Public Speaking Part 17

The shorter forms of transitions--words and phrases--belong rather to the expression, the language, of the speech than to this preliminary planning.

A speaker should never fail to use such phrases as _on the other hand_, _continuing the same line of reasoning_, _pa.s.sing to the next point_, _from a different point of view_, because they so clearly indicate the relation of two succeeding pa.s.sages of a speech.

In planning, the speaker frequently has to consider the insertion of longer transitions--paragraphs or even more extended pa.s.sages. Just how such links appear in finished speeches the following extracts show. In the first selection Washington when he planned his material realized he had reached a place where he could conclude. He wanted to add more. What reason should he offer his audience for violating the principle discussed in the chapter on conclusions? How could he make clear to them his desire to continue? We cannot a.s.sert that he actually did this, but he might have jotted down upon the paper bearing a first scheme of his remarks the phrase, "my solicitude for the people." That, then, was the germ of his transition paragraph.

Notice how clearly the meaning is expressed. Could any hearer fail to comprehend? The transition also announces plainly the topic of the rest of the speech.

Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But a solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge me on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people.

These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsels. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiment on a former and not dissimilar occasion.

GEORGE WASHINGTON: _Farewell Address_, 1796

The next selection answers to a part of the plan announced in a pa.s.sage already quoted in this chapter. Notice how this transition looks both backward and forward: it is both retrospective and antic.i.p.atory. If you recall that repet.i.tion helps to emphasize facts, you will readily understand why a transition is especially valuable if it adheres to the same language as the first statement of the plan. In a written scheme this might have appeared under the entry, "pa.s.s from 1 to 2; list 4 apologies for crime." This suggests fully the material of the pa.s.sage.

And with this exposure I take my leave of the Crime against Kansas. Emerging from all the blackness of this Crime, where we seem to have been lost, as in a savage wood, and turning our backs upon it, as upon desolation and death, from which, while others have suffered, we have escaped, I come now to the Apologies which the Crime has found....

They are four in number, and fourfold in character. The first is the Apology tyrannical; the second, the Apology imbecile; the third, the Apology absurd; and the fourth, the Apology infamous. That is all. Tyranny, imbecility, absurdity, and infamy all unite to dance, like the weird sisters, about this Crime.

The Apology tyrannical is founded on the mistaken act of Governor Reeder, in authenticating the Usurping Legislature, etc.

CHARLES SUMNER: _The Crime against Kansas_, 1856

The beginning speaker should not hesitate to make his transitions perfectly clear to his audience. When they add to the merely bridging use the additional value of serving as short summaries of what has gone before and as sign posts of what is to follow, they are trebly serviceable. The attempt to be clear will seldom be waste of time or effort. The obvious statements of the preceding selections, the use of figures, are excellent models for speakers to imitate. With practice will come skill in making transitions of different kinds, in which the same purposes will be served in various other ways, in what may be considered more finished style. The next extracts represent this kind of transition.

Sir, like most questions of civil prudence, this is neither black nor white, but gray. The system of copyright has great advantages and great disadvantages; and it is our business to ascertain what these are, and then to make an arrangement under which the advantages may be as far as possible secured, and the disadvantages as far as possible excluded. The charge which I bring against my honorable and learned friend's bill is this, that it leaves the advantages nearly what they are at present, and increases the disadvantages at least fourfold.

THOMAS B. MACAULAY: _Copyright Bill_, 1841

One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the ma.s.ses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON in a speech at the Atlanta Exposition, 1895

Thinking before You Speak. While students may feel that the steps outlined here demand a great deal of preparation before the final speech is delivered, the explanation may be given that after all, this careful preparation merely carries out the homely adage--think before you speak. If there were more thinking there would be at once better speaking. Anybody can talk. The purpose of studying is to make one a better speaker. The antic.i.p.ation of some relief may be entertained, for it is comforting to know that after one has followed the processes here explained, they move more rapidly, so that after a time they may become almost simultaneous up to the completion of the one just discussed--planning the speech. It is also worth knowing that none of this preliminary work is actually lost. Nor is it unseen. It appears in the speech itself. The reward for all its apparent slowness and exacting deliberation is in the clearness, the significance of the speech, its reception by the audience, its effect upon them, and the knowledge by the speaker himself that his efforts are producing results in his accomplishments.

All speakers plan carefully for speeches long in advance.

A famous alumnus of Yale was invited to attend a banquet of Harvard graduates. Warned that he must "speak for his dinner" he prepared more than a dozen possible beginnings not knowing of course, in what manner the toastmaster would call upon him. The remainder of his speech was as carefully planned, although not with so many possible choices. Note that from each possible opening to the body of the speech he had to evolve a graceful transition.

