Public Speaking: Principles and Practice

by Irvah Lester Winter

The most important, because the most fundamental, principle to be borne in mind is that gesture should be made to enforce, not the superficial, or incidental, ideas appearing in a statement, but the ideas which lie behind the form of expression and are the real basis, or inhere in the fundamental purpose, of the speaker's discourse.

At the close of Senator Thurston's speech on intervention in behalf of Cuba, there is picturesque language for impressing the contention that force is justified in a worthy cause. The speaker cites graphically examples of force at Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, Shiloh, Chattanooga, and Lookout Heights. The student is here very likely to be led astray by the fine opportunity to make gesture. He may vividly see and picture the snows of Valley Forge, marked with bloodstained feet, and the other scenes suggested, but forget about the central idea, the purpose behind all the vivid forms of expression. Graphic, detailed gestures may have the effect of making the pictures in themselves the main object. The action here should be informal, unstudied, and merely remotely suggestive. The speaker should keep to his one central idea, and keep with his audience. Otherwise the speech will be insincere and purposeless, perhaps absurd. The fundamental, not the superficial, should determine the action. Young speakers almost invariably pick out words or phrases, suggesting the possibility of a gesture, and give exact illustration to them, as if the excellence of gesture were in itself an object, when really the thing primarily to be enforced is not these incidental features in the form of expression, but the underlying idea of the whole passage. It is as if the steeple were made out of proportion to the church, or a hat out of proportion to the man. This misconception of what gesture really means is doubtless, in large measure, the cause of making platform recitation often false and offensive. The remedy does not lie in omitting gesture altogether, as some seem to think, but in making gesture simple and true.

Finally, let the student remember that he goes to the platform, not to make a splendid speech and receive praise for a brilliant exhibition of his art, but that he goes there because the platform is a convenient place from which to tell the people something he has to say. Let him think it nothing remarkable that he should be there; let him so bear himself, entering with simplicity, honesty, earnestness, and modesty, into his work, that no one will think much about how his work is done. Spirited oratory, with the commanding presence, the sweeping action, and an overmastering force of utterance, may at times be called forth, but these are given to a man out of his subject and by the occasion; they are not to be assumed by him merely because he is before an audience, or as necessary features of speech-making. Let the student speak, first and always, as a self-respecting, thinking man, earnest and strong, but self-controlled and sensible.

PLATFORM PRACTICE

THE FORMAL ADDRESS

The selections in the several sections for platform practice are to be used for applying, in appropriate combination, the principles heretofore worked out, one by one. The first group provides practice in the more formal style. The occasion of the formal address requires, in large degree, restraint and dignity. The thought is elevated; the mood serious, in some cases subdued, the form of expression exact and firm. The delivery should correspond. The tone should be, in some degree, ennobled; the movement deliberate, and comparatively even and measured; the modulation not marked by striking variations in pitch; the pauses rather regular, and the gesture always sparing, perhaps wholly omitted. The voice should be generally pure and fine; the enunciation should be finished and true. Whatever action there may be should be restrained, well poised, deliberate, with some degree of grace. In general it should be felt that carelessness or looseness or aggressiveness or undue demonstrativeness would be out of harmony with the spirit of the occasion. Good taste must be exercised at every step, and the audience should be addressed, from the outset, as in sympathy with the speaker and ready at once to approve. The spirit and manner of contention is out of place.

In this style of discourse the liability to failure lies in the direction of dullness, monotony, lack of vitality and warmth. This is because the feeling is deep and still; is an undercurrent, strong but unseen. This restrained, repressed feeling is the most difficult fittingly to express. In this kind of speech some marring of just the right effect is difficult to avoid. Simplicity, absolute genuineness, are the essential qualities. The ideas must be conveyed with power and significance, in due degree; but nothing too much is particularly the watchword regarding the outward features of the work.

THE PUBLIC LECTURE

In the public lecture the element of entertainment enters prominently. The audience, at first in a passive state, must be awakened, and taken on with the speaker. Probably it must be instructed, perhaps amused. The speaker must make his own occasion. He has no help from the circumstance of predisposition among his auditors. He must compel, or he must win; he must charm or thrill; or he must do each in turn. Animation, force, beauty, dramatic contrast, vividness, variety, are the qualities that will more or less serve, according to the style of the composition. Aptness in the story or anecdote, facility in graphic illustration, readiness in expressing emotion, happiness in the imitative faculty, for touching off the eccentric in character or incident, are talents that come into play, and in the exercise of these, gesture of course has an important place.

The lecture platform is perhaps the only field, with possibly the exception of what is properly the after-dinner speech, wherein public speaking may be viewed as strictly an art, something to be taken for its own sake, wherein excellence in the doing is principally the end in view. This means, generally, that individual talent, and training in all artistic requirements, count for more than the subject or any "accidents of office," in holding the auditor's interest. An animated and versatile style can be cultivated by striving to make effective the public lecture.