Public Speaking

Use Language Effectively (^155)
The more distinct your word choices, the more vivid your images, and the more precise
your meanings.
This excerpt from British author Doris Lessing’s lecture to the Nobel Peace Prize
Committee^22 is exceptional for its use of concrete language:
[I’m in] northwest Zimbabwe early in the eighties, and I am visiting a friend who
was a teacher in a school in London.... [H]is school ... consists of four large
brick rooms side by side, put straight into the dust, one two three four, with a half
room at one end, which is the library.... [T]here is no atlas, or globe in the school,
no textbooks, no exercise books, or biros [ballpoint pens], in the library are no
books of the kind the pupils would like to read: they are tomes from American
universities, ... rejects from white libraries, detective stories, or with titles like
Weekend in Paris or Felicity Finds Love.
Each carefully chosen word presents concrete sensory imagery that helps you place
yourself into the sights and the emotions of the setting.
In contrast, vague words are imprecise, with indefinite boundaries. For example,
what is large? Small? Compared to what? A large glass of orange juice is not on the
same scale as a large barn. One way to minimize your use of vague words is to choose
details that specify or illustrate what you mean. For instance, if you talk about a small
inheritance, give a dollar figure that shows how you’re defining small. One listener may
think $500 is small whereas another has $50,000 in mind.
Build in Repetition
Repetition is common in an oral style. One strategy is to repeat the same word or phrase
at the beginning of clauses or sentences. For example, President Reagan’s tribute^23
to the space shuttle Challenger astronauts included these repetitive phrases: “We will
cherish each of their stories, stories of triumph and bravery, stories of true American
heroes.” Another type of repetition restates the same phrase at the end of a clause or
a sentence. Lincoln’s famous phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the
people” is an example. This excerpt from a commencement address is full of repetition.
You can imagine the speaker gesturing, varying his voice, and using effective pauses to
drive home his points:^24
I came in the house one day when my younger son Asa was playing the piano.
Extraordinary piano player. Playing this Rachmaninoff piece. And I stood at—
we had this little small house, big grand piano, took up the whole living room.
And I stood in the back door. Couldn’t see Asa, he was on the other side of the
wall. But the whole house was, like, reverberating like this, just reverberating.
And I realized as I stood there that the house was not reverberating with the piano.
The house was not reverberating with Rachmaninoff. The house was reverberating
with Asa. Asa was filling the house. That piano just sits there. Rachmaninoff is just
little dots on a piece of paper until he puts his hands on that keyboard and then
the music happens.
Speakers often repeat words, but reverse them in a second phrase. (The technical
term for this is antimetabole.) Some examples include:^25
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. (Carl Sagan, scientist)
I don’t throw darts at balloons; I throw balloons at darts. (Joe Montana, quarterback)
Eat to live, not live to eat. (Socrates, philosopher)
President Kennedy’s inaugural address, printed in Appendix B, includes several
famous examples of antimetabole including, “Ask not what your country can do for you;
ask what you can do for your country.”
vague word imprecise term
that has indefinite boundaries
antimetabole saying words
in one phrase, and reversing
them in the next phrase
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