by Ed Vilade
The first question I ask about a speech is, "Why are you giving this speech?"
Many clients answer, "Because someone asked me."
My next question is, "What do you want this speech to accomplish?"
Sometimes the answer is, "I don't know...I just want to give it and get out."
My advice: "Cancel the speech."
Too many people give speeches just because someone asked them, and without accomplishing any communication objective. It's a waste of their time, and most officeholders and business executives have little time they can afford to waste.
A speech is a powerful communication tool. It can persuade and convey information with an immediacy that a press release or white paper doesn't have. Speeches down through the ages, from Marcus Tullius Cicero to Winston Churchill to John F. Kennedy, have changed the minds of the audience, and the course of history. But a speech that is given just because the speaker was asked to appear, and because the host needed to fill time on a program, is a waste. It wastes the speaker's time, and it wastes the audience's time, as well. And it can backfire - the audience can react negatively to the speaker, and his or her cause.
Rather than just accepting speech invitations that come in over the transom, I suggest to clients that they turn down time-wasting appearances and instead seek venues that will advance their communications agendas - preferably outside groups that can be influential in advancing those agendas, and that are either ignorant of the facts or ambivalent and persuasible.
Too many speeches are given by industry speakers to their own industries - to counterparts from other companies who already know all the issues and agree with the speaker. Controversial issues - from nuclear power to pharmaceutical research - need to be aired before the general public, or even potentially hostile audiences. That's where opinions are changed.
The Speech
A speech is a public performance, and the speaker is the performer. When I write a speech, I don't write in my "style." I try to write it in the speaker's style - as he or she would say the words - using his or her patterns of speech. The more the speech sounds like the speaker in conversation, the more effective it will be, because the speaker will be more comfortable in delivering the words. When I write a speech, I try to think of myself as a playwright writing a soliloquy for a character - the speaker. I always try to meet with the speaker, to get some idea of his or her manner of speaking, and I always use a tape recorder. When that's not possible, I try to get videotapes of the speaker, so that I can view her or him in a rhetorical situation.
A speech also belongs to the speaker, not the speechwriter. I have no pride of authorship - I'm just the conduit through which the speaker reaches the audience. And the more of the speaker, and the less of the speechwriter, there is in the speech, the better the speech will be. During my interviews with the speaker, I try to get him or her to relate anecdotes or examples on the subject matter, and reproduce them as faithfully as I can. A speaker delivering his or her own words will be more comfortable with those words, and with the rest of the text, as well.
The Audience
Communication is a two-way process. The speaker must speak, and the audience must hear what the speaker means to say. If the speaker thinks he or she is saying one thing, and the audience hears another, the communication transaction is incomplete - we have what the academic community calls "cognitive dissonance."
Part of the speechwriter's role in ensuring the completion of the communication transaction is audience analysis - determining who will be in the audience, and what they want to hear. The analysis also includes sensitivities and preconceptions - a remark that can be innocent in most contexts can strike a nerve with a particular audience and turn it against the speaker, and his or her cause.
On the other hand, a remark that resonates with an audience can gain a speaker a positive reception, even among those predisposed to be skeptical or even hostile. There is a concept in rhetoric called "consubstantiation." It means finding common ground with an audience. How many times have you heard a politician go before a blue collar audience and talk about his or her parents who worked in factories or on farms? They are trying to find common ground - identification - with the audience, and if they succeed, it is always helpful. Good audience analysis can help to find some basis for identification.
Audience analysis is always helpful, and necessary, because the words of a speech must fit the situation. The rhetoric employed in a public speaking situation is sometimes defined as "situated speech." It is tailored to the time, the place, the audience and all other factors that come into play, and it is the job of a good speechwriter to make all that come together into an effective speech - one that accomplishes the speaker's objective.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ed Vilade is the principal of Vilade Communications. He has nearly 40 years of experience as a freelance and corporate speechwriter, communications manager, media relations and strategic communications consultant, award-winning newspaper and magazine writer and editor.
His employers and clients include the White House, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Commerce, Fortune 500 companies, U.S. Senators and Congressmen, Governors, international organizations and leading Washington, D.C. trade associations.
Ed holds a B.A. in Public Communications and an M.A. in Speech Communication. He is the author of scholarly works on rhetoric and public speaking, and of speeches, newspaper articles and other published writings numbering in the thousands.
Contact: Ed Vilade, Vilade Communications, 7525 Bradley Blvd., Bethesda MD 20817, 301-365-1532, evilade@comcast.net, www.viladecommunications.com
Read another article by Ed: "Speechwriting: The Tracks of the Ghost"
Comments? Members who have submitted an article can comment on Ed's article here:
(This link will fail if you don't qualify).
