The Introduction and the Audience. When we turn from the material of the introduction or the speech we naturally consider the audience. Just as the salutations already listed in this chapter indicate how careful speakers are in adapting their very first words to the special demands of recognition for a single audience, so a study of introductions to speeches which have been delivered will support the same principle. A speech is made to affect a single audience, therefore it must be fitted as closely as possible to that audience in order to be effective. A city official invited to a neighborhood gathering to instruct citizens in the method of securing a children's playground in that district is not only wasting time but insulting the brains and dispositions of his listeners if he drawls off a long introduction showing the value of public playgrounds in a crowded city. His presence before that group of people proves that they accept all he can tell them on that topic. He is guilty of making a bad introduction which seriously impairs the value of anything he may say later concerning how this part of the city can induce the municipal government to set aside enough money to provide the open space and the apparatus. Yet this speech was made in a large American city by an expert on playgrounds.
People remembered more vividly his wrong kind of opening remarks than they did his advice concerning a method of procedure.
Effect of the Introduction upon the Audience. Many centuries ago a famous and successful Roman orator stipulated the purpose of an introduction with respect to the audience. Cicero stated that an introduction should render its hearers "benevolos, attentos, dociles"; that is, kindly disposed towards the speaker himself, attentive to his remarks, and willing to be instructed by his explanations or arguments. Not everyone has a pleasing personality but he can strive to acquire one. He can, perhaps, not add many attributes to offset those nature has given him, but he can always reduce, eradicate, or change those which interfere with his reception by others. Education and training will work wonders for people who are not blessed with that elusive quality, charm, or that winner of consideration, impressiveness. Self-examination, self-restraint, self-development, are prime elements in such a process. Great men have not been beyond criticism for such qualities. Great men have recognized their value and striven to rid themselves of hindrances and replace them by helps.
Every reader is familiar with Benjamin Franklin's account of his own method as related in his Autobiography, yet it will bear quotation here to illustrate this point:
While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English Grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter "finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon after I procured Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charmed with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter.... I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practised it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved. I continued this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced anything that may possibly be disputed, the words Certainly, Undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engaged in promoting; and as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat everyone of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fixed in your present opinions, modest, sensible men who do not love disputation will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by such a manner you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing your hearers, or to persuade those whose concurrence you desire. Pope says, judiciously:
"Men should be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown propos'd as things forgot;"
farther recommending to us
"To speak, tho' sure, with seeming diffidence."
Of course an audience must be induced to listen. The obligation is always with the speaker. He is appealing for consideration, he wants to affect the hearers, therefore he must have at his command all the resources of securing their respectful attention. He must be able to employ all the legitimate means of winning their attention. A good speaker will not stoop to use any tricks or devices that are not legitimate. A trick, even when it is successful, is still nothing but a trick, and though it secure the temporary attention of the lower orders of intellect it can never hold the better minds of an audience. Surprises, false alarms, spectacular appeals, may find their defenders. One widely reputed United States lawyer in speaking before audiences of young people used to advance theatrically to the edge of the stage, and, then, pointing an accusing finger at one part of the audience, declare in loud ringing tones, "You're a sneak!" It is questionable whether any attempt at arousing interest could justify such a brusque approach. Only in broadly comic or genuinely humorous addresses can it be said that the end justifies the means.