The Art of Oratory: Appreciating the

Performance of the Spoken Word

David Scully
School of Business
Algonquin College
Ottawa, ON

I became a good speaker as other men become good skaters: by

making a fool of myself until I got used to it.
George Bernard Shaw
 Table of Contents
I. Theoretically Speaking: Speaking as Performance 3
Public and Private Persona 4
Social Convention and Cultural Continuity 6
The Problem of Privilege 7
Implicit Bias 9
Disregarding Content: the Verbal and the Non-Verbal 11
Hemispheric Dominance and Non-Verbal Communication 13
Fight-or-Flight 16
The Words: Choosing the Right Way to Use Them 18
Ethos, Pathos, Logos 18
Swearing 19
The Power of a Good Story 21
Self-Actualisation 23

II. Speech Construction 26

The Rule of Three 26
Using Notes: Trigger Sheets 27
Verbal Signposts 28
Assessing Speech Performances 30

III. Presenting to the Camera: The Use of New Technology 31

Cognition: The Complications of Presenting in Cyberspace 31
Strategies for Online Presentations 32

IV. Practically Speaking: The Use of Non-Verbal Language 34

Body Language 34
Stance 34
Eye Contact 35
Hands 37
Proximity and Platform 38
Facial Expression 40
Voicing (Prosody) 42
Volume 42
Rates 43
Articulation 45
Pausing 46
Pitch, Tone, and Intonation 47

Appendix A: Speech Grading Sheet 49

Appendix B: Key Terms 50
References 52

1
Foreword

The purpose of this book is twofold. First, it addresses the art of public speaking in a way that
casts light on the subtleties of public speaking and persuasion that good public speakers have
been aware of since there have been good public speakers; they have recognised that it is not
enough to simply convey words and ideas – any publisher or photocopier can do as much for an
active reader – but rather, each speech must be understood as a performance in the fullest sense,
a performance that delivers a message, or messages, by engaging an audience on as many levels
as possible. Secondly, it aims to inspire the reader to reflect on his or her own sensibilities
around public speaking, to help in the realisation that no matter how inspiring a speaker may be,
those qualities are ones that are potential in all of us as human beings, and do not reside in some
inaccessible place attainable only by the few.

The content has been organised into two sections. The first consists of a broader discussion of
the theory behind effective public speaking – specifically, its social, neurobiological, rhetorical,
and psychological dimensions. The second focuses primarily on non-verbal techniques that allow
dynamic public speakers, once they recognise them, to deliver their message with the greatest
possible impact for their audiences. Each subsection provides reflective exercises to bring the
value of each non-verbal into sharper relief.

This text was developed largely through the inspiration of Doug Duminie’s public speaking
course with the School of Business at Algonquin College, as well as his Performance Institute, a
public speaking course offered to faculty and staff at the college. Doug taught at the college from
1970 until his passing away in 2007; his legacy at the college remains strong. Thanks go out to
Judy Puritt, who redacted Doug’s original Speaking Handbook and carried his work forward.
Thanks also to those fellow instructors at Algonquin College – Thomas Steffler, Catrina
McBride, Heidi Upson-Ferris, Kathlyn Bradshaw, Scott Randall, Colette Garvin, Angela Lyrette,
Louisa Lambregts, Kim Bosch, JP Lamarche, and Jordan Smith – who have given valuable
contributory, redactive, and critical advice in the course of this current handbook’s development.

2
I. Theoretically Speaking: Speaking as
Performance

Performance is much older than human history can tell us. Long before the
written word, communities large and small would gather around the fire to
listen and watch as stories were told, stories that delivered meaning and
value. Little has changed over the millennia. We still love to watch a good
speaker, probably in the same proportion that we dread having to watch a
bad one (and there is never a shortage of these). As TED Talks coach Nancy
Duarte (2010) points out, “Campfires have been replaced with projector
bulbs, and the power of story has eluded presenters in the workplace” (p.
17).

It is natural enough to observe a speaker’s performance and simply like or

not like it, while not really understanding why. Those questions are
compounded when we find ourselves in the spotlight and need to
understand what works and what doesn’t. Nonetheless, it has been shown
that courses in public speaking oriented around theory and ones directed
towards technique in, for example, voicing serve equally well in reducing
speakers’ anxiety and in boosting both confidence and competence
(Hancock, Stone, Brundage, and Zeigler, 2010).

3
 Public and Private Persona

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask,
and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde

What Jung says is that you should play your role, knowing that it’s not
you. It’s a quite different point of view. This requires individuation,
separating your ego, your image of yourself, from the social role. This
doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t play the role; it simply means that no
matter what you choose to do in life, whether it’s to cop out or to cop in,
you are playing a role, and don’t take it too damned seriously. The persona
is merely the mask you’re wearing for this game.
Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss

What is it that makes that person we see speaking so well on stage, at the
front of the room, or in the successful interview so good? They must be
believable, for a start; they have to leave a good impression, and they have
to have shared something with us with which we can walk away. Good
speakers show us to some degree who they are as people. Yet there is
always something about their performance – maybe because we do
understand on some level that we are witnessing a performance – that
leaves us to think that we aren’t seeing quite everything of what they are,
something that might give us some clues about how they arrived at such a
place. We can find ourselves wondering how anyone could ever attain high
levels of public performance as well, while not leaving themselves too
vulnerable – because there are few human endeavours that leave us as
vulnerable as when we single ourselves out from the crowd in such a way.

We do wear different hats depending on context and who we are interacting

with. We express certain parts of ourselves around family, others around
Persona: a friends, others around colleagues, others with strangers in an elevator. There
role or is nothing either surprising or wrong about this “division of labour” for our
character personality. Quite the opposite is true, in fact: we would find ourselves in a
played by an very awkward and possibly legally compromising position were we to talk
actor. with the cashier at a supermarket in the same way as we would speak with a
lover.

4
 The Latin word persona translates, more or less literally, as “that through
which sound passes”; think of the hole in front of the mouth in the masks
used in ancient Greek drama. Persona tells us much about a speaker’s
ability to both captivate us and communicate to us, because in a way,
speakers do conceal something behind such figurative masks. A speaker
may be completely sincere, but it is impossible to see full, absolute
revealing of self on the part of anyone (as any psychologist is aware), let
alone someone who is addressing a multitude of different persons.

Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman’s classic book The Presentation of

Question: Self in Everyday Life (1959) shines a strong light on the dynamics of self-
What are a representation in face-to-face encounters. Goffman reads ordinary social
few things interaction within the framework of theatrical performance. Put simply, we
that you prefer to put our best face forward and to conceal the less impressive
would aspects of ourselves in the background (where we can deal with them
discuss only ourselves). All interaction, for Goffman, is about performance. To be
with certain successful, we need to exercise what he termed “impression management,”
people? with an eye to preserving ourselves and others from embarrassment. When
we are not within the safety of our own private backstage, nor with those
whom we have deep intimacy with, we are all actors, on stage, all the time. Impression
As actors, then, we are called upon to adopt certain appearances and management:
behaviours, to make use of certain props, and to wear certain costumes, with the regulation
the goal of allowing the most seamless and least awkward interactions and control of
possible. While this might seem a bit cynical, those people the actor information in
interacts with also go out of their way to maintain a consistent “definition of social
the situation,” even as they will at the same time gather as much interaction.
information about that individual that they can; for as much as we like to
avoid conflict or embarrassment, nobody likes to be made a fool of.

Even so, Goffman argues that whatever the social situation, once we are
aware of the social stage on which we are playing, we play by largely
unspoken conventional rules that allow the actor (and audience) to save
face. Once grasped, this fact alone can be a sedative for the frayed nerves of
any performer. Hecklers and pranksters aside (something for another
discussion), nobody wants to make a scene, and we all do what we can –

5
 actor and audience alike – to make performances come off as smoothly as
possible (see also Atkinson and Heritage, 1984).

Social Convention and Cultural Continuity

To watch a performance is to participate in culture and tradition. Cultures

Tradition: are learned; they are matters of tradition. They are integrated systems of
from the Latin practices and beliefs, shared values and goals, learned behaviours, and
tradere, “to conventional symbols, used in complex social organisation. Culture is
hand down” always inferred: we only know culture through behaviours and their
“residue”, and we absorb these to the point where they reside largely in the
subconscious (this question is one that leads to the problems of ideology;
for an excellent overview, see Eagleton, 1991). How do we then go about
understanding how culture “works”? Philosophers, anthropologists,
sociologists, and psychologists have wrestled forever with this question, and
each field has suggested its own answers.

Ethnomethodology, a school of sociology founded at the University of

California in the 1960s, offered a helpful means of seeing how our
interactions generate culture. This approach aimed at unlocking the “study
of the methods people use for producing recognizable social orders”
(Garfinkel 2002, p. 6). The focus for ethnomethodologists is on the subtle,
unspoken cultural rules that we follow unaware – at least until those rules
are breached and we are made uncomfortable. What helps make social
interaction normal, seamless, and frictionless? Given the amount of work
that we put into it, social order is to be seen as an ongoing set of
achievements. What it is that is achieved can be brought into relief through
Breaching what ethnomethodologists called “breaching experiments”; in the same sort
experiments: of way that physicists understand atoms by breaking them apart to observe
experiments the reactions, a student of social behaviour can reveal what is “normal” by
to study deliberately practicing abnormal behaviour – for example, by behaving like
people’s lodgers in parents’ home, standing uncomfortably close in conversation,
reactions to asking for a Whopper at a McDonald’s, or haggling with bus drivers over
violations of fare. By shaking ourselves out of our habits, we can see what we take for
social norms. granted, and in so doing, acquire more conscious awareness of and control
over it.

6
How deep does our conditioning go? Consider something we do routinely – Question:
writing our own signatures, which is an important cultural taken-for- Why is it
granted. Take the time to write your signature a few times with your non- important for
dominant hand. It is a simple but worthwhile exercise to shake ourselves out us to change
of our habits by doing new and challenging things that are out of our our routines
comfort zone (see also Betty Edwards’ classic, Drawing on the Right Side from time to
of the Brain). time?

The Problem of Privilege

It is disconcerting to consult (through Google, for instance) lists of “the
great public speakers”, and to note that so many of them are comprised
overwhelmingly of men, often of similar socioeconomic “type”. How can
this still be the case for us in the 21st century? In supposedly democratic
Classical Rome, public speaking, despite being purportedly the right of
every Roman citizen, was restricted through a set of inflexible conventions
to a small elite; short of violence, there were no means through which
members of the general public could express their thoughts, feelings, and
needs (Polo, 2010, pp. 286-294). History has made slow but steady progress
over the centuries, yet unspoken forms of discrimination against just who
can take the platform remain, based on, among other factors, gender, race,
age, socioeconomics, and physicality.

Amy Cunningham, in her seminal article “Why Women Smile” (2004),

argues that the smile adopted by women in North America is meant to
comfort and reassure, not reflect genuine emotion; in other words, the smile
is used to mask real feelings. While she notes that this propensity is
changing gradually in the world of comedians and advertising, it remains a
norm against which many women struggle. In the world of public speaking
(particularly in male-dominated domains), expectations for women tend
generally to be higher in terms of demonstrating authoritativeness and
expertise; aversion to “power behaviours” (such as voicing and eye contact,
often interpreted as passive) leads to a perceived loss of prestige (Kenton,
1989). In the world of politics, it is a truism that women face a frustrating
set of challenges that their male counterparts never need to face, from their
choices of clothing to criticisms of their tones of voice in the heat of debate
(Brown, 2009; Hess, 2013; Sweet, 2008; Woo, 2013).

Often the right to speak – as ancient Romans learned – only comes the hard
way. Who, from their time to ours, has had a chance to fight for and to keep
a public platform, along with opportunities to develop talents for it? The
path of Malcolm X from self-professed small-time hustler to one of the
most articulate and lauded public speakers in American history came at the
expense first of all of hand-copying an entire dictionary during his tenure in
prison (see chapter 11, “Saved,” of The Autobiography of Malcolm X), and

7
secondly through years of intensely heated and ultimately fatal controversy
as spokesperson for the disenfranchised. This he did by speaking from
experience. If one were to put concisely a key strength of Malcolm X’s
public speaking, if might be this:

With a mix of self-deprecating humor, straight talk and withering

criticism of, well, everyone — Malcolm X conveys that public speech
should not be attempted until the speaker has something to say. It's a
fundamental truth that many of us forget. Oratory is born of knowledge
and as Malcolm X says, "You couldn't have gotten me out of books
with a wedge." When books were scarce, he provided his own
reportage — speaking authoritatively about how African-Americans
and people of color worldwide were faring based on his own travels
and observations. The multitude of books on those topics came well
after his trips to the Middle East, Africa and Europe. (Thomkins, 2015)

Similarly, poet Maya Angelou considered herself not so much interesting as

interested, though she was one who considered herself hobbled more by her
own conscience and expectations of what she would allow herself to say – a
self-described addiction to remaining mute – than by overt external racial
and gender pressures; ultimately, it was the support of her mother and
grandmother that allowed her to find her voice (Moore, 2003). She did
certainly find her voice; not only was she an immeasurably influential
human rights activist and educator, nor the second person to ever recite a
poem at a president’s inauguration, as she did for Barack Obama, but it was
one of her poems that was included among the human artifacts aboard the
Orion spaceship, sent to Mars and beyond, in late 2014 (“Poem by
American Matriarch,” 2015).

