220 10.2 IntroducIng Your Speech
Three corporate executives were trying to define the word fame.
One said, “Fame is getting invited to the White House to see the
President.”
The second one said, “Fame is being invited to the White House and
while you are visiting, the phone rings and he doesn’t answer it.”
The third executive said, “You’re both wrong. Fame is being invited
to the White House to visit with the President when his Hot Line rings.
He answers it, listens a minute, and then says, ‘Here, it’s for you!’ ”
Being asked to speak today is like being in the White House and the
call’s for me.^14suBTle huMor Humor need not always be the slapstick comedy of the
Three Stooges. It does not even have to be a joke. It may take more subtle forms,
such as irony or incredulity. When General Douglas MacArthur, an honor grad-
uate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, returned to West Point in 1962,
he delivered his now-famous “Farewell to the Cadets.” He opened that speech
with this humorous anecdote:
As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, “Where
are you bound for, General?” And when I replied, “West Point,” he
remarked, “Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?”^15
MacArthur’s brief story caught the audience’s attention and made them laugh—
in short, it was an effective way to open the speech.
huMor and diVersiTY If your audience is linguistically diverse or com-
posed primarily of listeners whose first language is not English, you might want to
choose an introduction strategy other than humor. Because much humor is created
by verbal plays on words, people who do not speak English as their native lan-
guage might not perceive the humor in an anecdote or quip that you intended to be
funny. And humor rarely translates well, as is evident from the following anecdote:... an Australian news anchor who was interviewing the Dalai Lama
with the aid of an interpreter opened the exchange with a joke: “The Dalai
Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, “Can you make me one with
everything?” His Holiness’s baffled state, viewed by nearly two million
people on YouTube, presents a lesson in the risks of translating humor.^16
Just as certain audiences may preclude your use of a humorous introduc-
tion, so may certain subjects—for example, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and
rape. Used with discretion, however, humor can provide a lively, interesting,
and appropriate introduction for many speeches.
Questions
Remember the pet peeves listed at the beginning of this chapter? Another pet
peeve for some is beginning a speech with a question (“How many of you... ?”).
The problem is not so much the strategy itself but the lack of mindfulness in the
“How many of you... ?” phrasing.