When used effectively, repetition in a speech

Chapter 8

Sierra wants to give a speech about sports. She has some great ideas about the role of sports in modern society and has done the research to make her points. But she has a problem: There is serious competition for her speech—sports! Sports, in-person and televised, are exciting, and she knows that 's why people like sports so much. But that means they won't be interested in a bunch of dry arguments and data about sports. So Sierra has a public speaking challenge: How can she give a sports talk that will be nearly as exciting as the real thing? Sierra has to make the right choices about verbal style.

Overview

Speakers often worry about the way they say words— which is important (note that delivery is the subject of the next chapter). But the words you choose to say are just as, or more, important. In ordinary life, we don't think about our words too much; we just talk. Yet, when we want our words to have impact, we should choose them carefully. In addition, we have to take responsibility for our words, and words sometimes can be hurtful or offensive. In a public speaking situation, when we expect people to remember our words and take them seriously, we will have to spend more time thinking about them and choosing them.

MindTap®

Start with a warm-up activity about Sierra 's speech, and review the chapter 's Learning Objectives.

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS STYLE, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Now that you have figured out the basic thrust of what you want to say and how you want to organize and support it, the next challenge is to figure out exactly how to express the ideas you want to convey—in other words, the considerations of Style , the wording choices you will make to achieve the goals of your speech.

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style Word choices made to achieve the goals of a speech.

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MindTap®

Read, highlight, and take notes online.

This chapter will give you a set of stylistic techniques for making word choices that you can integrate into your speeches. We can't tell you how to phrase everything in your speech, because so much about phrasing is unique to you as a speaker and to the audience you are addressing. But we can offer a number of tried-and-true stylistic forms that have been used effectively in great speeches. In the next chapter, we'll complete our discussion of delivery by discussing the nonverbal parts of speaking; of course, there is sense in which that is a kind of “style,” but for this chapter (and this book), “style” means the choice of words and use of language.

Style exploits one of the most powerful features of language—that there are many different ways of saying the same thing. For instance, you could say, “It 's hot outside, and I'm tired.” Or you might say, “It 's an oven outside, and I'm beat.” Or perhaps you like more formal expressions: “Oh, this insufferable heat—it 's left me feeling fatigued.” If you try, you probably could come up with dozens of different ways of saying the same thing.

Expressing your thoughts in words is an art of making choices. You have choices about how you say what you want to say, and these choices are important because different choices can convey different impressions about your topic. Striking just the right verbal style for your topic and the occasion will help you achieve your speaking goals. Perhaps you want to evoke a straightforward informational tone; perhaps you want to convey some particularly significant material in a playful and even artful way. Whatever you want to achieve, the style you choose matters.1

CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE STYLE

No matter how wonderful a speaker 's delivery may be, if she begins her speech, “La oss taler i dag om problemet med nettkriminalitet,” you won't have any idea that this is a speech about cybercrime—unless you speak Norwegian. No amount of work on topic choice, organizational patterns, or delivery can make up that gap: Language matters. Language matters in another important respect: The word choices that you make in expressing yourself also define the character of your ideas for your audience. Language matters not only in being understood, but also in being interesting, compelling, and in convincing your audience that you're worth listening to.

The study of verbal style, how to choose and use the right words, is central to communicating effectively. The second part of this chapter will discuss how you can choose words to achieve your communication goals, but, first, we will cover the basics. To be an effective speaker, you will have to use language that is concrete and lively, reduces abstraction and makes ideas come alive for listeners, and is respectful and doesn't unintentionally exclude some audience members. We'll talk about each of these characteristics in turn.

Speaking in Images

Evoking strong images is a crucial persuasive technique. Why say, “It was hot outside” when you can say, “It was like an oven outside—if you cracked an egg on the pavement, you could stand there and watch it sizzle on the hot asphalt.” New evidence in cognitive science gives us reason to prefer the second formulation over the first. When you describe a vivid visually rich image, your audience will be able to literally imagine seeing the egg frying on the pavement, and this is much more effective than saying that it 's hot outside. Why? Well, studies in cognition now say that when people can call up a visual image of a thing, they are engaging your content in two distinct ways: They're both calling up the idea of “hot” (they can recall a time when they were hot), and they can picture the egg frying on the pavement.

