The previous chapter was used to show what means orators employed in constructing their oratory, and this chapter will be devoted to showing students how to adopt and use those means. It would be of little use to tell students of oratory how others made their effects unless they are shown how they can produce equal results; therefore this chapter will be a chapter of hows. It will consider the proper arrangement of all the forms of creating and delivering the oratorical message, and deal at length with the conveying of the thought by means of the putting together of words and interpreting it through an understanding and an application of inflection and emphasis. It has been shown that oratory, through all its existence, has been created by means of the effective use of negative and positive words, phrases, and sentences; correct application of apposition and opposition; proper grouping of words and phrases in the form of series; the driving home and clinching of points; and many other ways of conveying thought by means of speech, and that these means have been passed from Gorgias to Isaeus, from Isaeus to Demosthenes, from Demosthenes to Cicero, and from these masters of old transmitted to Webster, Clay, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Bryan, Watterson, and the other able and careful public speakers of our day. Not only will the arrangement of words be thoroughly considered, but their utterance will receive much attention, the aim of the author being to show how, by the inflection, emphasis, and tone of the living voice, thought can be interpreted, and an impression made by the speaker on the minds and actions of others by means of the spoken word. Attention will also be given to getting the mentality into the voice, making the soul of the speaker shine through the medium that is to make the thought apparent to the listener.
inflection
What is inflection? Inflection is a bending of the voice.
How many inflections are there? Two. The rising and the falling.
What does the rising inflection signify? The rising inflection, in the main, signifies uncertainty. Whatever is uncertain, negative, qualified, conditional, incomplete, or continuous, requires the rising inflection; as,
Uncertainty. A government having at its command the armies, the fleets, and the revenues of Great Britain, might possibly hold Ireland by the sword. . . . But, to govern Great Britain by the sword—so wild a thought has never, I will venture to say, occurred to any public man of any party.
—Macaulay
In this example the first sentence is uncertain because Ireland might possibly be held by the sword, but it is not certain that it could be. The second sentence is assertive, and requires the falling inflection.
Negative. He have arbitrary power! My Lords, the East India Company have not arbitrary power to give him; the King has no arbitrary power to give him; your Lordships have not; nor the Commons; nor the whole legislature. We have no arbitrary power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing which neither any man can hold nor any man can give.
—Burke