3 Speeches and speech-making

To round off this initial exploration of our key terms, we will look at an aspect of language use where voices and texts converge. The ancient art of rhetoric, in which a speaker employs eloquent devices to achieve persuasive effects, was an important element of a university education in the Middle Ages, and it is still very much alive today in the public sphere. Speeches by figures such as politicians are usually carefully crafted affairs, designed to be spoken, but relying on a written script. Analysing the construction of a speech, and its manner of delivery, can give interesting insights into the techniques of rhetoric, but what matters most of all in any situation where a speech is being made is the audience. The audience, and therefore the context for and the purpose in speaking, will shape not only what is said, but how it is said.

The idea of ‘audience’ is, of course, crucial in any form of communication, and as you work through this course you will frequently be thinking about the audiences (or readers) for written texts. But for the purposes of the next activity we will move away from the printed page so that we can listen to some examples of famous speeches, and begin to analyse their effects.

Listen to the following audio, ‘Speeches and speech-making’, and then answer the questions below.

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Transcript: Speeches and speech-making

Presenter

Great speeches like this one from the American Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Junior have moved, persuaded and rallied people for generations. But there are some fundamental elements that go into making a speech great. Simon Lancaster, one of the country’s leading speech writers reveals some of these basic rules which date back to ancient Greece.

Simon Lancaster

The master of rhetoric was Aristotle back in around 350 BC and he wrote this wonderful text called ‘Rhetoric’ which to me is still the bible. Aristotle said that rhetoric was based upon three things. You have ethos, which is the character of the speaker, his credibility, whether or not the audience trust him. And then you have pathos, which is the emotions of the audience. And then you have logos, which is the reasoning of the argument.

Presenter

Rhetoric, the art of persuading and pleasing people, was a valued part of a traditional education, and many of the key elements of rhetoric still hold good to this day. Tom Clarke is the editor of ‘Historic Twentieth-century Speeches’.

Tom Clarke

Traditionally, rhetoric was an elite activity. What changed it was the advent of democracy, where suddenly the elite had to reach out beyond their own in order to try and change people’s minds. The modern age in rhetoric really begins with an address that lasted only two minutes in 1863 at Gettysburg.

Presenter

Abraham Lincoln delivered the famous Gettysburg Address during the American Civil War in 1863. It stands out for its simplicity and contains all the aspirations that a modern democracy strives for.

Tom Clarke

It marked a turning point in the way that the elite, if you like, or the powerful, the politicians, communicated with the public at large, and it was just a wonderful simple speech. It was something like 261 words in total and 205 of those were one syllable, and I love it because of that. But of course it had that terrific sound bite to die for, about government of the people by the people for the people, which is technically a work of genius.

Presenter

However clever the rhetoric or skilful the speaker, Tom Clarke believes that a speech is remembered only if it captures the zeitgeist, the spirit of the time.

Tom Clarke

I think that the speeches that we really remember are those that for us define a personality, or those that in some cases demolish a personality, or rally a cause in a way that it’s not been rallied before, and so we can look back then and identify the speech as something that changed history.

Barack Obama

But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.

Presenter

Barack Obama speaking in January 2008, after he won Iowa’s democratic nomination in the race for the American Presidential Election.

Tom Clarke

That had a ring of authenticity about it both because he wasn’t white and also because it was of course true. Every black activist, every white racist, had said that this day would never come, and him contradicting what everyone had agreed on before that, simply by saying it came from him, and it moved the audience and it defined the moment.

Presenter

In the UK the early 1980s was a time of mass unemployment and the government’s popularity was at its lowest. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rallied her Conservative Party and gave her most famous speech. It’s remembered mainly because it encapsulated a historical moment that defines her to this day.

Margaret Thatcher

We shall not be diverted from our course. To those waiting with baited breath for that favourite media catchphrase ‘the U turn’, I have only one thing to say. You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.

