Strategies for Introducing the Speech.

Anecdotes and Examples.

A complete consideration of the use of anecdotes and examples can be found in the section on evidence. All of those rules apply to employing them as introductory devices.

In addition, keep in mind:

• Do not let your introductory example overwhelm the speech. If it takes a long time to develop the story, begin it in the intro, then develop each new episode as it relates to the idea you are discussing.
• Make sure the introductory device concretely and significantly speaks to the overall topic of the speech. Don't just stick a good story on the beginning, because it's a good story, then make some flimsy transition to the body. The audience will spot that as a gimmick, and your ethos will suffer. The narrative needs to be illustrative of the case you are making to be a justifiable introductory device.
• Start with the story. Don't wander into it with a long-winded discussion of the topic. Just say: "I'd like to tell you about John." or "Last year, while I was hiking in the Great Smokey Mountains . . ." Don't say: "I'd like to begin with an opening example."

Rhetorical Questions.

First a note about asking questions in general!

Whenever you elect to put content in your speech, you have to ask yourself whether its potential for helping you realize the specific speech purpose is worth the risk of its potential for damaging your presentation. At the basic public speaking level, asking the audience members a question that you want them overtly to answer (e.g. "How many of you . . .?" "Who here has . . . ?" etc.) is almost never worth the risk--and hence should be avoided.

WHY?

Well, I'll tell you why. Audience members have a universally annoying tendency with regard to being asked questions by a speaker. They tend to answer them! "But," you say, "that is a good thing. It shows that they are paying attention. It engages them emotionally? It makes the speech about them. You said those were good things to do."

Yes, I did. That will teach you to listen to me. You are right. Up to the point of the response, asking a question may do all of those things. But at the moment you get the response, the chemistry is likely to go terribly wrong, because the audience--assuming that you asked them a question becuase you needed the answer--will expect you to incorporate the answer you get into the speech immediately. They expect you to have needed it to go on. That means you have to be spontaneously able to do one of three things:

• instantly develop a strategy for incorporating any of the immense range of answers you might get.
• guess with unerring accuracy what the audience members' responses will be and plan accordingly ahead of time.
• figure out all of the various possible combinations of answers you could get and plan a response to each.

I doubt that you feel comfortable with any of those options, so why not just eliminate the necessity to employ one of them by not asking the question in the first place!

Instead . . . ask what is called a Rhetorical Question.

A rhetorical question is designed to stimulate thought and imagination, rather than an overt response. You employ it to make the audience member mull over a circumstance or search his or her memory.

I used to ask my students the question:

Can you remember the worst Christmas you ever had?

It is obviously not a Yes or No question. It is meant to influence the audience member to dig back into his or her history--to cycle through Christmases past in an attempt to conjure an image that will inform the inquiry.

Using this device, I have still accomplished all of the ends you had hoped to accomplishwith a more directed question like: "How many of you had a close relative die during the Christmas holiday?"--showing that they are paying attention, engaging them emotionally, and making the speech about them--without risking the downside of having the audience members' response blow up in my face.

When using a Rhetorical Question:

• Get to the point. Keep it simple and direct. The audience members should be concentrating on answering it, not on what you meant by asking it in the first place.
• Make sure it is directly relevant to the speech, and not just a cheap gimmick to get the audience members' attention. Nobody likes to be taken advantage of. Any concentration of attention you get will be more than offset by the bad feelings it will engender what the ruse becomes obvious.
• Combining a rhetorical question with a hypothetical example is often a good strategy. Start by establishing the narrative, then tie the audience to it be extracting some sort of reaction--"What would you think?" "How would you respond?" etc.
• Discuss the issue raised by the question. Reflect on the range of possible answers. For instance, when I asked the question about Christmas, I knew that the only likely available categories of response were:
  1. the listener had a really bad Christmas and was immediately reminded of it.
  2. the listener was thinking back to what could be considered relatively petty reasons for thinking a given Christmas was bad--got the wrong thing, didn't get enough, got stuck in the airport, etc.
  3. the listener couldn't really think of one, because thankfully Christmas had treated him or her pretty well down through the years.

  Then I told the story of the kids in the terminal care ward for which I was soliciting the donation of toys (the point of the speech). As I narrated individual stories, the audience members would compare their scenarios to the one I laid out, and either empathize or feel a little guilty. In either case, their own experience would provide evidence to support my argument. This is the ideal situation for a speaker to be in, and the creative use of a Rhetorical Question facilitates it.

Quotations.

Let's face it, you and I could eat our Funk and Wagnell's for breakfast every day and still never regurgitate anything close to profound enough to make it into Bartlett's. So what is a poor beginning speaker to do?

What you do is borrow eloquence from somebody else--somebody like Lord Chesterfield who has the gift to say what we want to say more eloquently than we could ever hope to. That is the service the use of an opening quotation provides. It allows you to co-opt the eloquence of a gifted communicator and link it to your message, with hope that the ethos of the speaker will at least buy you the time to establish an ethos of your own.

