Budget eve message from Alistair Darling at the crossroads

Last year, I marked Budget day by posting the remarkable sequence from the early section of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech, in which he showed that even something as unpromising as banking could be developed into a powerful and extended metaphor (HERE).

This year, I thought I'd mark the occasion with a clip of some economists - the governor of the Bank of England, Nobel laureate Joseph Stigliz and former chief economist at Shell, Vince Cable - showing how to deploy imagery about bumpy roads, party-poopers, tail-spins and illnesses to talk about our recent economic woes.

But then I noticed that HM Treasury had just posted something a bit more topical on YouTube, namely a video of the Chancellor Exchequer not telling us very much about his plans for tomorrow's big day.

As only 139 people have viewed it so far*, this could well be your first chance to see it. Apparently, we're at 'something of a crossroads', the government can 'help unlock private sector investment' and 'our competitors are not standing still' - and that's your lot as far as Mr Darling's imagery is concerned.

And, if you're a bit hard of hearing, don't worry: we tax-payers have paid someone to transcribe it and insert sub-titles (which has also saved me quite a bit of time and effort).

We'll have to wait until tomorrow to see if he's got any more metaphors up his sleeve, not to mention whether he's going to 'turn left or right' at the crossroads.

Meanwhile, and to keep you going until then, here are some rather more uninhibited metaphors from the economists mentioned above:

* In the first hour since putting this post together, the number of YouTube views rose dramatically from 139 to 223 - which really makes you appreciate the commendable value for money that HM Treasury is getting from our taxes.

** P.S. A comment added by 'headless' makes the interesting point that whoever posted this video - presumably the Treasury - made it impossible for anyone to rate or make a comment on it!

An example of rhetorical virtuosity from rhetoric denier Tony Benn

Readers from outside the UK have probably never heard of Tony Benn, and quite a few here will be too young to remember just how effective an orator he was. So, having looked at his 'rhetorical denial' in the previous post I thought it might be useful to show a video illustrating his rhetorical virtuosity in action.

This particular clip comes from a Labour Party conference in the early 1980s, when he was at the height of his powers and a prime mover in his party's electorally disastrous lurch to the left after Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 (on which, see also HERE).

It shows how he was so in tune with the way the audience was reacting that a slight response to his news about that day's record stock market fall was enough to prompt him to break off from what he was going to say and launch into an impressively constructed contrast, each part of which ends with the phrase ‘the wealth of the nation’:

BENN: For a moment between debates the stock market had its biggest fall was it within living memory 30 points – and uhh that is an indication that indeed it was rather appropriate that ITN was swinging
[A] from the stock market where they’re gambling with the wealth of the nation
[B] to Brighton where we represent the people who create the wealth of the nation.

ICONIC GESTURES
The sequence also provides more examples of the way 'iconic gestures' come before the word(s) to which they relate, as discussed in earlier posts (HERE and HERE): Benn's swinging hand movements get under way quite a while before the word ‘swinging’ comes out of his mouth – whereupon his hands start moving to his left just before the words ‘stock market’ and to his right just before he say’s the word ‘Brighton’.

Then the slightest pause after ‘create’ followed by the coordinated downward movements of his head and hands are reminiscent of the precision with which an orchestral conductor brings in the whole of the chorus on time – and the audience starts applauding just before he's finished repeating ‘the wealth of the nation’.

SURFING APPLAUSE
But, as was typical of Benn, he didn’t stop there but carried on trying to ‘surf’ the applause - not that he says anything more important than "and that is also-" and "now uhh-") while the applause is still preventing his words from being heard - for more on which, see HERE andHERE).

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
One point of interest is that, as the applause gets under way, the camera switches away the from the audience to focus on Benn's former Labour cabinet colleague and arch-enemy of the day, Denis Healey, who had just narrowly defeated Mr Benn in an election for the party's deputy-leadership - but who seems to be thoroughly enjoying this particular line.

Another is the fact that a stock market fall as pitifully small as 30 points was treated as such dramatic news in those days!

Claptrap 1: The movie

This is the first in a series of posts to mark this month's 25th anniversary of a television documentary that completely changed my life and can now be watched in full below.

Before that, I’d spent nearly twenty years working in universities and doing research that was widely regarded at the time as being thoroughly 'useless' (i.e. lacking in any theoretical or practical implications whatsoever).

But a series of lucky breaks led to my getting the chance to take part in a World in Action documentary based on my book Our Masters’ Voices: the Language and Body Language of Politics World in Action series frequently attracted audiences of 15 million or more viewers - though 'attracted' is probably the wrong word, because it came on immediately after the nation's most popular soap (Coronation Street): it was also before everyone had remote controls, which meant that viewers still had had to make the effort of getting out of their chairs if they wanted to switch channels.

Such was the impact of the programme that, on the following morning, my phone hardly stopped ringing, with everyone asking the same question: "can you do the same for me?" Without realising it at the time, I had embarked on an irreversible journey from the peaceful seclusion of an Oxford college to the more hectic world of freelance consultancy.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be blogging about some of the background leading up the publication of Our Masters’ Voices and the making of the film Claptrap.

It was called ‘Claptrap’ because one of the definitions of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary is a ‘trick, device or language designed to catch applause’. I’d originally thought of using it as the title of the book, but decided against it because it would be too much of a hostage to fortune for reviewers.

Gus Macdonald, the film's producer who'd dreamt up the idea in the first place, had no such qualms about using it as the title for the programme - but by then, of course he did have the advantage of knowing that the experiment had been a success.

You can watch the film here in four consecutive episodes (and I hope you're impressed by my new Apricot computer!).

P.S. A better quality version of the film can now be watched in full HERE.

• CLAPTRAP 2: Eureka
• CLAPTRAP 3: News leaks out of the lecture theatre

• CLAPTRAP 4: How to get a book published

• CLAPTRAP 5: In the right places at the right times

Obama on Kennedy got more applause than 'normal'

I mentioned in an earlier post an observation, first reported in my book Our Masters’ Voices, about there being a standard or ‘normal’ burst of applause that, in many different settings and across several different cultures, lasts for about 8 seconds. Less than 7 seconds and it sounds feeble; more than 9 seconds and it sounds more enthusiastic than usual.

The most powerful piece of cross-cultural evidence came from a group of Iranian students who had collected some tapes of speeches by Ayotollah Khomeni after the Shah had been deposed. Applause had been banned as a 'decadent Western practice' and replaced by chanting ("Death to the Americans..." "Down with imerialists..." etc.) .

The students reported that the chanting occurred immediately after Khomeni had used exactly the same rhetorical techniques as the ones that trigger applause in the West and, even more interestingly, regularly faded out after 8 plus or minus 1 second.

