painting and sculpture — we use the best models available. Why not in speaking? The student who saturates himself with good models along with his practice is well on the way to becoming a good speaker.

No one can work in this subject without feeling a large measure of indebtedness to veterans in the field like James Winans, Arthur Edward Phillips, William Trufant Foster, Charles H. Woolbert, James Milton O’Neill, and others. I may with propriety make special mention of Frank M. Rarig, head of the Department of Speech, University of Minnesota, with whom for many years I threshed out most of the problems here dealt with, and whom I here absolve from all responsi¬ bility for whatever heresies may be found within these covers; to Franklin H. Knower of the same department, for carefully reading the manuscript and offering constructive suggestions; also, to Joseph M. Thomas, Assistant Dean, Senior College, University of Minnesota, for good counsel in preparing the manuscript.

H. B. G.

COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Jane Addams, for permission to reprint her address, “Washing¬ ton’s Birthday.”

To D. Appleton-Century Company, for permission to quote from Contemporary Speeches, by James Milton O’Neill and Floyd K. Riley; Public Speaking, by James Winans; and Psychology of Suggestion, by Boris Sidis.

To E. P. Dutton and Company, for permission to quote from Selected Papers on Philosophy (Everyman’s Library), by William James.

To Ina Firkins, for permission to reprint the speech, “The Usurpa¬ tions of Society,” by Oscar W. Firkins.

To Funk and Wagnalls Company, for permission to quote from William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold Speech,” as contained in Speeches of William Jennings Bryan.

To Harper and Brothers, for permission to quote from Human Values, by DeWitt H. Parker; Eloquence, by Garrett P. Serviss; and Fundamentals of Speech, by Charles H. Woolbert; and for per¬ mission to reprint the speeches, “Social versus Biological Inherit¬ ance,” by Clifford Kirkpatrick, from Man and His World, and “Acres of Diamonds,” by Russell H. Con well.

To Henry Holt and Company, for permission to quote from Talks to Teachers, by William James, and Psychology, by Robert S. Woodworth.

To Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company, for permission to reprint “The Calf Path” from Whiffs from Wild Meadows and “The House by the Side of the Road” from Dreams in Homespun, by Sam Walter Foss; and “Little Boy Blue,” by Eugene Field.

To the Macmillan Company, for permission to quote from Pur¬ posive Speaking, by Robert W. West.

To Edwin Markham, for permission to reprint his poems, “Lincoln, the Man of the People,” and “The Man with the Hoe,” copyright by the author.

To A. L. Miller, for permission to reprint the poem “Columbus,” by Joaquin Miller.

To W. W. Norton and Company, for permission to quote from Influencing Human Behavior, by Harry Allen Overstreet.

viii

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Value oe Speech Training . i

II. The Speech Situation. 8

Chapter I The Value Of Speech Training

Nothing so truly distinguishes one person from another in point of culture as his manner of speaking. There is much truth in the statement that a man is known by the character of his speech. This is perfectly natural when we reflect that speech is our most important means of communication and the chief instrumentality by which we become known to each other. “Guard well thy tongue,” said Thomas Carlyle, “for out of it are the issues of life.” It is primarily through speech that we give expression to our personality — interpreting speech in the broad sense, not only of words, but also of the accompanying action, posture, gesture, and facial expression. John Ruskin has put this effectively in the following paragraph:

A well educated gentleman may not know many languages, may not be able to speak any but his own, may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; what¬ ever words he pronounces, he pronounces rightly. An ordinary clever and sensible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at most ports; yet he has only to speak a sentence of any language to be known for an illiterate person. So also the accent or turn of expression of a single sentence will at once mark a man a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted by educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of inferior standing forever.

The more fully we appreciate the extent to which speaking is a revelation of personality, the more readily will we give of our time and effort to attain in the largest possible measure the charm and power of cultivated speech.

