Gordon Brown tries out a 4-part list at the TUC

Well, Mr Brown's now given the speech that had been widely circulated before he got anywhere near the TUC in Liverpool.

And here's what Sky News singled out as the sound bite of the day - because the much trailed news was that he was going to say the word 'cut' for the first time.

In fact, he used the 'C' word four times in a row, deploying a curious combination of rhetorical techniques that I've seldom seen before: a fifth item being contrasted with the previous four (very different from the much commoner form, favored by speakers like Churchill and Obama, where the third item is contrasted with the first two).

Nor did it seem to go down all that well, as there was a significant delay before the applause finally got under way - prompted, it appears, by Mr Brown leaning back from the lectern to let them know that he jolly well wasn't going to go on until they responded.

(You may have to watch an advert or two before GB comes into view).

Edmund Stoiber: A charismatic Bavarian?

Whilst running a course last week, I met a German who asked me if I’d heard about Edmund Stoiber, former premier of Bavaria, who's well known in the German speaking world for his incoherent speeches and frequent faux pas.

As I hadn’t, he’s kindly sent me a specimen from YouTube with English subtitles, that, as you can see HERE, makes George W Bush and John Prescott sound like amateurs in such matters.

All of which prompted me to find a bit more by typing ‘Edmund Stoiber+gobbledygook’ into Google - which quickly came up with the following background information (fuller version is HERE):

The gentleman that he is, Stoiber was going to compliment German Chancellor Merkel on her tough stance against US President George W. Bush. But that's where things got a little complicated.

"I found it refreshing," Stoiber said, "that the Chancelor criticized Guantanamo in front of US President Brezhnev."

US president Brezhnev? Hello, Bavaria, this is earth speaking! What was Edmund Stoiber thinking when he mixed up Bush – himself a master of the Freudian slip – and Brezhnev – a man who loved vodka as much as communism?

He's done it before

Stoiber is known for not always saying the right thing. The country is laughing to this day about the time he addressed Sabine Christiansen – the people's princess of German political talk shows – as "Frau Merkel."

Admittedly, not all of his faux pas were equally entertaining. The entire population of eastern Germany, for instance, was not in the least amused when Stoiber – during the 2005 election run-up – called them "the frustrated ones" and said he was not leaving the country's fate to them.

Stoiber has raised his inability to form complete sentences to the level of rhetorical bravado. One of his speeches about the transrapid railway system, for example, has inspired numerous music geeks to remix his staccato gobbledygook into a musical and poetic firework that became an instant success on the German-speaking internet.

Very few politicians get to have their speeches set to cheap techno or German rap. But Stoiber is not like other politicians. He could easily make the transition from Herr Prime Minister to MC Kool Dawg Eddie and land a contract with a major record label, without even trying.

Hilarious stuff that gets you wondering what other gems we students of rhetoric and communication in the English speaking world are missing out on because of our linguistic incompetence.

Why is Mr Brown bothering to speak to the TUC?

Regular readers of this blog may have seen my previous comments on the way in which speeches feature less and less prominently in British media coverage of political communication (e.g. HERE, HERE and HERE).

As the party season gets under way with the Trades Union Congress in Liverpool, television news last night was telling us what Gordon Brown is going to be saying to them later today – and, in case you missed it, there’s plenty more on the BBC website:

In the rest of his speech, Mr Brown will also say that the government will take the "hard-nosed decisions" needed to steer the UK out of recession and towards a sustainable recovery.

"Today we are on a road towards recovery," he will say.

"But things are fragile, not automatic, and the recovery needs to be nurtured. People's livelihoods and homes and savings are still hanging in the balance and so, today, I say to you, don't put the recovery at risk."

Having opposed the measures that Labour has taken to support the economy through the recession, the Conservatives cannot be trusted to take the economy forward, the prime minister will argue.

"Don't risk it [the recovery] with the Tories, whose obsessive anti-state ideology means they can't see a role for government in either recession or recovery."

All of which raises the question of why Mr Brown is bothering to go to all the expense and trouble of going to Liverpool to repeat things that he and his aides have already put into the public domain.

The TUC, where 'fings aint wot they used to be'

The Trades Union Congress is meeting this week, but it's unlikely that you'll see as much of it as you would have done 25 years ago, when its proceedings were televised live on two channels (BBC and Channel 4).

Back in 1984, the miners' strike was still in full swing, as too was Arthur Scargill who was given centre stage to rally support from the TUC.

Granada Television were filming Claptrap (which can be seen HERE) and had sent Ann Brennan and me there in preparation for her own speech at the SDP conference the following week.