The last time I remember the congregation applauding a eulogy was after Lord Spencer finished speaking at the funeral of his sister, Princess Diana.

But it happened again on Saturday after President Obama’s eulogy at the funeral of Edward Kennedy, where the clapping went on for 35 seconds or just over four times longer than a standard burst of applause.

In this clip, you can check out for yourself what 'longer than normal' sounds like to you:

Joe Biden's moving tribute to Edward Kennedy

Of the all the tributes to Edward Kennedy I've heard over the past couple of days, the one that stood out for me came from Vice-president Joe Biden (full text HERE and full video HERE).

A bit long, maybe, but there were moments of genuine sincerity that could perhaps only have been said by someone who’d lost a wife and child in a road accident and knew from his own experience the importance of support from friends and relations when you’re struggling to come to terms with such trauma.

Interestingly, two of the most quoted passages from Biden’s speech came from the following short sequence – one was a simple piece of imagery - “he was kind of like an anchor” - and the other a reasserted contrast “it was never about him. It was always about you. It was never about him.”

There were other neat rhetorical flourishes as well, such as the opening three-part list in which the third item contrasted with the first two, another neat contrast and the anecdotes about Kennedy phoning him every day and arranging for doctors from Massachusetts to turn up out of the blue and about what Kennedy’s wife had said to him near the end (another contrast)

But, as I've so often said and written in the past, seeing a speaker exhibiting such technical skill in no way diminishes either the sincerity or the positive impact conveyed by his message.

BIDEN:

I literally would not be standing here were it not for Teddy Kennedy,
(1) not figuratively,
(2) this is not hyperbole
(3) but literally.



He was there -- he stood with me when my wife and daughter were killed in an accident. He was on the phone with me literally every day in the hospital, my two children were attempting, and, God willing, God thankfully survived very serious injuries.

I'd turn around and there would be some specialist from Massachusetts, a doc I never even asked for, literally sitting in the room with me.

(A) You know, it's not just me that he affected like that.
(B) It's hundreds upon hundreds of people.

I was talking to Vicki this morning and she said - she said,

(A) “He was ready to go, Joe,
(B) “but we were not ready to let him go."

He's left a great void in our public life and a hole in the hearts of millions of Americans and hundreds of us who were affected by his personal touch throughout our lives.

People like me, who came to rely on him.

He was kind of like an anchor.

And unlike many important people in my 38 years I've had the privilege of knowing, the unique thing about Teddy was

(A) it was never about him.
(B) It was always about you.
(A) It was never about him.




RELATED POSTS:
• The enduring challenge and importance of funeral orations
• Gordon Brown's model example of how to express condolences

(And, on the rhetorical techniques mentioned here, type 'rhetoric' into the search box at the top of the page for similar examples from Barack Obama and other famous speakers).

On the death of Edward Kennedy: “the dream shall never die”

Speeches by all three of the Kennedy brothers are to be found in the top 100 American speeches listed on the website American Rhetoric.

For me, one of the most memorable ones by Edward Kennedy was delivered shortly after I had started studying political speeches in 1980: his address to the Democratic National Convention, now ranked at 76th in the top 100.

To mark his death, here are the final few sentences, which, somewhat unusually, end with a 4 part list that has been much quoted since:

And someday, long after this convention, long after the signs come down and the crowds stop cheering, and the bands stop playing, may it be said of our campaign that we kept the faith.

May it be said of our Party in 1980 that we found our faith again.

And may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now:

I am a part of all that I have met

To [Tho] much is taken, much abides

That which we are, we are --

One equal temper of heroic hearts

Strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end.

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

Later post on Biden's tribute.

MORE ON 3 PART LISTS & OTHER RHETORICAL TECHNIQUES
• Why lists of three: mystery, magic or reason?
• Lists of 3 and other rhetorical devices in Obama’s victory speech
• Tom Peters: high on rhetoric but low on content?
• When the young Paddy Ashdown surprised himself by the power of his own rhetoric
• David Cameron’s attack on the budget used some well-crafted rhetoric
• Rhetoric wins applause for questioners on BBC Question Time

P.S. FOR OTHERS SCEPTICAL ABOUT OR NEW TO TWITTER:
In the 'Pros' listed the other day, I included the fact that announcing new blog posts on Twitter can increase the number of visitors to the blog.

It also turns out that there's a more indirect way of this happening via Twitter. Since the death of Edward Kennedy, a lot of people have been typing 'thedreamshallneverdie' into Twitter search - as a result of which, some have found and visited this page.

Moon rhetoric from Neil Armstrong, JFK & Werner von Braun

About twelve years after the moon landing in 1969, I started writing about the power of rhetorical techniques like the contrast, and remember being vaguely amused and delighted when I realised that, of all the possible things that Neil Armstrong could have said 40 years ago, it was a simple contrast that was beamed back to earth.

[A] That's one small step for man;
[B] one giant leap for mankind.



But this historic achievement was also the fulfillment of earlier memorable rhetorical flourishes from President Kennedy, who’d committed the USA to land a man on the moon within a decade. And here he is cranking out a contrast and rounding off his message off with a three-part list:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,

[A] not because they are easy,
[B] but because they are hard,

because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is

[1] one that we are willing to accept,
[2] one we are unwilling to postpone
[3] and one we intend to win.

(The full text of the speech is HERE).



Rocket scientist though he may have been, Werner von Braun, without whose brains NASA might never have met Kennedy’s deadline, was no slouch when it came to coining memorable quotations.

When the first of the V2 rockets he’d designed for Hitler hit London, it’s been claimed that his mind was already on space – as he was quoted as saying: "The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet."

Other famous lines from von Braun include the following:

“Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft, and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.”

“Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity.”

“Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.”

“Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go -- and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.”

“We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.”

“There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program - your tax-dollar will go further.”

“Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.”

“It will free man from the remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet.”

“For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift.”

For someone who helped the Nazis to develop the V2 rockets that launched so much terror and destruction on London, US citizenship wasn't such a bad gift either.

Rhetoric wins applause for questioners on BBC Question Time

It wasn't just some of David Dimbleby's questions that got applauded on last night's Question Time (see previous post). Some of the questions also won bursts of applause, which was hardly surprising in the case of those who used the rhetorical techniques that are most likely to trigger a positive audience response.

In this first example, the question includes a contrast between ‘their own money’ and ‘our country’ that triggers a burst of applause before Dimbleby or anyone else has time to say anything:



The speaker in this next one deploys three rhetorical techniques in quick succession: a rhetorical question, a three-part list and a contrast.

