WHAT IS STYLE, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Sierra wants to give a speech about sports. She has some great ideas about the role of sports in modern society and has done the research to make her points. But she has a problem: There is serious competition for her speech—sports! Sports, in-person and televised, are exciting, and she knows that ‘s why people like sports so much. But that means they won’t be interested in a bunch of dry arguments and data about sports. So Sierra has a public speaking challenge: How can she give a sports talk that will be nearly as exciting as the real thing? Sierra has to make the right choices about verbal style.
Overview
Speakers often worry about the way they say words— which is important (note that delivery is the subject of the next chapter). But the words you choose to say are just as, or more, important. In ordinary life, we don’t think about our words too much; we just talk. Yet, when we want our words to have impact, we should choose them carefully. In addition, we have to take responsibility for our words, and words sometimes can be hurtful or offensive. In a public speaking situation, when we expect people to remember our words and take them seriously, we will have to spend more time thinking about them and choosing them.
MindTap®
Start with a warm-up activity about Sierra ‘s speech, and review the chapter ‘s Learning Objectives.
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS STYLE, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Now that you have figured out the basic thrust of what you want to say and how you want to organize and support it, the next challenge is to figure out exactly how to express the ideas you want to convey—in other words, the considerations of Style , the wording choices you will make to achieve the goals of your speech.
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style Word choices made to achieve the goals of a speech.
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MindTap®
Read, highlight, and take notes online.
This chapter will give you a set of stylistic techniques for making word choices that you can integrate into your speeches. We can’t tell you how to phrase everything in your speech, because so much about phrasing is unique to you as a speaker and to the audience you are addressing. But we can offer a number of tried-and-true stylistic forms that have been used effectively in great speeches. In the next chapter, we’ll complete our discussion of delivery by discussing the nonverbal parts of speaking; of course, there is sense in which that is a kind of “style,” but for this chapter (and this book), “style” means the choice of words and use of language.
Style exploits one of the most powerful features of language—that there are many different ways of saying the same thing. For instance, you could say, “It ‘s hot outside, and I’m tired.” Or you might say, “It ‘s an oven outside, and I’m beat.” Or perhaps you like more formal expressions: “Oh, this insufferable heat—it ‘s left me feeling fatigued.” If you try, you probably could come up with dozens of different ways of saying the same thing.
Expressing your thoughts in words is an art of making choices. You have choices about how you say what you want to say, and these choices are important because different choices can convey different impressions about your topic. Striking just the right verbal style for your topic and the occasion will help you achieve your speaking goals. Perhaps you want to evoke a straightforward informational tone; perhaps you want to convey some particularly significant material in a playful and even artful way. Whatever you want to achieve, the style you choose matters. 1
CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE STYLE
No matter how wonderful a speaker ‘s delivery may be, if she begins her speech, “La oss taler i dag om problemet med nettkriminalitet,” you won’t have any idea that this is a speech about cybercrime—unless you speak Norwegian. No amount of work on topic choice, organizational patterns, or delivery can make up that gap: Language matters. Language matters in another important respect: The word choices that you make in expressing yourself also define the character of your ideas for your audience. Language matters not only in being understood, but also in being interesting, compelling, and in convincing your audience that you’re worth listening to.
The study of verbal style, how to choose and use the right words, is central to communicating effectively. The second part of this chapter will discuss how you can choose words to achieve your communication goals, but, first, we will cover the basics. To be an effective speaker, you will have to use language that is concrete and lively, reduces abstraction and makes ideas come alive for listeners, and is respectful and doesn’t unintentionally exclude some audience members. We’ll talk about each of these characteristics in turn.
Speaking in Images
Evoking strong images is a crucial persuasive technique. Why say, “It was hot outside” when you can say, “It was like an oven outside—if you cracked an egg on the pavement, you could stand there and watch it sizzle on the hot asphalt.” New evidence in cognitive science gives us reason to prefer the second formulation over the first. When you describe a vivid visually rich image, your audience will be able to literally imagine seeing the egg frying on the pavement, and this is much more effective than saying that it ‘s hot outside. Why? Well, studies in cognition now say that when people can call up a visual image of a thing, they are engaging your content in two distinct ways: They’re both calling up the idea of “hot” (they can recall a time when they were hot), and they can picture the egg frying on the pavement.
This is what cognitive scientists call “multi-modal” engagement. Instead of just relying on the concept “hot,” your audience can recall both the physical sensation of being extremely hot, and can call up the visual image of the egg frying on the pavement. This multi-modal engagement, which activates more parts of the brain than just the idea of “hot,” helps your audience to engage your content in at least three distinct ways: the idea, the feeling, and the visual image. Engaging lots of different brain functions is a good way to get your audience to bring to bear ideas, images, and experiences, to really experience an idea in more direct ways than just the concept. If you want to create conditions for maximum persuasion, think about the ways that what you are saying can evoke ideas, experiences, and images that engage the audience with your content.
For more information see:
Elizabeth El Refaie, Reconsidering “image metaphor” in the light of perceptual simulation theory. Metaphor and Symbol, 30(1), 2015.
Holding the interest of the audience and making yourself understood depends, to a large extent, on making abstract ideas and relationships concrete so the audience can more clearly imagine what you’re talking about. When people complain that a speech was “dry,” they usually mean that the material was presented in a way that was abstract and theoretical rather than concrete and vivid. Concepts, numbers, ideas, and arguments couched in language that creates a picture in audience members’ mind become almost as visual as a movie, and the speech, in turn, is more interesting.
Painting images with words—detailed, three-dimensional, persuasively real images—is a skill you can learn. For instance, compare these two sentences. Which one creates a picture in your mind?
1. He cut it up.
2. Swiftly and silently, Jim hacked the watermelon into small pieces.
Clearly, sentence 2 provides much more detail than sentence 1 does. The mental images that audience members construct from sentence 2 would be more similar than their mental images from sentence 1.
If you want to get people ‘s attention about sports, you might try:
Sports are very exciting, with competition as well as highs and lows.
This isn’t really interesting. You might think you knew it already, so what ‘s the point? Sierra faces this problem at the beginning of her speech, and here ‘s how she solves it:
It ‘s full of adrenaline rushes, blood, sweat, tears, cheers, pain, pleasure, joy, and everything in between. Whether it ‘s the roar of the crowd, the swish of the basket, the crack of the bat, or the sound of the buzzer, it ‘s something that we’re all familiar with despite the heartbreaks and gut-wrenching defeats. We can never let go of one of the greatest things in the world: sports.
This language is exciting, full of images, motion, and a pleasing rhythm. This is the start to a speech that the audience will want to continue to hear. The language of public speaking is not the same as the language of everyday chitchat. Using language that departs somewhat from everyday speech, while remaining appropriate to your audience, makes the occasion special and can inspire listeners to pay closer attention.
Language that is interesting and lively is also easier to remember. Because self-persuasion is the best persuasion, the audience members must remember what you’ve said so they can mull it over later. Dry and abstract language won’t help them do this. You must turn people ‘s ears into eyes so they will “see” what they’re hearing.
TRY IT! MAKING LANGUAGE LIVELY
How could you make each of the following sentences more concrete and vivid?
• We should do something about immigration.
• U.S. consumers have a responsibility to reduce their environmental impact.
• Better nutrition is in everyone ‘s best interest.
Because public speaking is designed with an audience—and a public—in mind, you have to speak in way that includes as many people as possible. You shouldn’t, deliberately or acci-dently, make any audience members feel excluded by using language they find disrespectful. Off-color language and sexist and racist language can create disrespect and exclusion.
Off-Color Language Is it ever OK to use foul language? Of course, you can legally say whatever you like. But is it rhetorically smart to do so? In the vast majority of cases, you should avoid it.
The usual argument offered for using off-color language is that it helps speakers to convey the depth of emotion they feel about a topic or to bring in a bit of pathos they wouldn’t be able to convey otherwise. It ‘s true that using, say, a four-letter word to describe a bad situation conveys a very different meaning than saying that it ‘s “disappointing.” But swearing almost always is a bad choice, for three reasons.
First, you can’t know in advance the extent to which rude epithets might undermine your credibility with your audience members or get in the way of their hearing your argument. In general, the more you deviate from the speaking norms your specific audience expects, the more likely you will be to create unintended resistance.
Second, when we speak in public, we model how we think people ought to speak in public. What if audience members were to go away from your speech persuaded that foul language was the best way to convey the emotional frame of your topic? If they did, they might not all use the same careful judgments that you did in coming to your word choices, and the quality of public discourse would decline.
Third, many people see the use of foul language as a sign of disrespect toward the audience. As a result, it might make it difficult for you to build the kind of ethical relationship with your audience that you would like to have.
Sexist and Racist Language Our language carries assumptions and implications. We have to be sensitive to whether the assumptions of the words we use are respectful to everyone in our audience. For example, if you talk about “manpower” in your speech, it seems to imply that women aren’t able to work or be productive, whereas talking about the “labor force” carries no such implication. Why not skip the implication? You don’t believe it anyway The same reasoning applies to outdated terms such as fireman and policeman, for which you should substitute firefighter and police officer. Just as you wouldn’t use hoys to refer to a group of college men, you shouldn’t refer to female adults as girls. In some parts of the United States, guys is used in a gender-neutral way, so “you guys” can refer to both men and women, but you probably should avoid it in a speech, to avoid any misunderstanding.
Racist language includes disrespectful terms for races or ethnicities and common expressions that use the name of an ethnic or racial group in a derogatory way. Generalizations about a group of people also are unacceptable. When a speaker says, “All____people are talented in music,” the speaker may mean it to be a compliment, but this statement stereotypes people and denies their individuality.
Language that reduces individuals to a single characteristic is also disrespectful. When you talk about “the deaf” or “the blind” or “AIDS victims,” you’ve taken one characteristic and the essence of a group of people. Perhaps that characteristic is relevant to your speech, but people are much more than their disabilities or illnesses, and most prefer to be acknowledged as “people who are blind or have a visual impairment” rather than just “the blind.” Although some people believe that referring to “the gays” is acceptable, talking about the “gay community” is a more inclusive and respectful choice.
Chris Rock is one of the comedians who use four-letter words for humor, but what works late at night in a comedy club isn’t appropriate in public speaking situations.
However, you use the techniques of verbal style discussed below to make your speech exciting and memorable, begin by striving to use language that is concrete, lively, and respectful to your audience.
CLASSIFYING VERBAL STYLE: FIGURES AND TROPES
Rhetoricians and linguists have proposed many theories of verbal style and many different systems for categorizing its elements. In this chapter, however, we’ll cover just two special forms of speech that are especially useful for public speaking: the figure , or a change in the structure of a phrase or sentence that lends an ear-catching quality, and the trope , or a change in the way words and concepts are used that give them a new meaning.
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figure An ear-catching change in the structure of a phrase or sentence.
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trope A figure of speech that gives a new meaning for a word or concept.
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You probably already use some figures and tropes in your everyday speech. For instance, only animals have legs and feet, but we routinely refer to “the foot of a mountain” and “the leg of a chair.” These common metaphors are a kind of linguistic trope (sometimes called “dead” metaphors because they no longer strike us as metaphors). Some turns of speech, like these familiar images, pass by in conversation without drawing attention to their form, whereas others are uncommon and artful uses of language. This second group is what is important to public speakers.
Your goal in choosing figures for your speech is to use them deliberately to highlight noteworthy content. If you use a figure too frequently, it begins to draw attention to itself rather than to your content, and then it becomes only a distraction for your listeners. But with careful use, figural language can add significant persuasive value to your speech. Two useful types of figures are of repetition and of contrast.
From our earliest days as conversationalists, we learn to avoid structured repetition of words or phrases. If we tell a friend that we’re going shopping, for instance, we don’t say, “I’m going to buy eggs. I’m going to buy milk. I’m going to buy ketchup.” We say, “I’m going to buy eggs, milk, and ketchup.” Yet, in public speaking, such repetition, even though it seems redundant, can be used to create structure, lend emphasis, and make words more memorable. A Roman rhetoric textbook, Rhetorica ad Herennium, noted that speakers who repeat words and phrases do so not because they are at a loss for words; instead, they are creating something powerful and beautiful: “For there inheres in the repetition an elegance which the ear can distinguish more easily than words can explain.” 2
The following example repeats the phrase, “It takes…,” giving both emphasis and structure to the passage:
It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual.
It takes no survey to remove repressions.
—Harvey Milk, campaign speech for San Francisco Board of Supervisors, 1973. The works of Harvey Milk are owned by L. Stuart Milk and are used for the benefit of the Harvey Milk Foundation.
FAQ Can I use too much repetition?
Some of the most memorable speeches in U.S. history rely on repetition. For example, Martin Luther King ‘s “I Have a Dream” speech uses the word dream at least eight times. But one of the keys to effective repetition is to cluster repetitions in specific parts of the speech. Such a cluster, which may draw on a theme from earlier in the speech, gives the word or phrase more impact than if it were repeated throughout the whole speech.
You can repeat words, phrases, or sounds effectively, and at the beginning, middle, or end of sentences. Repeating initial sounds is called alliteration (“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”). Repeating final sounds is called rhyme (“Hickory, dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock”). Both of these repetitions of sounds are more common in poetry and song than in public speaking, which more often uses repeated words and phrases. Let ‘s look at a couple figures of repetition.
Grammatical Repetition Almost everyone knows the final words of President Abraham Lincoln ‘s Gettysburg Address:
… this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Because the phrases in italics have the same grammatical structure (in this case, preposition + definite article + noun), we call this grammatical repetition .
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grammatical repetition The use of two or more phrases with the same grammatical structure.
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Another famous example of grammatical repetition is the message Julius Caesar sent to the Roman Senate (in Latin, of course) in 47 BC to announce the results of a battle he fought in Turkey:
Veni, vidi, vici. (“I came, I saw, I conquered.”)
Here, Caesar gave us three complete sentences with the structure of I + verb. It not only is an economical expression but also a memorable one (in the original Latin, it also is an alliteration).
Another example, this time from Martin Luther King, Jr., is:
You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s famous 1963 “Address to the March on Washington” speech is commonly known as the “I Have a Dream” speech because of his repeated use of that phrase. Why does Dr. King use so much repetition in this speech?
Go back to + (place) is repeated six times, creating speed and force to King ‘s call for civil rights workers to take action, and the emotion is impossible to ignore if you listen to a recording of the “I Have a Dream” speech. This type of repetition is powerful and allows you to focus on either the phrase that is repeated or the complement to that phrase.
Progression Progression uses repetition to create a sense of movement. The effect of progression should be that of moving, rung by rung, up a ladder, drawing the listener forward to a conclusion. The following progression became popular during the 2008 U.S. presidential election: 3
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progression Grammatical repetition that creates a sense of movement.
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Rosa sat so that Martin could walk,
Martin walked so that Barack could run,
Barack ran so that our children could fly.
Generally, progression leaves the most important item until the end and builds to the word or point you want the audience to remember.
All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.
—John E Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961
Some possible progressions include the following:
Minutes → hours → days
Great → greater → greatest
Local → state → Federal
Low → middle → high
Bad → worse → worst
Legendary primatologist Jane Goodall said, “Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.”
You also can use progression to structure the points of your speech, so the preview itself will be a progression. For example, if your thesis were “Taxation is unjust,” structuring your argument as a progression might yield this argument:
If taxation is unjust for the federal government, it is unjust for a state, and if unjust for a state, it is unjust for our town.
Like repetition, progression uses ordinary words and their normal meanings, but it arranges them to create a striking and memorable effect. You can use these figures to create emphasis for points you are trying to make.
Think about the difference between these two sentences:
It ‘s often hard for people to change their cultural assumptions, even when they make major geographical and sociological moves.
You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.
These two sentences have much the same meaning; the difference is in the choice and arrangement of the words. The second version makes the contrast clear and memorable. You can use contrast in several different ways. Let ‘s look at antithesis and a couple of its variations.
Antithesis Antithesis means putting opposites together by creating a sentence with two contrasting or opposing parts. Here ‘s a famous example:
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antithesis The use of two contrasting or opposing words or meanings.
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One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.
—Neil Armstrong, as he set foot on the moon, July 21, 1969
By putting the contrast of ideas into the structure of the sentence, antithesis makes the point in more than one dimension. Consider this example from Richard Nixon ‘s eulogy for Senator Everett Dirksen in 1969; it ‘s part of Nixon ‘s argument that Dirksen was an outstanding politician:
FIGURE 8.1 Constructing an antithesis on a scale
A politician knows how to make the process of democracy work and loves the intricate workings of the democratic system. A politician knows not only how to count votes but how to make his vote____.
Because you can easily guess what the last word of this passage must have been, you know that you, like the audience, were following the structure of the sentences, and listening/ reading closely.
Consider the final sentence of this passage from a speech by Carrie Chapman Catt, a leading advocate of women ‘s suffrage, to Congress in 1917 on why women should have the vote:
If parties prefer to postpone action longer and thus do battle with this idea, they challenge the inevitable. The idea will not perish; the party which opposes it may.
The antithesis fills out the meaning of inevitable from the previous sentence in a clear and compelling way.
You might think that only someone with poetic abilities could write this way. Not true. Anyone can come up with effective antitheses in a few minutes. When you compose an antithesis, don’t try to write it from beginning to end. Instead, start by thinking about a couple of ideas that are crucial to the argument or point you’re trying to make. Then try this: Draw a line, and put an arrow in the middle to serve as the fulcrum of your scale (see Figure 8.1 ).
If your ideas were about trust and money, think about their opposites: trust/betrayal and wealth/poverty Put the opposing words on either side of the fulcrum in Figure 8.1 . Then play around with the words to shape them into phrases. In Figure 8.1 , it seemed that reversing the order of the concepts worked better. In a speech whose theme is “money can’t buy happiness,” this might be an effective way to make the point.
Try to keep about the same number of words and syllables on each side of the fulcrum. Charles Dickens did this in a famous antithesis that begins A Tale of Two Cities (see Figure 8.2 ).
FIGURE 8.2 Antithesis from A Tale of Two Cities
The basic way to create the opposition in an antithesis is to use words with opposite meanings, such as best and worst. The plain double antithesis and the double-reverse antithesis are slightly more complex ways to structure an antithesis.
FAQ How can I use contrast effectively?
Figures of contrast work best if you stick to a few rules:
• Keep the contrasting figures compact—that is, relatively close together and preferably in the same phrase.
• Use contrast sparingly—saving it for important points. You wouldn’t, for example, use a contrasting construction in a transition (“Now, the first point, as opposed to the second…”).
• Look for real opposites—contrast works best when it is stark. Don’t try to force an opposition between things that are not actually opposites.
Plain Double Antithesis In plain double antithesis , the contrast is double, between two or more pairs of terms, such as between all and none, between virtues and vices, and between dislike and admire in this example:
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plain double antithesis Two pairs of contrasting words.
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He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
—Winston Churchill, describing a political opponent
Here are a couple of other examples:
[We have] made the most difference in people ‘s lives when we’ve led not by polls, but by principle; not by calculation, but by conviction.
—Barack Obama, op-ed, Des Moines Register, November 27, 2007
Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
—Barry Goldwater, accepting the Republican Party ‘s nomination for president, 1964
The double-antithesis has all the virtues of the simple antithesis, but it allows you to put more ideas in play.
Double-Reverse Antithesis A double-reverse antithesis achieves opposition by reversing the order of key words to create the opposite meaning, and has an AB-BA structure.
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double-reverse antithesis Key words repeated in reverse order.
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Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
—John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
—Winston Churchill
When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
—Joseph P. Kennedy
Double-reverse antitheses are somewhat more difficult to compose than the other types, but they are memorable. This is why they get used in advertising jingles.
Aristotle claimed that “popularity of style is mainly due to antithesis,” and he was certainly right that antitheses are impressive and memorable. They are especially useful in your peroration (see Chapter 7 ), where they can help you end your speech clearly and definitely Because you, as a listener, usually can predict the end of an antithesis after hearing the first half, you’re anticipating the end, and it ‘s clear that the speaker means to be absolutely done.
TRY IT! RECOGNIZING FIGURES OF REPETITION AND CONTRAST
Almost everyone knows about Abraham Lincoln ‘s Gettysburg Address, delivered on a battlefield in Pennsylvania after a Civil War battle in which many thousands of soldiers died. Most people find the speech to be powerful, but they’re not sure why. The reason might be Lincoln ‘s skill with figures of speech. Find out for yourself. Here ‘s the text of Lincoln ‘s speech. See how many figures of repetition and contrast you can find in it.
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
How hard was it to find these figures? Do you think they helped to make the speech powerful and memorable? Which ones would you personally change?
Tropes are words or phrases that we use to convey a message other than their usual, literal meaning. As we pointed out earlier, you may not realize it, but you use tropes in your daily speech. The challenge for your public speaking is to choose tropes that serve your purpose and are understandable to the audience.
Tropes are surprisingly easy to create and use, and they’re highly effective with audiences. Tropes can serve several purposes in your speech, including comparison, substitution, and exaggeration (see Table 8.1 ). We’ll begin with the comparative tropes, metaphor and simile, and then move to the tropes of substitution (metonymy), exaggeration, and voice.
FAQ Why is it called a “trope”?
Trope derives from the Greek word tropos, which means “turn.” A trope is a turn of meaning that is somehow meaningful to the audience. If you “turn a phrase” to say something in an indirect but artful way, you have used a trope.
Advice for Being More Charismatic
One of the most difficult things in training public speakers has been, until recently, teaching people how to be more charismatic. If you ask people how to be more charismatic, they often respond with mostly useless advice: Be more confident, own the room, and so on. Being charismatic, confident, or “owning the room” are not things that speakers can decide to do on a whim. If people already knew how to be more charismatic or how to appear more confident, they wouldn’t need this advice. Being charismatic or confident are the products of specific choices; they are the culmination of things that the speaker actually does, as opposed to being things that a speaker can just decide to be.
Scholars who are interested in leadership have started to ask exactly what choices make a person appear more charismatic, and their findings have been extremely interesting. One of the essential things in projecting leadership and, therefore, charisma is to employ some of the tropes discussed in this chapter. Specifically, researchers have found that employing a central explanatory metaphor or analogy tends to make audiences perceive a speaker as more charismatic.
In the research, employing a central explanatory metaphor not only increased the perception that speakers knew what they were talking about, but also increased the tendency of speakers to talk about values, and made the content of the speech more accessible to the audience: Whereas a direct claim that was rooted in the idea behind a content may have fallen flat, a metaphor that explained and imparted value-based content to a claim was found to engage the audience and to make the underlying values of the speaker more accessible. If you want to be more charismatic, you should organize your speech around one or more central metaphors. Your audience will think better of you and the claims you make.
For more information see:
John Antonakis, Marika Fenley, & Sue Liechti, Learning charisma, Harvard Business Review, June 2012, https://hbr.org/2012/06/learning-charisma-2
Tropes of Comparison: Metaphor and Simile
Every time you get up to speak, you’re telling the audience members something they don’t know already How can you help them to understand? You’ll have to start with things they do know and lead them into the new information. Tropes of comparison are a great way to accomplish this, because they allow you to compare the unfamiliar to the familiar.
Metaphor A metaphor is an assertion that isn’t literally true but is still understandable. In essence, it is a comparison that doesn’t use the word like or as, and it is a particularly important trope. When you say of a favorite football player, “Oh, he’s a monster,” you don’t mean it literally (he’s a human being, not a monster); you mean it metaphorically (he ‘s a really large, intense, tough player). Metaphors borrow a meaning or association from one context and import it to another. Although what you’ve said isn’t literally true, it invites the listener to transfer meaning from monster to the football player.
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metaphor A word or phrase applied to something in a way that is not literally true.
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Table 8.1 Types of Tropes and Their Functions
| Comparison | Exaggeration |
| Metaphor | Understatement |
| Simile | Overstatement |
| Substitution | Voice |
| Metonymy | Personification |
Metaphors can make unfamiliar things familiar. For instance, you could say,
College basketball teams are the minor leagues of professional basketball.
This isn’t literally true, because professional teams don’t fund or control college teams, but the metaphor points out the structural similarity in the relationship between student athletes and professional teams.
Metaphors also can simplify complicated things. The statement “Your body is a machine, so it needs regular maintenance in the form of checkups” lets your audience members apply their knowledge about cars to health issues. Metaphors are so common that you may not realize how often you use them. Knowing how to create or find good metaphors for a given speech is the challenge.
Continuing the example of the speech about blood donation from Chapter 1 , here are some sample metaphors:
Turn on the light for someone without hope—give blood.
Donating blood opens the door to hope.
Blood is life.
Giving your blood is giving yourself.
That little tube is a lifeline to others.
Notice that metaphors can clarify what you’re doing when you give blood (“blood is life”), or they can express the benefits of giving blood (“opens the door to hope”). Which you choose depends on the point you’re trying to make in your speech.
Sometimes entire speeches can even be structured around a metaphor: If the audience members understand and remember the metaphor, they will understand and remember the entire speech. For example, suppose you’re talking about educational reform, particularly for underachieving students, and your points consist of the needs to improve home life, classroom facilities, and after-school activities. You might choose the metaphor of an ailing tree: What could we do to improve it? First, we’d look at the roots, the part we can’t see (home life), and be sure the soil was properly balanced (appropriate opportunities at home). Then, we’d attend to the trunk of the tree (the classroom) and make sure it was whole and pest-free (good facilities and no distracting students). Finally, we’d look at the leaves (after-school programs) and make sure they were healthy and able to nurture the rest of the tree (extracurricular opportunities that enhance the rest of the educational process).
Although it ‘s not always possible find an appropriate controlling metaphor for an entire speech, it ‘s often worth the effort. Just make sure that all the parts fit. (If the metaphor falls apart or contradicts itself at some point, it ‘s like a flat note for a singer and can spoil the audience ‘s impression of your speech.) Also make sure the metaphor isn’t so strange or obscure that you’ll confuse the audience.
Simile A simile is an explicit comparison between two things, using the word like or as to connect them. Less subtle and complex than metaphors, similes are most useful when you’re trying to help the audience members immediately see the clear relationship between something they know about—for instance, “beating your head against the wall”—and a new or unexplored idea or experience—“taking a math class too advanced for you.” The simile could be, “Taking a math class too advanced for you is like beating your head against the wall.” Clearly, taking this class is going to prove painful and frustrating.
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simile An explicit comparison that uses like or as to connect two things.
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Similes are related to metaphors, yet they can be more precise, because they make the terms of a connection explicit: One thing is like or can be understood “as” (in explicit connection to) another thing. Because the connection is explicit in a simile, you can fill out the similarity as specifically as you need to, helping you make your point clearly. Compare these examples of similes about blood donation to the examples of metaphors about blood donation in the previous section:
Giving blood is like making a deposit in a bank.
Giving blood is as important as giving time or money.
Similes also are useful when the object of comparison has parts you can use to explain aspects of the main idea. Here ‘s a simile for a speech about changing our diets:
Your body is like a machine: You take fuel in, you produce heat and do work, and you produce waste products. We need to look at the kinds of “fuels” we use and how efficient they are for our “machines.”
Similes can be useful because they are familiar, but if they are trite or cliched, they may not make a strong impression on the audience. Like a stone worn smooth from long handling, familiar similes no longer create much mental friction. If you’ve heard it a lot, you often just don’t hear it. Here are some classic similes that you probably should avoid in favor of something fresh:
| brave as a lion | sick as a dog |
| blind as a bat | silent as the grave |
| busy as a bee | gentle as a lamb |
| cold as ice | good as gold |
| dry as a bone | hard as nails |
| pretty as a picture | strong as an ox |
| quiet as a mouse | sweet as honey |
TRY IT! Using the blood donation example as a model, design a metaphor that is appropriate for the topic of your next speech.
• Now, take that metaphor and reframe it as a simile.
• Which of the two is more effective for your purposes?
• Which is more powerful?
• Why?
The Trope of Substitution: Metonymy
Metonymy (pronounced meh-TAHN-ah-mee)is an expression that substitutes a part for the whole, or a property of something for the thing itself. An example is a television executive saying, “We need to double the eyeballs in this timeslot.” Obviously, the programmer is talking about viewers, not actual eyeballs, but substituting the relevant part of the viewers’ anatomy creates metonymy.
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metonymy An expression that substitutes a part or a property for the whole.
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Metonymy not only is a kind of shorthand, but it also directs listeners’ attention in some way. The eyes are particularly important to television watchers. Historically, the metonymy in which sailors are called “hands” (“All hands on deck!”) is rooted in the days when ships were controlled by ropes, which the sailors worked with their hands. Journalists sometimes refer to infantry soldiers as “boots on the ground,” because traditionally the infantry advanced on foot.
How could metonymy help a speech about blood donation? Suppose your argument is that giving blood is a small inconvenience that has a huge positive impact. To sum up that argument in a memorable way, you could use metonymy:
That tiny pain can save a life.
Every bare arm saves a life.
Blood donation is community in a pint-sized bag.
In each of these examples, some feature of the experience of blood donation stands in for the larger meaning of giving blood.
Jackie Chan isn’t a native speaker of English, though he speaks it well. Does his accent matter in his ability to employ verbal style effectively?
Tropes of Exaggeration: Overstatement and Understatement
Another way to get your point across is by using overstatement and understatement.
Hyperbole is an overstatement, a claim so over the top that it obviously isn’t true:
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hyperbole Extreme overstatement that obviously is untrue.
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I have a million things to do today.
Litotes (pronounced li-TOE-tees) is an understatement, expressing something in a way that obviously is out of proportion with the facts.
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litotes An exaggerated understatement that obviously is untrue.
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The United States has just a small army.
Hyperbole and litotes are both means of ironic exaggeration that put a particular perspective on an event. Litotes usually includes a kind of reversal, in which the understatement emphasizes the magnitude of the truth without making the speaker seem overly passionate or concerned; the audience gets to draw the conclusion.
Here are examples of litotes and hyperbole about blood donation:
Giving blood takes just a second.
A drop of blood from you can do an ocean of good for someone else.
These tropes put the experience of blood donation in perspective, highlighting how a small sacrifice can yield an important result.
The Trope of Voice: Personification
Personification is the process of giving human qualities to abstract or inanimate objects, allowing them to speak, feel, or think.
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personification Human qualities ascribed to an abstract or inanimate object.
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The cost of this school building speaks volumes about its importance to the community.
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Personification is an effective way to position an argument or point of view by shifting from the actual speaker to an imaginary one. For example, if a speaker on a Civil War topic wants to avoid seeming partisan, she might attribute certain arguments to the locations themselves.
The battlefields speak to us eloquently. They ask us to consider the meaning of disagreement, and sacrifice, in a democracy.
If you were going to make an argument about the impact of blood donation, you could give agency to the blood or illustrate that without donations, people won’t get the surgeries they need:
Your blood might go out and save a life.
All these empty hospital beds whisper, “Where were the blood donors?”
Thanks to modern film animation techniques, talking objects are familiar, and speakers should make creative use of them.
MATCHING THE STYLE TO THE TOPIC AND THE OCCASION
In this chapter we’ve given you many new choices about language. Making these choices requires you to consider how to coordinate them with your goal, with the occasion, and with the topic. For example, if your speech is about an everyday topic, your style should be simple—reserving metaphors and examples for difficult concepts. You wouldn’t, for example, talk about the “tyranny” of cilantro-haters or the “bloody massacre” of class registration. But if you’re talking about a subject with a legitimate emotional charge, you might use a more elaborate style. No one should give a speech about a massacre and say that it was “kind of a bummer.”
Similarly, your style should fit the occasion and the audience. If you’re giving a toast in front of a crowd of college friends at a wedding, you’ll have to strike a balance between the customary ribbing, old stories, and something sweet (often metaphorical) about love. If you’re giving a pitch at a business meeting, you wouldn’t use too much figurative language, and only if it relates to your goal. For example, you might use a poker metaphor to invite someone to “double down” on an investment, but you likely wouldn’t talk about how an investment made your “heart take wing.” (We’ll discuss special-occasion speeches like these in Chapter 13 .)
As you think about language and your speech, remember: Novelty is like salt; a little goes a long way. If every sentence is overwhelmingly interesting, the audience will burn out and probably stop listening well. Use figures to highlight your most important points, the ones you absolutely want the audience to walk away remembering. Look through your speech and ask yourself, “If they remember only two things, what would I want the two things to be?” Figures are helpful when you move from one idea or point to another—as transitions and in the introduction, conclusion, or anywhere you’re trying to draw attention to main ideas and relationships.
The speeches you give in class will be designed primarily to inform your audiences about something important or interesting to you or to persuade them to get on board with a policy or other course of action. As a result, although you have some room to use strongly figured language, you will have to pick your places. For example, stylistic figures work well in stories that serve as an example of a larger issue and in your call for action.
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Summary
Language matters. Choosing the right words is a choice about style, even more than delivery is. Although no secret verbal jiu-jitsu can enable you to persuade people by just choosing the right words, presenting your arguments in smart, compelling language helps to make you an effective speaker and communicator. Excellent speakers start by ensuring that their language choices are as concrete, vivid, and respectful as possible. They then go on to look for places in their speeches where they can arrange words (as figures) to make a point or use a turn of phrase (a trope) to enable the audience to see their point. All of these choices have to be made appropriately, taking into account the audience, the occasion, and the topic.
Having good ideas and good arguments in your speech is necessary, but people are not simply data-processing units. The way you use language to convey an idea makes a big difference in how your audience will receive your ideas. Stylistic choices can be difficult, but the most important thing for good style is to think about your choices and to select wisely.
Questions for Review
1. What is style? How do the choices you make about language influence your audience ‘s reception of your ideas?
2. What are the different types of figures?
3. To what uses can tropes be put? Give examples.
4. Give an example showing how you would integrate tropes and figures into a speech.
5. What should guide your choices in using tropes, figures, and other stylistic elements in your speech?
Questions for Discussion
1. Can someone use too many tropes and figures? How would you tell whether a speech is over the top?
2. Which kind of trope seems to be the most common, in everything from famous speakers to advertising jingles? Why do you think it ‘s so popular?
3. Take a simple statement such as, “This course is difficult.” Now invent as many different ways of saying it as you can. Which of the ways that you invented might be effective in a speech? Which would not? Why?
4. Go to www.americanrhetoric.com and select a speech. Choose one section of the speech (the introduction, conclusion, or a specific argument) and list all the tropes and figures you find. Then write a brief paragraph explaining which ones served the speaker ‘s purpose and which ones didn’t. Compare your results with your classmates.
| Key Concepts | MindTap® |
Practice defining the chapter ‘s terms by using online flashcards.
antithesis
double-reverse antithesis
figure
grammatical repetition
hyperbole
litotes
metonymy
metaphor
personification
plain double antithesis
progression
simile
style
trope
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