The power of Speech Delivery 13.1 255
The Power of Speech Delivery
13.1 Identify three reasons delivery is important to a public speaker.
The way you hold your notes, your gestures and stance, and your impatient ad-
justment of your glasses all contribute to the overall effect of your speech. One
study confirmed what you may have suspected; when a speaker’s delivery was
effective, the audience felt greater pleasure and had a more positive emotional
response than when the same speaker had poor delivery.^4
Nonverbal communication is communication other than through written
or spoken language that creates meaning for someone. Nonverbal factors such
as eye contact, posture, vocal quality, and facial expression play a major role
in the communication process. As much as 65 percent of the social meaning of
messages is based on nonverbal expression.^5 Why does your delivery have such
power to affect how your audience will receive your message? One reason is
that listeners expect a good speaker to provide good delivery. Your unspoken
message is also how you express your feelings and emotions to an audience.
Ultimately, audiences believe what they see more than what you say.
Listeners Expect Effective Delivery
In a public-speaking situation, nonverbal elements have an important influence
on the audience’s perceptions about a speaker’s effectiveness. Communication
researcher Judee Burgoon and her colleagues have developed a theory called
nonverbal expectancy theory. The essence of the theory is this: People have
certain expectations as to how you should communicate.^6 If you don’t behave
as your listeners think you should, your listeners will feel that you have vio-
lated their expectations. The theory predicts that if a listener expects you to have
effective delivery, and your delivery is poor, you will lose credibility. There is
evidence that although many speakers do not deliver speeches effectively, audi-
ences nevertheless expect a good speech to be well delivered.
AudIeNce-ceNtered delIvery As we have emphasized, audience mem-
bers with different cultural backgrounds will hold different assumptions about
how a speech should be presented. More than one hundred years ago, speak-
ers were taught to deliver orations using a more formal style of speaking than
most people prefer today. In newsreels of speakers during the early part of the
twentieth century, their gestures and movement seem stilted and unnatural be-
cause they were taught to use dramatic, planned gestures. If you are speaking to
an audience of a thousand people, using a microphone to reach the back of the
auditorium, your listeners may expect a more formal delivery style. But your
public-speaking class members would probably find it odd if you spoke to them
using a formal oratorical style that resembled the way a politician would have
addressed a political rally in 1910.
13.1