And, as so often happens when someone combines more than one technique at a time, the applause here exceeds the standard 8 pus or minus 1 second 'normal' burst of applause (by about 2 seconds), thereby underlining the response as a more enthusiastic one than usual:

It was quite explicit. It has to be wholly necessary to do the job as an MP.

[Q] What could be more plainer than that?

[1] They don’t need scatter cushions,
[2] bottles of gin,
[3] plocks.

[A] It’s not the system that’s wrong.
[B] It’s the people - the MPs themselves. [APPLAUSE]



For more about rhetorical techniques and how to use them to get your own messages across, see any of my books (listed in the left-hand margin).

David Cameron's attack on the Budget used some well-crafted rhetoric

Having used the neat alliterative phrase ‘decade of debt’ early in his reply to Mr Darling’s Budget speech on Wednesday, David Cameron returned to it in the second part of a contrast as he began to wind up his reply.

He then followed it up with another contrast between the last Labour government and this one, a repetitively constructed three-part list and a question – technically* pretty faultless, and hardly surprising that he was rewarded with a good deal of positive media coverage.

CAMERON:
[A] The last Labour government gave us the Winter of Discontent.
[B] This Labour Government has given us the Decade of Debt.

[A] The last Labour Government left the dead unburied.
[B] This one leaves the debts unpaid.

[1] They sit there, running out of money,
[2] running out of moral authority,
[3] running out of time.

[Q] And you have to ask yourself what on earth is the point of another fourteen months of this Government of the living dead?

(* More on these rhetorical techniques and how to use them can be found in my books Lend Me Your Ears and Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy).

When the young Paddy Ashdown surprised himself by the power of his own rhetoric

Last night I went to an enjoyable and nostalgic event hosted by Total Politics magazine, at which Paddy Ashdown was in conversation with Iain Dale about his autobiography A Fortunate Life (April, 2009).

Hearing him in ‘elder statesman’ mode reminded me of the earliest clip from an Ashdown speech in my collection -which may well have been the first time any of his speeches had ever appeared on television (see below).

It’s from the debate on cruise missiles at the Liberal Party Assembly in 1981, two years before he became an M.P.

If the then prospective parliamentary candidate for Yeovil possessed a suit, he certainly wasn’t wearing it that day, preferring to appear in a sweater and open necked shirt – though the podium unfortunately prevents us from seeing whether or not he was also wearing sandals.

This was Ashdown in post-military mode, barking out his lines to the troops at high speed and with a serious shortage of pauses. I’ve often used it as an example of how an inexperienced speaker can sometimes be surprised by the power of his own rhetoric. The audience (predictably) applauds after the third item in a three-part list, at which point he breaks off, looking vaguely surprised by what's just happened.



POSTSCRIPT: 7 YEARS LATER
Paddy subsequently changed his position on cruise missiles, for which he was rewarded with the nickname ‘Paddy Backdown’.

This continued to haunt him during the Ashdown v. Beith campaign for the leadership of the new party formed by the Liberal-SDP merger in 1988. According to his opponents, this change of heart was evidence of inconsistency and indecisiveness, therefore making him unsuitable for leadership.

The response from some of his supporters, which you won't be able to find in his autobiography, came in the form of a very neat contrast along the lines of:

"It’s a damn sight easier to knock sense into a charismatic person than it is to knock charisma into a sensible person."

Obama’s rhetoric identifies with Martin Luther King but appeals to a wider audience

The oratory of Martin Luther King was clearly derived from the style of preaching he had grown up with in the Southern Baptist Church. That same tradition was also reflected in the way crowds responded to his speeches like congregations, punctuating them at regular intervals with chants like “Holy, holy, holy”, “Amen”, etc.

This was very evident in the last speech he ever made on the night before he was assassinated (see transcript and video below):

MLK: I just want to do God’s will.
CROWD: Yeah-
MLK: And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain.
CROWD: Go ahead-
MLK: And I’ve looked over,
CROWD: Yeah -
MLK: and I’ve seen the promised land.
CROWD: Holy, Holy, Holy.
CROWD: Amen.
MLK: I may not get there with you.
CROWD: Yeah – holy.
MLK: but I want you to know tonight
CROWD: Yeah -
MLK: that we as a people
CROWD: Yeah -
MLK: will get to the promised land.
CROWD: Yeah [APPLAUSE] Holy, holy.
MLK: So I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord [CHEERS + APPLAUSE].



Moving though his use of biblical imagery and references to ‘God’ and ‘the Lord’ may have been, a question that never occurred to me when I first wrote about Martin Luther King’s oratory twenty five years ago (Our Masters’ Voices pp. 105-111) was how such language must have sounded to American Muslims, Jews, Hindus and non-believers, all of whom who were explicity included in the nation’s ‘patchwork heritage’ referred to in President Obama’s inaugural address.

Nor was his inaugural speech the first time that Obama’s rhetoric had broadened and extended his appeal to a much wider constituency than King’s fellow Southern Baptists and/or committed Christians. The following sequence from his victory speech in Chicago last November (for detailed analysis of rhetoric, see HERE) included clearly recognisable echoes with its mountain-climbing imagery and the claim that “we as a people will get there”:

OBAMA: The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.

CROWD: Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can …



“We as a people will get there” may have sounded a good deal less dramatic than “We as a people will get to the promised land”, but it has the great benefit of being much more inclusive than was implied by the religious connotations of "the promised land" - while at the same time clearly identifying Mr Obama with well-known words of the person whose dream he was implicitly claiming to have fulfilled by winning the election.

The crowd also responded with a ‘secularised’ version of the kind of chanting that brought such life to Martin Luther King’s speeches, replacing words like 'holy' and 'amen' with repetitive refrain of the non-religious “Yes we can”, but still echoing or harking back to the close speaker-audience interaction of the Southern-Baptist tradition of worship.

As an outside observer of Barack Obama’s oratory and rhetoric, I have been fascinated by the way he managed, by stripping out religion from well-known words of Martin Luther King, to broaden his appeal to a much wider audience, while leaving the identification with his distinguished African-American predecessor clearly on view.

The questions I’d be fascinated to hear answered by him and his team of insiders is whether this was a deliberately contrived strategy and, if so, whose idea was it and when it was first conceived?

Rhetorical techniques and imagery in Hannan’s attack on Brown – edited highlights

As promised the other day, here are some notes on the rhetorical highlights of Daniel Hannan’s attack on Gordon Brown.

At its simplest, the more use a speaker makes of the main rhetorical techniques and imagery to get key messages across, the more likely it is that a speech will achieve high audience ratings (for more detail on these and how to use them, see any of the books listed on the left).

Given the impact of this particular speech, it’s therefore hardly surprising to see just how frequently he uses them – at a rate that comes close to the frequency to be found in some of Barack Obama's speeches (on which, see earlier postings on his victory speech and inaugural address).

