Communication Elements for Speeches
Most college students are familiar with writing essays and research papers. Preparing and delivering a speech, however, differs from these activities in fundamental ways.
Audience
Often, the audience of an essay is either the general audience of your classmates or your professor. You’re all in the same situation, working in the same field, so thinking about your audience may not be a big factor when writing an essay. You usually get feedback after you write, in the form of written comments from the professor, or discussion feedback from your peers.
However, a speech demands that you always consider your audience first, since they will likely be more diverse in their knowledge and situations. Audience analysis can help you identify the size of your audience, who your audience is, what they already know, what they need to know, and how they may feel about your topic. Knowing and considering the audience shapes the goals of a speech, the information to provide, and how to present it. Also, the audience of a speech is an active participant in your speech. When speaking in real time, the audience provides live feedback which can help you adjust your speech as you’re speaking.
Context
The context of reading an essay is personal. The context of public speaking is communal. You can’t easily adapt an essay to the context in which it is received. Is the reader at home or in their office? Are they reading at night or in the morning?
But context plays a more important role in public speaking. You need to adapt a speech’s content to the speaking context. Great speeches fit the moment. Reflect on the purpose of your speech, the amount of time you’ll have, and the speaking environment. These elements will influence what you can realistically hope to accomplish with your audience. Consider how you might present a speech differently if you’re delivering it in different media, to different audiences, in different locations. The context of your speech can also help you determine which delivery type to use: impromptu, speaking notes, memorized, or a manuscript. If you are speaking for an hour, it may not be realistic to memorize a speech, but speaking notes or a manuscript can be very helpful. If your context will be highly emotional or require careful wording, then using a manuscript may be the best delivery type.
Content
In writing, your audience has the benefit of reading at their own pace, visually grasping your organization through paragraphs or headings, looking up definitions for unfamiliar terms, and spending more time reading detailed information.
In a speech, your audience may not have any visual guideposts about the organization of the material. To adjust, you must provide clear, spoken organizational indicators or signposts. It helps to use language that is relatable, simple, and familiar, and to include vivid imagery and anecdotes.
Source Citations
In a research paper, your credibility is established through research, which is cited in the text as well as at the end with a list of sources.
In a speech, citations are a bit more tricky. If your speech uses researched support, you must properly attribute your sources. Although they may be included in your written outline, stating a full-source citation when delivering your speech can quickly lose your audience. Therefore, you will instead use abbreviated source citations, often with just the author, title, publication, and/or date.
Visual Aids
Especially when they rely on complex data or visual information, essays can include graphs, charts, and illustrations.
In addition to using visual aids to explain complex data in a speech, visual aids are often used for additional purposes: to illustrate an idea, evoke emotion, summarize data, or draw attention to an important concept. A visual aid adds interest, can refocus your audience, and can help them remember an important aspect of your speech. If you use a visual aid, consider when to use it in your speech and what type of visual aid would best illustrate what you’ve chosen to highlight. The most common visual aid is PowerPoint, but visual aids can also be objects or any sort of pictorial representation. For example, a speech about a guitar could use a PowerPoint with pictures of various parts of a guitar—or an actual guitar.
Speaker
In the case of an essay, we only perceive the writer through the style of their writing. Unless we have seen them in person, or look them up on the internet, we probably know very little about how they look, what they sound like, or how they carry themselves.
Unlike the invisible author of an essay, the speaker confidence, delivery style, and energy level will have profound effects on the audience’s experiences physically or virtually present to deliver the speech. Their appearance, dress, posture, cone of the event.
Delivery
When writing an essay, it doesn’t matter if you finished well in advance or the night before. The essay will be judged on its quality rather than your emotional and physical state at its completion.
In a speech, the quality of delivery will impact how well it is received, regardless of how carefully it was written and prepared. Verbal and nonverbal cues set the tone and engage your audience. Even when using speaking notes or a manuscript, you must be familiar enough with your speech that you avoid simply reading it. Therefore, you must build in plenty of time to practice.
View the first 5 minutes of this TED talk, in which linguist John McWhorter discusses some of the differences between speaking and writing. (The rest of the talk is very interesting as well, particularly if you’re curious about the linguistic changes brought about by texting.)
You can view the transcript for “John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!” here (opens in new window).
What to watch for:
Notice how McWhorter starts his speech: “We always hear that texting is a scourge.” This statement sets up his thesis, which is that texting isn’t the downfall of language, but rather a “miraculous thing.” This style of opening, sometimes called “stabilization-destabilization,” can be a great way to get a speech off the ground. First you state the stable condition, the thing that everyone thinks is true. Then you destabilize this idea by showing how it’s not true, or at least more complicated than the listener might think. The destabilizing move says “yet . . .” or “however. . . .” (McWhorter says “The fact of the matter is that it just isn’t true.”)
Note as well how McWhorter uses visual aids in this presentation. Even though he puts a lot of words on the screen, he is not expecting the audience to read and engage with the meaning of these passages. Instead, the words are there to say something about language style. When you really want your audience to engage with the meaning of words on a slide, you should keep the text as minimal and concise as possible. We’ll cover this concept in more detail when we learn about visual aids.