Advantages of Speech Training, i. Speech training affords the very best kind of discipline in the art of thinking. There is no use in disguising the fact that there is no good speaking without careful thinking. The two processes go together and cannot be separated, or at any rate should not be. A student making a speech in class is compelled to see that his thinking cap is on straight. He knows that his performance will be under fire from his associates and from his teacher. If his facts are colored, reasoning processes wobbly, authorities warped, illustrations inapt, the searchlight of criticism will reveal these deficiencies. If he departs from his purpose and moves in a semicircle instead of in a straight line, as many of us have seen youthful Ciceros do, some one will probably point out how far the needle of his aim has deflected from the true meridian.

The process of analysis that underlies every well-prepared speech, the search for materials in books, pamphlets, periodi¬ cals, interviews, and experience, the sifting of essentials from unessentials, the discovering of the main ideas on which the discussion hinges, the selection of speech materials in support of these propositions, and finally the preparation of this mate¬ rial for oral presentation to an audience — ah these afford op¬ portunity for sustained and discriminating thinking bounded only by the capacity of the individual. “The ability to think oneself into and through a subject, to be the master of a subject and not .its slave,” is worthy of a man’s best efforts.

2. Speech training helps us to form correct habits of speech , and to overcome incorrect and slovenly habits. To speak dis¬ tinctly, so that every vowel and every consonant sound is properly enunciated; to speak audibly, so that every word and every syllable can be heard with the least possible effort; to speak correctly, so that every word is properly pronounced — this is no mean accomplishment. Unfortunately, it is not so easy of attainment as one would think. There is a tendency for most people to be careless and slovenly in their speech. Teachers of public speaking have the experience every day of

THE VALUE OF SPEECH TRAINING being within thirty feet of a student speaking from the platform and still being unable to hear or understand one-half of what is being said. Voices fail to carry, and words sound as if they were being swallowed by the speaker. Vowel and consonant sounds are either slurred or incorrectly given. For society, we hear sassiety; for government, govurment; for beauty, beaudy; for duty, doody; for spirit, spearit; for trusts, truss.

Faults like these and many others need to be overcome only once in our lives, and then they will stay corrected. It matters not whether it be in conversation, in business, or on the plat¬ form, a clear, distinct, confident, and cultivated speech is one of the greatest accomplishments any man can acquire.

3. The skill in speaking which is acquired through speech training extends one’s sphere of influence. A man may have native ability of a high order, but as long as he uses it only in his calling, very few have occasion to observe it. “Extempo¬ raneous speaking,” said Lincoln, “should be practiced and cul¬ tivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.”

As long as a man hides his talents under a bushel, nobody will notice him much. But let him show his mettle in public, utter words of wise counsel, or blaze a trail of thought, and all the four winds of heaven will become willing messengers to spread the news of his advent into the community life. He will be singled out as “a man who can make a speech.”

Such a man is always in demand. He is wanted at clubs, luncheons, banquets, conventions, festivals, Fourth of July cele¬ brations, political rallies, Old Settlers picnics, and all the rest of the community’s festal and commemorative occasions. It is doubtful whether there is any accomplishment so much in con¬ stant demand in the church, in the schools, in the public assem¬ blies, on the platform, and for occasions of all kinds as is the gift of effective speech. Those who cultivate this talent, there¬ fore, have a very good chance in the long run of being singled out for preference and distinction. It was precisely Lincoln’s power of speech which lifted him into fame and launched him on a career of noble and conspicuous statesmanship, in the course of which he was destined to sway the fortunes of the Republic. “It is undeniable that it was Webster’s power of speech that made his greatness,” affirms Gamaliel Bradford in a biographical sketch. Those who have heard Carrie Chapman Catt will understand how large a factor in her leadership, con¬ spicuous in forward-looking movements for forty years, has been her distinctive charm of speech. We have only to look about us to be impressed with the fact that even moderate skill in speaking is the open-sesame to public preferment.

