The Well-Spoken Woman (21 page)

It is used in all kinds of music today. Dance, contemporary and world music. In the U.K., France and Spain. It takes between three and five years to make one. It is made by specialized artisans in Europe. It is very difficult to tune. So, without further ado, would you like to hear it?
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Speaking to Persuade

If the informative speaker is a teacher, then a persuasive speaker is a leader. The persuasive speaker is asking for a commitment from the audience. The speaker's goal is to change the listener's views and urge a course of action in accordance with those beliefs. The persuasive speaker identifies the exact steps the audience should take, such as voting yes on a referendum, buying a new product, donating to a charity, or contacting their member of Congress.

Persuasive speeches often attempt to appeal to the listener's emotions and/or deeply held values. A consumer is urged to buy a home alarm
system to ensure her family's safety and security. A political candidate bases an appeal on the value of hard work by sharing a “pulled myself up by my bootstraps” story. Another common persuasive technique is the bandwagon effect. The speaker urges the audience to do or believe in something because “everyone else does.” Persuasive speeches are heard in nearly all forums where the audience has a hand in determining an outcome, such as political conventions, organizational business meetings, and sales presentations.

Robin Chase is a remarkable innovator and a bit of a transportation geek. In 2000 she used her MIT business training to found Zipcar Inc., now the world's largest car-sharing business. At a gathering of technology bigwigs, she explained why her customers—particularly women—are super satisfied with the company's product.

How does it feel to be a person using a Zipcar
^®
? It means that I pay only for what I need. All these hours for a car sitting idle, I'm not paying for it. It means that I can choose a car exactly for that particular trip. So here's a woman that reserved a Mini-Mia and she had her day. I could take a BMW when I'm seeing clients. I can drive my Toyota Element when I want to go on that surfing trip. You know? And, the other remarkable thing is that it's the highest status of car ownership. Not only do I have a fleet of cars available to me in seven cities around the world that I can have at my beck and call. But heaven forbid that I would ever maintain or deal with the repair or have anything to do with it. It's like the car that you always wanted that your mom said you couldn't have. I get all the good stuff and none of the bad.
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Speaking to Entertain

Speaking to entertain can have more impact than you might expect because most such speeches take place at social events when the audience is relaxed and receptive. People remember the speaker who helped them kick back and have a good time. While humor is almost always an element, there should still be a topic or point of view. This speech lends itself to the incorporation of unusual props, dramatic video, and/or music. First Lady Laura Bush stole the show when she showed her funny bone at a White
House Correspondents Dinner. The gala event comingles the Washington press corps, political heavyweights, and Hollywood celebrities in an evening of toasts and roasts. In 2005, the First Lady said she'd had enough of sitting quietly by and had a few things to share about her husband, President George W. Bush:

George always says he's delighted to come to these press dinners. Baloney. He's usually in bed by now. I'm not kidding. I said to him the other day: “George, if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you're going to have to stay up later.”

I am married to the president of the United States, and here's our typical evening: Nine o'clock, Mr. Excitement here is sound asleep, and I'm watching
Desperate Housewives
—with Lynne Cheney. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife. I mean, if those women on that show think they're desperate, they oughta be with George.

One night, after George went to bed, Lynne Cheney, Condi Rice, Karen Hughes, and I went to Chippendale's. I wouldn't even mention it except Justices Ruth Ginsberg and Sandra Day O'Connor saw us there. I won't tell you what happened, but Lynne's Secret Service codename is now “Dollar Bill.”

George and I are complete opposites—I'm quiet, he's talkative, I'm introverted, he's extroverted. I can pronounce
nuclear.

The amazing thing, however, is that George and I were just meant to be. I was the librarian who spent 12 hours a day in the library, yet somehow I met George.
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Speech Writing Step 2: Select a Theme

Once you have decided on the type of speech, whether inspirational, informative, persuasive, or entertaining, then establish the theme. The theme is the single most important idea or message you want to convey. It is the core point you return to throughout the speech. The renewal of hope is the theme of Angelou's poem “On the Pulse of the Morning.” She develops it with the line: “For this bright morning dawning for you….” She returns to it with: “Give birth again, To the dream” and “Each new hour holds new chances.” The theme is not the same as the statement of topic.
The topic statement should be narrowly defined, while the theme is usually broad and encompasses a value or belief. For example, Angelou talks about the topic of rap music lyrics by relating it to the theme of respect.

Identify the theme by responding to the following five questions. The responses will help you organize and prioritize your thoughts so you can pinpoint the main idea you want to elevate and embellish. Responding to the questions will also put the entire speech into context. Be as specific as you can when responding to the questions; otherwise, the theme will lack focus, and the speech will lack overall direction.

Got Topic?

Effective topic statements are a concise wording of exactly what you plan to talk about. With any subject, there are endless possible approaches and different aspects that could be covered. It is impossible to organize and develop the remainder of the speech if you lack a clear statement of topic. A common mistake is to select a topic that is too broad to cover in the allotted time. Try to define the subject narrowly. For example, this topic statement is too broad: “The importance of public education.” A crisper topic statement would be “A high level of parental involvement spells success for our public schools.” This is too vague: “Support the referendum on civil unions.” This is more direct: “The civil union referendum should be supported because all citizens deserve to be treated equally and fairly.”

Can You Hear Me Now?

Don't be satisfied with a vague sense of who will attend or make assumptions about how much they know about the topic.
Chapter 6
details how to work with the event host to get a good read on the audience's vital statistics. Examples of clearly defined audiences include NASCAR dads, suburban soccer moms, male high-tech entrepreneurs age twenty to forty, or senior citizens living on fixed incomes in Arizona.

