In my previous post about speechwriting, I described a formula for writing a good speech quickly. So now, I’d like to present a few common rhetorical techniques for making your language appealing.
A good speech structure is like the frame of a strong house, with solid walls and doors in the right places. Good rhetorical techniques are pretty decorations. They’re not absolutely necessary, but they can take a plain structure and turn it into a stunning home.
For capturing an audience’s attention, the most important technique is imagery. Any word that conjures an image is an effective word. An audience doesn’t remember a concept. It sees and remembers an image, the plainer the better. For example, combustion is less effective than fire. Capability is less effective than tool. Engage is less effective than talk.
Much corporate messaging is not effective because the language doesn’t capture the imagination of an intended audience. Being specific is key. Any word that conjures a specific image is more effective than a concept lost within a dark cloud of nebulous meaning.
For that reason, great writers often use metaphors – or images – that sum up their argument.
John F. Kennedy, for example, did not say that America was tackling items on its priority action list by engaging in difficult extraterrestrial endeavors. He said: America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.
John the Baptist did not assert that he was a faith-based consultant prepared to make his own end-of-life decision on behalf of spiritually challenged clients. He said, I am the good shepherd… and I lay down my life for the sheep.
Martin Luther King, Jr did not say, I’m experiencing daytime hallucinations.
Another common rhetorical technique is to engage the audience’s emotions by telling personal stories. After all, any decent speech has to sound as if a human being wrote it, but you might be surprised how many high-level speeches sound as if robots wrote them.
Corporate or policy speeches are tricky in this regard. Such speeches are usually intended less to persuade than to convey information, so they’re bound to be less emotional than, say, a cat-lover campaigning to be the town dogcatcher.
But a policy speech that bores the audience to tears will have no impact, and the information it conveys will be quickly forgotten.
Good policy speeches tend to share certain broad traits.
They avoid esoteric language that the audience wouldn’t use.
They say something new.
They focus on either universal or individual questions – topics that either concern everyone in the audience or appeal to every individual in the audience.
They minimize the deathly middle ground of generalizations, statistics, budgets and abstract concepts.
They talk about policy without policy language.
One rule of thumb is to illustrate every policy point with at least one personal anecdote that serves as an example.
So if your sales in China went up ten percent last year, preface that point with a story about the time when you visited China and saw people using your product. Or if your organization’s efforts have meant that twenty percent of people in a certain country now have access to potable drinking water, tell a story about one of those people, and how this new access has changed their lives.
Finally, any decent speech must also accept a degree of risk.
When Matthew said, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God, he offended a few people. In the same way, any joke, no matter how well intentioned, could be misconstrued. A speech that avoids any risk will be safe. It will also be ignored.
In sum, not every speech is going to leave its listeners cheering. Corporate or policy speeches usually have humbler goals, but those goals are still important.
If you’re a CEO or a non-profit’s director, craft your speech as if you’re inviting your audience to visit your well-tended garden. Lead your listeners around. Show off a few of the nicer flowers. Gain their trust and appreciation. Then sit down on a shady wooden bench to chat about a serious matter using humor, anecdotes and common sense.
By the time you’re done, you may have crystallized what your listeners were already thinking. They may even consider you a friend. They will certainly remember what you said.