J. BERG ESENWEIN DALE CARNAGEY - THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

You say Massa_CHU_setts and Minne_AP_olis, you do not emphasize each

syllable alike, but hit the accented syllable with force and hurry over

the unimportant ones. Now why do you not apply this principle in

speaking a sentence? To some extent you do, in ordinary speech; but do

you in public discourse? It is there that monotony caused by lack of

emphasis is so painfully apparent.

So far as emphasis is concerned, you may consider the average sentence

as just one big word, with the important word as the accented syllable.

Note the following:

"Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice."

You might as well say _MASS-A-CHU-SETTS_, emphasizing every syllable

equally, as to lay equal stress on each word in the foregoing sentences.

Speak it aloud and see. Of course you will want to emphasize _destiny_,

for it is the principal idea in your declaration, and you will put some

emphasis on _not_, else your hearers may think you are affirming that

destiny _is_ a matter of chance. By all means you must emphasize

_chance_, for it is one of the two big ideas in the statement.

Another reason why _chance_ takes emphasis is that it is contrasted with

_choice_ in the next sentence. Obviously, the author has contrasted

these ideas purposely, so that they might be more emphatic, and here we

see that contrast is one of the very first devices to gain emphasis.

As a public speaker you can assist this emphasis of contrast with your

voice. If you say, "My horse is not _black_," what color immediately

comes into mind? White, naturally, for that is the opposite of black. If

you wish to bring out the thought that destiny is a matter of choice,

you can do so more effectively by first saying that "_DESTINY_ is _NOT_

a matter of _CHANCE_." Is not the color of the horse impressed upon us

more emphatically when you say, "My horse is _NOT BLACK_. He is _WHITE_"

than it would be by hearing you assert merely that your horse is white?

In the second sentence of the statement there is only one important

word--_choice_. It is the one word that positively defines the quality

of the subject being discussed, and the author of those lines desired to

bring it out emphatically, as he has shown by contrasting it with

another idea. These lines, then, would read like this:

"_DESTINY_ is _NOT_ a matter of _CHANCE_. It is a matter of _CHOICE_."

Now read this over, striking the words in capitals with a great deal of

force.

In almost every sentence there are a few _MOUNTAIN PEAK WORDS_ that

represent the big, important ideas. When you pick up the evening paper

you can tell at a glance which are the important news articles. Thanks

to the editor, he does not tell about a "hold up" in Hong Kong in the

same sized type as he uses to report the death of five firemen in your

home city. Size of type is his device to show emphasis in bold relief.

He brings out sometimes even in red headlines the striking news of the

day.

It would be a boon to speech-making if speakers would conserve the

attention of their audiences in the same way and emphasize only the

words representing the important ideas. The average speaker will deliver

the foregoing line on destiny with about the same amount of emphasis on

each word. Instead of saying, "It is a matter of _CHOICE_," he will

deliver it, "It is a matter of choice," or "_IT IS A MATTER OF

CHOICE_"--both equally bad.

Charles Dana, the famous editor of _The New York Sun_, told one of his

reporters that if he went up the street and saw a dog bite a man, to pay

no attention to it. _The Sun_ could not afford to waste the time and

attention of its readers on such unimportant happenings. "But," said Mr.

Dana, "if you see a man bite a dog, hurry back to the office and write

the story." Of course that is news; that is unusual.

Now the speaker who says "_IT IS A MATTER OF CHOICE_" is putting too

much emphasis upon things that are of no more importance to metropolitan

readers than a dog bite, and when he fails to emphasize "choice" he is

like the reporter who "passes up" the man's biting a dog. The ideal

speaker makes his big words stand out like mountain peaks; his

unimportant words are submerged like stream-beds. His big thoughts stand

like huge oaks; his ideas of no especial value are merely like the grass

around the tree.

From all this we may deduce this important principle: _EMPHASIS_ is a

matter of _CONTRAST_ and _COMPARISON_.

Recently the _New York American_ featured an editorial by Arthur

Brisbane. Note the following, printed in the same type as given here.

=We do not know what the President THOUGHT when he got that message, or

what the elephant thinks when he sees the mouse, but we do know what the

President DID.=

The words _THOUGHT_ and _DID_ immediately catch the reader's attention

because they are different from the others, not especially because they

are larger. If all the rest of the words in this sentence were made ten

times as large as they are, and _DID_ and _THOUGHT_ were kept at their

present size, they would still be emphatic, because different.

Take the following from Robert Chambers' novel, "The Business of Life."

The words _you_, _had_, _would_, are all emphatic, because they have been

made different.

He looked at her in angry astonishment.

"Well, what do _you_ call it if it isn't cowardice--to slink off

and marry a defenseless girl like that!"

"Did you expect me to give you a chance to destroy me and poison

Jacqueline's mind? If I _had_ been guilty of the thing with

which you charge me, what I have done _would_ have been

cowardly. Otherwise, it is justified."

A Fifth Avenue bus would attract attention up at Minisink Ford, New

York, while one of the ox teams that frequently pass there would attract

attention on Fifth Avenue. To make a word emphatic, deliver it

differently from the manner in which the words surrounding it are

delivered. If you have been talking loudly, utter the emphatic word in a

concentrated whisper--and you have intense emphasis. If you have been

going fast, go very slow on the emphatic word. If you have been talking

on a low pitch, jump to a high one on the emphatic word. If you have

been talking on a high pitch, take a low one on your emphatic ideas.

Read the chapters on "Inflection," "Feeling," "Pause," "Change of

Pitch," "Change of Tempo." Each of these will explain in detail how to

get emphasis through the use of a certain principle.

In this chapter, however, we are considering only one form of emphasis:

that of applying force to the important word and subordinating the

unimportant words. Do not forget: this is one of the main methods that

you must continually employ in getting your effects.

Let us not confound loudness with emphasis. To yell is not a sign of

earnestness, intelligence, or feeling. The kind of force that we want

applied to the emphatic word is not entirely physical. True, the

emphatic word may be spoken more loudly, or it may be spoken more

softly, but the _real_ quality desired is intensity, earnestness. It

must come from within, outward.

Last night a speaker said: "The curse of this country is not a lack of

education. It's politics." He emphasized _curse, lack, education,

politics_. The other words were hurried over and thus given no

comparative importance at all. The word _politics_ was flamed out with

great feeling as he slapped his hands together indignantly. His emphasis