Tom Clarke

Borrowing this very obscure reference from the theatre about ‘the lady’s not for burning’, she used this ‘the lady’s not for turning’ line, which got captured in all the media and was run away at the time. And also calling herself the Iron Lady of the Western world – something that the Russians had been referring to her as, which she then turned to her own advantage. All these images of strength she pulled together in response to the events she was saying and created a caricature, which wasn’t entirely flattering, but was very much to her advantage, and it was one that lives on to this day really.

Presenter

Women are under-represented in the pantheon of great recorded speeches. Tom Clarke:

Tom Clarke

Speeches that we remember tend to be made by leaders, and leaders tend to reflect who’s got the power at any one time. I should just add, however, one of the really great rhetoricians of our time, Tony Benn, always says that the best speeches ever heard given in his life was by someone who had never given a speech before which was a wife of one of the miners during the 1984 Miners’ Strike.

Miner’s Wife

I believe that if you shout long enough and loud enough people will listen. I’m going to shout long and I’m going to shout loud.

Tom Clarke

It does make the point that you can have a great speech that might not have great surroundings, and will make an impression on individuals.

Miner’s Wife

I’ve only one message now and that is for Mrs Thatcher and her government. Men, women and families are together now, and you’ve got one hell of a bloody fight on your hands.

Presenter

There are several rhetorical devices from which great speeches are constructed. Simon Lancaster:

Simon Lancaster

So you have the rule of three. A famous example of this is ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’. And this creates an illusion of completeness and finality, so if you want an argument to appear cut and dried then you use the rule of three. It makes arguments sound completely final, beyond a doubt.

Presenter

The American President, John F. Kennedy, delivering his powerful inaugural address in 1961:

John F. Kennedy

Not a new balance of power, but a new world of law where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.

Simon Lancaster

Another great technique is imagery, and the power of metaphor in particular. Metaphor works on two levels. On a basic level it illuminates and abstracts issue. But crucially the second level it works at is its persuasive ability: that it can put an audience into a particular frame of mind without them even realising what’s going on. If you think about the history of the world since the Second World War, you can tell it through metaphor. So, the Iron Curtain, to the Cold War, to the Wind of Change, to the Swinging Sixties, to the Winter of Discontent, to the Iron Lady, to the Axis of Evil and the Smoking Gun.

Presenter

The ‘Wind of Change’ was a phrase coined by the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in a speech given to the South African Parliament in 1960, which signalled the end of Britain’s imperial ambitions in Africa.

Harold Macmillan

The most striking of all the impressions that I have formed since I left London a month ago is of the strength of this African national consciousness. The wind of change is blowing through this continent and whether we like it or not its growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

Simon Lancaster

By using the metaphor of African nationalism as wind, and using a metaphor of nature, he was reinforcing the view, or trying to create the view that we couldn’t stop it because we all understand that forces of nature are unstoppable. And so by saying the ‘wind of change’, he was saying it’s just going to happen. That was the argument he was making to the British people. There is nothing we can do about this. We must just let African nationalism happen. We must dismantle the empire.

Harold Macmillan

And this tide of national consciousness, which is now rising in Africa, is a fact of which you and we are ultimately responsible.

Simon Lancaster

It’s very interesting that de Gaulle in France, who was also faced with the challenge of African nationalism, used a very different metaphor, and that’s because he believed that African nationalism could be stopped. And he used the metaphor of the insurgents as vermin. And so what do we do with vermin? We exterminate vermin. Another really powerful rhetorical device is the technique of contrast and ‘To be or not to be’ is probably the greatest example of contrast from Shakespeare, who was himself a master rhetorician.

John F. Kennedy

Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.

Presenter

Contrast was a technique which President John F. Kennedy used to great effect.

John F. Kennedy

And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

Simon Lancaster

Contrast works because it heightens our senses. It makes us feel more alert, and we are more used to thinking of things in twos. So when things are presented in twos, it makes our ears prick up and we are more likely to listen.

Presenter

Connecting with an audience is one of the most critical aspects of great speech making.

Simon Lancaster

There are a number of ways that an orator can establish a rapport with an audience or win their approval if you like, and one of the first and easiest ways is flattery – that no one ever objects to being told that they are brilliant.

Barack Obama

I know that you didn’t do this for me. You did this because you believed in the most American of ideas that in the face of impossible odds people who love this country can change it.