Putting a fine point on how one has been restricted in speaking in public can
be a bewildering exercise at times. One has to be sensitive to certain
sensitivities (e.g. when traveling) – at least, up to a point – but should there
be limits on free expression? Comedians might enjoy a certain freedom in
their use of language (depending on the audience, of course), but much Multiculturalism:
larger issues can rear their head, issues that cause no little grief in the public the promotion of a
square – questions around religious expression, for instance. When is variety of ethnic
offense legitimate, and when is it unwarranted or outdated? The traditions in a
multiculturalism debate is complex and is a question for deeper discussion, broader cultural
though it remains (obviously) one very much in the air in Canada as context.
elsewhere (see Taylor et al., 1994, for an informative debate).

In the end, even where broader social and political issues – gender,
ethnicity, and so on – are confronted, there remain generally unspoken
barriers to speakers’ receiving a fair hearing – these concerned with
qualities that are more immediately personal, such as tone of voice or
natural facial dispositions. We are often judged when we least expect to be,
and the habits with which we have grown up can weigh heavily against us if
8
 people judge us on those points (see, for instance, the recently named
phenomenon of “bitchy resting face,” popularised on YouTube; Saedi,
2015). Sometimes, we might be able to recognise and compensate for these
qualities (Highfield, Wiseman, and Jenkins, 2009); the discussion that
follows in the second half of this handbook addresses some of these
possibilities.

Aside from external, physical factors, there are internal, biochemical ones
Cortisol: a
that can get in the way of performance, inasmuch as they heighten anxiety
steroid
and stress in a public speaker. Hostinar et al. (2014) note, in measuring
hormone
cortisol levels among adolescents faced with public speaking tasks, that the
produced
hormone had a higher incidence among white male adolescents than among
naturally in
any other group. While the authors of the study make no comment on the
response to
implications of these findings, we might consider how a conscious,
stressful
deliberate engagement with the fight-or-flight response might help channel
conditions. such a response towards productive ends.

Implicit bias
As Jonathan Haidt (2012) reminds us, we’ve evolved as a species like any
other to survive – to be relaxed around the familiar, and to be on alert Implicit bias:
around the unfamiliar. Our cognitive load would be too much to bear if we unconscious
processed equally all of the millions of things that we could possibly attitudes or
experience at any given moment. This is the root of prejudice, in the most stereotypes
abstract sense of the word: we pre-judge incoming experiences in order to that we carry
deal with them the most efficiently. This means that our brains need to which affect
dwell on some things longer than others to better process them, in spite of our thoughts
our natural default to sit comfortably and lazily in System 1 thinking. and behaviour
towards
If you are in any doubt of this, try taking a quick Stroop test. The game is people unlike
simple: For the first pass, say out loud the colour of the words in the series, us.
without reading the words, and note how much time this takes. For the
second pass, say out loud the colour of the words in the series, without
reading the words, and note how much time this takes. Now, try here for
another version of the test, this time calibrated for your fingers to type
certain keys for each colour.

We have undeniably prejudicial associations between the words we see and

the connotations we bring to them. Our social prejudices are very much
wired in the same way. The most compelling Stroop-like demonstration of
this can be seen in Harvard University’s Implicit Association Test. Try it
here.

9
 Whether we like it or not, we are constantly rendering unconscious
judgements on others. This is how power in any society flows most easily Question:
and without hindrance: by shunting the unfamiliar from our awareness. This What
can result in, on one end of the scale, micro-aggressions against others – automatic
passing over or ignoring others who should otherwise deserve attention – associations
and on the other, overt aggression (which the history of war will confirm). might we
Power favours the dominant and disfavours the marginalised. And it’s have with
important to remember here that for our purposes, minorities – whether in certain
terms of ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc. – are not only accents in
“visible minorities” but also “audible minorities”. movies or on
TV?
Susan Fiske (2007) proposes through the Stereotype Content Model (SCM)
that we pre-judge groups along two key dimensions: warmth and
competence. Those from whom we feel no sense of threat rank high in
warmth, while those whom we see as having high status rank high in
competence (see also Fiske, Xu, Cuddy, and Glick, 1999). Warmth suggests
affinity or identity with ourselves – that is, we like people who are like us,
both socially and morally. Competence can suggest intellectual or technical
ability, or in other words, authority in any given field. Thus, those whom
test subject rank high in both warmth and competence will invariably reflect
“in-group” status, whereas those who rank low in both warmth and
competence will be considered “out-group” (e.g. the homeless or people on
welfare).

Wallace Lambert observed this same phenomenon acutely in Montreal in

the 1960s with respect just to the spoken word. Having developed the
Matched-Guise Technique, Lambert and his fellow researchers studied how
subjects felt towards a language, accent, or dialect. Model speakers were
presented to these subjects for their assessment of the speakers’ character.
Even though every model speaker was in fact bilingual, the subjects did not
know this, and without fail, judgments of speakers who delivered their lines
in English were rated more favourably, English being the de facto language
of power in Montreal at the time (Lambert et al., 1960). Similar
observations have been made with respect to Modern Standard Mandarin
(Potonghua) (Dong, 2009) and Modern Standard Arabic (Fusha) (Khamis-
Dakwar, 2005); no doubt the experience is the same around the globe.
Question: The phenomenon of code-switching drives the point home: sometimes we
What are compelled to adapt our self-presentation to the audience we face. Code-
scenarios can switching is a term used in linguistics to describe how we change speech
you think of and language patterns – dialects, styles, or registers – in conversation. What
where people it further suggests is that we sometimes adopt different identities as a means
need to of self-preservation in different social contexts (Zandbergen, 2020). As we
practice have seen from Goffman, however, such adaptation does not mean simply
code- passive reflection of given social situations; we have it always in our power
switching? to actively create and manipulate them.

10
 Disregarding Content: the Verbal and the Non-Verbal
Whatever their message, and whether we agree with it or not, nobody could
deny that Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Margaret
Thatcher, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Steinem, Michel
Foucault, Ronald Reagan, Maya Angelou – the list does go on – were all
powerful and effective public speakers. Each was a powerful performer able
to bind audiences and move them to think and act in ways that each saw as
important.

We do love our words and all of the ways that we have to express them, and
the fact is that we can’t go very far without them. Language may well be
our singular distinguishing feature as a species (the jury still being out on
dolphins and elephants). Whether it is in a passing conversation with a teller
in a grocery store, over drinks with friends, at a meeting with colleagues at
work, in moments of shared intimacy, on the telephone with someone in a
government office, or in addressing a room full of people in a classroom or
a conference, we are constantly, if often unconsciously, hard at work
stringing our words together to find the means of getting through to our
audience, in ways that leave as little to question as we can. It is surely out of
this desire for as pure a delivery of meaning as possible that we have
developed our love for literature, poetry, and other forms of well-crafted
writing.

Verbal content, however – the literal and figurative meanings of our words
– is only ever just one aspect of what happens when we interact face-to-face
with an audience, and in fact a relatively small one. The classic study by
Albert Mehrabian (1971), who analysed the conflicts in how people
interpret what a person says and how it is expressed, tells us that there are
three distinct dimensions of communication: the visual, the vocal, and the
verbal. Mehrabian found that the visual (body language) accounts for 55%,
the vocal (use of the voice) comprises 38%, while the verbal (the words
used) makes up only 7% of the meaningful content.

Body language
Voicing
Verbal content

11
 It is important to remember that this all has less to do with what the speaker
is trying to express, but what we walk away with – the information
(particularly, emotional) that we extract from the encounter. It is one thing
to be aware of our own interior monologue while we are speaking; it is
quite another to have an informed awareness of what our audience is
receiving, regardless of what we might intend. The problem is that a great
deal of our communication happens on an unconscious, subliminal level,
often through habits that we may not even be aware of. Speakers regularly
Subliminal: present audiences with plenty of distractions – patterns of brushing hair
below the away from the face or stroking a beard, fidgeting with hands, lip-smacking,
threshold of heavy indrawn breaths, and the use of “fillers” (um, ah, like, so, and-stuff-
conscious like-that, etc.). Those distractions are noise in the signal; they take away
awareness. from the speaker’s intended meaning and replace it with clutter. A good
speaker will be aware of the potential for this noise and will make conscious
use of those subliminals to reinforce the intended verbal message, rather
than detract from it.

12
 Hemispheric Dominance and Non-Verbal Communication

Friedrich Nietzsche, in his 1872 book The Birth of Tragedy, delved into the
contrast between Apollonian and Dionysian forms of thinking – the former MRI:
being about control, the latter about ecstasy (Nietzsche, 1995). From Pierre Magnetic
Paul Broca’s first studies in the 1860s to research done with MRI and PET Resonance
scans today, it has become clear that the left and right hemispheres of our Imaging
brains have their own specialisations in how we process information, much PET:
as Nietzsche argued. These processes, Broca first found, are mediated Positron
through the corpus callosum, a narrow bridge between the hemispheres. For Emission
many of us, we can see signs of “hemispheric dominance,” where, like the
Tomography
muscle that it is, either the left or the right hemisphere has gotten the better
workout. In broad strokes, we can describe these hemispheric “aptitudes” in
these terms:

Deduction vs. induction. We can stereotype here and say that there are
mathematicians, and then there are artists. The left brain is particularly good
at working with concrete ideas, while the right brain excels at seeing
patterns. Deductive logic – of which symbolic logic is a clear example –
operates by beginning with established truths and then deriving particular
Syllogism: a applications from them. A simple example of this is the Aristotelian
logical syllogism, e.g.,
argument in
which a
conclusion is A: All men are mortal. A: Nobody’s perfect.
derived from
two or more B: Bob is a man. B: I’m nobody.
propositions.
C: Bob is mortal. C: ???

13
Inductive reasoning, which is a right brain specialisation, takes an entirely
different approach to working with information. With induction, we don’t
begin with truths; we tease them out. We sit with things that we perceive
and know, and out of all of the given information, patterns begin to emerge.
Grounded Theory, a school of sociology, works explicitly in this way
(Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Resisting the urge to begin with a hypothesis,
these researchers will sit with collected data until they start to see
connections between them, labeling those discoveries and grouping them
into concepts and categories until they finally arrive at a theory that hadn’t
existed previously. There is a particular creativity and artistry in this kind of
exercise, and it is in the right brain that this work is largely done (see also
the world of “Freakonomics”; Levitt and Dubner, 2005).

Similarly, the contrast between logic and analogy highlights the differences
in how our brains operate. Where the left brain works well at literal
meanings, the right brain is better at stretching those meanings into
“poetry”. This isn’t just an academic point; it has even been suggested that
religious conflict could be diminished if the right brain were exercised a
little more to see how scripture from any tradition can be read as poetry that
reveals universal truths, rather than concrete descriptions of reality
(Armstrong, 2000). A balanced approach to thought in both hemispheres is
essential to better bringing reality and abstraction together (d’Aquili and
Newberg, 1999, p. 87).

Precision vs. abstraction. Left-brain thinkers enjoy their facts. Facts can be
used, handled, demonstrated, and organised. The left brain doesn’t handle
abstraction well. More right-brained thinkers – conspiracy theorists, e.g. –
on the other hand, love abstraction, which is fine, except that they too often
fail with the facts. There are plenty of theories out there about cabals of
plotters lurking in the shadows, because there are patterns that can be
picked out of history and current events; problems arise when the left-brain
thinker challenges these theorists to come up with the goods. “Prove it!”
they say; the right-brained conspiracy theorist may have a lot of difficulty in
doing so, because so much of the “proof” lies in that cloudy world of
abstract ideas, which sits just below the surface of conscious awareness,
disconnected from real, demonstrable data (Nicholson, 2013).