As you'll see in the following clip, there was a TV camera aimed at us as we sat in the audience and, though not visible, we'd both been fitted up with microphones. The idea was that, as Scargill was speaking, I was to show Ann which rhetorical techniques he was using and anything else she should take note of.

But we had to abandon the plan almost as soon as I'd started to speak, as the people sitting behind us in the audience were Scargill fans with some rather threatening advice along the lines of "If you don't bloody well shut up, we'll knock your f****** head in."

Not particularly pleasant at the time, but one thing I learnt from them was the pressure members of a crowd can exert on each other to toe the official party line. They didn't know what we were doing, and were assuming that I was criticising what Scargill was saying, rather than analsing how he was saying it - and therefore had to be silenced to let their hero rant on without interruption.

So the Granada team had to 'fake' it by making out that Ann and I had gone back stage afterwards for further instruction.

In fact, the second part of this sequence was shot a week later at the SDP conference in Buxton. To make it look convincing, I was told to make a note of what I was wearing at Brighton the previous week - and I've just realised that it's taken me 25 years to notice a continuity error I'd never spotted before - I'd remembered the jacket, trousers, shirt and tie, but, as you'll see when we get back stage, the TUC admission badge has mysteriously disappeared:

Einstein 'chalk & talk' competition results

Thank you to everyone who sent in so many entries that judging the competition has been far more difficult than expected.

As I was unable to separate entries (A) and (B), I've decided to award them equal first prize - so both of them will be receiving a signed copy of Lend Me Your Ears.

Entry (A) came from Oliver Coddington, who impressed me greatly with his display of mathematical bullshit, but Entry B by Chantal Jordan had to be given very high points for brevity and succinctness.

SPECIAL AWARD FOR TIMELY WIT:
Entry (C) from Andrew Tate can't really be judged on the same basis as the joint winners because it was prompted by a mistake in the original announcement of the competition, in which I'd specified a closing date that had had already passed. Once his alertness had made me correct the date, subsequent entrants were in no position to compete with his wit.

I have therefore awarded him a special bonus award in the form of a free copy of Speech-Making and Presentation Made Easy (signed and incorrectly dated by the author).

= 1st Prize (A): Oliver Coddington



= 1st Prize (B): Chantal Jordan



Special award for timely wit: Andrew Tate

If you missed the original announcement of the competition, it can be seen HERE, where there are links to the website where you can write what you like on Einstein's blackboard and to other posts on chalk and talk, PowerPoint and the use of visual aids.

Pre-conference season conference

If you thought the LibDem conference in Bournemouth was the first conference of the season, you'd be wrong - because there's another one taking place the day before they get there.

I know this because I've agreed to speak next week at the first conference of the UK Speechwriters’ Guild at the Arts University College, Bournemouth.

It's an exciting innovation for all of us, because presentation trainers and speechwriters tend to toil away in isolation and don't often get a chance to meet each other.

The theme is ‘Why is there no British Obama?’.

If I'd known what an impressive line-up it was going to be, I might have thought twice about accepting the invitation, but it's far too late to back out now.

The other speakers include Phil Collins, Tony Blair’s former speechwriter, as well as Dr Susan Jones, author of Speechmaking and the team from CreativityWorks in Brighton, who'll be showing their video on the Mehrabian Myth, a much more pithy and entertaining treatment of the subject than my various attempts at debunking it. Dr Johan Siebers who's pioneering a new university course in rhetoric will also be there.

Anyone who's going to be in Bournemouth for the LibDem conference would surely benefit from arriving a day early. And anyone involved in politics and business would find it difficult to get a day of expert insight at such a reasonable price anywhere else.

I understand from the organiser, Brian Jenner, that there are still some tickets available - and you don’t have to be a speechwriter to come along. Call him on 01202 551257.

Claptrap 4: How to get a book published

(This is the fourth in a series of posts marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of Our Masters' Voicesand the televising of Claptrap, which you can watch HERE.

Part 2: EUREKA! is HERE

Part 3: News leaks out of the lecture theatre is HERE).

For academics in the 1970s, getting your work into print was never much of a problem. Publisher’s reps used to tour the universities with two simple missions.

One was to try to persuade you to put some of their books on your reading lists and get the university bookshop to order a few copies. The other was to ask if you had any books in the pipeline – and, if you had, they’d more or less sign you up there and then.

As the first lecture I’d given on the clapping research had revealed wider interest in the subject than I’d expected (Claptrap 3), I assumed that it would be just as easy to get it published as had been the case with my previous ‘academic’ books.

I could not have got much further from the truth: by the time I finally signed a contract for the publication of Our Masters’ Voices, I’d collected a grand total of twenty- two (yes, 22) rejection slips.

It was probably a mistake to write the whole manuscript before sending it to any publishers. After all, my other academic books had been accepted on the basis of a few notes, an occasional paper or two and a good deal of waffle on my part.

