Considering five types of speeches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a relatively brief article by Diane Windingland on pages 10 and 11 of the November 2024 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Exploring 5 types of speeches. She discusses informative, persuasive, entertaining, demonstrative, and ceremonial ones, and which is the best type for your goal.

 

What is missing? There is no link to educational material from Toastmasters. But at Toastmasters NZ you can find a .pdf file of the current Pathways Level 3 Project on Persuasive Speaking. And elsewhere from the former Advanced Communication Series you can download .pdf files of The Entertaining Speaker, Speaking to Inform, and Special Occasion Speeches. There is an article about the Special Occasion Speeches manual by Maureen Zappala on pages 22 to 25 of the December 2016 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled It’s a Special Occasion.

 

Also, at the APSU Writing Center for Austin Peay State University you can download .pdf files for Informative Speech, Persuasive Speech, and Demonstrative Speech.

 

Of course, as I blogged about on October 5, 2024 in a post titled Free 2023 e-book on Public Speaking as Performance you can download an e-book with entire chapters on informative, persuasive, and special occasion speeches.  

 

 

6 Tips for better public speaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent brief article by Jim Mandelaro at the University of Rochester on November 21, 2024 titled Fear of public speaking? This Rochester professor has you covered. It presents these six tips:

 

Know your audience!

Be yourself.

Find your perfect pace.

Work up to eye contact.

Focus on getting started.

Practice, practice, practice.

 

And it links to a five-minute YouTube video by Amy Arbogast titled 6 Tips for better public speaking. Under Know Your Audience she says:

 

“Good speakers think about what they’re going to say. Great speakers think about who they’re saying it to. Ask yourself, ‘What do I want my audience to learn or take away from what I say? How do I want them to feel or respond?’ And think about who’s going to be there – what do they already know or not know? What kind of jargon is going to be familiar to them, or is going to make them feel a little left out? What’s important to them? And how can you make them care about what you are saying?  Thinking through these questions will make it much easier and more intuitive to convey your message.”

 

The cartoon was adapted from one with six thinking hats at Openclipart.

 

Is the number one rule of communication a sandwich helix?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 25, 2024 there was an xkcd cartoon titled Sandwich Helix with the following dialogue:

 

Cueball:   Always remember the #1 rule of communication:

                  Sandwich Helix.

 

Ponytail: What does that mean?

 

Cueball:   Unfortunately the context has been lost.

                  But we know the message,

                  and that’s the important part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not sure what a sandwich helix is or why the context got lost. Perhaps, as shown above, one is made on spiral-sliced bread. The web page at Explain xkcd suggests that it is about the long-used Compliment Sandwich. When I looked at Google Books, I found an article from 1964 – a Special Report from the University of Kansas Governmental Research Center (page 33):

 

“Use the Sandwich Method. Slip your criticism or suggestion between two hunks of praise or compliments.”

 

What other rules for communication are number one in books? In a 2020 book by Rebecca C. Thompson titled Fire, Ice, and Physics: The Science of Game of Thrones, on Page 254 she said:

 

“I’ve spent my life working as a science communicator, and the number one rule in communication is to tell a story.”

 

And in another 2022 book by Illana Raia titled The Epic Mentor Guide on Page 166 she instead said that:

 

“The number one rule of communication is to know your audience”

 

The sandwich helix was Photoshopped from this image at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Heritage interpretation with objects, images and text at the Idaho State Museum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interpreters are people who explain natural or cultural resources for visitors at places like parks, nature centers, museums, zoos, botanical gardens, aquariums, and tour companies. Interpretation also includes writing and graphic design of exhibits and signs. The Idaho State Museum in Boise has excellent examples of exhibits. I visited it on November 16th.

 

The Origins exhibit on the ground floor introduces the state’s five federally recognized tribes. Permanent exhibits on the second floor include Idaho: The Land & Its People, divided into three regions as follows:

 

“Lakes and Forests: North Idaho

 

Learn the rich history of mining, forestry, and transportation and how some of Idaho’s natural resources are used around the world today. Watch a spark turn into the blaze that became the Big Burn of 1910, and how this historic fire continues to influence forest management today.