When opening with a quotation:

• Clearly bracket the quotation. The biggest risk you run when using a quotation to open your speech is that the audience member will fail to realize when the quote is over and you are being you again. This lack of clarity is disconcerting for the audience member and can easily be avoided, if you just:
  • Keep it Short. One or two sentences maximum should be the guideline. If you need any more than that the economy of language that makes it an asset is missing anyway.
  • Clearly label it a quotation. Do this before you say it. Don't say, "I'd like to start with a quote." or anything quite so artificial. Just say, "A great write once said . . . ." or " Dorothy Parker put it best when she said . . . ." This is always a good idea unless you are sure that all of the audience members will know that the quote is a quote. Then you can lead with the quote and follow with the source.
  • Use overt Signposting to Delineate the beginning and end of the quote. Don't stick your fingers in the air and make those little quotation marks, but somewhere in the vast gulf between doing that and doing nothing lies the balance you need to strike. As always, err on the side of clarity.
• Make sure the quote is Directly Relevant to the subject. This means that the spirit as well as the content of the quote should resonate with your topic.

  "I think that I shall never see a thing as lovely as a tree. Today, I'd like to offer a vigorous defense of clear-cut lumbering."

  I'm going to take flyer and guess that clear-cut lumbering isn't what Joyce Kilmer had in minds when she wrote the poem. Again, you are using the quote because it clarifies the essence of your intended message. If it doesn't . . . well . . . Dorothy Parker put it best when she said " Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthentics with words."

• Avoid Elongated Recitations of Poetry. If you don't believe me, ask William Shatner. Suffice to say that about six lines into "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" most of your audience will be volunteering to.

Starting With a Direct Statement of Relevance.

Sometimes, the best device is no device. Sometimes the relevance of the subject for the audience--the predictability of their interest--is so overt that the best choice for the speaker is just to state as directly as possible what the speech is about. I had a student once who was a Wall Street investment manager. He started his speech by saying:

"Tonight, I'm going to tell you all how to get rich."

Having said that, the speaker could be pretty sure that--excepting those who had sworn the vow of poverty (and anyone that spiritual would be polite enough to listen anyway)--everyone would be tuned into the first of his main ideas. Wasting valuable time with quotations or examples would not, in this case, have been a good strategic choice.

When opening with a direct statement of relevance:

• Make sure the relevance of your topic is, in fact, obvious. Far too many student-speakers claim to be employing this device when they have really just failed to create a good conclusion. Direct statement is not No Device. It should only be used when, as in the example above, you are sure your audience will be amenable to the subject.
• Make sure your tone matches your content. If the subject matter is supposed to be overtly compelling to us, it needs to be communicated as overtly compelling to you. Nonverbal confidence and gravity are necessary to the effective use of this device.
• Think of a couple of alternative opening strategies anyway. What seems obviously compelling in the planning stage may not seem so compelling when you actually go to deliver the speech. It cannot hurt to have a spare introduction or two in case--having met your audience--you think you need the additional boost.

Starting With a Reference to the Occasion.

If the reason for your speech is tied to some event, occasion, or institution, the audience members can be counted on to bring with them a serious expectation to hear you tie the subject of the speech to that event or institution. So just do it. Why not? There is bound to be a set of ideals or abstractions with which the group identifies; imbuing your content with those abstractions will make the audience members feel as though they have had that impact on you. How can that hurt?

At the same time, don't be constrained by the event or institution. We have all heard enough debilitating commencement addresses to know what happens what the speaker's attendance to expectations of the audience becomes slavish. Consider the occasion a starting point, nothing else.

Strategies for Concluding the Speech.

Bookending.

Bookending is the application of the introductory device to the conclusion. If you open with a story, close with it. The same goes for a quotation, a rhetorical question or any other device.

Bookending is effective, because it provides a nice psychological closure for the audience--a sense that they have come full circle back to the beginning. Imagine that the speech is like a roller coaster. How disconcerting would it be if you got on the roller coaster in one part of the park, then it took you halfway across the lot and dropped you off. Instead, the attendant ushers you on, you sit down, you get banged around for a couple of minutes, then you stumble out just a few feet from where you got in. Then off you go with the rest of your life--wiser for the experience!

The amusement ride is a good analogy to the speech. You grab the audience members as they sidle through life, take them on a ride, then drop them back where you found them. Bookending is a clear signpost that the end is near.

When closing with a bookend:

• Try to make clear how the content of the body of the speech has informed the device with which you started. Our perception of the device should be fuller, more appreciative in some way, because we heard your speech. If you started with a story, you can resolve it or give it a happier ending. If you started with a quote, point out how much more in touch we are with its eloquence than the first time we heard it. etc.

Return to Virtual Clarity.