“DEPORABLY LOW”

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 256, 27 September 1929, Page 11

“DEPORABLY LOW”

ORATORY IN DOMINION. JUDGE’S FRANK OPINION. “The standard of public speaking :n New Zealand at present is deplorably low. Of the making of speeches there seems to be no end. Public speech in this Dominion may be rich in quantity, but it certainly is poor in quality. Until at least one of our more talkativo bores is (justifiably) shot on the public platform, I fear, however, that there is not much hope of improvement in this respect.” • . In the literal sense Mr Justice MacGregor, who made the above utterance when delivering an address to the Wadestown and Highland Park Men’s Society, was not advocating personal violence towards members of Parliament and others (says the Post), but he. was serious, during his address on “The Art of Public Speaking,” in his advocacy that more attention should he paid to speech than is the case at the present time. After commending Pascal’s definition of eloquence as “a pictorial representation of thought,” Mr Justice MacGregor went on to say that few public speakers learn so to produce their voices as to make themselves . adequately heard by their entire audience. “Those who profess the kindred art of singing in public frequently devote years of patient study to what is termed voice production,” while most of our ,would-be orators appear to neglect almost entirely this indispensable training for public speech. Many a good speech is ruined for lack of a welltrained voice, while an inferior address may prove a success owing largely to its better delivery.”

“USE SIMPLE, SINCERE WORDS. - ’ But a good voice alone was not enough. In order to make a successful speech in public it was necessary to have clear ideas to impart, and to clotho these ideas in appropriate language. “It is true,” he said, “that tiie pleasing delivery of a speech is the nrst stop towards success, but what if there be little or nothing of substance to deliver? How often is one condemned to listen to a mere outpouring of words, without any effective arrangement of ideas, and perhaps disfigured by slang or slipshod or ungrammatical English ? Very few speakers appear to realise how necessary it is to select their topics carefully, to use clear and cogent language, and to avoid cant and commonplace, if at all possible. It is not enough merely to repeat platitudes and generalities—however fluently. Language was not really given to us to conceal our thoughts, but to express them, to transfer our individual ideas to the collective mind of our audience. This can be effected only by the use cf simple and sincere words, which are much more lucid and convincing than the grandiloquent language too often affected by those who seek to sway the multitude from public platforms. “As a rule speakers take too little trouble in selecting the words they use, and thereby rob their public utterances of much of their point and effect. But, before choosing with care the W'ords he intends to employ, the aspiring public speaker should be at pains to arrange in orderly sequence the topics on which he proposes to speak. Skill in arrangement is essential to successful public speaking. Until you first have clear in your own view what you mean to say it is hopeless to expect to make your meaning transparent to other people. Muddled thinking in the mind of the speaker makes lucid speech on his part all but impossible. Hence the importance of a clear outline or framework, with the various topics so arranged as to follow each other in orderly sequence.” It was comforting to reflect how'few public speakers ever attained to anything approaching perfection. “True orators, indeed, are at least as rare as true poets. Speaking for myself, it has been my lot for nearly half a cen-. tury to listen to numberless speeches in public, but during that time I have hoard only two real orators—Gladstone and Rosebery. We commonplace people cannot hope to emulate orators like Gladstone or Rosebery. That, of course, is far beyond our powers. But if we desire to become even passable public speakers, we must assiduously study and practise the rules of the game. Tersely and crudely put, these rules are frequently enunciated as ‘Stand up, speak up, and shut up’ 1 The last of these rules is not the least important of them, but ie, I think, the one most commonly broken by would-be orators. How often do we hear some prosy speaker meandering on long after lie should have come to a close, wearying his audience and ruining the effort of an oration —otherwise passable. It is a safe rule, of general application, always to stop speaking while your hearers still wish you to continue. How much shorter, and better, would many public speeches thus become 1 WIRELESS AND TALKIES. “For more than one reason it appears to me to be of importance that the art of speaking in public should bo carefully cultivated at the present time. Tho advent of wireless has vastly extended the range and influence of the human voice. Before tho days of broadcasting an orator could address at most a few thousand people. Now his hearers may be numbered in mili.ons. Broadcasting may become, indeed, a great influence for good or evil in the community. Curiously enough, too, many an indifferent speaking voice sounds well on the wireless, and the microphone appears to have a capricious influence in this respect, which may perchance transform a poor speaker into an efficient broadcaster. It is ail the more important, therefore, that the thoughts and ideas thus transmitted to the multitude should be good in themselves, and should also be couched in pure and scholarly English, not disfigured bv faults in style or pronunciation. We have already in this Dominion too much slovenly language, too much slang, and too much twang. The public speaker of the future could do a great deal to correct these faults, to teach the rising generation to think clearly, to enunciate properly and to speak correctly. “That recent phenomenon, commonly known as the ‘talkies,’ must also inevitably produce some effect on our public speech—for weal or for woe. It is too early as yet to foretell with - confidence what the final result mav be, whether in the end it may do good or harm. If the mechanical process becomes perfected, and the actors speak clearly and correctly in good English, it may be that the ‘talkies’ will tend to improve, and not to injure, the public speakers of the future. But if the ears of. our young people are to be persistently assailed by nasal and raucous voices booming forth second-rate American slang, I fear that the public and private speech of the rising generation must bo corrupted in the process.”