Edited footage of the following five highlights can be seen below.

1. THE OPENING

Attention grabbing opening with a Puzzle (that sounds as it though it could be a compliment) followed by a solution packaged as a contrast (that turns out to be an insult/attack):

PUZZLE:
Prime Minister, I see you’ve already mastered the essential craft of the European politician,

SOLUTION:
(A) namely the ability to say one thing in this chamber
(B) and a very different thing to your home electorate.

2. ATTACK PACKAGED AS A ‘YOU/OUR ‘ CONTRAST:

The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money.

3. EXTENDED METAPHOR INTRODUCED BY TWO CONTRASTS:

(A) It is true that we are all sailing together into the squalls.
(B) But not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition.

(A) Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear their rigging; in other words – to pay off debt.
(B) But you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further.

As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line under the accumulated weight of your debt.

4. INSULT/ATTACK PACKAGED AS A‘NOT (A) BUT’ (B) CONTRAST WITH ALLITERATION:

(A) Now, it’s not that you’re not apologising; like everyone else I have long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things.

(B) It’s that you’re carrying on, wilfully worsening our situation, wantonly spending what little we have left.

5. CONTRASTS FOLLOWED BY SIMILE, FOUR 3 PART LISTS (WITH REPETITION) AND A CONCLUDING PUZZLE-SOLUTION:

(A) Prime Minister you cannot go on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy
(B) in order to fund an unprecedented engorging of the unproductive bit. [applause]

(A) You cannot spend your way out of recession
(B) or borrow your way out of debt.

And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we’re well placed to weather the storm, I have to tell you, you sound like a Brezhnev-era Apparatchik giving the party line.

(1) You know,
(2) and we know,
(3) and you know that we know that it’s nonsense.

Everyone knows that Britain is worse off than any other country to go into these hard times.

(1) The IMF has said so.
(2) The European Commission has said so.
(3) The markets have said so, which is why our currency has devalued by 30% – and soon the voters, too, will get their chance to say so.

And soon the voters too will get their chance to say so.

PUZZLE: They can see what the markets have already seen:
SOLUTION: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government.

Does Daniel Hannan’s attack on Brown tell us what makes a speech memorable?

When I first started doing research into political speeches in the early 1980s, I concentrated on sequences that prompted applause – as it seemed a fairly obvious and unequivocal barometer for measuring audience approval. What attracted most attention about the results was the observation that most bursts of applause are triggered by a small number of simple rhetorical techniques (Our Masters’ Voices: the Language and Body Language of Politics, 1984).

But the book also included some observations about the content of the messages that get applauded in political speeches, the main finding being that 84% of the bursts of applause occurred after a boastful statement about the speaker’s own party or an insult/attack on an opposing party – or some combination of the two (OMV, p. 45).

When I was actively involved with the Liberal Democrats during the Ashdown years, we had some interesting arguments, thanks to their rather pious tradition of trying to stand aside from ‘Yah-boo’ politics – which would make it sound inconsistent if they were to use too much in the way of knocking copy.

But my point was (and still is) that to abstain from the insult/attack option means signing up to a self-denying ordinance that deprives you of one of the main techniques for generating audience approval - and the success of Vince Cable's suggestion that Gordon Brown had changed from Stalin to Mr Bean suggests that there is at least one member of the current leadership team willing to deploy an insult now and then.

So the first thing that struck me about Daniel Hannan’s speech was that almost every sentence conveyed an insult or attack – not just directed at Labour in general, but highly personalised ones aimed at the leader of the Labour Party in particular.

Add to this the fact that it was in front of MEPs in Strasbourg and in the presence of Mr Brown, a distinguished guest who had just made a speech, and the context becomes comparable with that of a cheeky schoolboy standing up at speech day and telling the headmaster exactly what he and others thought of him in full view of all the other pupils, teachers and parents.

If Mr Hannon’s repetitive use of the insult/attack option, packaged with some neat rhetoric and appropriate imagery (on which, see HERE), may have set the speech up to attract more attention than usual, it’s obviously not the only reason for its success.

Since writing Our Masters’ Voices, I’ve been asked many times: what makes a truly memorable speech? However intellectually and financially rewarding it would be to have a definitive answer, I can't claim to have got there yet. But I do have the beginnings of a theory.

Effective use of rhetoric and imagery to package the key messages is important, but it doesn’t really provide anything like a compete answer, not least because the same techniques are to be found in all famous speeches.

So I started trying to get together sample of speeches that qualified as such to see if they had anything in common. After asking scores of people which speeches they considered ‘memorable’, what surprised me was the frequency with which they mentioned the same four speeches (remember that I was doing this 25 years ago):

Harold Macmillan’s ‘Wind of change’ in the South African parliament in 1960
John F Kennedy’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ in front of the Berlin wall in 1963
Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963
Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of blood’ in Birmingham, 1968

So what, if anything, did these particular speeches have in common that made them stand out as more memorable than most?

The best I’ve been able to come up with is that, in each case, the speaker managed to hit the jackpot by saying something that struck just the right chord with just the right audience in just the right place at just the right moment in history – which means that it’s more or less impossible to predict ‘memorability’ with any certainty in advance of any particular speech - though I did wonder whether this was what Barack Obama had in mind when he tried unsuccessfully to speak at the Brandenburg Gate when visiting Berlin last year – given the previous Berlin successes of Kennedy in 1961 and Ronald Reagan’s ‘Tear down this wall’ in 1987.

Much the same can be said of three more recent specimens of the commonest answers to the same question about memorable speeches:

Ronald Reagan’s ‘Challenger’ speech after the shuttle disaster in 1986
Tony Blair’s ‘People’s Princess’ speech on the death of Princess Diana in 1997
Lord Spencer’s eulogy at the funeral of Princess Diana (his sister) in 1997

At this point, I should make it clear that I am not suggesting that Daniel Hannan’s speech in Strasbourg the other day will ever get anywhere close to the long-term ‘memorability’ of the above examples. But I do think that, when it comes to explaining its sudden succes, the same factors -- right chord/right audience/right place/right time – may help to answer the question appearing on blogs and in the media, namely why has it taken off in the way that it has?

Right chord: challenging one of the favoured solutions to the current economic crisis
Right audience: including a prime minister and people around the world who are also unconvinced by such solutions
Right place: in the European Parliament where there is disagreement between countries about the alternative solutions
Right Time: Just before the G20 meeting about agreeing a global solution to the economic crisis

What brought me back to this question after so many years was reading through some of the 5,573 comments (at the time of writing) about the speech on YouTube.

