"...these change of emotions"

In class we discussed the four different forms of public speaking, manuscript, memorized, impromptu and extemporaneous. Each form has a positive and negative aspect. Until then, I never really thought about the difficultly of a manuscript speech.  In my eyes, I viewed it as one of the easiest. The material is right there in front of you and you know what you have to say. You didn’t have the fear and the anxiety to articulate your thoughts spontaneously, you simply just read off of a slide or teleprompter. However, during the discussion of pros and cons and the importance of tone and inflection, I began to have a different approach. When reading from a paper or a screen, the speaker tends to lose sight of what they’re actually saying and has the possibility of developing a monotone, which I know we’ve all had one of those professors and the experience is dreadful. With that fear of being boring, the speaker must adjust his or her pitch and tone in order to convey the right type of message. This may seem easy when you know the material ahead of time, but I immediately thought of newscasters who might not know what is coming up on their teleprompter. On live TV, with a split second to spare the newscaster has to apply the perfect tone to make the newsreel flow smoothly. As we read that paragraph on the board, it took us a couple of minutes to decipher which parts of the sentence to emphasize. Tone enables the passage to harp of the audience’s emotions. Saying a word a certain way can make the audience enraged, happy or even sad. Now imagine having that control over national TV, as if public speaking wasn’t nerve-racking to begin with. This dilemma reminded me of a bit from Ellen DeGeneres’ stand up, Here and Now, and how she discusses the difficulty of being a newscaster:

  

FAST FORWARD TO 1:35.

“I feel sorry for the newscasters you know? We can turn it off. But that’s their job and they have to read these stories and they’re just coming up on the teleprompter they don’t know what’s coming up. and they have to go through these change of emotions. That.. “There were no survivors…And next Which candybar helps ya lose weight! Still to come! Is an asteroid headed towards earth…But first where to find the cheesiest pizza in town! Also, a disturbing study finds that studies are disturbing…”

We don’t realize how much information on Rhetoric and Civic Life (the title again!) there is in our lives. Public speaking is a civic engagement that everybody as an American takes part in. Whether we are the speaker or the audience. In Ellen’s stand up, she pokes fun at the newscasters in a way to show the audience how difficult their job really is. She indirectly exemplifies how public speaking is so common yet still tricky. The newscaster has to make sure his tone is sympathetic when talking about a tragedy and upbeat when talking about food. By misusing this tone, they might come off as arrogant, unsympathetic and even downright rude. Our class discussion and exercises we discuss everyday reflect how society in many ways, even pop culture. If we learn to “read between the lines” we can discover all the secrets of Rhetoric and Civic Life there is in our lives and embrace it.

P.S. If you ever have the chance or time, Ellen's full stand up is very funny. 

Until next time...

"Keep Calm and Carry On"

Joanna