14
 People who take psychotropic drugs (marijuana for instance) often report
Psychotropic heightened creativity, and studies have in fact found increased activity in
drugs: drugs the right hemisphere when these substances are ingested (O’Leary et al,
that act on the 2002). The stimulation of free association is shown in the epiphany that bus
central driver Otto in The Simpsons has when, staring at his hand after getting high
nervous at a decriminalisation rally in Springfield, he exclaims, “They call them
system to alter fingers, but I’ve never seen them fing!” Drugs like this were undoubtedly
consciousness, among the fuels in the explosion of creativity in the 1960s (to say nothing
mood, of the role of other psychotropics such as absinthe in 19th century Europe or
cognition, opium throughout the centuries). Heavy use of marijuana, however, has also
perception, been linked to, among other things, impaired cognition, suggesting that the
and behaviour. heightening of right-brain capacity may come at the cost of left-brain
function (Quickfall and Crockford, 2006). There is also the matter of those
who may crave marijuana prior to public speaking – according to a recent
study, women and those with social anxiety disorder may be particularly
vulnerable – and the ensuing effects on performance (Buckner, Silgado, and
Schmidt, 2011).

Words, concepts vs. images, sounds. As a final illustration of how our

left-brain/right-brain specialisations shape our thinking, consider how you
listen to music. Whether you’ve heard a song for the first time or the
thousandth, where do you find your attention going – to the words in the
lyrics, or to the interplay and subtleties in music? The left-brain is at home
with the words, while the right-brain is active in making out patterns in the
sound. It may be that you are able to experience the song in a balanced,
integrated way, and you may consider yourself the richer for it.

Test yourself: Though these online tests could hardly be called hard
science, they can give a modest sense of whether you are right-brain or left-
brain dominant. It is important to note that while there remains no little
controversy around theories of hemispheric dominance (see Wanjek, 2013),
the concept itself is still an interesting and productive way to reflect on the
means by which we interpret and communicate information.

 Personality Test 1
 Hemispheric Dominance Inventory Test

15
 Implications

Among the consequences for people who have suffered damage to their left
hemispheres is a dramatic loss in the ability to speak, to use words (Sacks
2007, 214-218). This is what public speakers need to remember: the left
hemisphere is the home of language, of words, of representation.
Meanwhile, if we remember Mehrabian, 93% of communication has to do
with the non-verbal. An effective speaker will be aware that we speak two
languages simultaneously. The challenge is to bring the right-hemispheric
mode of communication into phase with that of the left so that the audience
receives the message in the most complete way possible.

Flight-or-Fight

There is one final aspect of the brains of public speakers that is worth
commenting upon. It has become a truism that most people’s fear of public
speaking (known as glossophobia) trumps the fear of death, although Glossophobia:
factually, this is apparently untrue: a 2001 Gallup poll found that snakes the fear of
ranked at no. 1, and while public speaking placed at no. 2, just 40% of public
respondents identified it as their top fear (Brewer, 2001). All the same, both speaking.
fears are rooted in what is called the reptilian brain, among the most ancient
of the gray matter that we’ve inherited through our evolutionary history. It
is the part of the brain that stirs in us the fight-or-flight responses that we
are all familiar with. For a public speaker, though, it can be that very stress
that can be a boon in helping us communicate with others (for an excellent
Question: TED talk on this point, see McGonigal, 2013).
What are
your own What happens when someone is called upon to speak to an audience and
physiological anxiety starts to take over? We know the symptoms: sweaty palms,
responses increased heart rate, shallow breathing, and, maybe the most frightening,
when loss of words. These unconscious physiological responses make sense
confronted against the backdrop of how we have evolved: they can be useful. Suppose
with stage you are a primate from, say, 10 million years ago, traipsing in packs
fright? through the African savannah. We traveled in packs because there is safety
in numbers; leave the pack, and you leave yourself vulnerable to predators.
Should this happen, though, the body has its own wisdom. Sweaty hands

16
give better traction for climbing trees. The heart will pump all the necessary
adrenalin into the system as quickly as possible to get us to leap into action.
The mind will go blank to minimise distractions from the crisis at hand.

The problem is that the public speaker doesn’t get the opportunity to flee (or
at least shouldn’t be exercising it), nor can he or she attack the audience
(again, this probably shouldn’t happen either). So what is one to do with
these responses?

For the novice speaker, these symptoms of the fight-or-flight response will
not disappear overnight. However, they can first be made the object of
conscious awareness; it does no good to pretend that they aren’t happening.
The audience, for its part, may be consciously or unconsciously aware of
them. Their right hemispheres will take in the anxious speaker’s cues, and
on some level the audience risks becoming distracted by them.

A good public speaker will recognise that those energies can be channeled
productively to reinforce the verbal message. We will return in detail to this
point in Section II.

17
 The Words: Choosing the Right Way to Use Them

Ethos, Pathos, Logos

So far, our focus has been on non-verbal delivery. This is by no means to

suggest that the words aren’t important, only that for too long they have
been given too much importance in discussions of public speaking. We are
aware of how tedious it can be to sit through the delivery of someone
droning on monotonously, standing stock-still at the front of the room,
reading from the page. That said, though, every speech performance must
obviously have content to satisfy an audience, and having interesting and
engaging content is an absolute must.

In his treatise “Rhetoric”, Aristotle identifies three ways in which an

orator’s words can inspire confidence and trust in an audience: ethos,
pathos, and logos (McKeon 1941, 1329 ff.).

Ethos

Pathos Logos

 Ethos, as Aristotle puts it, “depends on the personal character of the

speaker.” Ethos demonstrates character; if we respect the speaker, we are
more inclined to believe what he or she says. To do this, the speaker needs
to show experience, authority, and a firm moral compass in order to inspire
trust. Reputation is not insignificant here, but that reputation can also be
established in the course of the performance itself.

 Pathos is that dimension of a speech that puts the audience into a certain
frame of mind. It is the ability to stir emotions, to draw an audience into the
speaker’s feelings and imagination – often achieved through storytelling
that will trigger emotional response. It is here that the audience can identify

18
 sympathetically or empathetically with the speaker, to feel compassion,
anger, pity, resentment, or joy. Non-verbal counterparts here are the
effective use of intonation and facial expression, which can communicate
joy, sadness, resentment, fear, or any other emotion.

 Logos is the “proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech Question:
itself.” This is the power to prove a truth through persuasive argument, one Can you
that is intelligible, logical, and well-supported. Here is the rational content think of
of the speech, which appeals to the audience’s higher faculties of reason, examples of
and draws on proofs, evidence, and logic. speeches that
work well in
An ideal blend of these three qualities will, Aristotle argues, “win” the terms of
audience over to the speaker. By bringing in indisputable facts, emotional ethos,
appeal, and the proper ethical compulsions, a speaker will be able to compel pathos,
the listener to accept his or her claims, and to make the listener adopt the and/or logos?
persuasive force of the thesis.

Swearing

There is no power like that of swearing which can seize an audience’s

attention, nor which can shape an audience’s perception of a speaker.

As cognitive psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker (2007) puts it, the
language of swearing is something that kidnaps our attention at a deeply
unconscious, visceral level. Among other things, it is language that is
socially repressed: Why, in democracies, is so much effort put into deterring
us from uttering words around such inevitable facts of human life as, say,
sex and excretion? Rather than the “speaking truth to power” cases of free
speech, it’s where some of the most headline-grabbing legal battles have
been fought in our age. Lenny Bruce, to take just one example, was finally
pardoned no less than 37 years after his death for words he used in comedy
clubs.

Swearing factors into our everyday judgments about people and their
character. However, it’s not that the words themselves corrupt our own
morals. We have come a long way from the oaths we used to make before

19
the days of explicit, written contracts (the “I swear” sense); swearing has
evolved in many ways from such oaths to what we now understand as “dirty
words”.

Everyone, of course, has his/her own list of taboo words. Pinker points out
that while these began in English historically with religion (which can still Question:
be seen in Quebecois French), the vocabulary of swearing has shifted over What taboos
time into language concerned with sex, excretion, disease, death, and (words or
marginalised/subordinated groups. We also swear in different contexts and behaviour)
with different intentions: we swear to vent frustration, as imprecation can you think
(cursing others and ourselves), and in figures of speech; we swear of from
descriptively (“let’s f*”), idiomatically (“it’s f*’d up”), abusively (“f* different
you!”), emphatically (“this is f*ing amazing!”), and cathartically (F*!!!”). cultures?
The taboo-ranking of certain words has evolved in even recent cultural
memory; the N-word used as the time that Mark Twain’s wrote Huckleberry
Finn has considerably more impact today, as a recent scandal at the
University of Ottawa makes plain (Crawford, 2020). Such terms, it should
be noted, do find positive value within movements that intend to reclaim
them – to contribute, in certain circumstances, to desensitisation around or
reorientation to their usage – but it remains a general rule that it’s best if it’s
only those in the disfavoured groups who are doing that work. Otherwise,
all cautions around implicit bias apply.

The language of sex is certainly among the most incendiary of all the terms
in our swear-word lexicons. As Pinker observes, sex is a site not simply of
pleasure but of some of the most distressing aspects of human experience:
exploitation, unintended pregnancy, illegitimacy, disease, jealousy,
desertion, cheating, sexist bias and power, and all degrees of assault; in
other words, bringing sexual language into play brings highly emotionally
charged responses, which Pinker notes can be especially hard to negotiate,
citing C.S. Lewis: “As soon as you deal with [sex] explicitly, you are forced
to choose between the language of the nursery, the gutter, and the anatomy
class.” The taboo words here are the opposite of euphemisms: they are
dysphemisms that bring to mind aspects of what they connote we know to
be potentially provocative.

Taboo words, Pinker elaborates, tap into “deep and ancient parts of the
emotional brain,” ranging from the neocortex to the limbic system
(particularly the amygdala), going further still into our own individual pre-
histories (i.e. when we were children). To see this for ourselves, we have
only to try another Stroop test – naming the colour of the ink – with swear
words! Swearing survives in the right hemispheres of those with aphasia
(brain damage leading to language loss) as prefabricated formulas. Without
any cognitive dysfunction, however, our “executive systems” can constantly
monitor and catch profanities, which explains how an expletive such as a
“sh*t!” might be modulated to a “shoot!” The hydraulic (“letting off
steam”), cathartic use of swearing is where this response is experienced
20
 most often, in expressing either anger or embarrassment. This is something
seen in all mammals, as when a cat lets its feelings be known when you step
on its tail; the difference with us humans is that the circuit involved passes
through our inner thesauruses where all of our most conventional,
emotionally-charged words are stored and can be shared to appropriate
effect.

In sum, swearing is a fact of communicative life. Swear words can put us on

thin ice and lead to our not being taken seriously (at best). At the same time,
they can also indicate our willingness to be informal; they can even serve as
an invaluable tool for “saving face” (in Goffman’s sense), a means of
demonstrating our own self-awareness. A well-placed exclamation can let
those around us know, when, say, we’ve committed a faux-pas, that we
aren’t oblivious to our wrong-doing (try not to utter a profanity after having
spilled a drink on a friend and see how s/he responds to you). The moral of
Pinker’s observations is that we need, in the end, to be aware of just how
taboo certain language is, to be aware of who in the room is listening, and to
be aware of our own over-use of that language – or, as he advises, “Keep
your powder dry.”

The Power of a Good Story

Abraham Maslow (discussed below) presents us with compelling reasons to

see how a truly great presenter will speak to the audience in a way that
allows each member of the audience to feel inspired to achieve all that he or
she feels it important to achieve in his or her own life. As Nancy Duarte
(2010) reminds us, there is little that will turn off an audience more readily
than a speaker who approaches an audience with such arrogance that the

21
 only success that matters is the speaker’s own (20). The speaker’s job,
Duarte argues, is not to be a hero, but a mentor – someone who has passed
through trials; the speaker is “simply one voice helping them get unstuck in
their journey” (20). Mentors need to be perceptibly humble and selfless,
regardless of the heroism of the journeys that have led them to the place
where they can help others. Just as in Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth”, the Monomyth:
hero’s journey (Campbell, 1949), they have had to travel from ordinary the concept
through extraordinary worlds, from the known into the unknown, in order to that
overcome their own fears, undergo a transformation and to bring back underlying all
something that is of value to the community – in our case, to the audience. major
As Duarte says, at the beginning of the speaker’s story, members of the religions and
audience are relatively naïve; they may have no sense at all that there is a myths is a
problem or opportunity that needs to be addressed (34). As the journey – the consistent
story – progresses and draws the listeners (provided the storyteller be a plotline that
good one) deeper into the “crisis” and they are challenged by the ideas that the founders
they hear, they will emerge from the experience prepared to press forward or heroes
themselves to make the world a better place. In the modern poverty of follow.
transformative ritual, Campbell always insisted, stories are needed more
than ever.

