Speaking Tips: A Word on Words

Welcome to another Speaking Tips Hub.

What is it that differentiates the average speaker from the great? This is not an easy question to answer. Yet it is something sensed, indeed known, from what that speaker arouses in us – our response to his or her words; what feelings, what resolutions they bring to our hearts. It is a matter of the speaker’s sincerity, passion, that indefinable animal magnetism that adds to their charisma. Therein lies much of it. But I shall deal with only one aspect, the use of words, for I wish to keep this article short,

Words - words are the tools of thought, and those tools are put to use when they are spoken to us in a particular way. The accuracy of the thought depends upon the precision of the words, and the precision of the words depends upon the learnedness of the speaker. Wooly words: woolly thought. A fine, spoken vocabulary does not need to be particularly extensive. It does, however, need to be a cut above the average man or woman’s. By that I mean it needs to contain more than that held in the minds’ the majority of people. Secondly those words need to be colorful and able to portray subtle degrees of meaning.

This is where the tyro speaker needs to place his or her emphasis. It should be a lifelong project, this continuing building of one’s tools of expression.

As a writer and speaker I had the good fortune of leaving school at fourteen and thereby gaining the freedom to educate myself in accordance with my own desires: what to read; what to take an interest in. I also had an advantage of living a quarter of my life before the common addiction of television viewing came into vogue. Television may reveal a great deal about the world. It does little to sharpen one’s wit or ability to communicate well. It’s passive. Reading, writing and speaking are active.

As both writer and speaker I cringe when I hear such office jargon as “when going forward” instead of the much simpler and more meaningful word, “advancing. I do the same when I hear the word ‘basic’ put into so many sentences where it isn’t necessary. It has become a habit with many people. Then there are such expressions as ‘At the end of the day,’ ' when all's said and done,' and that overworked adjective ‘great,’ which really does grate when it’s used to describe everything from mass and size to importance. Yet so many of the people I know who genuinely wish to become top flight speakers use these more or less meaningless expressions as they speak. They are not quite Ums and Ahs, but they serve the same purpose: to pulsate the air with meaningless sound waves because the speakers are afraid of silence.

Avoid them, if you really do wish to reach your fullest potential!

Yes, I know I’m being pedantic. You’re in Toastmasters to learn Communication and Leadership Skills. Fine. You’ll achieve a measure of competence, and maybe a little too much confidence subject to shortcomings you have no intention of overcoming. “I'm doing fine. I’m advancing through the manuals. I picked up my CL and now have my ALB. Goodness, I’m on the way to becoming a DTM.”

Oh, and remember, these title's don't mean a damn thing outside of the Toastmasters environment.

Well, if this is enough for you, good. But if you want to rise to your very best; bring out the greater you and to do it with effect, you need to perpetually work towards being better, perpetually better. And in order to do that one of the most important requirements is to have a powerful vocabulary in your ‘ready-to-use’ locker. So get into the good reading…and before you know it, you’ll really be heading up there towards being the great speaker you wish to be.