You don’t have to read many of them to see that the right chord, the right audience, the right place and/or the right time are recurring themes from those who liked the speech well enough to want to put their own comments on the record.

How to improve impact by sequence, repetition and a rhetorical technique

In Vince Cable’s speech at the spring conference of the Liberal Democrats in Harrogate a couple of days ago, there was a sequence that would have been more effective had he (or his speechwriter) reversed the order in which he mentioned the two points, used repetition and packaged it as a contrast.

The line went as follows:

"Public companies should publish full pay package of all their highly paid employees [applause starts] as well as the directors."

You can see the sequence by looking here (1 minute, 25 seconds into the video), and will notice that the audience started applauding immediately after he said ‘employees’ and before he got to the key phrase ‘as well as the directors.'

As the current situation is that pay packages of directors already have to be published and Cable’s new/controversial point was that this should also apply to all highly paid employees, this would have worked better if the 'news' had come second rather than first.

It was also crying out to be turned into as a more explicit contrast between directors and other highly paid employees, with key words repeated, along the lines of the following:

"Public companies should not just publish the full pay package of their directors.
"They should publish the full pay package of all their highly paid employees."

Rhythmically and for adding emphasis, it would arguably have been improved further by making the second part of the contrast slightly longer, as in:

"They should publish the full pay package of each and every single one of their highly paid employees."

Either way, the applause would still have come immediately after the word ‘employees’, but it would have sounded more emphatic and there would have been no risk of the key point being drowned out by the applause.

Obama’s inauguration rhetoric won approval for some uncomfortable messages

A point I made a couple of days ago was that bursts of applause can be used to identify which points in a speech an audience liked best.

If there are about 150 sentences, of which only six (4%) stood out enough to get a whole-hearted display of approval that lasted more than a few seconds – as happened on Tuesday – it’s worth looking at them in a bit more detail to see what really turned the audience on.

On looking through them again, what I found interesting and surprising was that three of the six messages rated by the crowd as worthy of a decent round of applause were actually quite contentious or uncomfortable ones:

1. The USA is up against a lot of serious problems that can’t be fixed easily or instantly, though the new administration will eventually fix them.

2. A lot of work needs to be done to remake America – where the use of the word ‘remake’ implies that there’s something so wrong with the country that it actually needs remaking.

3. The USA will be friends with any countries wanting to live in peace and dignity and is ready to provide leadership again – where ‘again’ is presumably an admission that its foreign policy hasn't been making a very good job of it recently.

To foreign ears, the encouraging thing about all this is not just that the new president is willing to acknowledge that all is not well on a number of important fronts, but that the large numbers of Americans in the crowd were willing to applaud him for subscribing to such uncomfortable positions.

At the very least, these sentiments are a far cry from the over-stated claims about the unique greatness of the country that I was complaining about the other day – and which have put in another appearance in an article in the Washington Post by Robert Ehrlich, Jr., former governor of Maryland, who writes of the need to 'pray for ‘the greatest democracy in the history of the world.’

(The rhetorical techniques that prompted the crowd to applaud these uncomfortable messages can be seen in the previous post – under sections 1, 3 & 4).

Rhetoric and applause in Obama’s inaugural speech as a measure of what the audience liked best

When I first started studying bursts of applause in political speeches thirty years ago, some people couldn’t see the point; others thought I was mad.

But I did have a rational reason for doing it – because the absence of any instant positive response from jurors in the tape-recorded court hearings I was studying made it impossible to get empirical evidence about what might be having a positive impact on the twelve most important members of the audience in court.

In trying to solve this ‘methodological’ problem, I was drawn to applause in speeches as a promising place to start, as it provides fairly concrete evidence that an audience is (a) awake and paying close attention and (b) approves of what’s just been said strongly enough to join in a collective physical demonstration of their approval (by clapping hands, cheering, etc.).

The main finding – that most bursts of applause are triggered by a small number of simple rhetorical techniques – not only surprised me, but also launched me on a new career (further details on which can be found in the books listed on the left of this page and/or my main website.).

More than a quarter of a century later, I still sometimes find it instructive to focus on the lines that were applauded in a particular speech to see which messages turned the audience on the most.

So the lines that prompted bursts of applause during President Obama’s inaugural speech yesterday are reproduced below, along with some notes about the rhetorical techniques that were involved. Video clips of the first six examples can be seen below.

[For anyone unfamiliar with them, the main rhetorical techniques include: Contrasts: e.g. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him (Mark Antony), three-part lists: e.g. Education, education and education. (Tony Blair) and combinations of contrasts and lists: e.g by contrasting a third item with the first two: We shall negotiate for it, sacrifice for it but never surrender for it. (Ronald Reagan). Add to these devices like alliteration, repetition, imagery and anecdotes, and you have the basic building blocks of the language of public speaking.]


1. The first burst of Applause came after the second of two three-part lists – in which the third item contrasts with the first two. Note also that the final item exploits the puzzle-solution format by getting the audience wondering what they’re going to have to know before providing tehm with the solution to the puzzle.

"Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real.
They are serious
and they are many.

They will not be met easily
or in a short span of time.
But know this, America — they will be met." [APPLAUSE]

SO THE AUDIENCE LIKED being told that the country is up against some serious problems that will be hard to solve and his assurance that they will be overcome.

(This was the first of four examples in the speech of his using the imperative form ('know this'), which is arguably a rather less high-sounding version of the repetitive ‘let’ form of imperative favoured by Kennedy for directing his inaugural remarks to specific audiences in 1961:

KENNEDY: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty...

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms—and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.
Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah—to "undo the heavy burdens ... and to let the oppressed go free.")


2. The second burst of applause also came after two three-part lists, each of which had a third item that was longer than the first two:

"The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit;
to choose our better history;
to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation:

the God-given promise that all are equal,
all are free
and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness." [APPLAUSE]

SO THE AUDIENCE LIKED hearing his reaffirmation of the American dream.


3. Another three-part list with longest item coming third:

"Starting today,
we must pick ourselves up,
dust ourselves off,
and begin again the work of remaking America." [APPLAUSE]

SO THE AUDIENCE LIKED his recognition that there’s work to be done in order to remake America (and, by implication, that America is in need of 'remaking').


4. Another example of the ‘know’ form of imperative, addressed this time to foreign audiences (identified by imagery contrasting ‘grandest capitals’ with the "small village" in Kenya where his father was born):

".. to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more." [APPLAUSE]

SO THE AUDIENCE LIKED liked the idea of restoring America’s reputation for positive leadership in the world (and, by implication, that it's in need of restoring).


5. Use of one three-part list to set up a puzzle (‘what is it that he's going to say now?’) that's solved by another three-part list that gets applauded.

