Public Speaking

190 CHAPTER 14^ Delivering Your Speech

Making eye contact can be difficult at first. It is tempting to look at your notes, the

floor in front of you, the back wall, or out the window—all gazes that communicate dis-

comfort. Here are some tips for developing effective eye contact:

•   Look in at least three general directions: at the listeners directly in front of you,

those to the left, and those to the right. Because of your peripheral vision, you can

generally keep most listeners within your vision as your gaze changes direction.

•   If your audience is sitting in a rectangular shape, mentally divide the group into a tic-

tac-toe–like grid, and make eye contact with a friendly face in each grid.^26 This will

help you look at various people within the room, not just at one or two.

•   Hold your gaze with an individual for three to five seconds; finish a thought or idea

before you look at someone else.^27

•   Resist the urge to make more eye contact with listeners you perceive as more power-

ful. In the classroom, don’t just zero in on your instructor; in the workplace, don’t

focus on your boss’s reactions at the expense of other listeners.

•   Keep in mind that some people don’t like to be looked at, perhaps out of shyness;

perhaps for cultural reasons, they’ve been taught to avoid direct eye contact. If you

sense your gaze makes someone uncomfortable, just scan in the general direction, but

don’t focus on that person’s eyes.^28

Expectations common in the United States are not universally applicable. For

instance, Japanese speakers use less direct eye contact, and it is not unusual to see listen-

ers with downcast or closed eyes at a meeting or a conference because this demonstrates

attentiveness and agreement rather than rejection, disinterest, or disagreement.^29

Vary Your Vocal Behaviors

Vocalics, also known as paralinguistics, deals with all aspects of spoken language

except the words themselves—including things such as voice quality, pitch variation, and

speech rate. Because of vocal cues, whenever you hear a voice on the radio, you can eas-

ily tell whether the speaker is young or old, male or female, a southerner or northerner,

a native or nonnative speaker of English. Often you can detect moods such as boredom,

hostility, or enthusiasm. This section discusses two major aspects of vocalics related to

public speaking: pronunciation and vocal variation.

Work on Clear Pronunciation

Pronunciation, the way you actually say words, includes articulation and stress.

Articulation is the way you say individual sounds, such as these or zese, bird or boid.

Some speakers reverse sounds, saying aks instead of ask, for example, or nuculer for

nuclear. Stress is the way you accent syllables within words—poe-LEESE (police) or

POE-leese. Some people alter both articulation and stress; for instance, the word

comparable can be pronounced two ways: COM-purr-uh-bul or come-PARE-uh-bul.

Your articulation often discloses your region of origin, ethnicity, and social status.

For instance, regional differences include the drawn-out vowels typical of the “southern

drawl” and the r added by many Bostonians to the end of words. Ethnic dialects such

as Appalachian English or African American English have distinctive articulation and

stress patterns. And the accents of nonnative English speakers reflect patterns from their

first language. Links between social status and pronunciation form the premise for the

classic movie My Fair Lady. Although Eliza Doolittle says the same words as Professor

Higgins, her pronunciation marks her as a member of the lower class. By changing her

pronunciation (as well as her dress and grooming), she eventually passes as a Hungarian

princess.

vocalics or paralinguistics
all aspects of spoken lan-
guage except the words

articulation the way you
enunciate or say specific
sounds, an element of
pronunciation

stress accenting syllables
or words

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