Question: Put another way, it is the speaker’s job not only to persuade an audience to
What is your buy something that is being sold but also to take the audience, step by step,
favourite on a journey, in which they are brought to recognise that something in the
“journey” world isn’t right and that they have to engage with the story, challenge their
story? Why own beliefs about the world, and come out the other side with a sense that
do you think there are changes that need to be made before the world can be set right. It
it is so is, as Duarte says, appealing to the contrast between what the audience can
effective? easily see already is and what they can be made to see could be.

It should be noted that Joseph Campbell has not been without his critics.
Not only can he be indicted for heedless orientalism (Said, 1978) and male-
centeredness, but it should also be kept in mind that not all good stories are
about confrontation and ego-assertion (Ayed, 2019). That said, neither are
all good speakers or audiences.

22
 Self-Actualisation

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become

uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.
Thomas Wolfe

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he
is to be ultimately happy.
Abraham Maslow

To conclude this first section, it is important to highlight the work that the
speaker has put into her- or himself as key to become dynamic, informative,
entertaining, engaging, and ultimately satisfying for an audience. And in
order for a speaker to be satisfying, he or she must first reach a level of
personal satisfaction that can reflect for members of the audience the needs
that they themselves bring to the speaker’s performance. Any such
discussion should include Abraham Maslow’s theory of self-actualisation
(1943).

Maslow’s primary concern has to do with what lies behind our motivations.
He argues that our essential needs (which are largely basic and
unconscious) sit in a hierarchy; satisfying primary needs allows for the
satisfaction of higher needs. In brief, those needs – or better yet, goals – are,
from lower to higher,

 Physiological: breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, excretion

 Safety: security of body, employment, resources, morality, family, health,
property
 Love: friendship, family, sexual intimacy (giving and receiving)
 Esteem: self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by
others, recognition
 Self-actualisation: morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem-solving, lack
of prejudice, acceptance of facts – in Maslow’s words, “the desire to
become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is
capable of becoming” (1943).

23
The idea of a hierarchy can be misleading, yet all of the motivations in this
schema are equally important; to be well-fed is no less important than to be
well-loved. It’s also possible that someone can confuse motivations –
thinking, for example, that one needs esteem when one is really after love.
The central point of Maslow’s theory is, though, that the satisfaction of
motivations on one level opens the door to the satisfaction of needs on the
next level, so that by the end, there is a realisation (or in his words, an Question:
actualisation) of the fullness of human being in all of its complexity and Do you
richness. accept the
concept of
For the purposes of public speaking, it should be noted that communication Maslow’s
really begins at level 3, that of love and belonging; interest in other people hierarchy?
helps with social and esteem needs and allows focus on the still higher Need one
needs. A speaker should then ask how a presentation is going to enhance the stage always
lives of others. Can a speaker appeal to a variety of needs up the pyramid – be satisfied
physiology, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation? Every before the
audience will have a wide variety within it. Can the truly effective speaker others can be
address all of their needs, remembering that the minds of those in the actualised?
audience process what they observe in the performance not only
consciously but also, and still more importantly, unconsciously?

The next section approaches ten aspects of non-verbal communication –

stance, eye contact, use of hands, proximity and platform, facial expression,

24
volume, rate, articulation, pausing, and pitch and tone – with the goal of
answering this question. It takes hard work to become a self-actualised
public speaker, and not many people take up the challenge; for his part,
Maslow believed that very few, generally speaking, have the desire or
capacity to become self-actualised, being content with lower expectations.
Many speakers are themselves happy to stay there. Our concern, though, is
to shine light on what makes a truly great speaker, one who treats the
performance of the spoken word as the art that it can be.

25
 II. Speech Construction
The Rule of Three

It is practically impossible to discuss every way in which a speech is

written, because every orator will organise his or her content in diverse
ways that have been proven effective.

That said, one constant in speeches, as elsewhere, is what has been called
the “Rule of Three”. There is something that resonates deeply with human
nature when three related items are strung together. If someone makes a
sound, a noise, then that could mean anything and nothing. If that sound is
repeated, it could be a simple accident. Three correlated sounds, though,
reflect human intention – as the standard knock at the door will be three
raps; three beats are also the minimum needed for the establishment of
Hendiatris: rhythm. The rhetorical world, going back to classical times, is full of lists of
Greek, “one three (in the Greek term, hendiatris). “Sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll”, “Friends,
through Romans, countrymen”, “Peace, order, and good government”, “of the
three”: a people, by the people, for the people”, or the 19th century German formula
figure of for the best preoccupations for women, “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” (children,
speech in kitchen, and church). Think of the satisfaction that comes with all of the old
which one children’s literature, fairy tales, and religious myths (in the best sense of the
idea is word) – the Three Little Pigs, Cinderella’s three wishes, or the three
expressed temptations of Jesus and of the Buddha. Think of all of the jokes that
through three you’ve ever heard where you know that the punchline will come precisely
words or when the third person acts. Politicians are acutely aware of the importance
phrases. of that “third thing” (Atkinson, 1984). A recent glaring example can be seen
in the fumble by Texas governor Rick Perry in the US Republican primary
debates when he promised to eliminate three departments were he elected
president; after identifying Commerce and Education, he failed to remember
the third. The discomfort among those on stage and in the audience at this
prolonged failure to complete the set was acute (Terkel, 2011). Perry opted
out of the running in short order as a result of this rhetorical fiasco.

26
 High school students are all familiar with the five-paragraph essay, yet the
question is often asked why such a constraint is put upon them. The reason
remains the same: the three points of support or development are not only a
minimum number of discussions to establish a point, but they are also
rhetorically satisfying. A chair can only take the weight of a person sitting
on it when there are at least three legs, placed equally apart. If two points of
a speech are too close together, as if they were legs on a stool, the thesis
will fall flat. To work best with the Rule of Three, key points in a speech
must be equally meaningful (to the audience and speaker alike), distinct
from each other in a balanced way, and equally relevant to the central
theme.

Using Notes: Trigger Sheets

Most speeches can be classified as belonging to one of three types:

prepared, spontaneous, and extemporaneous. Prepared speeches are Extempora-
thoroughly organised and written out; they can be read off a page or a neous
teleprompter. Spontaneous speeches are “off the cuff”; the speaker will speech: a
know in vague terms where to go, but the content is often made up on the speech
spot. Extemporaneous speeches are organised, but they allow the speaker to delivered with
play with the material creatively and to adapt to the moment. It is this last a minimum of
category of speech that the presentations in this course belong to and where prepared
keeping notes handy can be invaluable – notes, that is, of a certain kind. notes.

27
 Notes are a bane for public speaking, being more of a hindrance than a help.
Holding notes is a serious impediment to non-verbal communication; it
inhibits free expression with hands, and it gets in the way of eye contact, so
vital to audience connection.

More effective by far for extemporaneous speaking are notes that can be left
on horizontal surfaces that we can call “trigger sheets”. Trigger sheets are
pages that can be used in extemporaneous speeches (speeches guided by
key ideas that allow a speaker to speak most directly with audiences), on
which are put guiding words or images that can keep the speaker on point
and in order, to talk freely while being aware of the time that passes. All
speeches will have time constraints, and the careful organisation of a
speech, including time markers (four minutes, six minutes, eight minutes,
etc.) on the trigger sheets will hone the delivery within that given
timeframe. It might be worth noting, in accordance with what’s called the
Picture Superiority Effect (Kahneman, 2013), that pictures and images have
proven to be better remembered than words.

Verbal Signposts

Speakers who let the audience know where the speech is at in any given
point provide a gift to all involved. There are few audience experiences as
straining as not knowing when a speaker will finish; it is far better to have
been given a roadmap from the beginning about where the speaker will go,
given the right teases about the content, reminded of the content so far
discussed, and left with a sense at the end that everything has been covered.

Verbal signposting is a term used for those cues that allow an audience to
know where a speaker is in the speech; it is vitally important for a
potentially bored audience, in ways parallel to the cues given in a written
essay that let the reader appreciate the development of the discussion.
Signposting can be done in three major ways: previewing, changing
direction, and summarising.

Previewing consists of setting out clearly what is going to be talked about.

In the traditional five-paragraph essay, we have the thesis statement – the
sentence that contains the central thesis and the three points of support

28
 given in parallel form, so that the reader can prepare for what is to follow to
better engage with it all. The central thesis, as well as the supporting points,
should be repeated continuously, so that the audience never loses track of
the central threads. A good preview in a speech will accomplish the same
task as a thesis statement in an essay: it lets the audience get a sense of how
the following minutes will be used so to be able to engage and respond in an
effective and critical way.

Changes in direction will also be well helped through effective verbal

signposting. Transitional positional words and phrases let the audience
know clearly where logic is in play. Some examples:

Now we’ll examine… In addition, …

The next point will give you…
If this interests you, …
Let’s consider this another way: …
Now, think about this: …
To show you what I mean, …
In other words, …
To put it another way, …
Therefore, …
Here is the most important thing: …
So, where do we go from here?
However, you need to consider…
Now, let’s take into account…
The final step…
Not surprisingly, …
However, …
Not only…, but also…

Summarising, finally, will bring an audience through a recap of all of the

key points that have been discussed. This step is vital to a speech. Audience
members will have drifted, going on their own flights of thought, they will
have been distracted, or they will have simply forgotten; it is for the
speaker, and the purposes that he or she will have had for giving the speech,
to drive the central points home once more, to recall them for the sake of
the audience. A re-thesis, or review, of the key points of the speech for
listeners will tie it all together for them, so that they can walk away with a
clear grasp of the intended message.

Signposting, of course, can be reinforced through non-verbals – use of

pauses, movement, hands, or pitch and cadence, among others. The
combination of verbal with non-verbal signposts doubles down on those
cues to the audience to let them know where they are as active participants
in a communicative moment, where they might take in something new that
they had not known before, and, in the end, be enriched by it.

29
Assessing Speech Performances
The rubric provided below (Appendix A) was developed by Algonquin
College’s Doug Duminie, and it serves as an excellent guide in evaluating
speeches. In keeping with the principle that non-verbals are central in
delivering an effective speech, the two columns on the right, Animation and
Voicing, are given special scrutiny. The first column, Design, reflects the
attention given to the verbal content, and draws out the details that are given
to the audience in terms both of structure and content – the structure that is
given to the audience to let them know where the speaker is at, and the
content that is intended, ultimately, to have an effect on that audience. All
three columns, though – design, animation, and voicing, must be understood
as an integrated package – the full impact of the speech on the audience
depends on a carefully crafted whole.

Not all of the boxes need be checked; the point of having such a range of
criteria is because every speech will have specific strengths and weaknesses
that can be discussed. Reflecting on those strengths and weakness will show
a speaker where improvements can be made, and it will allow for a
heightened sensibility for anyone watching and listening to a speaker in any
context.

Theories underlie a great speech, aspects of non-verbal communication

reinforce the intended content, and the shaping and critiquing of the speech
give it final form. Such speeches create the richest form of interpersonal
communication to which we have access. A heightened and sharpened sense
of all of the dimensions of public speaking may seem at times to be
something of a curse – in the same way as someone who has spent time
painting houses can no longer look at a freshly painted house the same way
again – but this ability is in the end a huge blessing, and it will enrich the
experience of any time that we sit and watch someone take to the stage.

30
III. Presenting to the Camera: The Use of New
Technology

The 21st century has, of course, seen an historical sea-change in how human
beings communicate to one another. Along with the advent of principally
text-based social media technologies (Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, LinkedIn,
Pinterest, Facebook, Messenger, etc.), video-based media platforms (Zoom,
MS Teams, Google Hangouts, WebEx, House Party, Skype, etc.) have
become part of our everyday lives (due in no small measure to COVID-19),
and the number of careers where time is spent teleconferencing has grown
exponentially, not least in the world of business (Smith, 2019; Wolverton
and Tanner, 2019; Campbell and Larson, 2013). Along with this growth
comes an increased need for familiarity and comfort with online
presentation, synchronous and otherwise.

