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Persuasive Oration: Watching What You Say
Language and persuasion can both be mangled. They can also be the epitome of art. And as with any artistic endeavor, unless you're a child prodigy like Mozart or Picasso, most likely you'll have to practice to excel.
Language and persuasion can both be mangled. They can also be the epitome of art. And as with any artistic endeavor, unless you’re a child prodigy like Mozart or Picasso, most likely you’ll have to practice to excel.
As always, we orient ourselves toward working with the affluent. To best serve us in this respect, we must use language and speech powerfully.
The more you read, the bigger your vocabulary.
But having a huge vocabulary is only one part of speaking well. The act of oration is an entirely different set of skills.
First you have the fear of public speaking to get over (if you’re inflicted with this, the most common of fears) and then of course you have to have something to say.
And once you get over the fear of speaking and have something to say of importance or interest, then there’s the next obstacle. . . the delivery.
I’ve been informed by my transcriptionist that I use the term ‘in other words’ a lot.
Part of the reason I do this is that I want to explain myself fully and so I deliver information in as many ways as I can think of.
Another reason I do this is because I don’t often use the filler words ‘um’ or ‘uh’. In other words, I’m filling the space with in other words.
In his new book, ‘Um. . . Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders and What They Mean,’ Michael Erard discusses ‘um’ as a universal language filler. In Spain they say ‘eh’ and in France it’s ‘euh’ and Mr. Erard suggests that this language filler has been around at least since Ancient Egypt and Greece.
As of late, probably since the advent of television and radio, ‘um’ has fallen out of favor and is seen as more of an impediment than simple filler.
’Um. . .’ (the book) starts out with the transcriptionists of the Federal News Service (FNS). They’re the ones that do the closed captions for the hearing impaired.
The FNS transcriptionists have style guidelines to follow when transcribing the news. Um, uh, ah, and er are never included, nor are false starts of one or two words or partial words. The exception to the rule is that policymakers are transcribed verbatim, ums, ers, ahs, slips, blunders, etc.
I couldn’t help myself. I skipped ahead and read the chapter on George W. Bush. And while it’s not as funny as ‘Bushisms’ it is quite an interesting take on perception and how people view him as a result of his “disfluencies”.
Perception is so fluid: while some consider the president ‘one of the people’ and ‘down to earth’ because of his blunders and gaffes, others perceive his mangling of the English language a total lack of intelligence or preparedness and indicative of a ‘disconnect with reality’.
Either way, whichever side you’re on, some of his more memorable malapropisms are really amusing.
If every word you uttered were recorded and transcribed, what kinds of patterns do you think you’d find? Pay attention to the way you and others talk, looking for the ums, ahs, false starts, gaffes and blunders you make.
Language is a critical part of persuasion and the ums, uhs, and other fillers ‘say something’ to your prospect when you speak. Keep that in mind when you are persuading the affluent.