Virtual Clarity:

Making Your Content Accessible.

The foundation of rhetorical effectiveness and eloquence is CLARITY! To be understood is precedent to any success at being powerful or persuasive. If you have to worry about whether the audience member is receiving the message you send, you are distracted from focusing on the strategic choices you must make and the speaking moment to which you must be attuned. The Audience Will contains a chapter on some of the communication problems that may compromise clarity, but in "Virtual Clarity" I will discuss the positive and deliberate steps you can take to make yourself understood.

The Fundamentals of Clarity.

The first step in the organization of coherent information is to adapt that information to your audience. Having done so, you must turn your attention to the fundamental qualities of clarity.

The fundamentals of clarity are Comprehension and Retention. Comprehension refers to the capacity of the audience member to understand what you are saying while you are saying it--that is, to have sufficient grasp of the organization of your material that he or she can focus solely on its content. Retention refers to the capacity of the individual to recall the information when it is time to act on it--to retain it in some meaningful and usable form. Both must be maximized for your material to be accessible to the audience.

Strategies for Enhancing Comprehension.

Again, comprehension is the capacity to understand what is going on in real time. The audience member ponders your train of thought to the detriment of his or her ability to board the train. If he or she is to be fully engaged in what you are saying, comprehension of your structure and meaning must be effortless. Some basic patterns of organization will be discussed below, but there are some things you can do within any structure to aid comprehension.

Employing Reduction.

Employing Signposts.

Employing Summaries.

Employing Transitions.

Employing Analogies.

Strategies for Enhancing Retention.

Unless you are inciting to riot or cajoling miscreants to come forward and confess their sins, your audience member will probably be using the information at some future point. If your purpose is to convince me that I shouldn't drink and drive, I will probably agree with you when I leave the room. The question is will I agree with you when I leave the bar?

How often do you watch cooking shows on television? How confident are you that at the end of the show, much less next month when you throw your dinner party, you will be able to replicate what you saw? The extent to which you can is the extent to which the producers and performers have paid attention to the need for retention.

Another Word About Comprehension.

Strategic Repetition.

Mnemonics.

Basic Patterns of Organization.

The easiest way to make sure an audience member can follow the pattern according to which you organize your material is to employ the patterns of organization the audience member uses every day to make sense of our random and disorganized, because we impose order on it. In fact, much of what we refer to as mental illness arises out of the inability to do so. Following are the five most common patterns of thinking into which people organize phenomena (One, chronology, is divided into two, because it is employed to two different ends.). In order to demonstrate how flexible most subjects are to development, I have chosen one object at random--

The Chrysler Building.

Chronological Order.

Spatial Development.

Narrative Chronology.

Topical Development.

Cause and Effect.

Problem and Solution.

Visual Aids.

Ironically, the biggest problem one is likely to have these days is to use visual aids too much. Computers and presentation software like PowerPoint have made them so easy to create and so flashy to show that we feel compelled to "jazz up" our presentations with effects.

While the strategic value of visual and audio effects is being hotly debated right now, I contend that one should use a visual aid only:

• when the subject being discussed is so complicated that verbal description is unwieldy.
• when specific details, either owing to their amount or their ongoing importance to the discussion, must be consistently available to the audience.
• or when one is demonstrating.

In other words, visual aids should aid visually. You should use only the information you need, and that information should support, not replace, the spoken text.

Don't use visual aids:

• as backgrounds. You want their attention on the foreground--namely YOU.
• as something to do with your hands. That is a crutch. Avoid it. Use your hands to gesture.
• to show that you know how. They need to come away impressed with you, not your toys.

Some Sample Visual Aids with Critiques.

Introductions and Conclusions.

The Introduction.

Remember that old science fiction show The Outer Limits?

Each Monday night, in 1963, studio announcer Vic Perin would begin with the same words:

Well . . . as hokey as it might seem, you need to engage your audience with the same attitude. The speaker is not the center of the event. The audience member has a life that is important to him or her and is actively engaged in living it. So it is the speaker's responsibility to persuade the audience member to put away whatever else might be going on at the time and relinquish control over his or her attention to the speaker for the allotted amount of time.

Specifically, the speaker wants to answer three questions with the Introduction:

• What am I going to hear?

  The audience member has to get a clear sense about what is going to take place. He or she must immediately be given sufficient interpretive guidance to be comfortable with the event. 

• Why should I care?

  The relevance of the subject matter has to be made apparent to the audience member as soon as possible. Remember, you are competing for the audience member's attention. It is a competition that should be waged with some vigor, because you will very likely not even know it if you lose.

• Why should I listen to you?

  It is imperative that very early in the speech, the speaker begin to develop his or her ETHOS.Ethos is the audience member's perception of your credibility. It is discussed elsewhere, but be aware that the introduction is the place to begin the work of defining it.

Strategies for Introducing the Speech.

Anecdotes and Examples.

Rhetorical Questions.

Quotations.

Statements of Direct Relevance.

Reference to the Occasion.

Strategies for Concluding the Speech.

At the end of the speech, the audience member needs to come away from the event with a psychological and emotional closure--content in the certainty that this was a meaningful and deliberately orchestrated message. So, of course it is important that you end the speech gracefully yet purposefully.

Instead, be the like guy on the Outer Limits; return control of our television sets to us. This is your last chance to impress us with the belief that you have been in control of the event, that you know what you are doing, and that your message has been sufficiently compelling that you can--with complete confidence--stop talking!

Important note:

The conclusion is never the place for new information. All of your claims, evidence, elaborations, etc. must be housed in the BODY of the speech. You can say "In conclusion, I have one more point to make." but to do so is actually to say "In the conclusion of the body of my speech, I have one more point to make. Then I will go to the real conclusion which may clarify, restate and reinforce, but won't add concrete material to my argument." Notice that none of the sample outlines I have supplied contain introductions or conclusions. That is because the whole substance of the arguments is contained within the system of claims--which is contained within the body of the speech.

The Conclusion is like the Introduction in that you bear three responsibilities:

• You must reinforce for the audience the purpose of the speech. Remember, you talk to an audience, because you want that audience's members to respond to your message in a specific way. The conclusion is the last chance you have to make sure they know what that response is. Restate it or rephrase it, but make sure you say it again!
• You must reinforce the proper emotional tone of the speech. As stated previously, all speeches must communicate not just an opinion but an attitude about the subject. In your introduction (as a function of answering question #2), you will begin to communicate that attitude by impressing on the audience a particular emotional tone. You will scare them, worry them, impress them . . . whatever is appropriate. The reality of delivery, though, is that it is almost impossible to sustain any emotional state for long without becoming monotonous. A speaker has to vary the emotional tone of the speech along with all of the other delivery variables. After you scare us with your recitation of the problem, you may want to reassure us with your recitation of the solution. The point is, if we are supposed to end up scared, make sure in the context of your conclusion that we are!
• Make sure we know you are done. The two most common conclusions I hear early in my Public Speaking classes are:

Well . . . [frantically searching the cards for any as yet unuttered syllable]. . . I guess that's it.

and

In conclusion . . . [while still talking walk back to seat mumbling incoherently like that guy in the ski mask who stands outside the bus station arguing cold fusion with the fire hydrant].

Don't do that. Instead, do one of two other things:

1. Have a "can't miss" concluding line, or
2. simply restate your specific speech purpose and thank us for our attention. "The Bloodmobile will be in your neighborhood soon. Thank you for your attention and your time."

Strategies for Concluding the Speech.

Summarizing.

Quotations.

Bookending.

This is the End of "Virtual Clarity."

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