Cognition: The Complications of Presenting in Cyberspace

However convenient the technology, it remains a less-than-human means of

interacting, never a proper substitute for in-person communication; worse
still, experience and research both suggest that it can be counterproductive
in ways we are just starting to recognise (Pittis, 2020). As a great many of
us have come to appreciate, engaging with platforms such as Zoom can be
exhausting on a variety of levels (Supiano, 2020). The reasons for this drain
on our systems are many: we have severely limited access to non-verbal
cues, we get pulled into the distractions of constantly monitoring our own
appearance in the mirror-window, we are inescapably bound to gazing at
each other’s faces, we are unable to change our surroundings, and we are
unable to scan and adequately read the room. How can any audience’s
understanding be gauged? Furthermore, as research has increasingly shown,
screen addiction (through the priorisation by many apps of user
engagement) brings in its wake untold psychological and social and even
political consequences (Sears, 2020; Deachman, 2020; Oremus, 2017;
Kramer, Guillory, and Hancock, 2014; Zuboff, 2019). Under all of these
conditions, how are we to fully recognise and engage with our fight-or-
flight responses?

31
 Daniel Kahneman (2013), whose work in cognitive science won him the Question:
Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002, has been instrumental in What
helping us recognise the degree to which all of the ways we think follow garden-path
one of two tracks: the fast and the slow. Put briefly, we process and react to sentences
information either with the gut or with the head. For example, orienting can you think
ourselves to a sudden sound, completing stock phrases such as “to whom it of or find?
may ___”, or detecting hostility in a voice are all governed by what
Kahneman calls “System 1” thinking: automatic, involuntary, and relatively
effortless. More effortful, “System 2” thinking is concerned with higher-
order thinking: tracking one person’s voice across a crowded room,
deciphering “garden-path” sentences such as “The horse raced past the barn
fell,” or monitoring how appropriate our behaviour might be in a social
situation. As speakers and as audiences alike, we need to consider
Kahneman’s insight at all times – for speakers, in terms of our fight-or-
flight responses; for audiences, in terms of our uptake of information.

Similarly, Richard Mayer (2005) reminds us of the diligence we must take

when delivering information to people with low prior knowledge (i.e. new
information). There is only so much information that we can hold, process,
and retain – what he refers to as “cognitive load” – which can be intrinsic
(related to the difficulty of the content), extraneous (related to the
challenges of context), and germane (related to the difficulty of moving
information from our short-term to long-term memory). There is altogether
too much that competes for our attention on all three of these levels, and
special effort needs to be made – in terms of Kahneman’s System 2 thinking
– in order to best impart meaningful content to an audience (see also
Ibrahim, 2012). What is ultimately of concern is making the cognitive load
as light as possible for the audience, not least given the combination of all
of the distractions we need to sift through online at any given moment and
everything we need to process in non-verbal (and even micro-expressive)
content.

Strategies for Online Presentations: Content and Context

On first reflection, many might think that moving from in-person to online
means a heightening of anxiety. Research here can reassure us. Studies of
relative heart rates in each case contradicts this (Campbell and Larson,
2013), and this is true regardless of gender or age (Wolverton and Tanner,
2019).

Practice, as always, remains important; engaging in more real-time online

discussions to prepare for online presentations is a sure bet to finding new
comfort zones. Similarly, recording informal presentations proves
invaluable when preparing for a proper presentation, as long as those

32
recordings don’t count towards formal assessment (Khalifa Tailab and
Marsh, 2020).

Remembering that we are still and always working with the subconscious –
our own and others’ – we can keep some points in mind. In the interests of
reducing cognitive load and minimising noise, it is vital to boil away all
non-essential content while amplifying the essential. Consider how best to
streamline all variables before getting on camera: dressing appropriately,
getting all of your technical ducks in a row, ensuring maximal eye-levels,
and being sure to continually re-engage your audience. Even if you’re aware
that the presentation is going to be recorded for posterity, make absolutely
sure that you keep repeating key points (Lucey, 2017), and keep practicing
all of your key lines.

Additional suggestions:

Seeing yourself online

If you are going to keep a mirror window open while presenting online, you
need to consciously choose your window. How big do you want see
yourself? Will you flip your image so you see yourself mirrored, or would
you rather see yourself as those on the other side of the camera will see
you?

Practicing in front of an audience

Big groups are often overwhelming in real life. Practice in small groups
where possible. This is already the case in most real-world circumstances.

Getting yourself offline

Be aware of how much screen time you already spend. Does it need to be
more limited to minimise burnout and to maximise engagement?

33
 IV. Practically Speaking: The Use of Non-
Verbal Language

Non-verbals, we have seen, largely engage the right hemisphere, where,

until they are reflected on consciously, they remain subliminal. They can,
however, be brought into consciousness and then controlled to good effect.
We have seen how body language, which, as Mehrabian tells us, makes up
55% of the content of interpersonal communication, is of huge significance
to the performance of the public speaker. Voicing, at 38%, is no less
deserving of attention.
Interconnect-
edness of In the section below, we will look at aspects of non-verbal communication,
non-verbals: first with features of body language – stance, eye contact, hands, proximity
no non-verbal and platform, and facial expression – and then voicing – volumes, rates,
can really be articulation, pausing, and pitch and tone. While each will be discussed
taken in separately, it is important to remember that there is a rich
isolation in interconnectedness between them that effective orators will synthesise and
actual harmonise to create convincing and powerful performance of their material.
practice.

Body language
Stance

Our experience with the fight-or-flight response tells us that it is good to at

the least be prepared for action. A good stance and good posture are crucial
for two reasons: first of all, to inspire confidence in an audience, and
secondly, to aid the speaker, physiologically, in a strong delivery.

Observe anxious or indifferent speakers: what is it, before they open their
mouths, that communicates their attitude? Slumped shoulders, a lowered
gaze, hands in the pockets, all of these relay a lack of engagement with both

34
 the material and audience (unless they are used deliberately to reinforce the
content of the speech). Conversely, an aggressive speaker – one with folded
arms, or one too dynamic, for example – can prove intimidating, which is
also distracting. An assertive speaker, on the other hand, communicates
self-confidence and self-reliance, balancing both content and delivery.

Physiologically, good posture helps a speaker in two key ways. One,

circulation is maximised, which means that there are no unconscious
distractions of parts of the body in need of greater blood flow (including the
brain). Two, breathing is made easier, which allows the speaker to project
from the gut.

Observe the balance in the “karate ready stance” in speakers: straight back,
arms to the sides, feet shoulder-width apart, and knees slightly bent. It is a
position from which action in any direction can spring, and in which
circulation and breathing are optimised. As a starting point for controlling
the fight-or-flight response, there are few better places to start than martial
arts.

Eye Contact

All authentic speaking begins with eye contact. Eye contact is used to
initiate relationship and regulate conversation. One of the most commented-
upon moments in the 2008 presidential debates came following the night of
John McCain’s apparent refusal to make eye contact with Barack Obama
Question: (Malcolm, 2008). Regardless of the content of McCain’s message, he was
How variously described as rude, contemptuous, or arrogant. Words are
comfortable immediately contradicted or made irrelevant if the speaker is not prepared
do you feel to engage on such a basic human level. Speakers are deemed insincere if
talking with they use less than 50% eye contact, as well as being judged uninformed or
someone inexperienced (Beebe, 1974; Droney and Brooks, 2001). Because of the
wearing complexity of facial expression, we tend to go directly for the eyes. We
mirror learn this from the time we are born. Very young children’s drawings of
sunglasses? faces invariably include the eyes, while not a few will exclude even the
mouth. Eyes also reflect the mood of the speaker in ways that few non-
verbal cues can. A genuine smile will also be written in the eyes; a person
who has lived a lifetime smiling will eventually have those smiles engraved,
wonderfully, in the corners of those eyes.
35
 Unconscious tendencies in eye contact can deeply undermine the
connection between speaker and audience. Fleeting eye contact can be
interpreted as a sign of nervousness or uncertainty. Emphatic and deliberate
eye contact, on the other hand, is a mark of authentic connection. Singer
Willie Nelson discovered the power of effective eye contact early in his
career:

A long time ago I’d look for one friendly face in the audience, when I
was first getting started and I didn’t know anybody, so I’d try to find
somebody that was looking at me and liking what I was doing. I’d sing
to that person all night long. I still look for who’s looking at me – I’ll
check the audience out and see who’s got me zeroed in and try to make
contact back with them. And that grows, that little-bitty spark of energy
exchanged will pick up some more around you and you can see some
other people getting off on that one exchange. (Patoski, 2008)

Ideally, a speaker would be able to establish eye contact with everyone in a

room, though this is obviously impossible in many situations where the
room is just too big. Where possible, though, a highly effective strategy is
to take the time before speaking to do a “scan-pause” – to make eye contact
with everyone present for between one and two seconds, to establish the
speaker’s presence and connection with those audience members.

A note of caution: it is important to be sensitive to cultural differences here;

where sustained eye contact may be seen as evidence of confidence in one
part of the world, it can be interpreted as aggression in another (Chu,
Strong, Ma, and Greene, 2005).

Exercise: Distribute cards to everyone in the room. Speakers will talk for two
minutes on a topic of their own choosing, and when they make eye contact
with someone for 1.5-2 seconds, that person will raise the card. Continue doing
this until everyone has a card in the air, and then continue speaking; when a
second eye contact “hit” is made, the card will come down. Each audience
member will keep a count of how many hits he or she has received, and when
the talking is done, everyone will reveal that number. This exercise ought to
serve as a reminder that eye contact is something that must not only be
consistent but also evenly distributed.

36
Hands

Hands are among the most powerful tools that we have for communicating.
When they are holding anything – notes, for instance, or a cup of coffee –
they are prevented from adding to the richness of the message, and they
cannot be used in deliberate and coordinated ways. Hands can emphasise
key points and depict imagery in ways where words can fail.

Consider some of the ways that speakers make effective use of their hands:

 Counting: How better to itemise the points that we are making than to draw
eyes to our fingers? The word “three” and three fingers in the air mean the
same thing, but when they coincide, it lets the audience know on both levels
simultaneously what is meant is exactly “three”.
 Finger pause: Just as an elementary school teacher can focus the attention of
the students with a raised arm, a speaker can focus the attention of the
audience with a raised finger and a pause (see also pausing. below).
 Chopping, hitting: If not over-used, points can be delivered with the
appropriate force.
 Drawing in, shaking off, waving away: These gestures can engage an Question:
audience physically – that is, create a physical connection between speaker How have
and audience. you seen
 Pointing to a scene, a place: The index finger is, not surprisingly, ideal for hands used
indicating. Scenes can be drawn for an audience in the collective effectively?
imagination.

Exercise: 1) How would you use your hands to illustrate the title of your favourite novel or
movie? 2) Attempt to describe a shape or thing without using your hands: how well are you
able to keep them by your sides?

37
Proximity and Platform

Edward T. Hall’s (1960) landmark studies of differences in intercultural

norms in communication identified several key areas that remain important
to social interaction – attitudes towards time (punctual or pushy), material
possessions (classy or cluttery), friendship patterns (convenient or
enduring), agreements (formalised or unstated), and space (closeness or
crowding). The last category is especially important in public speaking.
Hall’s science of proxemics – study of interpersonal space as a dimension of
culture – identifies four key zones that speakers should be aware of,
depending upon context:

 Intimate space – < 1.5 feet

 Personal space – 1.5 feet - 4 feet
 Social space – 4 feet - 12 feet
 Public space – 12 feet +

These zones are important for a number of reasons, appropriate volumes not
the least. Many speaking contexts, of course, are limited to the zone of
public space; others, however – the classroom, for instance – allow the
speaker to play with social and even personal space to good effect. This is
all naturally dependent upon those uses of space being the product of
conscious and careful choice.

Given that we are concerned with speaking as performance rather than mere
delivery, we can use the term “platform” to refer to the stage on which the
speaker performs. Use of platform, like all other non-verbals, must be
deliberate. A good performer will resist the urge to stay in one place or to
pace aimlessly; movement needs to be conscious and linked to content. A
shift in platform can signal a change in topic; placing notes (see Trigger

38
 Sheets below) in different places around the platform can compel
movement and further reinforce changes in topic.

Planned and deliberate use of platform was the main field of study for
Rudolph Laban (1879-1958), whose Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) has
become a tool used by dancers, athletes, and physical therapists (Laban and
Lawrence, 1974). The focus in LMA is on eliminating “shadow movement”
– unconscious, wasted movement – to focus on conscious, constructive
movement. Laban divided movement into two broad categories: effort and
space.

EFFORT: dynamics of SPACE: relation of the body

the dancer’s intention to the environment

Weight: strong or light Kinesphere: area the body

moves in
Time: sudden or Spatial intention: direction
sustained the mover uses
Space: direct or indirect Geometry: how space is
carved up
Flow: continuous or
discontinuous

Reflection on all of these dimensions of movement can be of enormous help

not only to dancers, athletes, and physical therapists, but also to public
speakers as well – whose performance importantly includes movement
through space as part of the spectacle that should be reinforcing the content
of the message.

Exercise: Walk around the room at a regular pace. Appoint someone to instruct you to
change the quality of your motion using, randomly and one at a time, Laban’s categories
of movement – strong/light, sudden/sustained, direct/indirect, and
continuous/discontinuous. In what ways might these qualities be exaggerated to make
their nature clear? How might those types of motion be used to underscore certain types
of verbal content?

39
 Facial expression

A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his
mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say,
in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.
Arthur Schopenhauer

What speakers do with their faces has enormous consequences for how their
words are received. Just as eye contact can reveal a disconnect between the
words and the actual feelings of the speaker, facial expression provides an
important key for an audience about whether or not the speaker is being
sincere and authentic.

We can talk about two kinds of expression here: macro-facial and micro-
Macro-:
facial. We can have explicit, direct, conscious control over macro-facial
large, long,
expression – we can make ourselves smile or frown when we want to. The
wide.
challenge, as Goffman (1959) points out, comes with the audience
Micro-:
perceiving micro-facial expression that we might not be aware of, given that
small, tiny,
they are involuntary; a split-second is enough to reveal an otherwise
narrow
suppressed smile or sneer. In fact, the audience may not be consciously
aware of these either, yet they will still absorb them subconsciously as a
kind of “vibe”.

Micro-facial expression has been exhaustively explored by Paul Ekman

(1985), whose study of involuntary movements in the face led to the Facial
Action Coding System (FACS), based on the seven primary emotions that
his research showed to be universal among all cultures: happiness, sadness,
surprise, fear, anger, disgust, and contempt. The shades of gray between
these emotions are what the FACS index is concerned with mapping, by
identifying the muscles associated with each basic emotion and all of the
combinations among them. Fluency with this system allows one to become,
in effect, a human lie-detector, and Ekman’s work has in fact been adopted
by law enforcement agencies around the world and dramatised in the TV
series Lie to Me (Frost, 2003).

What this should tell us is that, given the inability to completely hide what
lies behind the words, an honest speaker’s words themselves need to come Question:
from a place of sincerity. A speaker who can be judged as authentic will How good do
have a direct connection between his or her words and the feelings that you really
underlie them that can be read in the face. Awareness of micro-expression is think your
also useful for speakers because it allows them to better read their audience “poker face”
in terms of their level of engagement, their comprehension, and their is?
emotional responses to the performance.

40
Exercise: Can you identify the micro-expressions in the series of faces on this
webpage? http://www.cio.com/article/2451808/careers-staffing/facial-
expressions-test.html

41
 Voicing (Prosody)

Volumes

While a strong base volume is vitally important to an orator – what speaker,

after all, doesn’t want to be heard? – it is important that (as with all non-
verbals) there be variety; we should talk about the volumes, rather than
simply the volume, of the speaker. Of course, a strong base volume will
establish credibility and confidence. Yet we can also keep in mind the
maxim that tension creates attention. Volume “hits” for key words will
Question: In cause those words to stand out in an obvious way. The usefulness of volume
what ways drops, or whispers, can also be enormous. An apocryphal tale tells of a road
can we use manager for a variety of bands in the 1970s who discovered this in the
tension course of his duties. Working in a high-decibel environment made
creatively to communicating important information difficult, and he found that both the
generate strain on his voice and the “noise in the signal” often led to
attention? misunderstandings. His solution consisted of dropping to a whisper: it
compelled the listener to lean in close and strain to hear. It was a strategy
that he adopted ever afterwards because it worked so well.

Exercise: Count to ten, but vary the volume placed on different numbers for each time
through, from whisper to shout. For example,

1 2 3456 7 8 9 10

12345678 9 10

1 23 45 6 78 9 10
And so on. Once aware of your possible range of volume, consider how you might use
different volumes to create functional tensions within the content of a two-minute talk on,
say, your favourite pet peeve.

42
Rates

Speaking rates are defined in Words per Minute (WPM), and all good
orators need to be aware of their own natural WPM as well as the
importance of making of variety in speaking rate. We think at an average
rate of 400 WPM (Wong, 2012, p. 304), while normal speaking varies from
approximately 90-180 WPM (with 90-230 being intelligible rates), which
helps explain why our minds wander so easily when a speaker isn’t
engaging. The danger of “talkoholism” is also real – too many words in too
short a time become a distraction, and meaning is lost as a result
(McCroskey and Richmond, 1993).

Speaker WPM
Martin Luther King Jr. 92 (Waknell, 2012)
Obama 172 (McKinnon, 2012)
Auctioneers 250 (Noah, 2000)

Speakers are identifiable by their signature speaking rates. John F. Kennedy

spoke at the upper end of the register, at 180 WPM, while Martin Luther
King Jr. spoke considerably slower, at 90-145 WPM, which makes sense
given his training as a preacher in such fields as homiletics. What makes Homiletics:
such speakers powerful ones is their respect for every word and every space in theology,
between words (see Pausing below). Speaking too quickly affects other the
non-verbal communication – pitch, volume, pausing, articulation, body application of
language – while it also communicates nervousness. Slower rates are rhetoric to
effective for complex or significant information whose meaning may public
require time to digest. Slower rates also allow for over-articulation; preaching.
allowing care for those words will bring about a more deliberate pacing.

It is helpful to be aware of one’s own natural speaking rate to see how

others are able to control their own.

43
Exercise: Determining Your WPM Rate

Read the following passages through twice to yourself to make sure you
understand it and can read it aloud without stumbling. Then read the three
passages aloud without stopping between passages, while a partner times
you in seconds. Have your partner note the number of seconds that have
passed at the three checkpoints indicated. Your partner should keep the
clock running continuously.

The word rate, like many words in our language, has a number of
different meanings. It may mean a place value, such as the rate
charged for goods or services, or the ratio of value used to assess
taxes. Rate may describe a relative quantity or condition, as when
we say “at any rate” to mean “anyway.” To rate can mean to
regard or consider, as in “The judges rated her performance the
highest of any contestant.” Rate can mean rank, as in “We rated in
the top 10 percent of the class.” Special rank or privilege is implied
in the phrase “She really rated,” although that particular usage may
be considered slang by some grammarians.
(Time check 1)

Currency from one country is transferred into currency from

another country at a given rate of exchange for that particular day.
The number of miles a vehicle can travel in a given period is its
speed, another form of rate.
(Time check 2)

In the navy, a ship is rated by its force or magnitude. Rate also has
the totally different meaning of scold or chide, probably more
familiar to you in the related word berate. Rate is certainly a word
of many meanings.
(Time check 3)

WPM = #words/time (seconds) x 60

Results: The entire passage is 197 words. If you reached one minute at
checkpoint 1, you could be reading too slowly. If, however, you made it
almost to checkpoint 3 before one minute elapsed, your rate may be too fast.
Reaching checkpoint 2 in 60 seconds is about the average rate. This
corresponds to a WPM of 145-175 for text of average complexity that is
read aloud.

(Adapted from Glenn, E., Glenn, P., and Forman, S. [1993]. Your Voice and
articulation)

44
 Articulation

A slower speaking rate, as mentioned above, allows for more careful

articulation, and more careful articulation reduces the possibility of loss of
meaning. Articulation, it is important to note, is different from
pronunciation or accent; these two can vary widely across the whole
English-speaking world, yet intelligibility doesn’t have to suffer for it.

A careful speaker will ensure that delivery be clear, crisp, and dramatic.
Every syllable can be exaggerated for key words and ideas. Where the
Question: casual speaker will go wrong is in unconsciously committing errors that are
Could you engrained from a life lived collecting bad habits. Such errors may be ones
make a list of of:
words that
you routinely  Omission: Febuary, libary, wanna, goin’, dint, an’, coulda
don’t bother  Addition: acrost, hice, haudit, filum, nucular
to articulate  Substitution: lemme, didja, swedder, thum, genelmen, ax, dis,
carefully? expresso, ekcetera, udder

Exercise: Tongue-twisters are an effective tool for testing our capacity for clear
articulation. Try these:

 Three free throws.

 Knapsack straps.
 Tip of the teeth, tip of the tongue.
 Sam's shop stocks short spotted socks.
 Lesser leather never weathered wetter weather better.
 What time does the wristwatch strap shop shut?

Now, try teaching a partner some of these more challenging ones (without
letting him or her read them):

45
  A bloke's back bike brake block broke.
 A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk, but the stump thunk the
skunk stunk.
 A big black bug bit a big black bear, and made the big black bear bleed
blood.
 Ruby Rugby's brother bought and brought her back some rubber baby-
buggy bumpers.
 What a shame such a shapely sash should such shabby stitches show.
 Strict strong stringy Stephen Stretch slickly snared six sickly silky snakes.

Pausing

Pausing can be among the most challenging aspects of non-verbal

communication; it can take a lot of control, effort, and confidence to get
past North American culture’s awkwardness around silence. Yet a speaker
who has such control is able to command attention and shape the reception
of the message to be delivered.
Question: Pausing comes in many forms. The scan-pause, discussed above (Eye
When have Contact), is remarkably helpful in establishing a speaker’s presence and
you used a connection with individual audience members. One can also make use of
set-up pause? set-up or major pauses to introduce new material, while a dramatic pause
What other can be deployed to emphasise points and increase tension, drama, and
non-verbals interest. Pausing, perhaps most importantly, allows information the time to
did you use sink in.
with it?
Among its many benefits, pausing leaves space for other non-verbal
communication:
 Gesture (finger, hand)
 Change in platform
 Change in volume
 Change in articulation
 Change in facial expression

46
 Effective pausing, in sum, helps eliminate fillers (um, like, ah, er, you
know, basically, stuff-like-that…); communicates confidence and self-
respect; provides the speaker with time to think, regroup, and transition; and
gives the audience clues and the opportunity to absorb information.

Exercise: One of our most counterproductive habits is the use of filler, which
finds its way into our speaking with irritating (and distracting) regularity. With
a partner, speak continuously on a subject of your own choice – something
with which you are personally familiar – for two minutes. Your partner will
listen attentively and count the number of instances of filler of any kind – not
just the ums and ahs, but any sounds or words that have no business being
there. After the two minutes, switch roles, and then compare the filler counts.

Pitch, Tone, and Intonation

In conversation, we are sometimes confused by the tone of our own voice,

and misled to make assertions that do not at all correspond to our
opinions.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Pitch, tone, and intonation are the musical qualities that words can be made Question:
to adopt. Pitch is altogether different from volume; it has to do with Can you find
frequencies on a musical scale. Tone is a broader term for the qualities of your natural
the sound itself (think, for example, of the difference in sound between a pitch level?
violin and a trumpet when they play the same note). Intonation is the rise or Hum a note,
fall of pitch in the course of a word, phrase, or sentence. The opposite of the and then
conscious use of pitch and tone is monotony, that quality above all others begin
that makes a speaker dull and boring. There are some speakers, of course, speaking.
who are able to speak monotonously and yet carry an audience: comedian
Steven Wright is one example. Yet arguably, what makes Wright’s routine
work is that he is a master of wordplay – very much a left-brain activity.

Every person has a natural pitch level; we can find our own by humming a
note at random and then starting to talk. If it feels too high or too low, we
know it immediately. Once aware of where our baseline is, we can then be
aware of how we risk falling into monotony. Vibrant speech is typically a
full octave. Professional singers will typically perform with two to three

47
 octaves, while there are also a few, such as Bobby McFerrin, who have a
reach of four. While it is hardly a prerequisite for public speakers to have
such wide control over pitch, it is still important to steer clear of monotony
by having conscious control over it. Changing pitch within words, that is,
using inflection, adds emotional and intellectual impact to a word or even a
syllable.

As with articulation, people are often victims bad habits of intonation;

among the most damaging of these is what linguists refer to as “uptalk” –
the ending of declarative sentences as if they were questions. Uptalk is an
unconscious non-verbal that undermines confidence in a speaker, because
Cadence: in like filler, it suggests that the speaker lacks conviction in what is being said.
terms of Effective cadence, on the other hand – that use of a downward tone to
voicing, the indicate the closing of a thought – is vital to the framing of a complete
dropping of thought; a speaker such as Barack Obama, while his sentences may last a
pitch at the remarkably long time, allows his audience to know when a thought is
end of a complete through proper cadence. Watch for speakers as they close their
complete speeches without a “Thank you” at the end, that ingratiating cue for the
thought. audience to begin to applaud. How do they do it, if not for content that is
self-sufficient coupled with, among other non-verbals, clear and decisive
cadence?