 

Mountains and Rivers: Central Idaho

 

Central Idaho’s mountains are a recreational paradise. Experience what it’s like to ride a chairlift up Mt. Baldy, or sit around a campfire where you’ll learn about the first group to urge protections for our wilderness areas.   

 

Deserts and Canyons: South Idaho

 

Discover the hard road travelers faced on the Oregon Trail, the challenges of developing agriculture in the desert, and Idaho’s atomic past and high-tech future. Take a virtual bike ride through historic Pocatello or downtown Boise.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Entrances for those three regions are shown above, as is the next sign explaining North Idaho. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In north Idaho there is an explanatory sign and display about Logging Camp Life as shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A display case about mining with an ore cart is shown above, as is another display in an alcove.

 

 

 

 

Signs on the left and right sides of the alcove are shown above.These organized displays and accompanying signs should inspire carefully organized speechwriting.

 

Jim Gaffigan heard there was a pinecone factory in Bend

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though I am a seasoned citizen there always are things I have not noticed before. Recently I was watching a YouTube video of a Jim Gaffigan comedy routine telling a story about Pinecones scented with cinnamon. I’d never noticed them, but as shown above, I found bags of them on display outside of a Winco supermarket here in Boise. Jim started his monologue with:

 

“Occasionally I will perform in a city I’ve never been. I did a show recently in Bend, Oregon. Beautiful Bend, down there in the woods. And I had never been to Bend, Oregon, so I asked my Uber driver, I was like, ‘What is the industry? The industry here in Bend, Oregon’ He very quickly answered: ‘Pinecone Factory.’ Oh well, obviously he didn’t hear me. I don’t even know what question I’d have to ask to get Pinecone Factory as an answer.“

 

Then the driver tried to explain about around the holidays, when everyone buys their bags of pinecones. Jim replied that no, they don’t. But when he Googled, he found out about pinecones that smell of cinnamon. When I Googled, I found an article by Dylan J. Darling at the Bend Bulletin on January 31, 2020 titled Pine cone picking catching on. It explained that you could get a license for picking them in the Deschutes National Forest. Presumably scent gets added in the factory. You can also get them scented with vanilla! But I think pinecones just should smell like pine trees.

 

Getting an award for surviving the most boring meeting ever

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday’s Savage Chickens cartoon by Doug Savage (shown above) is titled The Award and is about surviving the most boring meeting ever.

 

How can you plan to not have a boring meeting? There is a brief article by Mithun A. Sridharan on page 6 of the January 2024 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled The 4Ps of Effective Meetings. Those four Ps are Purpose, Product, People, and Process.

 

And there is a 17-page pdf article at Northern Illinois University titled Planning a Great Meeting that originated at The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation but is no longer on their website.

 

You do not really know the Gettysburg Address

 

 

 

 

 

 

A blog post by David Murray at Writing Boots on October 31, 2024 titled You Don’t Know the Gettysburg Address begins:

“The Gettysburg Address was not a ceremonial speech, inevitably bound for a marble wall. It was a strategy speech, designed to ‘convince a very skeptical public in the north that they should keep dying’ despite their doubts about a cause ‘that they didn’t particularly believe in,’ says legendary University of Chicago writing professor Larry McEnerney.”

 

There is a YouTube video of professor Larry McEnerney’s excellent lecture at the World Conference of the Professional Speechwriters Association titled The Gettysburg Address, as You’ve Never Considered It Before. It is an hour and fifteen minutes long – and well worth watching for learning about that great speech. If you can’t spare all that time right now, I suggest you watch the last fifteen minutes which I have bookmarked here.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At 35 minutes he talks about Lincoln’s use of coherence as shown above – going more specific: continent, nation, battlefield, portion, resting place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At an hour and eight minutes he discusses how dedicate yourself (the call to action) solves three problems.

 

The plaque of the address text came from here at Wikimedia Commons.