4. Speech training develops ability to speak in public , which has become almost a business necessity. Business these days is no longer the simple undertaking it used to be — or much of it, at least, is not. Business today is done on a large scale, with vast organizations involving personnels of thousands of people, and a hierarchy of officials from the president down to the shop fore¬ man, each one responsible for the efficiency of those under his management. Ability to manage and address large groups has become one of the requisites of business leadership. Moreover, our economic system is so ordered that the problem is no longer so much how to produce as how to get people to consume all the things we produce. This requires advertising and sales¬ manship of a high order, both grounded in the science and art of persuasion , which is the province of public speaking. For salesmen, at least, experience and skill in public address is of great value. It is not enough that they know principles; they must know how to apply them when face to face with prospective buyers whether singly or in groups. A salesman bulging with theories about salesmanship and without training in speaking is like a carpenter who knows all about tools but cannot drive a nail straight.

Not only do we have large business units these days, but businesses large and small organize themselves into state and

THE VALUE OF SPEECH TRAINING national associations. The local hardware man may become president of the state association; the local elevator man, state president of his group. At their annual conventions the mem¬ bers of these groups exchange ideas and talk about things of mutual interest: prices, economies, new methods, needed leg¬ islation to protect their interests, and other matters. Here are large opportunities for leadership. Men who have ideas and can make them known are the trail-blazers in business progress.

5. Speech training is an aid to social adjustment. Speaking is a social performance and tends to develop those social qualities and personality traits that make us more desirable and efficient social beings. Among these may be mentioned tact, poise, ease, grace, self-confidence, and tolerance of other persons’ views. We are beginning to realize that it may be quite as important for us to learn to “get along with other people” as it is to master the details of our work. Social adjustments in a society as complex as ours are not easy to make. Nowhere do maladjustments of personality come to the surface as they do in a class in speaking. Here they may be dealt with intel¬ ligently and with sympathy. To cultivate satisfactory social relationships, to adjust oneself easily and fully to one’s social environment, is a vital thing. Speech or speech habits deter¬ mine largely how we succeed in doing this.

6. Speech training makes for intelligent citizenship. The theory of our government is that all political power is lodged in the people, and that up from the people must spring “the life-giving waters of good government.” Movements for social amelioration cannot move faster than public sentiment. It may be said truthfully that the basis of all progress in a demo¬ cratic government is an enlightened public opinion. Daniel Webster once said, “We are living in an age when the accumu¬ lated common sense of the people outweighs the greatest states¬ man or the most influential individual.” If this was true one hundred years ago, how much more is it true now. Woodrow Wilson has put the same thought more picturesquely:

And so with the making of public opinion; back in the country, on the farms, in the shops, in the hamlets, in the homes of cities, in the schoolhouses, where men get together and are true with one another, there come trickling down the streams which are to make the mighty force of the river, the river which is to drive all enterprises of human life as it sweeps on into the common sea of humanity. 1

How important it is, then, that public opinion shall be truly enlightened! Too often our opinions are mere bundles of inherited or acquired prejudices. Many a man is a protectionist for no other reason than that his father was a Republican, and many a man is a free-trader for no better reason than that his grandfather was a Democrat. How few there are who come to conclusions on great public questions as a result of investi¬ gation and thought! We let our editors, preachers, and poli¬ ticians do our thinking for us. One great value of public discussion is that it leads to independent thinking. He who, through speaking, comes in contact with live questions, learns something of their vital relation to our well-being, and forms opinions on them as a result of study and reflection, lays the foundation of a broad and intelligent citizenship. John Stuart Mill in his Autobiography says: “I have always dated from these conversations [discussions in a debating society] my own inauguration as an original and independent thinker.”

In Conclusion. We may be assured that it is well worth while for any one to improve his speech habits and to acquire some degree of skill in speaking. In point of clear thinking, cultivated speech, business leadership, personality development, intelligent citizenship, it is discipline of the first order. In no better way, moreover, can one make one’s influence felt than through public address. He who can stand before his fellows, give adequate expression to his thoughts and feelings, and so help to mould even in a small measure the opinions of his fellow men, is likely to be in the long run a power in his community, and perhaps in his state and nation.