Simon Lancaster

Also empathy is just very important: showing that you feel what the audience feels or you understand what the audience understands. And also it’s very important just having some common ground with the audience. I think Barack Obama is the king, and his trick was not necessarily that he was agreeing with everyone. It was creating the impression that he was agreeing with everyone. And he did that by creating such deliberately blank phrases that anyone could interpret into them whatever they wanted to.

Barack Obama

And those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the people – ‘Yes, we can’.

Simon Lancaster

‘Yes, we can’. What does that mean? Everyone’s going to hear that phrase and think something very, very different. Of course it’s just …, it’s a feeling. It’s a positive statement. But to some people that will mean ‘Yes, we can get the house we want’. To others ‘Yes, we can get the job we want’. To others it might just feel good. The point is, everyone will read it a different way. Another great Obama line: ‘They said this day would never come’. What day? Who said?

Barack Obama

They said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high.

Simon Lancaster

And so ambiguity is often a very powerful device as well, because people will listen to things and reach their own interpretations. They’ll kind of take a sentence and then fit it in with all of their values, beliefs and opinions and twist it and hear what they want to hear. One example of this is Tony Blair’s ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. What a great sentence. If you’re a ‘hang ’em, castrate ’em’ kind of guy, then you will just hear the first three words of that and think ‘Fantastic. He agrees with me’. If you’re a more liberal, ‘sympathy for the downtrodden’, then you’re going to hear the ‘tough on the causes of crime’. The kind of ‘Oh, it’s not really their fault’. And so people will read different things into a sentence like that, and yet that shows empathy.

Presenter

Another powerful element in establishing a rapport with an audience is call and response. This featured in many of the speeches of Martin Luther King Junior.

Martin Luther King

Some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. And some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution.

Simon Lancaster

It created a really powerful impression of a dialogue. It had a kind of call and response strategy going on in there.

Martin Luther King

Every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rock faces will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

Simon Lancaster

It’s a genuine dialogue with the audience. It’s not just a one-sided monologue.

Presenter

Making an emotional connection with an audience is one of the most important elements of a successful speech.

Earl Spencer

For all the status, the glamour, the applause, Diana remained throughout a very insecure person at heart.

Presenter

Earl Spencer, though not known for his skills as an orator, is remembered for his eulogy in 1997 at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, when he expressed concern for her children.

Earl Spencer

On behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men.

Simon Lancaster

He decided to play up rather than playing down the emotion in a way that caused tremendous waves right round the world. And it felt so out of time and so fairy tale, and just at the point where Diana was becoming the fairy tale. I think it really kind of hammed up the emotion at a time when the royal family had been a bit stand offish and people wanted to have their emotions ‘bigged up’ rather than played down. And so I think he played to the audience very well, and a lot of people remember it.

Earl Spencer

It is a point to remember that, of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this: a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was in the end the most hunted person of the modern age.

Simon Lancaster

And he talked about the origins of her name. Diana is the ancient god of hunting, thereby suggesting that she had been hunted by the paparazzi and perhaps hadn’t enjoyed the protection that she might have been entitled to. So his task in that speech, as far as he was concerned, was both to raise his own standing by getting on the right side of the public emotion – that he did. But also to kind of instil in memory the version of Diana that he wanted remembered, as this vulnerable person who didn’t have the support that she could have expected. And on both counts he succeeded.

Presenter

Winston Churchill is perhaps the most famous orator of the modern era. He proved the power of rhetoric to rally a nation at a time of war, delivering this rousing speech to the House of Commons in June 1940, at a critical point in the Second World War.

Winston Churchill

We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.

Simon Lancaster

He repeats a phrase or word or clause within a particular sentence, and does so in order to show that you are fixated about an issue. That you feel very emotional about it. Of course he could have said ‘We will fight on the streets – comma – sands – comma – beaches – comma’. But that would have lost the effect and by emphasising ‘We will fight. We will fight. We will fight’, that is actually all the audience will then hear.

End transcript: Speeches and speech-making

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Speeches and speech-making