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Public Speaking. Clarence Stratton
Читать онлайн.Название Public Speaking
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4057664642684
Автор произведения Clarence Stratton
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
Why was the style of the extract below especially good for the evident purpose and audience? Why did the author use names for the candidates?
When an American citizen is content with voting merely, he consents to accept what is often a doubtful alternative. His first duty is to help shape the alternative. This, which was formerly less necessary, is now indispensable. In a rural community such as this country was a hundred years-ago, whoever was nominated for office was known to his neighbors, and the consciousness of that knowledge was a conservative influence in determining nominations. But in the local elections of the great cities of today, elections that control taxation and expenditure, the mass of the voters vote in absolute ignorance of the candidates. The citizen who supposes that he does all his duty when he votes, places a premium upon political knavery. Thieves welcome him to the polls and offer him a choice, which he has done nothing to prevent, between Jeremy Diddler and Dick Turpin. The party cries for which he is responsible are: "Turpin and Honesty," "Diddler and Reform." And within a few years, as a result of this indifference to the details of public duty, the most powerful politicians in the Empire State of the Union was Jonathan Wild, the Great, the captain of a band of plunderers.
George William Curtis: The Public Duty of Educated Men, 1877
Appropriate Diction. The final test of any diction is its appropriateness. The man who talks of dignified things as he would of a baseball game—unless he is doing it deliberately for humor, caricature, or burlesque—is ruining his own cause. The man who discusses trifles in the style of philosophy makes himself an egregious bore. As Shakespeare said, "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature."
Beware of the flowery expression; avoid metaphorical speech; flee from the lure of the overwrought style. In the first place it is so old-fashioned that audiences suspect it at once. It fails to move them. It may plunge its user into ridiculous failure. In the excitement of spontaneous composition a man sometimes takes risks. He may—as Pitt is reported to have said he did—throw himself into a sentence and trust to God Almighty to get him out. But a beginner had better walk before he tries to soar. If he speaks surely rather than amazingly his results will be better. The temptation to leave the ground is ever present in speaking.
A Parliamentary debater describing the Church of England wound up in a flowery conclusion thus: "I see the Church of England rising in the land, with one foot firmly planted in the soil, the other stretched toward Heaven!"
An American orator discussing the character of Washington discharged the following.
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