THE SPEAKING VARIABLES

Let’s face it: A well delivered decent speech sells better than a shabbily delivered excellent one. Vocal variety is a must. Read here what you need to do with your voice in order to mesmerize your audience with your excellent camp text.

Paralanguage is the use of inflection and modulation to convey meaning.

 

The rule of thumb is to use CONTRAST. If the whole world turned “orange” we would see nothing, as everything would be one color; only by seeing white against red or yellow against blue can we see ANY color. So, in order for an audience to “see” and “hear” what we are saying we must have sufficient contrast.

 

What are the variables?

PITCH                           High to low (high when piercingly excited; low when calm and relaxed—with lots of variance in between)

VOLUME                      Loud to soft (loud if you want to audibly arrest an audience; soft if you want to lure them in to feel what you are feeling, to heed each and every word)

RATE                             Fast to slow (fast if you are talking about something inherently exciting or if you are telling a something which quickly builds to a climax; slow if you are deadly serious, if you are establishing the bottom line)

STRESS                         Word emphasis is necessary to highlight what is important (either by raising pitch and volume on a word/phrase or by stretching a word/phrase it or by doing something else that draws attention to it)

TONE                           CHOOSING THE RIGHT TONE FOR EACH AND EVERY PHRASE IS CRUCIAL. TONE CHOICES TELL YOUR LISTENERS HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING. ARE YOU MAD? SAD? GLAD? SCARED? AND SO ON. 

QUALITY                      Pulling sound from the entire chest cavity, producing full volume and resonance, to pulling sound from the throat, producing a lesser volume and resonance (in the first case to take over a room; in the second case to show your sensitivity)

PHRASING                  Pausing after a few words to pausing after many words (in the first case to make the point slowly so that it sinks in; in the second case to build to some climax)

ARTICULATION         Fuzzy (bad) to crisp (good). 

SYLLABLE DURATION                  One second per syllable to a few per syllable