TEST QUESTIONS

These questions are for the student to use in testing his knowledge of the principles in this lesson. They are suggestive merely, dealing largely with the practical application of the principles, and are to be placed in the notebook for future reference.

1. Imagine that you are addressing a small group of people. Explain to them, so they will understand, the three major purposes of an introduction.

2. Give your own definition of attention. Recall an instance in which, with relaxed attention, you have listened to a speaker. Can you remember what he said? What, then, is the relation of attention to memory?

3. Recall the astonishing exclamations of Beecher, and try to remember speakers whom you have heard use similar devices.

4. What other device is used to secure a different kind of attention? What kind is it? What is its advantage?

5. What is the appeal to gain in Patrick Henry's introduction? 6. (a) In a speech to sell goods, what might secure attention? (b) In a letter applying for a position, what might secure attention? (c) In a speech for the change of your city government to the commission form, what might secure attention?

7. What is meant by necessary preliminary information? What effect has it upon the reception of the speaker's direct message?

8. You can see the necessity of this preliminary information by imagining what preliminary questions you would ask a speaker about such topics as Sixteen to One, Branch Banking, Recognition of Panama, Paying Indemnity to Colombia, Asset Currency, or any other subject with which you are not familiar. 9. When is a careful definition of terms particularly necessary? 10. Try to define for an average audience the following terms: Efficiency, workmanship, courage, ledgers, balance sheet, sales talks, etc. Take the technical terms of your own vocation with which the audience may not be familiar.

11. What are the advantages and the disadvantages of announcing the plan of the speech?

12. What are the advantages and the disadvantages of announcing the object or purpose of the speech?

13. Can you state any reasons why it would be tactful, in a business conference with a manager, for you to introduce preliminary information in the most unobtrusive way possible? What risk would you run by leaving it out altogether?

14. Suppose that you had been asked to prepare a speech against reciprocity with Canada, in 1911, when the question was before the two countries. Prepare your introduction.

LESSON 5

GENERAL BASES FOR THE ARRANGEMENT OF MATTER IN THE BODY OF THE SPEECH

By this time, no doubt, the student has inferred that a speech is always planned with the probable mental state of the audience as a guide. If it is foreseen that the audience is likely to be unfriendly or insufficiently informed, the speaker casts about for the means of remedying these deficiencies. Furthermore, if he discovers any unforeseen barriers to the most favorable reception of his message, when he faces the audience or during actual delivery, he readjusts himself and modifies his statements so as to mould the auditors' minds to a state of favorable feeling, acute attention, and intelligent insight.

Since it is most generally probable that such efforts must come at the very beginning, we have considered them as natural parts of an introduction. Yet it is possible that the speaker cannot always prepare for every portion of his entire address at the outset. He may have to make many little or subordinate introductions to new points as they arise during the course of the speech. Still, even though scattered throughout the discourse, these efforts are introductory in character, for they seek to prepare the way for something which would not be received without them. Understanding, then, that the formal introduction, when used, may be re-enforced throughout the body of the speech, let us leave the intro

duction in order to consider the arrangement of the body.

GENERAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE BODY OF THE SPEECH

Naturally enough, the body of a speech differs with every occasion and theme. It is extremely difficult to lay down any but the most general rules for the arrangement of the divisions of the message proper. In a later lesson, we shall give directions concerning the details of the body of the speech; just now only the larger matters of general arrangement will be taken up.

If the address be very short, the problem is not a serious one; but if it be long, much depends upon the order in which the various points are presented. The introduction may promote the most favorable emotional response and prepare for the easiest intellectual grasp, but the arrangement of the body must be depended upon to preserve these desired ends. Therefore, in determining the sequence of material in the body of the speech, be guided by some plan which will dovetail with the efforts of the introduction. Two principles for general guidance suggest themselves:

(1) Follow the natural divisions of the subject which exist because of the way things hang together in nature. (2) Modify or adapt this order to meet the peculiarities of the particular audience to be addressed.

The first of these, if it can be followed, insures a clear grasp of the matter just as it is, irrespective of anyone's bias. The second takes account of the truth that all men are biased and must have their peculiar shortcomings made up by the skill of the speaker.

(a) Natural Sequence in the Body of the Speech

All the things which a speaker may wish to include in the body of his speech have a natural relationship; this relationship should help to determine the order of presentation. Typical relationships are those of time, place, magnitude, and causation. Let us make this clear.

Relationship of time is the most simple. If we wish to narrate a series of events which followed one after the other, then the simplest arrangement of details is to present them in the order of actual occurrence. Suppose your speech to be a eulogy: A man's life is to be reviewed and appreciated. There are two kinds of ideas to be presented to the audience-the concrete facts of the life and the abstract qualities or characteristics which are to be appraised. Evidently the easiest order in which to offer these things is to begin with the man's ancestry, then tell of his birth, his childhood, his early education, his young manhood, and his later career, and then close with his death. This is simple, chronological sequence.

The following extract from Carl Schurz's eulogy of Charles Sumner, delivered in Boston Music Hall, April 29, 1874,1 will illustrate. After an introduction in which he spoke of the nation's loss in the death of one of its great senators, the orator mentioned his own friendship for Sumner. Then, remarking that Americans usually liked to speak of their heroes as self-made men, he said:

But not such a life was that of Charles Sumner. He was descended from good old Kentish yeomanry stock, men stalwart of frame, stout of heart, who used to stand in the front of the 1 In a memorial volume published by order of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1874.