This is what cognitive scientists call “multi-modal” engagement. Instead of just relying on the concept “hot,” your audience can recall both the physical sensation of being extremely hot, and can call up the visual image of the egg frying on the pavement. This multi-modal engagement, which activates more parts of the brain than just the idea of “hot,” helps your audience to engage your content in at least three distinct ways: the idea, the feeling, and the visual image. Engaging lots of different brain functions is a good way to get your audience to bring to bear ideas, images, and experiences, to really experience an idea in more direct ways than just the concept. If you want to create conditions for maximum persuasion, think about the ways that what you are saying can evoke ideas, experiences, and images that engage the audience with your content.

For more information see:

Elizabeth El Refaie, Reconsidering “image metaphor” in the light of perceptual simulation theory. Metaphor and Symbol, 30(1), 2015.

Concrete and Lively Language

Holding the interest of the audience and making yourself understood depends, to a large extent, on making abstract ideas and relationships concrete so the audience can more clearly imagine what you're talking about. When people complain that a speech was “dry,” they usually mean that the material was presented in a way that was abstract and theoretical rather than concrete and vivid. Concepts, numbers, ideas, and arguments couched in language that creates a picture in audience members' mind become almost as visual as a movie, and the speech, in turn, is more interesting.

Painting images with words—detailed, three-dimensional, persuasively real images—is a skill you can learn. For instance, compare these two sentences. Which one creates a picture in your mind?

1. He cut it up.

2. Swiftly and silently, Jim hacked the watermelon into small pieces.

Clearly, sentence 2 provides much more detail than sentence 1 does. The mental images that audience members construct from sentence 2 would be more similar than their mental images from sentence 1.

If you want to get people 's attention about sports, you might try:

Sports are very exciting, with competition as well as highs and lows.

This isn't really interesting. You might think you knew it already, so what 's the point? Sierra faces this problem at the beginning of her speech, and here 's how she solves it:

It 's full of adrenaline rushes, blood, sweat, tears, cheers, pain, pleasure, joy, and everything in between. Whether it 's the roar of the crowd, the swish of the basket, the crack of the bat, or the sound of the buzzer, it 's something that we're all familiar with despite the heartbreaks and gut-wrenching defeats. We can never let go of one of the greatest things in the world: sports.

This language is exciting, full of images, motion, and a pleasing rhythm. This is the start to a speech that the audience will want to continue to hear. The language of public speaking is not the same as the language of everyday chitchat. Using language that departs somewhat from everyday speech, while remaining appropriate to your audience, makes the occasion special and can inspire listeners to pay closer attention.

Language that is interesting and lively is also easier to remember. Because self-persuasion is the best persuasion, the audience members must remember what you've said so they can mull it over later. Dry and abstract language won't help them do this. You must turn people 's ears into eyes so they will “see” what they're hearing.

TRY IT! MAKING LANGUAGE LIVELY

How could you make each of the following sentences more concrete and vivid?

• We should do something about immigration.

• U.S. consumers have a responsibility to reduce their environmental impact.

• Better nutrition is in everyone 's best interest.

Respectful Language

Because public speaking is designed with an audience—and a public—in mind, you have to speak in way that includes as many people as possible. You shouldn't, deliberately or acci-dently, make any audience members feel excluded by using language they find disrespectful. Off-color language and sexist and racist language can create disrespect and exclusion.

Off-Color Language Is it ever OK to use foul language? Of course, you can legally say whatever you like. But is it rhetorically smart to do so? In the vast majority of cases, you should avoid it.

The usual argument offered for using off-color language is that it helps speakers to convey the depth of emotion they feel about a topic or to bring in a bit of pathos they wouldn't be able to convey otherwise. It 's true that using, say, a four-letter word to describe a bad situation conveys a very different meaning than saying that it 's “disappointing.” But swearing almost always is a bad choice, for three reasons.

First, you can't know in advance the extent to which rude epithets might undermine your credibility with your audience members or get in the way of their hearing your argument. In general, the more you deviate from the speaking norms your specific audience expects, the more likely you will be to create unintended resistance.

Second, when we speak in public, we model how we think people ought to speak in public. What if audience members were to go away from your speech persuaded that foul language was the best way to convey the emotional frame of your topic? If they did, they might not all use the same careful judgments that you did in coming to your word choices, and the quality of public discourse would decline.

Third, many people see the use of foul language as a sign of disrespect toward the audience. As a result, it might make it difficult for you to build the kind of ethical relationship with your audience that you would like to have.

Sexist and Racist Language Our language carries assumptions and implications. We have to be sensitive to whether the assumptions of the words we use are respectful to everyone in our audience. For example, if you talk about “manpower” in your speech, it seems to imply that women aren't able to work or be productive, whereas talking about the “labor force” carries no such implication. Why not skip the implication? You don't believe it anyway The same reasoning applies to outdated terms such as fireman and policeman, for which you should substitute firefighter and police officer. Just as you wouldn't use hoys to refer to a group of college men, you shouldn't refer to female adults as girls. In some parts of the United States, guys is used in a gender-neutral way, so “you guys” can refer to both men and women, but you probably should avoid it in a speech, to avoid any misunderstanding.