So, unlike these unfortunate publishers on whose desks there dropped a complete draft of Our Masters’ Voices , the previous ones never had to wade through hundreds of pages of tedious prose before reaching a decision.

Twenty years later, when I was writing Lend Me Your Ears, I learnt from my agent that it was much more effective (and much less time-consuming) to send a proposal out to likely publishers – and, though he 'd be too modest to say it, having a reputable agent is half the battle.

A PROMISING START FALTERS
Initially, things looked quite promising. Desmond Morris, zoologist and best-selling author ofThe Naked Ape and Manwatching was a fellow of the same Oxford college as me. He loved the book enough to fix me up with an introduction to his own publisher, the legendary Tom Maschler (and eventually wrote some nice glowing words on the back cover of the book).

Mr Maschler was friendly enough, but said that he thought the book would be much better if he recruited what he called a ‘co-author’, which I took to be a polite word for ghost-writer.

“I’m a bit surprised by that,” I said, “ because one of the few kind things reviewers have said about my other books is that they found them very readable.”

“But” he came back decisively “that merely reflects the abysmally low standard of writing in the academic world.”

I’ve no doubt in retrospect that I should have taken his advice. I was trying something that was completely new to me – to write in a way that would be accessible to any average reader of a serious Sunday newspaper, a book with plenty of pictures, no extensive bibliography and no footnotes citing every last chapter and verse.

THE ROAD TO REJECTION
Looking at Our Masters’ Voices now, I realise that I never got anywhere near the style I was aiming for until the third chapter – which also happened to be the most important one in the book. If the publishers I’d inflicted it on had never got as far as that, it was hardly surprising that they rejected it.

Many of them also had backing for their decision from learned assessors, from whom they’d sought an expert opinion.

Quite a lot of these reflected the vested interests of hostile camps within sociology, psychology, and linguistics, the main disciplines in which the (then) new field of conversation analysis was already having a significant, if controversial impact after little more than ten years in business.

Others were more straightforward in their dislike of the book, and I’ll never forget the one that said ‘people are already cynical enough about politicians without publishing this kind of stuff.’

A KEY CROPS UP ON A CROATIAN BEACH
By the time the twenty-second rejection came in, we were on family holiday on the Makarska riviera, where I met a British school teacher who was grappling with the problem of how to get another new subject (media studies) across to her pupils.

She was complaining about something I knew all too well from my background in sociology, namely that most of the available literature was relentlessly Marxist in approach, and she was having trouble finding anything that took a took a different line.

When I told her about the clapping research and Our Masters’ Voices, she was extremely encouraging and said that it sounded just the kind of thing they needed.

She also had a practical suggestion. Methuen were just starting a new series of books on communication studies, had I tried them and, if not, why not send them a copy of the manuscript when I got back to Oxford?

Without either of us realising it at the time, she had handed me the key to the door that had so far refused to open.

FATE COMES TO THE RESCUE
I thought no more about it until about a week later. I was back in college having lunch for the first time since getting home. In the common room afterwards, I sat down for coffee with a colleague from the Psychology Department who had a guest with him.

She was an editor with a firm of publishers, and not just any old publishers, but one that was very fresh in my mind: Methuen!

“Don't disappear until I get back” I blurted out as I sprinted back to my office. Five minutes later, the manuscript was in her brief case.

No, she wasn’t in charge of the new series on communication studies, but knew who was and would make sure it landed on the right desk as soon as she got back to London.

A few weeks later, I signed the contract with Methuen – 23rd time lucky.

My only regret is that I didn't exchange names and addresses with the teacher on the beach in Croatia, so I've never been able to thank her for mentioning Methuen and their interest in communication studies.

If she hadn't, it might never have occurred to me to thrust the manuscript into the hands of my colleague's lunch-time visitor.

OTHER POSTS IN THE CLAPTRAP SERIES

• CLAPTRAP 1: Claptrap - the movie
• CLAPTRAP 2: Eureka!

• CLAPTRAP 3: News leaks out of the lecture theatre

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

EARLIER BLOG POSTS ON APPLAUSE INCLUDE:
• Obama on Kennedy got more applause than ‘normal’
• Thatcher had more teleprompter troubles than Obama
• How to stay awake during a repetitive ceremony
• Disputing the meaning of applause
• Rhetoric wins applause for questioners on BBC Question Time
• Applause for Dimbleby’s questions on BBC Question Time
• Obama’s rhetoric identifies with Martin Luther King but appeals to a wider audience
• Obama’s inauguration rhetoric won approval for some uncomfortable messages
• Rhetoric and applause in Obama’s inaugural speech as a measure of what the audience liked best