Edmund Burke, in his great speech on conciliation with the American colonies, related that some time before, a friend had urged him to speak upon this matter, but he had hesitated. True, he had gone so far as to throw "my thoughts into a sort of parliamentary form"--that is, he made a plan or an outline, but the pa.s.sage of a certain bill by the House of Commons seemed to have taken away forever the chance of his using the material. The bill, however, was returned from the House of Lords with an amendment and in the resulting debate he delivered the speech he had already planned.

Daniel Webster said that his reply to Hayne had been lying in his desk for months already planned, merely waiting the opportunity or need for its delivery.

Henry Ward Beecher, whose need for preliminary preparation was reduced to its lowest terms, and who himself was almost an instantaneous extemporizer, recognized the need for careful planning by young speakers and warned them against "the temptation to slovenliness in workmanship, to careless and inaccurate statement, to repet.i.tion, to violation of good taste."

Slovenliness in planning is as bad as slovenliness in expression.

EXERCISES

Choose any topic suggested in this book. Make a short preliminary plan of a speech upon it. Present it to the cla.s.s. Consider it from the following requirements:

1. Does it show clearly its intention?

2. How long will the speech be?

3. Too long? Too short?

4. For what kind of audience is it intended?

5. Has it unity?

6. Has it coherence?

7. Where are transitions most clearly needed?

8. What suggestions would you make for rearranging any parts?

9. What reasons have you for these changes?

10. Is proper emphasis secured?

CHAPTER VIII

MAKING THE OUTLINE OR BRIEF

Orderly Arrangement. A speech should have an orderly arrangement. The effect upon an audience will be more easily made, more deeply impressed, more clearly retained, if the successive steps of the development are so well marked, so plainly related, that they may be carried away in a hearer's understanding. It might be said that one test of a good speech is the vividness with which its framework is discernible. Hearers can repeat outlines of certain speeches. Those are the best. Of others they can give merely confused reports. These are the badly constructed ones.

The way to secure in the delivered speech this delight of orderly arrangement is by making an outline or brief. Most pupils hate to make outlines. The reason for this repugnance is easily understood. A teacher directs a pupil to make an outline before he writes a composition or delivers a speech. The pupil spends hours on the list of entries, then submits his finished theme or address. He feels that the outline is disregarded entirely. Sometimes he is not even required to hand it to the instructor. He considers the time he has spent upon the outline as wasted. It is almost impossible to make him feel that his finished product is all the better because of this effort spent upon the preliminary skeleton, so that in reality his outline is not disregarded at all, but is judged and marked as embodied in the finished article. Most students carry this mistaken feeling about outlines to such an extent that when required to hand in both an outline and a finished composition they will write in haphazard fashion the composition first, and then from it try to prepare the outline, instead of doing as they are told, and making the outline first. It is easier--though not as educating or productive of good results--to string words together than it is to do what outline-making demands--to think.

Professional Writers' Use of Outlines. Professional writers realize the helpfulness of outline-making and the time it saves. Many a magazine article has been sold before a word of the finished ma.n.u.script was written. The contributor submitted an outline from which the editor contracted for the finished production. Many a play has been placed in the same form. Books are built up in the same manner. The ubiquitous moving-picture scenario is seldom produced in any other manner.

Macaulay advised a young friend who asked how to keep his brain active to read a couple of solid books, making careful outlines of their material at the same time. One of these should be--if possible--a work in a foreign tongue, so that the strangeness of the language would necessitate slow, careful reading and close thinking. All good students know that the best way to prepare for an examination is to make outlines of all the required reading and study.

It is just because the making of the outline demands such careful thinking that it is one of the most important steps in the production of a speech.

The Outline in the Finished Speech. If the outline really shows in the finished speech, let us see if we can pick the entries out from a portion of one. Edmund Burke in 1775 tried to prevent Great Britain from using coercive measures against the restive American colonies.

Many Englishmen were already clamoring for war when Burke spoke in Parliament upon conciliating the Colonies.

I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have a.s.serted in my detail, is admitted in the gross; but that quite a different conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentlemen say, is a n.o.ble object. It is an object well worth fighting for.

Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those who understand the military art, will of course have some predilection for it. Those who wield the thunder of the state, may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more in favor of prudent management, than of force; considering force not as an odious, but a feeble instrument, for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connexion with us.

First, Sir, permit me to observe, that the use of force alone is but _temporary_. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered.

My next objection is its _uncertainty_. Terror is not always the effect of force; and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without resource; for, conciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence.