Friday, February 24, 2006
Who Says? (Pithy Advice on Powerful Speech-Making
"The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here," President Abraham Lincoln said in dedicating the cemetery at Gettysburg.
These words were written almost 150 years ago, at the height of the U.S. Civil War.
And about the closing words of his second inaugural address, Lincoln said: "It is a truth that I thought needed to be told," as noted by James L. Swanson in *The Wall Street Journal*.
Yet the secret to the emotion Lincoln evoked when he spoke, according to Ronald C. White Jr., author of "The Eloquent President" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400061199/104-3479112-6906330?v=glance), was that he "wrote for the ear, not the eye," using "a variety of . . . stylistic devices, including parallelism, assonance, alliteration, the use of one-syllable words and, perhaps most important, brevity."
With that in mind, read the speech's conclusion: "With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."
White offers another insight to speaking with impact. He delivered his words slowly, "at 105 to 110 words a minute instead of the 150 to 160 of normal conversation."
Read an excerpt: (http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=1400061199&view=excerpt).
These words were written almost 150 years ago, at the height of the U.S. Civil War.
And about the closing words of his second inaugural address, Lincoln said: "It is a truth that I thought needed to be told," as noted by James L. Swanson in *The Wall Street Journal*.
Yet the secret to the emotion Lincoln evoked when he spoke, according to Ronald C. White Jr., author of "The Eloquent President" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400061199/104-3479112-6906330?v=glance), was that he "wrote for the ear, not the eye," using "a variety of . . . stylistic devices, including parallelism, assonance, alliteration, the use of one-syllable words and, perhaps most important, brevity."
With that in mind, read the speech's conclusion: "With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."
White offers another insight to speaking with impact. He delivered his words slowly, "at 105 to 110 words a minute instead of the 150 to 160 of normal conversation."
Read an excerpt: (http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=1400061199&view=excerpt).
