Is public speaking the greatest fear for US teens?

Last week I read a news story with the usual comical “statistic” from Jerry Seinfeld:

“On Saturday, hundreds of students from across eastern Montana turned out to Rocky Mountain College in Billings for the Class "A" Eastern Divisional Speech, Drama and Debate Tournament.

‘The two greatest fears are death and public speaking,’ said Billings Central Catholic High School head coach Mark Elison. ‘And death is second’.”

Does that claim really apply to teens?

On March 29, 2005 Gallup reported the results (shown above, click to enlarge) for their poll about What frightens America’s youth? They asked a sample of 1028 teenagers (ages 13 to 17) between January 17th and February 6th of 2005. Teens were asked what they were most afraid of, in an open-ended format. Terrorist attacks were the top fear, followed by ties for spiders and death, and  then being a failure, war and heights. Note that public speaking isn’t anywhere on this top ten list.  

These results reminded me of a Sherlock Holmes story, Silver Blaze, in which Holmes tried to draw the inspector’s interest to what he called the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. The inspector replied that the dog did nothing, which Holmes then said was very curious (since it would have barked if a stranger was approaching). 

The sleeping dog image is from Wikimedia Commons.

Hype cycles revisited

This morning Seth Godin blogged about Reconsidering Gartner’s Cycle of Hype. Those hype cycles supposedly describe how a new technology spreads. They propose a complicated curve shape (the red line) rather than a simple one like the blue dotted one, or perhaps an S-curve like a sigmoid function. Seth said hype cycles ignore being ignored so that:

.”..most of the things we now take for granted (cell phones, tweeting, insulated windows, email) didn't follow this curve at all.”

He’s right. If you look in a sample of books via the Google Ngram viewer for the three phrases of cell phones, insulated windows, and email (or electronic mail) you don’t see the hype cycle shape. For cell phones and email there is a smooth rise, and for insulated windows there's more complex behavior. I blogged about this topic last May, and showed seven other examples. 

Six decades ago the famous physicist, Enrico Fermi, commented skeptically about theories including adjustable parameters. He said that:

 “I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”

Tired old phrases to use nevermore

Almost a century ago, on page 546 of his 1915 book Kleiser’s Complete Guide to Public Speaking, Grenville Kleiser presented the following list of of 46 redundant (and thus undesirable) phrases:

“I rise with diffidence
Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking,
By a happy stroke of fate,
It becomes my painful duty
I am encouraged to go on
I point with pride
On the other hand (with gesture) I hold
The vox populi
Be that as it may,
I shall not detain you
As the hour is growing late,
Believe me,
We view with alarm
As I was about to tell you,
The happiest day of my life
It falls to my lot
I can say no more
In the fluff and bloom
I can only hint
I can say nothing
I cannot find words
The fact is
To my mind
I can not sufficiently do justice
I fear
All I can say is
I shall not inflict a speech on you
Far be it from me
It behooves me
Rise Phoenix-like from his ashes
But alas!
What more can I say?
At this late period of the evening
It is hardly necessary to say
I cannot allow the opportunity to pass
For, mark you
I have already taken up too much time
I might talk to you for hours
Looking back upon my childhood
We can imagine the scene
I haven’t the time nor ability
Ah no, dear friends!
One word more and I have done
I will now conclude
I really must stop
I have done.”

They were tired way back then, but many are still around. I’ve never heard “in the fluff and bloom” though. Please avoid them all.

Politicians are fond of both of pointing with pride (at the past) and viewing (the present) with alarm. Their speeches fit an outline used as an article title in 2008 by David B. Nash:

“Point with pride, view with alarm, end with hope.”

The image, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven, was adapted from a 1900 Puck magazine cover.

101-word stories and 50-second elevator speeches

On January 4th Boise Weekly published ten winners and judge’s picks from their 10th annual Fiction 101 contest. Those ten writers each managed to tell a unique story using only 101 words.

Coincidentally, on January 5th, Fred Miller blogged about non-fiction elevator speeches. If you speak at a reasonable rate of 120 words per minute, that 101-word limit corresponds to a 50-second speech. Fred described an extremely useful floor-by-floor approach that can work within 50 seconds, or longer as appropriate.  

Two years ago I blogged about elevator speeches, which I described as covering What do you do that can help me? You can find a much more detailed discussion in Terri L. Sjodin’s 2011 book, Small Message, Big Impact - How to Put the Power of the Elevator Speech Effect to Work for You. An excerpt is here on her blog.

A 50-second elevator speech is at one end of a class of very useful, brief presentation formats - which also include 100-second presentations, 200-second Presto presentations, 300-second Ignite presentations, and 400-second Pecha Kucha presentations.

18 Wheels of Love: A quirky country-rock love story

Drive-By Truckers - 18 Wheels Of Love from juldes on Vimeo.

Back in 1998 a relatively unknown noir alternative country-rock band called the Drive-By Truckers recorded a song called 18 Wheels of Love for their debut CD, Gangstabilly. It had somewhat forgettable lyrics. For live performances they added a long, profane spoken introduction. Finally, a decade later on the Austin City Limits TV program, they told that story via the extended version shown above. An audio-only version is here.

Watch and listen for all the gestures and specific details Patterson Hood crams into telling his story - including mama, divorce, vodka, Elvis, tabloids, tattoos, Vietnam, Dollywood, and heart disease. Those details make a presentation compelling, rather than generic. Other country songs about truck drivers like Phantom 309 or Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses pale in comparison.

By the way, Chester lived for a couple more years.

Developing a sure-fire speech topic

Page 34 of the January-February issue of Speaker magazine (from the National Speakers Association) has an excellent two-page article by Jeff Davidson on how to Develop a Sure-Fire Topic. He suggests exploring by:

1. Talking to your local librarian

2. Tapping the industry influentials

3. Reading trend-identifying publications

3. Conversing with meeting planners

4. Expanding on the subtopics within your existing topics

5. Rereading your interviews

5. Filling a void

Jeff also discusses checking a topic to see if it really fits you.

Being on a list of Fifty Best Blogs

Every month or so I Google the name of this blog. A few days ago I was pleasantly surprised to find it on a list (from last week) of 50 Best Blogs for Communications Majors. I’m number 48, just after Jay Heinrich’s Figures of Speech Served Fresh and Tom Antion’s Great Public Speaking.

In reply I assembled a list of ten of my posts about surveys that communication majors may find particularly interesting:

1. York College professionalism survey shows students don’t realize how important employers think communications skills are.

2. Employers consider verbal communication and many other skills important, but are only somewhat satisfied by their newly hired college graduates.

3. What’s the difference between a fear and a phobia?

4. How to get beyond just using a worn out cliche.

5. 20 fears for a new millennium - replacing the 1977 Book of Lists.

6. Lists where the fear of public speaking isn’t anywhere near the top - The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Survey

7. What do US college students fear most? Is it snakes, spiders, or public speaking?

8. Public speaking is the worst social fear for both Swedish and Indian college students.

9. Social fears in learning situations: a survey of students at the University of the West of England.

10. Social and specific fears in young Israeli soldiers.

The cartoon came from here on Wikimedia Commons.