"We will not apologize for our way of life,
nor will we waver in its defense,
and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that

our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken;
you cannot outlast us,
and we will defeat you." [APPLAUSE]

SO THE AUDIENCE LIKED hearing his commitment to defend the American way of life and defeat terrorism.


6. Contrast between negative status of a father being discriminated against 60 years ago and his son becoming president today:

"This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed — why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath." [APPLAUSE]

SO THE AUDIENCE LIKED being invited to celebrate the election of an African-American as president as evidence that the central part of Martin Luther King’s dream has come true.


UNEXPECTED FLUTTERS OF APPLAUSE

There were a few other instances where a slight flutter of applause didn’t build into a fully fledged burst, and where Obama didn’t seem to have been expecting applause.

In the following, it came in just after the second of two contrasts, the first of which contrasted the first item with the second two in the list.

Evidence that he wasn’t expecting it came from the fact that he can be seen abandoning an in-breath and a pointing gesture before waiting for the flutter of applause to subside.

"The success of our economy has always depended
not just on the size of our gross domestic product,
but on the reach of our prosperity;
on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart –

not out of charity,
but because it is the surest route to our common good." [FLUTTER OF APPLAUSE]


In this final example, the short burst of applause came in response to another ‘know this’ imperative that ended with a contrast between ‘build’ and ‘destroy’.

The start of the applause interrupted President Obama just after he’d embarked on another “to those .." - which he cut short and then repeated as the applause was fading away (for more on ‘surfing applause’, see earlier post in September 2008).

"To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy." [FLUTTER OF APPLAUSE]

The enduring challenge and importance of funeral orations

Unlike many commentators, I haven’t had much time to try my hand at second guessing what Barack Obama might say in his inaugural address tomorrow. This is because I’ve been involved in the sad business of preparing for the funeral of the 27-year old daughter of some friends of ours, who died in sudden and tragic circumstances.

I've found the determination of some of her young friends to speak at her funeral and the experience of editing their words and coaching them in rehearsals a more moving and uplifting experience than I’d expected.

[And - now the funeral is over - what was even more uplifting was to hear them doing such a fantastic job, and see them receiving so much well-deserved praise from those who were there].

The whole experience has reminded me just how difficult it can be to get it right for such a diverse audience on such a distressing occasion.

It also reminded me that, however suspicious some critics may be of all things rhetorical, there is still a demand and a need for impressive displays of rhetoric that catch the shared mood of a group, both at the best of times and at the worst of times.

At the national level, this is exactly what Tony Blair achieved a few hours after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in August, 1997 (see text and video below). At the time, I remember being surprised and impressed by the number of Tories who openly volunteered their approval of what a Labour prime minister had just said.

An added side effect was that it helped to establish the then new prime minister's recognition as a national leader much more quickly than is usually the case. But that doesn't in any way diminish the effectiveness of the writing or delivery of the speech on that particular morning.

BLAIR: 
Our thoughts and prayers are with Princess Dianas family - in particular her two sons, two boys - our hearts go out to them. We are today a nation, in Britain, in a state of shock, in mourning, in grief that is so deeply painful for us.

She was a wonderful and warm human being. Though her own life was often sadly touched by tragedy, she touched the lives of so many others in Britain - throughout the world - with joy and with comfort. How many times shall we remember her, in how many different ways, with the sick, the dying, with children, with the needy, when, with just a look or a gesture that spoke so much more than words, she would reveal to all of us the depth of her compassion and her humanity.

How difficult things were for her from time to time, surely we can only guess at - but the people everywhere, not just here in Britain but everywhere, they kept faith with Princess Diana, they liked her, they loved her, they regarded her as one of the people. She was the peoples princess and thats how she will stay, how she will remain in our hearts and in our memories forever.

How would Obama's rhetoric and oratory sound from a London back street?

With pageants like the annual trooping the colour and state opening of parliament by the Queen, occasional royal weddings, state funerals and even more occasional coronations, Britain normally excels at finely choreographed displays of pomp and circumstance.

But the inauguration of an American president is an interesting example of how a former colony can sometimes outperform the old mother country with a set-piece event that makes the arrival of a new British prime minister about as inspiring as the sight of someone changing planes at Heathrow Airport.

One key difference, of course, is that our American cousins are inaugurating a new head of state as well as a new head of government, whereas a British prime minister is no more than that: the prime minister of a Queen, who will carry on being head of state for the rest of her life, and without whose invitation politicians wouldn’t be able to form a government at all.

Another stark difference is 'location, location. location'. New US presidents speak from Capitol Hill, looking out over a classic masterpiece of post-enlightenment town design that stretches before them as far as the eye can see. New UK prime ministers speak from the front doorstep of a terraced house that has no front garden and opens directly on to a cramped London backstreet – not the most promising venue for stirring rhetoric and oratory.

The British version of the orderly transfer of power is at its most mundane when a new prime minister takes office because the majority party in the House of Commons has changed its leader between general elections, which means that there won’t even be any jubilant crowds celebrating the previous day’s victory (not that there’s room for much of a crowd in Downing Street anyway).

So the official schedule of events for the afternoon of 27th June 2007, when Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, went as follows:

13.00: Blair says farewell to staff at No 10 Downing Street
13.12: Blair arrives at Buckingham Palace, where he tenders resignation to the Queen
13.30: Brown departs Treasury with wife Sarah
13.40: Blair leaves the Palace
13.51: Brown arrives at the Palace where the Queen asks him to form a government
14.48: Brown leaves the Palace
14.55: Brown enters No 10 Downing Street for first time as prime minister

Although the schedule makes no mention of a speech at 14.55, new prime ministers can’t just walk in without saying anything to the television cameras and reporters. But they hardly ever say anything that anyone ever remembers, and it’s an occasion that’s generated very few entries in dictionaries of quotations.

One apparent exception was Margaret Thatcher’s recitation of lines from St Francis of Assisi on the steps of Downing Street in 1979. But even that hardly qualifies as a real exception, as it was already a memorable quotation that had survived for about eight hundred years before being recycled by Mrs Thatcher (see video clip in blog entry of 1 January 2009).

Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of charismatic woman: PART II The 'Iron Lady'

The problem of pitch (see PART I) was only one aspect of public speaking that Mrs Thatcher took seriously after becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 1975. She also took advice from professionals in the theatre, television and even evangelism. One of her main speechwriters was Ronald Millar, a playwright about whose influence Mrs Thatcher's biographers have noted as follows:

‘She ... turned out to be an amenable pupil to Millar's methods, which included advice on delivery as well as script. Millar has become known as the author of the jokes (he was responsible for 'U-turn if you want to - the lady's not for turning'), but his principal skill was and is playing director to the leading lady, a combination of firm steering mixed with reassurance.’ (Wapshott and Brock, Thatcher, p. 161)

'The lady's not for turning' is but one of many contrastive punch lines supplied to Mrs Thatcher by Millar, and it was at his suggestion that she quoted the following four contrasts from St Francis of Assisi as she entered Downing Street after winning the 1979 general election (see video with blog entry on 1st January 2009):

“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.
Where there is error, may we bring truth.
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith.
Where there is despair, may we bring hope.”

Since before the 1979 election, television producer Gordon Reece had provided Mrs Thatcher with extensive and detailed guidance on how to perform effectively on the small screen. And, during the 1983 general election, the staging of her set-piece speeches was organised by the same team that managed mass meetings for Billy Graham's evangelical crusades to Britain.

Much of this expert help, of course, had little or nothing to do with the specific problems faced by a female political leader. But some of the advice, such as that provided by Gordon Reece, was directly concerned with image-related matters like hair-styles, clothes, jewellery make-up and even which side of her face was supposed to be best for exposing to the camera.

This included advice that she should go for greater simplicity of appearance in television performances than when making major speeches. Reece and Millar were also concerned with the problems associated with pitch. To quote her biographers again:

‘A full blast Commons speech can sound like raving hysteria in a broadcasting studio. The broadcasting of the Commons (which happened to coincide with Reece's arrival) caused him special problems. He was heard to remark that the selling of Margaret Thatcher had been put back two years by the mass broadcasting of Prime Minister's Question Time as she had to be at her shrillest to be heard over the din... Millar had also taught her that lowering the voice brought the speed down to a steadier rate. He advised holding to a steady and equable tone at Question Time which would eventually drive through, not over or under, the noise.’ (Wapshott and Brock, Thatcher, pp. 169-70)

Before the 1979 general election, the Conservative Party's advertising agents, Saatchi and Saatchi, were also worried about the prospects of convincing the electorate of the leadership potential not just of a woman, but of one who seemed to epitomise the typical suburban middle-class housewife.

Meanwhile, the various nicknames devised by her colleagues, such as 'Mother', the 'Leaderene', the 'Bossette', 'Attila the Hen', 'the Immaculate Misconception', etc. can be seen as reflecting a sustained attempt on their part to come to terms with the fact that they were having to work under a woman leader.

Much the same could be said of the culturally available stereotypes of powerful women that cartoonists exploited in their caricatures of Mrs Thatcher, which included Bodicea, Britannia, a witch and the Queen. But the most astute attempt to come to terms with Mrs Thatcher's position as a political leader was supplied by the Soviet newspapers when, after a speech at Kensington Town Hall in 1976, they dubbed her the 'Iron Lady'. Of all the nicknames Mrs Thatcher attracted, it was as the 'Iron Lady' that she became internationally best known. And this may well be because these two words aptly sum up one of the main secrets of her success in finding a solution to the problem of being a female in a position of power.

Given that successful women face the dilemma of being ‘damned if they behave like men, and damned if they don't', one solution is to behave in as efficient, tough and decisive a manner as possible, while at the same time making no concessions whatsoever when it comes to maintaining the external trappings of femininity. So Mrs Thatcher was committed to the importance of being smart in a conventionally feminine way, and consistently sought to make the most of her natural physical attractiveness. This included the preservation of her blonde hair by regular tinting as well as the elimination of gaps in her teeth by dental capping.

Nor was she afraid to be seen in the traditional female roles of wife and mother, even to the extent of being photographed at the kitchen sink just before competing as a candidate in the 1975 Conservative Party leadership election. Her uncompromisingly feminine appearance, and her repeated emphasis on the virtues of family life may not have endeared Mrs Thatcher to feminists. But, in the eyes and ears of a wider public, such factors had the effect of insulating her from being 'damned' for lacking culturally acceptable feminine attributes, by leaving no one with any doubt that she was anything less than a 100 per cent female of the species.

At the same time, there was little or nothing in her conduct of government that could be singled out to expose her as 'gentle', 'weak' or not up to the job, and this enabled her to avoid being 'damned' for possessing the sorts of stereotypical feminine attributes so often cited in attempts to demonstrate the unsuitability of women for positions of power and responsibility.

Her external image of unambiguously recognisable femininity effectively liberated her to pursue forceful policies without running any risk of being damned for behaving ‘like a man’, because any such claim would have been so transparently at odds with all the other evidence that she was uncompromisingly female. And, with lines like “a general doesn't leave the field of battle just as it's reaching a climax”, she showed no inhibitions at all about identifying herself closely with a powerful male role model, without having to worry about whether this would raise doubts about her essential femininity.

Nor was she averse to using a negative nickname to question the manliness of her male colleagues, as it was Mrs Thatcher herself who first used the word 'wet', a colloquialism for describing men as feeble or lacking in masculinity, for referring to her more liberal Tory cabinet ministers.

As for the 'iron lady', its aptness lay in the fact that it captured the two most visible and contrasting characteristics of her public image: toughness and femininity. And, when these two qualities are exhibited in the conduct and appearance of the same woman, she has found an effective way of deterring, resisting and neutralising any attacks based on male-chauvinist assumptions.

Mrs Thatcher was also quick to latch on to the advantages of this. Within weeks of the Russians dubbing her the ‘iron lady’ (and still three years before she became prime minister) she was to be heard juxtaposing her feminine attributes with the toughness implied by the nickname in a speech she made in 1976:



Seven years later, when fighting for re-election in 1983, she was still confident enough about the nickname being an asset to woo her audiences with lines like these:

Thatcher: "The Russians said that I was an Iron Lady."
Audience: "Hear-hear."
Thatcher: "They were right."
Audience: "Heh-heh-heh"
Thatcher: "Britain needs an Iron Lady."
Audience: "Hear-hear" [applause]

Nor did she ever try to deny the appropriateness of another nickname that located her firmly within a long-standing and culturally familiar category of successful professional women in positions of power, namely head-teachers. In a report by John Cole, the BBC’s political editor, during the 1983 general election, she showed no qualms about accepting the image he presented her with in a question formulated in blatantly male-chauvinist terms:

Cole: “Other Prime Ministers after all have been bossy too, but Mrs Thatcher does undoubtedly keep a fussy watch on her ministers' performances with an occasional touch of motherliness. I asked her today what she said to suggestions that she had a headmistress image.”

Thatcher: “Well I've known some very good headmistresses who've launched their pupils on wonderful careers. I had one such and was very grateful. But I am what I am. Yes, my style is of vigorous leadership. Yes, I do believe certain things very strongly. Yes, I do believe in trying to persuade people that the things I believe in are the things they should follow. And Mr Cole I'm far too old to change now.”