1 The New Freedom (1913), p. 103.

THE VALUE OF SPEECH TRAINING

1. Have you ever listened to a man speaking to a large audience, who was incapable of being heard or understood by more than a small group? If so, what was the difficulty? Could he have overcome it by early training?

2. Name some prominent men in your community in politics, busi¬ ness, and professional fife. To what extent, do you think, has proficiency in speaking been a factor in their success?

3. Introduce yourself to the class by telling them about your inter¬ ests, ambitions, likes and dislikes, why you are taking speech, your principal difficulties in speaking, and what you expect to do when you get out of college. Aim to show the same degree of frankness that you would like to see in others. This may be very valuable information for your teacher. (About three min¬ utes.)

4. Commit to memory the stanzas by Emerson on page iii. Aim to give expression to them with conviction and fulness of meaning.

5. Report orally or in writing on one of the speeches suggested for reading. Give your impressions of it as a speech.

“Oratory,” by Henry Ward Beecher {Beecher: I). 1

“The Value of an Ideal,” by William Jennings Bryan {Bryan, Vol. II).

1 Many of the speeches assigned for reading are to be found in Modern Eloquence (Third Edition, revised in 1929), our best compilation of lectures arid addresses. For all such speeches, no reference is given except the volume number. Often these speeches may be found in earlier editions also. In case of all other speeches, reference is made to the volume in which each appears by inserting in italic type, after the name of the author of the speech, the name of the author of the volume, as shown here. The complete reference may be found in Appendix IV (page 488).

In listing speeches for reading, reference is sometimes made to the same speech more than once. A good speech illustrates several if not all impor¬ tant principles of speech-making; e.g., good style and good selection of speech materials. The same speech may be read with profit several times.

Chapter II

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more im¬ portant than any other one thing. Work, work, work is the secret of success. — Abraham Lincoln

When you appear on the platform for the first time to address your fellows, you face a situation which to you seems new, novel. When you come to think about it, however, there are not many elements of newness to be found in the situation. You are accustomed to speaking to a group of your friends, on occasion at some length. You have stood up in school and given recitations many times. You may even have spoken before your class; so you are used to facing at least one audi¬ ence. If you have been accustomed to doing these things, then there is really nothing new in the situation when you make your first speech in a class in speaking, unless it be that the occasion is a trifle more formal, and that a little more care¬ ful preparation is expected of you. If you can meet the situa¬ tion by feeling that there is really nothing new about it except a little added responsibility, then that is the best way to ap¬ proach it. Behave on the platform just as you would anywhere else when you are on your dignity; and speak to your audience much as you would speak in ordinary conversation to a group of your friends.

This sounds very simple, but of course it is not quite so simple as it sounds. If we are to be perfectly frank, we have to admit that most of us face the situation with some degree of uneasiness, with more or less uncertainty as to how we shall comport ourselves, and with a feeling of far heavier responsi¬ bility than we are accustomed to feel in ordinary conversation or classroom recitations. The problem is to make the necessaryadjustments, to resolve the situation to our advantage and to master it.

The Communicative Attitude. The first thing to note is that a speech situation always involves two parties: the person speaking, and the persons spoken to. This is obvious, of course, and would not need to be mentioned were it not for the fact that there is an ever-present tendency for the first party to forget all about the second party. We need always to remember that the chief and only purpose of speaking is to get certain responses from the audience, to influence their be¬ havior. Henry Ward Beecher defines oratory or persuasive speaking as “the art of influencing conduct with the truth sent home by all the resources of the living man.” The aim of a speaker is not merely to unload what is on his mind; it is to present it in such a way that it will stir up thoughts and feelings in the hearers. To do this he must have an alert consciousness of an observing and listening audience. Note that an audience not only listens to a speaker, but also observes or watches him. A speech appeals both to the ear and to the eye. Both voice and action carry meaning.