What's the Point?

Once you have a clear understanding of the audience, then pinpoint what you want to accomplish. Zero in on specifics so the goal statement is not empty rhetoric or meaningless platitudes. “Raising public awareness” is too squishy. What is it exactly that you want the listeners to do? Former First Lady Nancy Reagan publicly endorsed stem cell research and made an impassioned plea to take the politics out of this scientific issue to ensure funding for researchers. Reagan spoke out in favor of human embryo research, which could help cure diseases like Alzheimer's that afflicted her husband, former president Ronald Reagan.

WHAM Them

All audience members ask themselves the WHAM question. WHAM is an acronym that stands for “What Here Applies to Me?” Your listeners want to know what's in it for them, so you must address this question up front. Don't save it for the conclusion. The WHAM factor is the hook that will engage them and keep them listening. The audience will care more about your topic when it aligns with what they value. For example, Americans love dogs and cats, but not everyone is ready to adopt an abandoned animal from a shelter. The Humane Society of the United States makes it possible for animal lovers to assist by writing a check to fund the organization's efforts.

E Pluribus Unum—
Out of Many, One

What common bond do you share with the audience? Sometimes it is obvious, such as when you are speaking at a professional conference that draws like-minded individuals. Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, has likely given more college commencement addresses than anyone else her age. The requests roll in because her story embodies a belief in the unlimited potential of America's youth. While a college senior, Kopp came up with the idea for Teach for America as a way to deal with inequities in the classroom. In her first year, she recruited 500 college graduates to teach in distressed schools, and 20 years later, nearly 30,000 teachers have served low-income communities.

Identifying the bond is more difficult when the audience is unfamiliar, skeptical, or hostile. It wouldn't seem that members of the American Bird Conservancy—people who like to watch birds—would have much in common with members of Ducks Unlimited—people who hunt birds. The point where their interests do align is on the issue of preserving wetlands and open space for wildlife habitats. Both groups agree that too much land is threatened by the encroachment of strip malls and tract housing.

Poet, Performer, Plus More

Angelou says she is a dancer at heart, but when her knees started to give out, she turned her creative energies to singing and acting. The description barely covers the richness of her life experience. The singer became a stage performer when invited to join the European cast of
Porgy and Bess
, and she spent a year touring in Paris, Rome, and Cairo. Following the show's success and relocation to New York, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, home to some of America's most creative writers, historians, and novelists. The return to the states reunited Angelou with her much-loved son, Clyde. Her only child was born just after Angelou graduated from high school. The boy's father was absent, and her family stepped in as Angelou struggled to care for her son. While taking dance and singing lessons, she had held a variety of jobs, including stints as the first black female streetcar operator in San Francisco and as a brothel manager.
Angelou married, but the unions didn't last. She built a community of love and support with her family and a large, extended network of friends.

In the late 1960s, Angelou was working as a playwright and poet when she was asked to develop a television series on African American culture for public television. She had never written for TV but poured herself into creating
Black, Blues, Black!
The achievement readied her for the next challenge, which would establish her as one of America's most gifted voices. In 1970, her autobiography,
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
, was published and became a bestseller. She said the book was more than a coming-of-age story about a black child in the segregated South. It was intended as an affirmation of the African American experience and a celebration of the human spirit.

In the book, Angelou bares the details of the childhood tragedy that caused her to remain speechless for six years. She chose to silence her voice because she blamed herself for the death of the man who raped her at the age of seven. The abuser was her mother's boyfriend, and after his trial, it is believed that Angelou's uncles murdered him. Angelou thought her voice had killed him because she gave the man's name to relatives. Angelou and her younger brother, Bailey, were sent to live with their grandmother, Annie Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas. Henderson was a formidable presence in the lives of her grandchildren and in the segregated community, where she ran a general store on the black side of town. Henderson accepted her granddaughter's muteness, convinced she would speak when she was ready. While Maya's voice was silent, she devoured books from the public library. It was a friend of her grandmother's, Bertha Flowers, who helped her reclaim her desire to speak. Mrs. Flowers said it was not possible to really love poetry until she had read it aloud: “Not until you speak it, till you feel it across your tongue, till it comes out your lips, you will never really love poetry.”
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Angelou says she hears poetry when she's writing it and thus always writes for the voice, not the eye. “I listened, I
listened to the radio. I listened to the church music. I listened to poetry as it was spoken and I thought of my whole body as an ear and I could go into any room and absorb sound particularly and somatically through my pores.”
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Poetry frees a writer to draw upon all five of the senses—what you heard, saw, tasted, smelled, and felt. The poem “Still I Rise” gives voice to the determination people find within themselves to do more than just persevere. To read the poem aloud is to experience Angelou's ability to express emotion with sparse, clear writing. It is possible to feel what it is like to rise even when downtrodden, to rise with a sassiness and haughtiness that may upset and offend. The discipline of poetry writing teaches you how to say nothing more than what needs to be said.

Speech Writing Step 3: Organize the Flow

A stream of consciousness running out of your mouth is not a speech—that is called rambling. Poets use patterns to express what they want to communicate, often in thirty lines or less. Literary devices like rhyming, imagery, and meter enhance the meaning of words. Ideas and emotion flow in a particular rhythm, whether in the form of rap, haiku, or sonnet. It's been said that a novel is “words in the best order” and poetry is “the best words in the best order.” Then a speech can be “the best words spoken in the best order.”