the king’s speech

the king’s speech

The Importance of Effective Communication

1. The Power of Speech

The ability to communicate is unique to our species and its expression is powerfully evident in its form as speech. Speech provides an individual with the ability to gain supporters or lose them, create a sense of social unity or isolation, and is directly responsible for the evolution and spread of ideas. The power of speech in influencing the behaviors of others is an essential component in the psychology of social control. The Greeks, famous for their deep philosophies and ideologies on government put an incredible importance on the power of speech used through rhetoric. Aristotle believed that the ideal function of rhetoric was to encourage people to make the right decisions, and later defined rhetoric to be “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.” By persuasion, he meant getting others to see the available choices in any given situation. This is extremely empowering in being able to guide others to a certain decision to better themselves, others, and their organization. Today, rhetoric is still considered to be an influential tool in the decision making of individuals and practices of modern speech such as salesmen trying to sell products to consumers contain ideologies of Aristotle’s old rhetoric teachings.

2. Overcoming Speech Challenges

Summary: Efforts to completely eliminate disfluencies and communication abnormalities frequently fail because speakers focus on eradicating problems rather than improving overall communication. The result is often a constrained and effortful communication style that is not successful. Meanwhile, many other factors can cause speech to be misunderstood and less accurate than intended. The best course of action is to improve one’s overall communication style, which will effect positive changes and carry over to a variety of speaking situations. The most effective way to accomplish this is to enlist the help of understanding communication partners and to seek the guidance of specialists in communication disorders.

The above strategies help to improve the quality and meaning of your communication style. Resist trying too hard to eliminate disfluencies; doing so makes speaking more difficult. However, make sure to focus on the best possible communication style. If you would like more practice, the next chapters offer methods to identify and treat specific problem behaviors. By succeeding with your clients and other communication partners, you can get the most accurate understanding of your communication strengths and weaknesses and the most helpful assistance to make any necessary improvements. Through the valuable feedback and guidance that successful communication partners can provide, you can greatly increase your chances of making enduring changes in your communication behaviors. With this help, many individuals find that substantial reductions in problem behaviors are possible, such that their overall communication becomes quite effective.

3. Strategies for Effective Communication

Listen actively. We can’t talk about communicating effectively without bringing up active listening. People are more likely to give their full attention if they know that they will also get a chance to speak and be listened to. Let the other person know you are truly interested in what they have to say. Make eye contact and be genuinely attentive. Don’t interrupt with your own thoughts and don’t let your mind wander off. If you’re having a conversation, at the end of the discussion you should be able to remember what the other person said.

Develop compelling content. People are more likely to listen and respond positively to your ideas if you can make your content interesting and relevant to them. This is the number one way to gain someone’s attention and agreement. Try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. What would make the message interesting or useful to them? What are they getting out of the situation? How might it benefit them and how does it impact their current interests and priorities? Use this information to tailor your message in a way that is compelling to the other person.

Make your message clear. Use language that is easily understood and appropriate for your audience. There’s no point in spending hours composing an eloquent, well-crafted message if its meaning will be lost on the recipient. If you’re not sure whether the language you’re using is simple and clear, try the Elevator Speech test. Imagine you have to give someone an important message really quickly (for example in an elevator). If you only had 30 seconds to talk, what are the most important elements of your message you need to get across? What key words and phrases would you choose to use? This can be a good way to simplify your language and make sure your key message gets through.

4. Inspiring and Persuading Through Speech

Inspiration is having the same effect upon others, but without necessarily having a desired outcome. Inspiring people are not trying to turn their followers into a cheap labor force, they just want to share their belief or passion. An inspired person may take action to further their beliefs, but the initial process is non-interactive. Both persuasion and inspiration are key tools of the leader. A leader is someone who can create a better future, and being a leader is an aspiration many of us share. A good leader is armed with the ability to reason and is skilled at problem-solving. These are attributes we have enough of, and they are often not the qualities which separate the man at the top from the herd. A better marker of success is the ability to create change by marshaling and influencing the efforts of others. The philosopher king is a wonderful idea, but someone has to get their hands dirty.

So what is persuasion? It is an attempt to direct others’ adopted beliefs, attitudes, or actions. The process of persuasion results in a change of the audience’s viewpoint towards the person who has presented the persuasive arguments. This is usually a change for the more favorable, and the speaker usually has a desired outcome. This is a conscious and interactive process. In order to persuade, we have to employ rhetoric.

The Greeks believed that only a man who could offer sound counsel could truly be considered wise. They considered eloquence a key to success in public and personal life, and held that it was not art, but a power which could move men. Aristotle called rhetoric the power of observing the means of persuasion and stated that these means could be sorted into three categories: ethos, pathos, and logos. Influence has always and will always be a tool of power. “The pen is mightier than the sword” or in modern terms, the media is a more effective weapon than the bomb. Language theoretically and literally has the power to move nations, but good verbal strategy is not just exclusive to politicians and public figures. We have to put our best foot forward when making a point, in casual conversation, when we’re trying to get a raise, or convince someone to employ us. Therefore, the ability to inspire and persuade is a vital tool of the competent person’s trade. Rationally, it makes sense that we are more likely to get what we want when we ask for it. Rhetoric is not only a form of strategy, but a higher art form which has many practical implications.

5. The Impact of a King’s Speech

But what happens when, as a public speaker, your message to your audience is one of encouragement, lasting change, and hope for the future? A public speaker with a truly significant message to deliver, one that might even change the course of history, would certainly want to look into how his message could be most effectively conveyed. A message of such importance conveyed to the people through their King. This was precisely the case in the late 1930s when King George VI was forced to accept the responsibilities of kingship in Great Britain. King George VI’s task was to lead his nation into a global conflict with a clear conscience and a strong resolve. His personal and moving speech announcing Britain’s involvement in the Second World War was a clear example of a message with great significance and importance. He was fully aware that his nation would need firm resolve to face the trials ahead and was determined to clearly convey the strength of his own conviction to the people. The fifth journal article can be directly related to King George VI’s speech. This is an experimental investigation of the effects of delivery on the persuasive impact of a speech. The researchers hypothesized that a clear, fluent delivery would enhance the persuasiveness of a speech containing strong arguments while a disfluent delivery would have a marginal impact on a speech with weak arguments. Effects of speech delivery on the persuasiveness of a speech with matched or mismatched strength arguments conducted by Hsuan-Ting Leu, Boaz Keysar, and Li-Jun Ji. The researchers began by pointing out that regardless of prevailing culture and language, people have an implicit positive attitude towards fluency and a negative one towards disfluency. This is true, people perceive a clear and fluent message to have been well thought out and with strong intention, whereas a disfluent message is seen to be hesitant. For the purpose of their investigation, the researchers chose to manipulate written speeches with either strong or weak arguments and invite English-speaking participants to read them. They argue that for a speech with strong arguments, a clear and fluent delivery would induce the highest level of persuasion because the strength of the message would be reinforced by the delivery. On the other hand, a speech with weak arguments would be no more or less persuasive with either a clear or disfluent delivery because of the lack of influence from the arguments to the delivery. Thus, persuasion from a speech containing weak arguments would be enhanced by a clear and fluent delivery, a speech with strong match arguments would induce the highest persuasion with a clear and fluent delivery, and there would be no significant fluency effect on a speech with weak matched arguments.