Public Speaking - Clarence Stratton

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permits of their being intelligible. The speaker, therefore, will exercise the greatest care in pronouncing consonants distinctly. As these sounds usually begin and end words, and as they are produced by rather sudden checks or interruptions, they can be made to produce a wave motion in the air which will carry the entire word safely and clearly beyond the ear into the understanding. In public speaking no amount of care and attention bestowed upon pronouncing consonants can be spared.

      Tone. The most marked quality of a person's voice is its tone. It will be enough for the purposes of this manual to assert that the tone should be both clear and agreeable. In public speaking the first of these is all important, though an absence of the second qualification may almost neutralize all the advantages of the first. Clearness may be impaired by several causes. The speaker may feel that his throat closes up, that he becomes choked. His tongue may become stiff and "cleave to the roof of his mouth"—as the feeling is popularly described. He may breathe so energetically that the escaping or entering air makes more noise than the words themselves. He may be more or less conscious of all these. The others he may not discover for himself. The instructor or members of the class will inform him of their presence. Set jaws will prevent him from opening his mouth wide enough and operating his lips flexibly enough to speak with a full tone. A nasal quality results mainly from lack of free resonance in the head and nose passages. Adenoids and colds in the head produce this condition. It should be eradicated by advice and practice.

      Usually whatever corrections will make the tone clearer will also make it more agreeable. The nasal pessimistic whine is not a pleasant recommendation of personality. High, forced, strident tones produce not only irritation in the listener but throat trouble for the speaker.

      Articulate—that is, connected—speech may be considered with reference to four elements, all of which are constantly present in any spoken discourse.

      Speed. First, there is the speed of delivery. An angry woman can utter more words in a minute than any one wants to hear. The general principle underlying all speech delivery is that as the audience increases in number the rapidity of utterance should be lessened. Those who are accustomed to addressing large audiences, or to speaking in the open air, speak very slowly. A second consideration is the material being delivered. Easily grasped narrative, description, and explanation, simply phrased and directly constructed, may be delivered much more rapidly than involved explanation, unfamiliar phraseology, long and intricate sentence constructions, unusual material, abstract reasoning, and unwelcome sentiments. The beginnings of speeches move much more slowly than later parts. A speaker who intends to lead an audience a long distance, or to hold the attention for a long time, will be extremely careful not to speak at the beginning so rapidly that he leaves them far behind.

      This does not mean that a speaker must drawl his words. One of our national characteristics is that we shorten our words in pronouncing them—ing generally loses the g, does not has become doesn't and quite incorrectly don't, yes is yeeh, etc. In many cases nothing more is required than the restoration of the word to its correct form. Some words can easily be lengthened because of the significance of their meanings. Others must be extended in order to carry. The best method of keeping down the rate of delivery is by a judicious use of pauses. Pauses are to the listener what punctuation marks are to the reader. He is not conscious of their presence, but he would be left floundering if they were absent. Some of the most effective parts of speeches are the pauses. They impart clearness to ideas, as well as aiding in emphasis and rhythm.

      Pitch. A second quality of speech is its pitch. This simply means its place in the musical scale. Speaking voices are high, medium, or low. Unfortunate tendencies of Americans seem to be for women to pitch their voices too high, with resultant strain and unpleasantness, and for men to pitch their voices too low, with resultant growls and gruffness. The voices of young children should be carefully guarded in this respect; so should the changing voices of growing boys. To secure a good pitch for the speaking voice the normal natural pitch of usual conversation should be found. Speech in that same pitch should be developed for larger audiences. Frequently a better pitch can be secured by slightly lowering the voice. If the natural pitch be too low for clearness or agreeableness it should be slightly raised—never more than is absolutely necessary.

      No connected group of words should be delivered in a monotonously level pitch. The voice must rise and fall. These changes must answer intelligently to the meaning of the material. Such variations are called inflections. The most disagreeable violations of required inflections are raising the voice where it should fall—as at the completion of an idea, and letting it drop where it should remain up—as before the completion of an idea, frequently answering to a comma. Other variations of pitch depend upon emphasis.

      Emphasis. Emphasis is giving prominence to a word or phrase so that its importance is impressed upon a listener. This result is most easily secured by contrast. More force may be put into its delivery than the rest of the speech. The word may be made louder or not so loud. The voice may be pitched higher or lower. The word may be lengthened. Pauses will make it prominent. In speaking, combinations of these are employed to produce emphasis.

      While all qualities of speech are important, emphasis is of cardinal value. Listeners will never recall everything that a speaker has said. By a skilful employment of emphasis he will put into their consciousness the main theme of his message, the salient arguments of his contention, the leading motives of action. Here again is that close interdependence of manner and material referred to in the preceding chapter. In later chapters will be discussed various methods of determining and securing emphasis of larger sections than mere words and phrases.

      Phrasing. Somewhat related to emphasis is phrasing. This is the grouping together of words, phrases, clauses, and other units so that their meaning and significance may be easily grasped by a listener. As has been already said, pauses serve as punctuation marks for the hearer. Short pauses correspond to commas, longer ones to colons and semi-colons, marked ones to periods. Speakers can by pauses clearly indicate the conclusions of sections, the completion of topics, the passage from one part of the material to another, the transfer of attention from one subject to its opposite. Within smaller range pauses can add delightful variety to delivery as they can signally reinforce the interpretation. No speaker should fall into the habit of monotonously letting his pauses mark the limit of his breath capacity, nor should he take any regular phrase, clause, or sentence length to be indicated by pauses. In this as in all other aspects variety is the charm of speech.

      Enunciation. No matter what handicaps a person may have he may overcome them to secure a distinct, agreeable enunciation. Care in enunciating words will enable a speaker to be heard almost anywhere. It is recorded that John Fox, a famous preacher of South Place Chapel, London, whose voice was neither loud nor strong, was heard in every part of Covent Garden Theatre, seating 3500, when he made anti-corn-law orations, by the clearness with which he pronounced the final consonants of the words he spoke.

      One of the orators best known to readers is Edmund Burke, whose speeches are studied as models of argumentative arrangement and style. Yet in actual speech-making Burke was more or less a failure because of the unfortunate method of his delivery. Many men markedly inferior in capacity to Burke overcame disadvantageous accidents, but he was frequently hurried and impetuous. Though his tones were naturally sonorous, they were harsh; and he never divested his speech of a strong Irish accent. Then, too, his gestures were clumsy. These facts will explain to us who read and study leisurely these masterpieces why they failed of their purpose when presented by their gifted but ineffective author.

      Pronunciation. Enunciation depends to a great degree upon pronunciation. The pronunciation of a word is no fixed and unchangeable thing. Every district of a land may have its peculiar local sounds, every succeeding generation may vary the manner of accenting a word. English people today pronounce schedule with a soft ch sound. Program has had its accent shifted from the last to the first syllable. Many words have two regularly heard pronunciations—neither, advertisement, Elizabethan, rations, oblique, route, quinine, etc. Fashions come and go in pronunciation as in all other human interests. Some sounds stamp themselves as carelessnesses or perversions at once and are never admitted into educated,

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