Chapter 96 Use words that create pictures in people's minds
There is a skill in crafting a witty speech that is incomparably important, though it is always overlooked.Unfortunately, however, many speakers seem to be ignorant of this technique.Perhaps, they did not consider at all what skills there are in the formation of speeches.The technique is to use words that create pictures in people's minds.Generally speaking, if a speaker has no trouble getting his audience to understand what he is saying, he must be good at using words that tend to create pictures in people's minds.Conversely, if his diction is vague, trite, and boring, it will only make the audience sleepy.
Images, as important as the air you breathe, are more interesting and powerful when they are part of your speeches and conversations.
To demonstrate this, let us analyze the excerpt from the Science Information Daily earlier on the Niagara River.Please pay attention to the "picture text" contained in it: 250,000 breads, 600,000 eggs, a 4,000-foot-wide river, the speed of the water, a library, and so on.
Such speeches, as a rule, are as memorable to the audience as the highlights of an action movie shown in the theater.Herbert Spencer has long pointed out in his famous essay "Classic Philosophy" that the excellence of diction is to inspire bright pictures in people's minds:
When we think about problems, we usually do not start from the general sense, but from the specific problem.The following expression, therefore, should be avoided as much as possible: The customs and pastimes of a country are usually cruel and barbarous, and its punishments often severe, in comparison with the decency of the people.
We can use a new wording to replace the above statement: In contrast to the joy of war, bullfighting, and fighting, people also have cruel punishments such as hanging, burning, and beatings.
So it should come as no surprise that the Bible and Shakespeare are peppered with pictures.
Perhaps, for an old-fashioned writer, the pursuit of perfection is completely superfluous, but for Shakespeare, perfection is the ideal in his heart.With the help of pictorial expressions, he once had an immortal famous saying: "Let the refined gold shine more brilliantly, let the blooming lily shine brighter, let the delicate violet fragrance overflow."
I don't know if you have noticed that our common adage is a kind of figurative language.For example:
A bird in the hand is better than a pair in the bush;
If it doesn't rain, it will be raining cats and dogs;
Twisted melons are not sweet.
Similarly, the analogy that has not been changed for hundreds of years is similar:
as cunning as a fox;
rigid as a stake;
flat like a pancake;
Hard as a rock.
Lincoln is a persistent practitioner who uses figurative language.During his time in the White House, if he was tired of those long, cumbersome and procedural reports, he always criticized them in a figurative language: "When I send someone to buy a horse, I don't want to know what is on the horse's tail. How many hairs, I just want to know what is special about the horse I want to buy."