Exercise: Take a short, embarrassing story (real or imaginary). Keeping the wording as
consistent as possible, tell it three times: once to a close friend, once to your
grandmother, and once to a judge. For the observers of these versions of the story, how
do pitch and tone come into effect to highlight the relationship between the speaker and
the intended listener?

48
 Appendix A: Speech Grading Sheet

SPEAKER: TOPIC:
DESIGN (20) ANIMATION (20) VOICING (20)
INTRODUCTION PERSONA VOLUMES
 (scan pause)  too brief  energetic  glimpses  strong base  too soft
 fairly involving  unimaginative  poised  capable  projected hits  fading
 dynamic impact  world-class act  awkward  dramatic lows  monovol
/60

THESIS HANDS (+fingers) RATES

 clear statement  just a topic  high-wide  clasp  one \ two  careful  too fast
 strong opinion  variety  pocket  low \ mid  good variety  bursting
 (major pauses)  fingers  fidget  repeating  dramatic variety  monorate
Total:

PREVIEW PLATFORM PITCH

 three clear points - - - - - - - A.  distributed L-C-R  limited  wide range  uptalk
 logical  depth  narrow  inflections  flattened
 major pauses B.  establishes  pacing  emotional  monopitch

C.
BODY EYE CONTACT PAUSING
 interesting  (visual)  distributed L-C-R  limited  dramatic  ordinary
 organized (by preview)  textbooky  consistent  fleeting  set ups  pushed
  involving  down \ up  thoughtful quiets  fillers
Marker’s Name (print):

well-illustrated
 sustained thesis

CONCLUSION FACIAL EXPRESSION ARTICULATION

 unified (repreview, rethesis etc.)  smiles ( eyes?)  serious  crisp  conversational
 good clincher  abrupt  variety  sameness  key words  difficulties
 successful  uncertain  entertaining  bit tense  exaggerations  mumblings

COMMENTS:

(4 points per item… 4 =A/A+ 3 =B 2 =C/D 1= F 0= F; subtotal columns = 3 @ /20)

49
Appendix B: Key Terms
Amygdala: the part of the limbic system of
the brain responsible for deeply emotional
reactions.
Articulation: the quality of clear,
intelligible speech (not to be confused with
pronunciation).
Breaching experiments: in
ethnomethodology (see below), experiments
to determine what is normal in social
interaction by deliberately behaving
abnormally.
Cadence: the drop-off or lowering of pitch
at the end of a complete spoken thought.
Code-switching: originally in linguistics,
the alternation between two or more
languages in the course of a single
conversation.
Cognitive load: the amount of mental
resources used in working memory; can be
intrinsic, extraneous, or germane.
Corpus callosum: the bridge that joins the
left and the right hemispheres of the brain.
Cortisol: a steroid hormone produced by the
brain in response to stress.
Deduction: the pattern of logic that aims to
establish truth applying universal truths to
particular claims (see Syllogism).
Ethnomethodology: a school of sociology
founded in the late 1960s to study how
people produce recognisable social order.
Ethos: in Aristotle, the effect that a speaker
has on an audience based on the moral
authority or personal respectfulness of the
speaker.
50
Extemporaneous speech: a speech
delivered with a minimum of prepared notes
(see Trigger sheets).
Fight-or-flight response: the biologically-
based reaction to stressful situations and
perceived harm (see Glossophobia).
Garden path sentences: grammatically
correct but counter-intuitive and often
convoluted sentences; first interpretations
will likely be incorrect and lead to
unintended meaning.
Glossophobia: the fear of public speaking.
Hendiatris: Greek – the expression of one
idea through three joined words or phrases
(e.g., of the people, by the people, for the
people”).
Hero’s journey: in Joseph Campbell, the
perennial story found across religions and
throughout literature in which an individual
abandons the comforts of childhood in order
to confront a major challenge, learns from a
mentor (see below), and faces and
overcomes a transformative crisis that
allows a boon to be brought back to the
community.
Implicit bias: unconscious attitudes or
stereotypes that we carry which affect our
thoughts and behaviour towards people
unlike us.
Impression management: in Goffman, the
regulation and control of information in
social interaction.
Induction: the pattern of logic that aims to
establish truth through the observation of
patterns.
Laban Movement Analysis (LMA): the
study of the elimination of non-
communicative or unproductive movement
in dance, used also in sports, physical
therapy, and public speaking.
Limbic system: the set of structures in the
brain responsible for memory and emotion.
Logos: in Aristotle, the rational appeal that a
speaker has on an audience, based on logic
and evidence.
Macro-facial expression: conscious, easily
readable emotion on a face.
Mentor: in Joseph Campbell, a figure who
aids the hero in her/his journey to overcome
challenges that must be faced.
Micro-facial expression: unconscious
emotion that can be perceived on another’s
face only briefly (measured in fractions of
seconds).
Monotony: the absence of variety in pitch
in spoken language.
Multiculturalism: the promotion within a
broader culture of a variety of ethnic
traditions.
Pathos: in Aristotle, the effect that a speaker
has on an audience based on the ability of
the speaker to bring out strong emotions.
Persona: a role or character played by an
actor.
Pitch: the musical changes across a word or
several words (as in a musical scale).
Platform: the space in which a speaker is
able to move during a performance.
Prosody: the patterns of rhythm, volume,
tone, pitch, and clarity in spoken language.
51
Proxemics: in Hall, the study of personal
space in social interaction.
Scan-pause: at the beginning of a public
speech performance, the silent time taken to
establish eye contact with the people in the
room for 1-2 seconds.
Self-actualisation: in Maslow, the highest
stage of personal development.
Signposts: verbal cues given to an audience
providing the speaker’s location and
direction in a speech (previewing, changing
direction, and summarising).
Stroop test: in neuropsychology, a visual
test used to assess cognitive interference and
processing time – e.g., measuring lag-time
between reading the name of a colour and
identifying the actual colour.
Subliminal: beneath the threshold of
conscious awareness.
Syllogism: an argument in which a
conclusion is derived from two or more
provable propositions.
Taboo: an implicit prohibition on words or
behaviour based on excessive repulsiveness
or sacredness.
Tone: the timbre of spoken language (as in
the difference between a soft, pleasant voice,
and a growly, aggressive one).
Tradition: those aspects of culture that are
handed down across generations.
Trigger sheets: hands-free notes prepared
by a speaker for a performance to aid
memory with minimal loss of eye contact
with the audience.
Warmth/competence matrix: in Fiske, the
two key dimensions through which we
stereotypically and intuitively assess others.
 References

Armstrong, K. (2000). The battle for God. A history of fundamentalism. New York: Ballantine.

Atkinson, J. M. (1984). Our masters’ voices: The language and body language of politics.
London: Methuen.

Atkinson, J. M., & Heritage, J. (eds.) (1984). Structures of social action. Studies in conversation
analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ayed, N. (Producer). (2019, Sept. 3). Just one story: Joseph Campbell and ‘The Hero’s Journey’
[audio podcast]. Retrieved December 2, 2020, from https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-
radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15734195-just-one-story-joseph-campbell-and-the-heros-journey

Beebe, S. A. (1974). Eye contact: A nonverbal determinant of speaker credibility. The Speech
Teacher, 23, 1, 21-25.

Brewer, G. (2001). Snakes top list of Americans’ fears. Gallup News Service. Retrieved April 30,
2013, from http://www.gallup.com/poll/1891/snakes-top-list-americans-fears.aspx

Brown, D. V. L. (2009, March 24). City paid $4,500 to fix politician’s ‘shrill’ voice. Toronto
Star. Retrieved August 5, 2015, from
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2009/03/24/city_paid_4500_to_fix_politicians_shrill_v
oice.html

Buckner, J. D., Silgado, J., & Schmidt, N. B. (2011). Marijuana craving during a public speaking
challenge: Understanding marijuana use vulnerability among women and those with
social anxiety. Journal of behavioral therapy and experimental psychiatry, 42. 104-110.

Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. New York: Bollingen.

Campbell, S., & Larson, J. (2013, April). Public speaking anxiety: Comparing face-to-face and
web-based speeches. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies.

Chu, Y., Strong, W F, Ma, J., & Greene, W. E. (2005, July). Silent messages in negotiations: the
role of nonverbal communication in cross-cultural business
negotiations.(Report). Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications and
Conflict, 9, 2. p.113(17). Retrieved January 22, 2011, from General OneFile via Gale:
http://find.galegroup.com.rap.ocls.ca/gps/start.do?prodId=IPS&userGroupName=ko_acd
_ac

Crawford, B. (2020, Oct. 20). Professor’s use of racial slur ignite uOttawa debate. Ottawa
Citizen. Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-
news/professors-use-of-racial-slur-ignites-uottawa-debate

52
Cuddy, A. J. C., et al. (2009). Stereotype content model across cultures: Towards universal
similarities and some differences. British Journal of Social Psychology, 48(1), 1–33.
Retrieved October 21, 2020, from https://doi-
org.eztest.ocls.ca/10.1348/014466608X314935

Cunningham, A. (2004). Why Women Smile. In L.H. Peterson and J.C. Brereton (eds.), The
Norton Reader, Shorter Eleventh Edition. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. 160-
165.

d’Aquili, E., & Newberg, A. (1999). The mystical mind. Probing the biology of religious
experience. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Deachman, B. (2020, September 16). Social media a problematic coping mechanism for
university students’ mental health this fall. CBC News. Retrieved September 30, 2020,
from https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/batten-down-the-hatches-university-
students-mental-health-poised-to-suffer-this-fall/wcm/f1b2b58e-017d-441a-b41f-
bc60454be8b3/

Dong, J. (2009). The enregisterment of Potonghua in practice. Working Papers in Language &
Literacies. Retrieved October 21, 2020, from
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ecs/research/research-centres/ldc/publications/workingpapers/the-
papers/56.pdf

Droney, J. M., & Brooks, C. I. (2001). Attributions of self-esteem as a function of duration of

eye contact. Journal of Social Psychology, 133, 5, 715-722.

Duarte, N. (2010). Resonate. Present visual stories that transform audiences. Hoboken, NJ: John
Wiley & Sons.

Eagleton, T. (1991). Ideology: An introduction. New York: Verso. Retrieved August 5, 2015,
from http://www.sok.bz/web/media/video/EaglIdeologie.pdf

Eberhardt, J. L. (2020). Biased: Uncovering the hidden prejudice that shapes what we see, think,
and do. Toronto: Penguin.

Edwards, B. (1979). Drawing on the right side of the brain. A course in enhancing creativity and
artistic confidence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Ekman, P. (1985). Telling lies: clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage. New
York: Norton.

Fiske, S. T. (2007). On prejudice & the brain. Daedalus, 136(1), 156+. Retrieved October 21,
2020, from
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A160805255/EAIM?u=ko_acd_ac&sid=EAIM&xid=7cba
6543

53
Fiske, S. T., Xu, J., Cuddy, A. C., & Glick, P. (1999). (Dis)respecting versus (dis)liking: status
and interdependence predict ambivalent stereotypes of competence and warmth. Journal
of Social Issues, 55(3), 473. Retrieved October 21, 2020, from https://doi-
org.eztest.ocls.ca/10.1111/0022-4537.00128

Frost, B. (2003, May). The art of reading faces and how it’s being used to fight terrorism.
Biography Magazine, 72-74, 106.

Garfinkel, H. (2002). Ethnomethodology’s program. Working out Durkheim’s aphorism. Ed.

A.W. Rawls. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.

Glenn, E., Glenn, P., & Forman, S. (1993). Your voice and articulation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday.

Hackney, A. (2005). Teaching students about stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination: An

interview with Susan Fiske. Teaching of Psychology, 32(3), 196–199. Retrieved October
21, 2020, from https://doi-org.eztest.ocls.ca/10.1207/s15328023top3203_13

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion.
Toronto: Vintage.

Hall, E. T. (1960, May-June). The silent language in overseas business. Harvard Business
Review, 87-96.

Hancock, A. B., Stone, M. D., Brundage, S. B., & Zeigler, M. T. (2010, May). Public speaking
attitudes: Does curriculum make a difference? Journal of Voice, 24, 3, pp. 302-307.
Retrieved July 3, 2015, from
http://www.sciencedirect.com.rap.ocls.ca/science/article/pii/S089219970800146X

Hansen, J. (2010, Sept.). Teaching without talking: teachers need to be aware of more than just
the words they speak to children. They also need to monitor the nonverbal messages that
they're sending to students through proximity, eye contact, gestures, and touching. Phi
Delta Kappan, 91, 10. p.35(6). Retrieved January 22, 2011, from General
OneFile via Gale:
http://find.galegroup.com.rap.ocls.ca/gps/start.do?prodId=IPS&userGroupName=ko_acd
_ac

Hess, A. (2013, April 8). When the media compliments a female politician’s looks, she loses the
election. Slate. Retrieved August 5, 2015, from
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/04/08/pretty_politics_female_politicians_can
_lose_elections_when_the_media_focuses.html

Highfield, R., Wiseman, R., & Jenkins, R. (2009, Feb. 14). How your looks betray your

54
 personality. New Scientist. Retrieved August 5, 2015, from
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126957.300-how-your-looks-betray-your-
personality?full=true

Hostinar, C. E., et al. (2014). Cortisol responses to a group public speaking task for adolescents:
Variations by age, gender, and race. Psychoneuroendocrinology 50, 155-166.

