Public Speaking | Page 8

Emphasis is giving prominence to a word or phrase so that its importance is impressed upon a listener. This result is most easily secured by contrast. More force may be put into its delivery than the rest of the speech. The word may be made louder or not so loud. The voice may be pitched higher or lower. The word may be lengthened. Pauses will make it prominent. In speaking, combinations of these are employed to produce emphasis.
While all qualities of speech are important, emphasis is of cardinal value. Listeners will never recall everything that a speaker has said. By a skilful employment of emphasis he will put into their consciousness the main theme of his message, the salient arguments of his contention, the leading motives of action. Here again is that close interdependence of manner and material referred to in the preceding chapter. In later chapters will be discussed various methods of determining and securing emphasis of larger sections than mere words and phrases.
Phrasing. Somewhat related to emphasis is phrasing. This is the grouping together of words, phrases, clauses, and other units so that their meaning and significance may be easily grasped by a listener. As has been already said, pauses serve as punctuation marks for the hearer. Short pauses correspond to commas, longer ones to colons and semi-colons, marked ones to periods. Speakers can by pauses clearly indicate the conclusions of sections, the completion of topics, the passage from one part of the material to another, the transfer of attention from one subject to its opposite. Within smaller range pauses can add delightful variety to delivery as they can signally reinforce the interpretation. No speaker should fall into the habit of monotonously letting his pauses mark the limit of his breath capacity, nor should he take any regular phrase, clause, or sentence length to be indicated by pauses. In this as in all other aspects variety is the charm of speech.
Enunciation. No matter what handicaps a person may have he may overcome them to secure a distinct, agreeable enunciation. Care in enunciating words will enable a speaker to be heard almost anywhere. It is recorded that John Fox, a famous preacher of South Place Chapel, London, whose voice was neither loud nor strong, was heard in every part of Covent Garden Theatre, seating 3500, when he made anti-corn-law orations, by the clearness with which he pronounced the final consonants of the words he spoke.
One of the orators best known to readers is Edmund Burke, whose speeches are studied as models of argumentative arrangement and style. Yet in actual speech-making Burke was more or less a failure because of the unfortunate method of his delivery. Many men markedly inferior in capacity to Burke overcame disadvantageous accidents, but he was frequently hurried and impetuous. Though his tones were naturally sonorous, they were harsh; and he never divested his speech of a strong Irish accent. Then, too, his gestures were clumsy. These facts will explain to us who read and study leisurely these masterpieces why they failed of their purpose when presented by their gifted but ineffective author.
Pronunciation. Enunciation depends to a great degree upon pronunciation. The pronunciation of a word is no fixed and unchangeable thing. Every district of a land may have its peculiar local sounds, every succeeding generation may vary the manner of accenting a word. English people today pronounce schedule with a soft ch sound. Program has had its accent shifted from the last to the first syllable. Many words have two regularly heard pronunciations--_neither, advertisement, Elizabethan, rations, oblique, route, quinine_, etc. Fashions come and go in pronunciation as in all other human interests. Some sounds stamp themselves as carelessnesses or perversions at once and are never admitted into educated, cultured speech. Others thrive and have their day, only to fade before some more widely accepted pronunciation. The first rule in pronunciation is to consult a good dictionary. This will help in most cases but not in all, for a dictionary merely records all accepted sounds; only partly can it point out the better of disputed sounds by placing it first. Secondly, speech is a living, growing, changing thing. Dictionaries drop behind the times surprisingly rapidly. The regularly accepted sound may have come into general use after the dictionary was printed. New activities, unusual phases of life may throw into general conversation thousands of unused, unheard words. This was true of the recent Great War, when with little or no preparation thousands of military, industrial, naval, and aeronautical terms came into daily use. Discussions still flutter mildly around cantonment and rations, and a score of others.
Next to authoritative books, the best models are to be secured from the speech of authorities in each branch to which the term specifically belongs. Thus the military leaders have made the