Chapter 95 To make the speech specific

I once had two students in a public speaking class: one was a Ph. D.; the other was a rude but very friendly man who had spent his youth in the British Navy thirty years earlier.At the time, the former, an elegant scholar, was a professor at a university; the latter, the owner of a small truck company.Surprisingly, however, the truck owner's speech was more popular than the university professor's.why?Although the university professor's language is beautiful, logical, expressive, and his manners are elegant and self-cultivated, he has neglected a necessary element of speech-the content must be specific.A speech must not be like his, which only stays on the general level and appears too general.In stark contrast to this was the proprietor, who went straight to the point, took his own business as an example, made the speech certain and specific, coupled with his own strong masculine energy and refreshing diction, and finally achieved great success.

The reason why I cite this example here is not because it is very special, but to illustrate a point: an interesting speech means how powerful a speaker is, whether he has received formal education or not. Next, I want to let you fully realize the incomparable importance of the above principle through a few examples. You must engrave it in your heart and never forget it. Which of the following two statements about the boy Martin Luther is more interesting? (1) Martin Luther was a "stubborn and stubborn" boy. (2) Martin Luther said frankly: "One morning, the teacher hit me as many as fifteen times."

In "(1)", "stubborn and stubborn" does not give people a strong attraction, but in "(2)", "hit me as many as fifteen times" may make the audience laugh Bar? Let's look at another example: In the past, when people wrote autobiographies, they always had to rely on some general principles. Aristotle called these general principles "the shell of people's dull thinking"; now, when people write autobiographies, they often rely on some specific examples. For example, according to the previous way of writing autobiography, we said: "John's father was poor but honest." Then, according to the current way of writing, it would be: "John's father had no money to buy a pair of overshoes for himself, so in the snowy day , he had to wrap his shoes in sackcloth to keep his feet warm and dry; but, in spite of his poverty, he never put water in the milk he sold, and never put a horse with asthma traded as healthy horses."

Does this new way of writing also express "John's father was poor but honest"?And, isn't this statement more interesting? The same is true for writing autobiography, and speeches are no exception.If you wanted to tell the world that the Niagara River wasted a staggering amount of water energy every day, and you said so, would that statement excite the audience?Absolutely not. The following paragraph is selected from an article published by Edwin Slauson in "Science Information Daily". You may wish to compare it. Is this expression more exciting? We know that millions of people in this country are still suffering from poverty and malnutrition, but did you know that on the Niagara River, the economic value of wasted water is equivalent to losing 250,000 per hour Bread, or 600,000 fresh eggs; and if this loss were to be converted into calico, it would be the same as spreading calico over the four thousand feet of the Niagara, and we would destroy the calico at the speed of its currents; If this loss is converted into books, then the amount of loss is worth a Carnegie library in an hour or two.

Undoubtedly, this kind of expression is very interesting, and the content is expressed in a variety of ways, so it is self-evident that it is attractive to the audience.Such speeches are easily remembered by people.