In anticipation of strange things happening during the first party conference season since the coalition government came to power, Liberal Democrat Voice has just posted some funny bits from Tory Party conferences of yesteryear.
I was rather surprised that they didn't balance them with a few clips from past Liberal Democrat Conferences and/or Liberal Assemblies of yesteryear, which has prompted me to start looking through my archives for gems.
What better place to start than David Steel's final words to the Liberal Party Assembly in 1981 (even though it's taken 29 years for them to come true)?
Regular readers will know that I'm not over-impressed by 'experts' who exaggerate the importance of body language and non-verbal behavior, and especially those who continue to spread the Mehrabian myth that 93% of communication is 'non-verbal' (for more on which, see links below).
But there are exceptions where 100% of the communication is indeed non-verbal, as in the case of a World Cup referee sending a player off for not having hit an opponent in the face that I posted a few weeks ago HERE.
A more elegant example where 100% of the communication is non-verbal is to be found in the way conductors interact with the orchestra during a concert.
No doubt the Mehrabianistas would want to put a percentage on how much of the communication is coming from Simon Rattle's facial expression as compared with movements of his hands (left, right and/or together), body, mouth, eyebrows, face, etc.
But how you'd go about arriving at such measurements is quite beyond me, and I'd be most interested to hear from anyone who could enlighten me on the matter. Meanwhile, I'll just have to make do with watching (and listening to) the music....
P.S. Since posting this, John Hindmarsh, to whom thanks, has drawn my attention to a fascinating TED talk by Itay Talgram comparing the styles of great conductors
Other posts on body language & non-verbal communication:
P.S.Since posting this, Jon Hindmarsh, to whom many thanks, has drawn my attention via Twitter (@jonhindmarsh) to a fascinating TED talk by Itay Talgram comparing the styles of great conductors:
In case you missed the sequence in which, according to Downing Street sources, David Cameron 'misspoke' when he said that Iran has nuclear weapons, here it is:
Misspeaking
Until Hillary Clinton came up with the word 'misspeak - when trying to explain away her (false) claim to have landed in Bosnia under sniper-fire - I'd never heard the words 'misspeak', 'mispoke' or 'misstatement' before. And I remember being vaguely amused at the way both she and an Obama aide used the new word to create some quite neat contrasts, which were reported in The Independent as follows:
'"I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things - millions of words a day* - so if I misspoke it was just a misstatement," she said.
'But an Obama spokesman, Tommy Vietor, noted she made her claims in a scripted speech. "When you make a false claim that's in your prepared remarks, it's not misspeaking, it's misleading."'
By Mr Vietor's critera, David Cameron can at least invoke in his defence the fact that this was not a 'scripted speech'.
Mistaken
But an even bigger mistake than the PM's gaffe arguably came from the Downing Street 'source' who decided to borrow and use this newly invented word, even though it had been created for such a dubious purpose and did little or no good for Mrs Clinton's reputation.
After all, as it said in The Independent, she was 'well ahead in most polls' at the time but her misspoken words had 'eclipsed coverage of her scheduled appearances and threatened to undercut her foreign policy experience message'.
Misleading
All of which is to warn Mr Cameron and his aides that, when it comes to explaining away a mistake or misdemeanour, misguided memos can cause miscellaneous mishaps, mistakes, misconceptions and misfortune, not to mention quite serious misgivings about your 'foreign policy experience message'.
* "Millions of words a day"?
Mrs Clinton's claim to have been saying "millions of words a day" was also an example of 'misspeaking'.
Assuming she was working an 18 hour day at the time and spoke continuously during her waking hours at 150 words per minute (i.e. half-way between the speed of conversation and speech-making), 2 million words (i.e. 'millions', plural) would require a speaking rate of 1,852 words per minute.
Or, to put it another way, delivering 2 million words at a more normal speed of 150 words per minute would take 222 hours - i.e. 12 eighteen-hour days of non-stop speaking without pausing for a moment.
I’ve just noticed that the previous post was the 600th since I started the blog in September 2008.
Without a steadily increasing number of visitors, I doubt if I’d have carried on for this long – so many thanks to all of you who've given me an incentive to carry on (at least for a bit longer).
Reaching this landmark prompted me to look more closely than usual at the results from my hidden visitor counter.
Return visits
Particularly encouraging was the discovery that 17% of the visitors to the blog are 'returning visitors' - among whom I should record special thanks to the record-holder, who's now made 478 return visits to the site.
I should also put on record my thanks to leading bloggers like Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes, and John Rentoul - links from whom always result in a spectacular increase in the number of hits.
Google search terms I've also been reasonably encouraged by what people have typed into Google to find their way here. As you'll see from this list of the most recent ones, they lead people to some of the recurring themes of the blog:
Obama 2008 victory speech rhetorics
Have you ever been denied a U.S. visa or entry into the U.S.
neil kinnock height
ceremony Acceptance Speeches
cartoons about body language
brown book
barack obama inauguration speech techniques
imagery in speeches
debunking body language experts
rhetoric + obama's victory speech
communication statistics percent body language vs speech
does the taller candidate win in UK elections?
communication cartoon blog
award ceremony speeches in public speaking
queen's speach at un july 2010
margaret thatcher public image
inspiring speeches
ronald reagan and teleprompter
peter sellers speech about nothing
Nelson Mandela Release Speech
body language cartoon
personification in barack obama inauguration speech
statesman speeches
margaret thatcher charisma
obama;s victory speech analysis
lists of three
communication is 50% tone,40% body language and 10%
rhetoric techniqus used in obama this is our time speech
non verbal communication videos
"little miss muffet" "dudley moore"
margaret thatcher voice training
labour leadership candidates in order of height
What's missing?
One thing I notice that doesn't appear in these recent Google searches are words like 'PowerPoint' and 'visual aids', both of which are discussed at length in my recent books and in quite a few blog posts. Also absent are words relating to research into everyday conversation.
So perhaps these are areas on which I should do some more blogging in the weeks and months ahead.
But most important from my point of view would be to hear of any suggestions that you might have about how to improve the blog, and especially about which kinds of post you like the best.
I'd also welcome any ideas about how to attract (and retain) more new visitors to the blog.
On 1st April, I recorded my surprise that a publisher had (a) thought it worth publishing a 300 page book of Gordon Brown's speeches The Change we Choose: Speeches 2007-2009 and (b) decided to publish it on April Fools Day (HERE).
So I suppose I shouldn't really have been quite as surprised as I was by the news of of how many copies of the said book have been sold since then, as revealed in this week's Private Eye - which reports that it 'has sold a grand total of 31 - yes thirty two - copies' (Private Eye,1268, p. 25).
Bad news, perhaps, for publishers still competing to sign up any remaining memoirs by former Labour cabinet ministers - but very good news for less well-known authors like me, who can take heart from the knowledge that, compared with Mr Brown's latest tome, our own books have all been outstanding best-sellers!
pril, I recorded my surprise that a publisher had (a) thought it worth publishing a 300 page book of Gordon Brown's speeches