Racist language includes disrespectful terms for races or ethnicities and common expressions that use the name of an ethnic or racial group in a derogatory way. Generalizations about a group of people also are unacceptable. When a speaker says, “All____people are talented in music,” the speaker may mean it to be a compliment, but this statement stereotypes people and denies their individuality.

Language that reduces individuals to a single characteristic is also disrespectful. When you talk about “the deaf” or “the blind” or “AIDS victims,” you've taken one characteristic and the essence of a group of people. Perhaps that characteristic is relevant to your speech, but people are much more than their disabilities or illnesses, and most prefer to be acknowledged as “people who are blind or have a visual impairment” rather than just “the blind.” Although some people believe that referring to “the gays” is acceptable, talking about the “gay community” is a more inclusive and respectful choice.

Chris Rock is one of the comedians who use four-letter words for humor, but what works late at night in a comedy club isn't appropriate in public speaking situations.

However, you use the techniques of verbal style discussed below to make your speech exciting and memorable, begin by striving to use language that is concrete, lively, and respectful to your audience.

CLASSIFYING VERBAL STYLE: FIGURES AND TROPES

Rhetoricians and linguists have proposed many theories of verbal style and many different systems for categorizing its elements. In this chapter, however, we'll cover just two special forms of speech that are especially useful for public speaking: the figure , or a change in the structure of a phrase or sentence that lends an ear-catching quality, and the trope , or a change in the way words and concepts are used that give them a new meaning.

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figure An ear-catching change in the structure of a phrase or sentence.

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trope A figure of speech that gives a new meaning for a word or concept.

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You probably already use some figures and tropes in your everyday speech. For instance, only animals have legs and feet, but we routinely refer to “the foot of a mountain” and “the leg of a chair.” These common metaphors are a kind of linguistic trope (sometimes called “dead” metaphors because they no longer strike us as metaphors). Some turns of speech, like these familiar images, pass by in conversation without drawing attention to their form, whereas others are uncommon and artful uses of language. This second group is what is important to public speakers.

FIGURES

Your goal in choosing figures for your speech is to use them deliberately to highlight noteworthy content. If you use a figure too frequently, it begins to draw attention to itself rather than to your content, and then it becomes only a distraction for your listeners. But with careful use, figural language can add significant persuasive value to your speech. Two useful types of figures are of repetition and of contrast.

Figures of Repetition

From our earliest days as conversationalists, we learn to avoid structured repetition of words or phrases. If we tell a friend that we're going shopping, for instance, we don't say, “I'm going to buy eggs. I'm going to buy milk. I'm going to buy ketchup.” We say, “I'm going to buy eggs, milk, and ketchup.” Yet, in public speaking, such repetition, even though it seems redundant, can be used to create structure, lend emphasis, and make words more memorable. A Roman rhetoric textbook, Rhetorica ad Herennium, noted that speakers who repeat words and phrases do so not because they are at a loss for words; instead, they are creating something powerful and beautiful: “For there inheres in the repetition an elegance which the ear can distinguish more easily than words can explain.”2

The following example repeats the phrase, “It takes...,” giving both emphasis and structure to the passage:

It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual.

It takes no survey to remove repressions.

—Harvey Milk, campaign speech for San Francisco Board of Supervisors, 1973. The works of Harvey Milk are owned by L. Stuart Milk and are used for the benefit of the Harvey Milk Foundation.

FAQ Can I use too much repetition?

Some of the most memorable speeches in U.S. history rely on repetition. For example, Martin Luther King 's “I Have a Dream” speech uses the word dream at least eight times. But one of the keys to effective repetition is to cluster repetitions in specific parts of the speech. Such a cluster, which may draw on a theme from earlier in the speech, gives the word or phrase more impact than if it were repeated throughout the whole speech.

You can repeat words, phrases, or sounds effectively, and at the beginning, middle, or end of sentences. Repeating initial sounds is called alliteration (“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”). Repeating final sounds is called rhyme (“Hickory, dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock”). Both of these repetitions of sounds are more common in poetry and song than in public speaking, which more often uses repeated words and phrases. Let 's look at a couple figures of repetition.

Grammatical Repetition Almost everyone knows the final words of President Abraham Lincoln 's Gettysburg Address:

… this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.