On 8th November, the following appeared in the Guardian by Allegra Stratton, who had phoned me the previous day:
Strangest of all, there is a British political scientist who claims he has proof that the actual inspiration for the slogan is Bob the Builder (theme tune: "Can We Fix It?" Answer: "Yes We Can"). Max Atkinson, expert on political rhetoric and author of Lend Me Your Ears, said: "What's so mad about that? I have it on the authority of two very reliable sources."
Er, no. What I actually said when Ms Stratton phoned me about Yes we can and Bob the Builder was that I’d come across two other people who'd made the same connection and that, if true, it wasn’t too difficult to imagine how Mr Obama might have come across it or why he might have had a good reason to use it.
But word must have got around the Guardian offices, because my two allegedly "reliable sources" reappeard on 12th November in another article in the same paper by Alice Wignall:
At least one expert in political rhetoric is convinced: at the weekend, British speechwriter Max Atkinson said that "two very reliable sources" had confirmed that Bob inspired the slogan.
And at least one journalist working for the Sunday Sun in Newcastle must be a Guardian reader, as the same story was recycled again in today's edition:
Max Atkinson, former speech writer for Paddy Ashdown, said that “two very reliable sources” had confirmed to him that Bob was the inspiration for the slogan.
So, to put the record straight, I never said that I had either "proof" or "two reliable sources who had "confirmed" the possible link they were so obsessed with.
To the journalists, who turned this molehill of a comment (“two other people who’d made the same connection”) into a bit of a mountain (“two very reliable sources" and/or "proof"), and anyone else who might have read their misleading articles, all I would say is that I'm not particularly interested in where Mr Obama got the line from.
Much more interesting is the way he used it to prompt audience responses in some of his speeches and how both it and the responses are significantly different from the choruses that regularly peppered the speeches of Martin Luther-King.
And, if you want to keep an eye on what others might be writing about you, I'd recommend signing up with Google Alerts - without which none of these rather annoying articles would have come to my attention.
Will there be any ‘rhetorical denial’ from the Obama camp?
Effective speakers don’t always like to see their technical ability being noticed and analysed by others.
I first became aware of this back in 1984, when I published a book on the rhetorical techniques used by politicians to trigger applause in speeches (Our Masters’ Voices: The Language and Body Language of Politics).
It included a chapter on charisma, part of which used the rhetorical ability of Tony Benn, then at the forefront of the Labour Party’s lurch towards the far left, as an example of how technical skill at oratory can get politicians into prominent positions. Apparently, he didn’t like this at all, and went around telling people that audiences didn’t applaud him because of how he said things but because they agreed so much with what he was saying.
Years later, both of us appeared on the same television programme, for which I had recorded a piece illustrating the main rhetorical techniques with video clips from political speeches. When asked what he thought of this, Mr Benn replied “Well, it’s rubbish” and went on to elaborate as follows:
“I suppose you can analyse great speeches, but it’s a bit like analysing a great painting in terms of the chemical composition of the pigments on the canvas.”
If I’d been given a chance to respond, I’d have said “Yes, and how many other people could have come up with such a powerful simile (with alliteration bringing the image to a close) to make their point?”
At the start of the 1987 general election in Britain, David Owen, who was leader of the SDP (which had broken away from the Labour Party largely because the Bennite tendency had taken it so far to the left), announced that “Reason, not rhetoric will win this campaign.” So here he was using an alliterative contrast, one of the most important of all rhetorical techniques, to tell us that there wouldn’t be any rhetoric from the SDP.
This tendency of good communicators who use rhetoric effectively to deny that they are using it at all goes back at least as far as Shakespeare. Having started his Forum speech in Julius Caesar with a memorable 3-part list with third item longest (Friends, Romans and countrymen) and two powerful contrasts (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred within their bones), Mark Antony later uses another contrast to inform the audience that he, unlike Brutus, is no good at public speaking (I am no orator as Brutus it, but just a plain simple man), even though this is the most famous speech in one of the most famous plays in English literature.
Now that so many commentators, including me, are waxing lyrical about Mr Obama’s technical mastery of rhetoric, imagery and alliteration, it will be interesting to see if any of his aides start trying to tell us that his success in communicating with mass audiences has had more to do with what he says than how he says it.
I first became aware of this back in 1984, when I published a book on the rhetorical techniques used by politicians to trigger applause in speeches (Our Masters’ Voices: The Language and Body Language of Politics).
It included a chapter on charisma, part of which used the rhetorical ability of Tony Benn, then at the forefront of the Labour Party’s lurch towards the far left, as an example of how technical skill at oratory can get politicians into prominent positions. Apparently, he didn’t like this at all, and went around telling people that audiences didn’t applaud him because of how he said things but because they agreed so much with what he was saying.
Years later, both of us appeared on the same television programme, for which I had recorded a piece illustrating the main rhetorical techniques with video clips from political speeches. When asked what he thought of this, Mr Benn replied “Well, it’s rubbish” and went on to elaborate as follows:
“I suppose you can analyse great speeches, but it’s a bit like analysing a great painting in terms of the chemical composition of the pigments on the canvas.”
If I’d been given a chance to respond, I’d have said “Yes, and how many other people could have come up with such a powerful simile (with alliteration bringing the image to a close) to make their point?”
At the start of the 1987 general election in Britain, David Owen, who was leader of the SDP (which had broken away from the Labour Party largely because the Bennite tendency had taken it so far to the left), announced that “Reason, not rhetoric will win this campaign.” So here he was using an alliterative contrast, one of the most important of all rhetorical techniques, to tell us that there wouldn’t be any rhetoric from the SDP.