How to give an effective online presentation from home. (2020, April 16). American Express.
Retrieved Sept. 18, 2020, from
https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/how-to-
give-an-effective-online-presentation-from-home/

Hwang, L. (2008, May 6). Eye contact. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association
Journal, 178, 10. p.1270(1). Retrieved January 22, 2011, from General OneFile via Gale:
http://find.galegroup.com.rap.ocls.ca/gps/start.do?prodId=IPS&userGroupName=ko_acd
_ac

Ibrahim, M. (2012, Summer). Implications of designing instructional video using cognitive

theory of multimedia learning. Critical Questions in Education (3:2), pp. 83-104).

Kahneman, D. (2013). Thinking, fast and slow. Toronto: Anchor.

Kenton, S. B. (1989). Speaker credibility in persuasive business communication: A model which

explains gender differences. Journal of business communication (26:2). 143-157.

Khalifa Tailab, M. M., & Marsh, N. Y. (2020). Use of self-assessment of video recording to raise
students’ awareness of development of their oral presentation skills. Higher Education
Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1.

Khamis-Dakwar, R. (2005, Spring). Children's attitudes towards the diglossic situation in Arabic
and its impact on learning. Languages, Communities, and Education, 65, 75-86.
Retrieved October 21, 2020, from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242601222_Children's_Attitudes_Towards_the
_Diglossic_Situation_in_Arabic_and_its_Impact_on_Learning

Kinzler, K. D. (2020). How you say it: Why you talk the way you do – and what it says about
you. Vancouver: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Kramer, A. D. I., Guillory, J. E., & Hancock, J. T. (2014). Experimental evidence of massive-
scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences. Retrieved September 30, 2020, from
https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788

Laban, R., & Lawrence, F.C. (1974). Effort: economy of human movement. London: McDonald
and Evans.

55
Lambert, W. E., Hodgson, R. C., Gardner, R. C., & Fillenbaum, S. (1960). Evaluational reactions
to spoken language. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 60, 44-51.
https://doi.org/10.1037/h0044430

Levitt, S., & Dubner, S. J. (2005). Freakonomics: a rogue economics explores the hidden side
of everything. Toronto: HarperCollins.

Lucey, C. (2017, June 1). Lights, camera, action: While many people fear public speaking, the
idea of appearing on radio or television can turn fear into terror. Accountancy Ireland,
49(3), 21.

Malcolm, A. (2008, Sept. 28). John McCain responds to the eye contact question. Los
Angeles Times. Retrieved February 22, 2013, from
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/john-mccain-res.html

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.

Retrieved April 30 from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm

Mayer, R. E. (2005). Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), The

Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (p. 31–48). Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816819.004

McCroskey, J. C., & Richmond, V. P. (1993). Identifying compulsive communicators: the

talkoholic scale. Communication Research Reports, 10, 2, 107-114.

McGonigal, K. (2013). How to make stress your friend. TED.com. Retrieved August 5, 2015,
from
http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?language=
en

McKeon, R. (ed.). (1941). The basic works of Aristotle. New York: Random House.

McKinnon, M. (2012, Oct. 16). Obama has to dumb it down at Hofstra debate. The Daily Beast.
Retrieved August 30, 2013, from
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/16/mark-mckinnon-obama-has-to-dumb-
it-down-at-hofstra-debate.html

Mehrabian, A. (1971). Silent messages. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Moore, L. (2003, April). Growing up Maya Angelou. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved August
5, 2015, from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/growing-up-maya-angelou-
79582387/?no-ist

Nicholson, C. (2013, Jan./Feb.). Philosophy and the two-sided brain. Philosophy Now. Retrieved
February 20, 2013, from http://philosophynow.org/issues/92/Philosophy_And_The_Two-
Sided_Brain

56
Nietzsche, F. (1995). The birth of tragedy. Mineola, NY: Dover.

Noah, T. (2000). The 1000-yard dash. College-educated people who fret they read too slow
should relax. Nobody reads faster than 400 words per minute. Slate. Retrieved August 30,
2013, from
http://www.slate.com/articles/briefing/articles/2000/02/the_1000word_dash.html

O’Leary, D. S., et al., (2002). Effects of smoking marijuana on brain perfusion and cognition.
Neuropsychopharmacology 26: 802-816. Retrieved February 20, 2013, from
http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v26/n6/pdf/1395868a.pdf

Oremus, W. (2017, March 5). Twitter’s new order: Inside the changes that could save its
business – and reshape civil discourse. Slate. Retrieved September 30, 2020, from
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/cover_story/2017/03/twitter_s_timeline_algorit
hm_and_its_effect_on_us_explained.html

Patoski, J. N. (2008). Willie Nelson. An epic life. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Pinker, S. (2007). The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human nature. Toronto:
Penguin.

Pittis, D. (2020, June 29). Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust – and
that’s bad for business. CBC News. Retrieved Sept. 30, 2020, from
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/zoom-trust-business-pandemic-1.5628638

Poem by American matriarch flown on Orion presented to NASA administrator. (2015, April 6).
NASA. Retrieved August 5, 2015, from http://www.nasa.gov/content/poem-by-american-
matriarch-flown-on-orion-presented-to-nasa-administrator

Polo, F. P. (2011). Public speaking in Rome: A question of auctoritas. In M. Peachin (ed.), The
Oxford handbook of social relations in the Roman world. Toronto: Oxford University
Press. 286-303.

Quickfall, J., and Crockford, D. (2006, June 1). Brain neuroimaging in cannabis use. Journal of
Neuropsychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences 18: 318-332. Retrieved February 20, 2013,
from http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=102807

Ross, H. J. (2020). Everyday bias. Identifying and navigating unconscious judgments in our
lives. Toronto: Rowman & Littlefield.

Sacks, O. (2007). Musicophilia. Tales of music and the brain. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf.

Saedi, G. A. (2015, August 5). Do you suffer from “bitchy resting face”? Psychology Today.
Retrieved August 5, 2015, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/millennial-
media/201508/do-you-suffer-bitchy-resting-face

57
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.

Sears, A. (2020, August 10). The brain’s autocomplete feature oversimplifies complex issues and
impedes tolerance. The Conversation. Retrieved Sept. 30, 2020, from
https://theconversation.com/the-brains-autocomplete-feature-oversimplifies-complex-
issues-and-impedes-tolerance-130525

Smith, J. (2019). Unit 1: Communicating in the digital age. Communication @ Work (Seneca
College). Retrieved Sept. 24, 2020, from
https://pressbooks.senecacollege.ca/buscomm/chapter/1-2-communicating-in-the-digital-
age/

Stein, D. (2007, April). Sending the right signals: honesty, respect, and power.(FYI). Public
Management, 89, 3. p.30(3). Retrieved January 22, 2011, from General OneFile via Gale:
http://find.galegroup.com.rap.ocls.ca/gps/start.do?prodId=IPS&userGroupName=ko_acd
_ac

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures
and techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Supiano, B. (2020, April 23). Why is Zoom so exhausting? The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Retrieved Sept. 24, 2020, from https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-is-zoom-so-
exhausting/

Sweet, D. (2008, Nov. 18). Fashion victims: female politicians face different criticism than men.
McGill Reporter. Retrieved August 5, 2015, from
http://publications.mcgill.ca/reporter/2008/11/fashion-victims-female-political-leaders-
face-different-criticism-than-men/

Taylor, C., et al. (1994). Multiculturalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Terkel, A. (2011, Sept. 11). Rick Perry forgets which three agencies he would eliminate as
President. Huffington Post. Retrieved May 8, 2013, from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/09/rick-perry-forgets-agencies_n_1085249.html

Thomkins, G. (2015, Feb. 21). Malcolm X’s public speaking power. NPR. Retrieved August 5,
2015, from http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/21/387979086/malcolm-xs-
public-speaking-power

Waknell, P. (2012, April 3). The power of the pause. philpresents. Retrieved August 30, 2013,
from http://philpresents.wordpress.com/tag/martin-luther-king-jr/

Wanjek, C. (2013, Sept. 3). Left brain vs. right: It’s a myth, research finds. livescience. Retrieved
August 5, 2015, from http://www.livescience.com/39373-left-brain-right-brain-myth.html

58
Wolverton, C.C., & Tanner, J. (2019). Teaching public speaking to business students in the
digital age: Updating our methods. International Journal of Education and Development
using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT), 15:3, pp. 22-33.

Wong, L. (2012). Essential study skills. Seventh edition. Boston: Wadsworth.

Woo, A. (2013, Feb. 13). Blog reveals sexist comments about female premiers. The Globe and
Mail. Retrieved August 5, 2015, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-
columbia/blog-reveals-sexist-comments-about-female-premiers/article8653596/

X, M., Haley, A. (2012). The autobiography of Malcolm X. Retrieved August 5, 2015, from
http://al-rasid.com/shared_uploads/The.Autobiography.of.MalcolmX.pdf

Zandbergen, R. (2020, July 31). Heard of code-switching? Here’s why these Western students do
it. CBC News. Retrieved Nov. 14, 2020, from
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/anti-black-racism-western-university-1.5667233

Zoboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at a new
frontier of power. New York: PublicAffairs.

59
 Image URLs

 Campfire: http://www.greenriverpreserve.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/IMG_0636.jpg
 Drama masks: http://doblelol.com/uploads/9/funny-fish-videos.jpg
 Respectable couple: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3417/3185116759_63b32edfe8_b.jpg
 Passing the torch: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WLJ_Lc-
EnYQ/Uagoydp43aI/AAAAAAABDUM/93dIlZhKCDg/s320/pass+the+torch2.jpg
 Brain:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/03_2_facies_dorsalis_cerebri_gyr
i.jpg
 Sleuth: http://knowingtheworld.com/cliparts/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/sleuth4.jpg
 Tinfoil Hat: http://www.hermes-press.com/tin-foil-hat.jpg
 Pot Leaf: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/U0HxN4q6U4csDobx2cArcQ
 Personal Space: http://designobserver.com/images/features/personal_space.jpg
 Fight or Flight: http://www.medipoint.com/assets/images/Fight_or_Flight.JPG
 Aristotle:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Aristotle_Altemps_Inv8575.jpg
 Swearing: https://theconversation.com/five-f-ing-fascinating-facts-about-swearing-66965
 Hero’s Journey: http://buildingheroes.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/the-hero_s-
journey.jpg
 Amazement: http://shooteditlearn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/amazement.jpg
 Maslow: http://www.researchhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/maslows-
hierarchy-of-needs.gif
 Zoom: https://zoom.us/privacy
 Karate stance: http://www.training-notebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/tonfa-
yoi.jpg
 Karate positions: http://s3.hubimg.com/u/447066_f520.jpg
 Eyes: http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/328/8/8/eyes___by_sikoian-d2zs9po.jpg
 Willie Nelson Guitar: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Trigger-
Willie_Nelson.jpg
 Hands:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Hands_of_God_and_Adam.jpg
 Feelings: https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/originals/43/3f/ab/433fab5eae7b6eb520ea78acc65be778.jpg
 Volume: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Audio-volume-
high.svg/300px-Audio-volume-high.svg.png
 Pocket watch:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Omega_pocket_watch.jpg
 Articulation: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Illu01_head_neck.jpg
 Pause: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8330/8095293794_d03ff93094_o.jpg
 Diva: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/mixmaster/the-fat-lady-sings.jpeg
 Noooooo: http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/vader.jpg

60
 Cylinder seal:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Khashkhamer_seal_moon_worship.
jpg
 Stool: http://www.acc.com/legalresources/publications/topten/images/three-legged-
stool.jpg
 Signposts: http://lh6.ggpht.com/-
AXxapLwKIdI/TLqBhfsyssI/AAAAAAAAVBI/Vwp5asVd83g/iStock_000001244739M
edium.jpg
 Taking a bow:
http://www.compositiontoday.com/admin/rt3/ckfinder/userfiles/images/taking-a-bow.jpg

61