Just what is meant by the communicative attitude may per¬ haps best be made clear by an illustration. I had occasion recently to be present at an international gathering of scien¬ tists — chemists, to be exact. An informal discussion was go¬ ing on, in the presence of an audience of about eight hundred people. The first speaker talked very slowly, and while he was speaking, he would refer to some notes he had, and most of the time look down at his chair or at his feet, once in a while at the ceiling. He gave one the impression of a man meditating aloud. If it ever occurred to him that eight hundred people were trying to hear him and understand him, he gave not the slightest evidence of it. Judging by the manner of his speaking, he seemed to be wholly oblivious of the fact that there were more than half a dozen or so persons right around him. Seated io THE ART OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING

as I was near the door, I could not hear more than one word in three. It is safe to say that not half the audience heard him with any degree of comfort, and many not at all. In several places in the room, men were talking among themselves, show¬ ing that the speaker had completely lost their attention. His difficulty consisted in overlooking the fact that there were two parties in the speech situation, the speaker and the audience. He forgot about the audience, or at least failed almost com¬ pletely to take it into consideration. Speaking that does not reach the hearers is wasted breath, no matter how distinguished the speaker. How often it happens that prominent men speak to large audiences and cannot be heard or understood beyond the seventh row!

After two or three others had spoken more or less indiffer¬ ently, there arose a man who no sooner had opened his mouth than the whole assemblage pricked up their ears, eagerly alert to catch every word that fell from his lips. This man had a good voice and knew how to use it, so that it carried easily to the whole assembly. He was, moreover, perfectly conscious of the fact that he had a large number of people listening to him, and was intent upon having them get what he was trying to convey. He surrendered himself completely to the task of deliv¬ ering his message. He did not look at the ceiling, nor at his feet, nor out of the windows, nor close his eyes, as the first man did. He looked his listeners in the face and talked to them, not at them; and he could be heard. In brief, he had the communicative attitude.

This matter of speaking to an audience presents one of the greatest problems in speech training. I recently listened to a state declamation contest, as oftentimes before, in which were several young contestants, of more than ordinary ability, al¬ though not necessarily with much training. So far as the oratorial contestants were concerned, there were, among many merits, two besetting weaknesses. They had a lack of directness which resulted in a lack of modulation in the voice. Almost ii without exception, these youthful aspirants spoke in the direc¬ tion of the audience, at them; but an individual in the audience could hardly feel that the message was meant for him. In fact, he wondered for whom it was really meant, and could not but conclude that it was really meant for nobody. A speaker would start out well and impressively; but before the ten minutes were up, the deadly monotony of voice and of emo¬ tional mood, together with the aimlessness in speaking and failure to sense a perceiving audience, detracted greatly from the effectiveness of the speech.

The Conversational Mode. Perhaps the best way to develop the communicative attitude is to cultivate what we call the conversational mode of speaking; that is, the type of speaking exemplified in conversation. We mean, of course, conversation at its best, polite, orderly, dignified. Everybody knows in a general way what that means, but still it has some implications that need comment.

Young students sometimes get the notion that speaking from the platform is a sort of “showing off” process, and that they must therefore appear in “grand style,” using sonorous tones and assuming a pompous attitude. No concept of platform speaking could be more disastrous than that. The frail bark of many a young man’s ambition has foundered on that rock. If ever humility serves a man well, it is when he faces an audience the first time, or the first few times. He is likely to feel humble anyway, before he gets very far; so he might as well start right.

When we say that a man should speak in public much as he speaks in conversation, we should understand what that means and what it does not mean. We do not mean, of course, that he should carry to the platform the faults of ordinary conver¬ sation. Quite the contrary. We expect thought more care¬ fully organized, diction more dignified though equally simple, enunciation that is more distinct, and a somewhat more formal manner.