By saying that there is not only nothing wrong with being like a headmistress, but that it’s a role model with positive virtues, Mrs Thatcher was able to identify herself with one of the relatively few widely respected positions of power and responsibility that have traditionally been available to women. Teaching is also one of the very few professions with job conditions that include a great deal of public speaking. For a female leader to be identified with the role of headmistress would therefore seem to be something worth cultivating if it’s in your interests to promote the idea that women are perfectly capable of holding their own both on a public platform and in a position of power.

Indeed, one of Mrs Thatcher's major long term achievements may turn out to have been the undermining of age-old assumptions of the sort contained in Quintillian's observation that the perfect orator cannot exist ‘unless as a good man'. And, by finding a workable solution to the problem of being damned for being like a man and damned for not being like a man, her combination of uncompromising femininity with equally uncompromising words and deeds may have laid the foundations for a new tradition within which women politicians of the future will be able to operate.

POSTSCRIPT:
After a year in which Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were at the forefront in the US presidential campaign, the question arises as to whether either of them showed any signs of taking on board any of these lessons from Margaret Thatcher - a theme to which I plan to return after posting this series of reflections on female charisma.

Related Posts

• Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of charismatic woman Part I: Cultural and vocal challenges
• Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of charismatic woman Part III: The education of a female orator

Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of charismatic woman: Part I. Cultural and vocal challenges

When I wrote 'Our Masters' Voices' (1984), Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and looked well set to win at least one more term of office (and actually won two more). The following is a somewhat revised version of what I wrote then, and will be followed in due course by some further blog entries about how she and her advisors sought to solve the problems she was up against as the UK's first woman head of government.

It was important for Martin Luther King's success as a communicator that there already existed a distinctive black religious tradition that could be readily adapted for speaking on behalf of the civil rights movement, because American political oratory before the 1960s had been dominated by white males. But, when Mrs Thatcher came to power in 1979 after winning the first of three UK general elections, there were no such obvious models for women. For thousands of years before that, politics and speech-making had been almost exclusively male preserves.

There are no records of any famous female orators in classical Greece or Rome, where the early texts on rhetoric assumed that the practitioners would all be male. This was very evident in the opening pages of Quintillian’s classic work on The Education of an Orator, where he had this to say about the aim of the book:

‘We are to form, then, the perfect orator, who cannot exist unless as a good man; and we require in him, therefore, not only consummate ability in speaking, but every excellence of mind ... since the man who can duly sustain his character as a citizen, who is qualified for the management of public and private affairs, and who can govern communities by his counsels, settle them by means of law, and improve them by judicial enactments, can certainly be nothing else but an orator.' (Quintillian, Institutes of Oratory, or The Education of an Orator, p. 4, emphases added)

In the years before Mrs Thatcher became prime minister of the UK, a number of women had become heads of government in other countries - Mrs Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka, Mrs Peron in Argentina, Mrs Gandhi in India and Mrs Meir in Israel - success stories that might seem to suggest that the male-dominated political mould had already been broken and that women in the future would in be able to enjoy equal opportunities in the pursuit of political careers.

Even then, however, there were two reasons for caution in drawing any such conclusion. The first was that three of the women who’d achieved high political office also had close family ties with male national heroes who had recently died, with Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher being the only ones who had reached the top entirely by their own individual efforts.

A second reason for caution is that women faced and still face cultural and physical obstacles with which men never have to contend. In the absence of any established tradition like that in which black American leaders Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson were able to operate, female politicians still have to develop new ways of surviving and thriving in such a male-dominated profession. This raises the question of whether the solutions found by Mrs Thatcher established any ground-rules that might benefit aspiring women politicians of the present and future.

Some of the problems faced by women in politics are obviously much the same as those faced by women in any other male-dominated profession – aptly summed up by the adage that ‘they’re damned if they behave like men, and damned if they don't.' If a woman acts in a tough, decisive or ruthless manner, she risks having her femininity being called into question. But if she appears gentle, indecisive or conciliatory, her male colleagues may conclude that she’s simply not up to the job.

This is a dilemma familiar to most professional women, but female politicians face another disadvantage because public speaking is such an important part of the job – not just because the techniques of oratory and debate have been monopolized by men for so long, but also because of the difference in length of male and female vocal cords that affect the pitch of the human voice.

Pitch can be a problem for all public speakers, whatever their sex, because it tends to rise when someone is nervous or is speaking louder than usual – both of which are likely to happen in speeches. For women the problem is more acute because the natural pitch of their voices has a higher starting point than is the case for men, with the result that it cannot rise as far before reaching a level at which it sounds 'shrill'.

This might not matter but for the fact that high pitch tends to be strongly associated with emotional or irrational outbursts - a deeply rooted cultural assumption that probably derives from (and is sustained by) the screams of each new generation of infants. The fact that the sound of a woman raising her voice is more likely to be negatively evaluated as ‘shrill' or 'screeching' is probably at the heart of a source of irritation that’s familiar to many professional women, namely the tendency of male colleagues to accuse them of 'overreacting' whenever they become involved in arguments.

Nor is it just a matter of there being negative associations with high pitched voices, as there are positive associations between lower-pitched female voices and attractiveness, 'huskiness' and 'sexiness'. Shakespeare's positive evaluation of low pitch has long been enshrined in the dictionaries of quotations:

'Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman' (King Lear, V, iii).

So the fact that Mrs Thatcher took positive steps to lower the pitch of her voice was a perfectly rational response to a real problem. Under the guidance of the National Theatre, she underwent training that included humming exercises aimed at lowering her previously natural pitch. Comparing recordings of speeches she made before and after tuition reveals a clearly audible difference. When played through a pitch and intensity analyser, the reduction in pitch came out at 46 Hz – a figure that’s almost half the average difference in pitch between male and female voices.

This significant decrease was all the more remarkable because it was achieved after Mrs Thatcher had already passed the age at which the pitch of women's voices tends naturally to rise: generally speaking, it falls up to the age of about forty-five, after which the it gradually starts to rise.

The lowering of her voice had other consequences that probably contributed both to the greater clarity of her talk and to its 'statesmanlike' character. For example, the human voice-production system works in such a way that a reduction in pitch tends to slow down the speed at which we speak, and the tutored Mrs Thatcher spoke noticeably more slowly than she did before having any voice coaching.

You can inspect the change in her style of speaking in the following clip showing her in one interview just after she became leader of the opposition in 1975 and another about ten years later after she'd spent two terms as prime minister.

Related Posts

• Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of charismatic woman Part II: The Iron Lady
• Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of charismatic woman Part III: The education of a female orator