This tendency of good communicators who use rhetoric effectively to deny that they are using it at all goes back at least as far as Shakespeare. Having started his Forum speech in Julius Caesar with a memorable 3-part list with third item longest (Friends, Romans and countrymen) and two powerful contrasts (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred within their bones), Mark Antony later uses another contrast to inform the audience that he, unlike Brutus, is no good at public speaking (I am no orator as Brutus it, but just a plain simple man), even though this is the most famous speech in one of the most famous plays in English literature.
Now that so many commentators, including me, are waxing lyrical about Mr Obama’s technical mastery of rhetoric, imagery and alliteration, it will be interesting to see if any of his aides start trying to tell us that his success in communicating with mass audiences has had more to do with what he says than how he says it.
The Queen's Speech: an exception that proves the ruler
Here's something at the other end of the scale from previous blogs about Barack Obama's brilliance at oratory.
At the State Opening of Parliament on 3rd December, the Queen, as she does every year, will be reading out her government's legislative plans for the months ahead. Most commentators will be listening to the Speech to find out what Gordon Brown is going to be putting on the statute book in 2009.
How not to speak inspiringly
But you can also listen to it as a model of how not to give an inspiring speech.
Public speaking at its best depends both on the language used to package the key messages and the way it is delivered. Using rhetoric, maintaining eye contact with the audience, pausing regularly and in particular places, stressing certain words and changing intonation are all essential ingredients in the cocktail for conveying passion and inspiring an audience. This is why it is so easy to ‘dehumanise’ the speech of Daleks and other talking robots by the simple device of stripping out any hint of intonational variation and have them speak in a flat, regular and monotonous tone of voice.
When it comes to sounding unenthusiastic and uninterested in inspiring an audience, the Queen’s Speech is an example with few serious competitors. She has no qualms about being seen to be wearing spectacles, which underline the fact that she is reading carefully from the script she holds so obviously in front of her. Nor is she in the least bit inhibited about fixing her eyes on the text rather than the audience. Then, as she enunciates the sentences, her tone is so disinterested as to make it abundantly clear that she is merely reciting words written by someone else and about which she has no personal feelings or opinions whatsoever.
This is, of course, how it has to be in a constitutional monarchy, where the head of state has to be publicly seen and heard as obsessively neutral about the policies of whatever political party happens to have ended up in power. The Queen knows, just as everyone else knows, that showing enthusiasm, or lack of it, about the law-making plans of her government would lead to a serious crisis that would be more than her job is worth. So, even when announcing plans to ban hunting with hounds, she managed not to convey the slightest hint of disappointment or irritation that a favorite pastime of her immediate family was about to be outlawed.
The Queen’s Speech is therefore an interesting exception to the normal rules of effective public speaking, and her whole approach to is a fine example of how to deal with those rare occasions when you have to conceal what you really feel about the things you are talking about. Another master of this was Mr McGregor, an official spokesman for the foreign office during the Falklands war, who made regular appearances of on television reading out progress reports in a flat, deadpan monotone – presumably because a vital part of his job was to give nothing away that might have encouraged or discouraged viewers, whether British or Argentinian, about how things were going in the South Atlantic.
How to prevent a civil war
Public speaking at its best depends both on the language used to package the key messages and the way it is delivered. Using rhetoric, maintaining eye contact with the audience, pausing regularly and in particular places, stressing certain words and changing intonation are all essential ingredients in the cocktail for conveying passion and inspiring an audience. This is why it is so easy to ‘dehumanise’ the speech of Daleks and other talking robots by the simple device of stripping out any hint of intonational variation and have them speak in a flat, regular and monotonous tone of voice.
When it comes to sounding unenthusiastic and uninterested in inspiring an audience, the Queen’s Speech is an example with few serious competitors. She has no qualms about being seen to be wearing spectacles, which underline the fact that she is reading carefully from the script she holds so obviously in front of her. Nor is she in the least bit inhibited about fixing her eyes on the text rather than the audience. Then, as she enunciates the sentences, her tone is so disinterested as to make it abundantly clear that she is merely reciting words written by someone else and about which she has no personal feelings or opinions whatsoever.
This is, of course, how it has to be in a constitutional monarchy, where the head of state has to be publicly seen and heard as obsessively neutral about the policies of whatever political party happens to have ended up in power. The Queen knows, just as everyone else knows, that showing enthusiasm, or lack of it, about the law-making plans of her government would lead to a serious crisis that would be more than her job is worth. So, even when announcing plans to ban hunting with hounds, she managed not to convey the slightest hint of disappointment or irritation that a favorite pastime of her immediate family was about to be outlawed.
The Queen’s Speech is therefore an interesting exception to the normal rules of effective public speaking, and her whole approach to is a fine example of how to deal with those rare occasions when you have to conceal what you really feel about the things you are talking about. Another master of this was Mr McGregor, an official spokesman for the foreign office during the Falklands war, who made regular appearances of on television reading out progress reports in a flat, deadpan monotone – presumably because a vital part of his job was to give nothing away that might have encouraged or discouraged viewers, whether British or Argentinian, about how things were going in the South Atlantic.
How to prevent a civil war
A much more surprising case was Nelson Mandela’s first speech after being released from prison in 1990. Here was a highly effective communicator, whose words at his trial 27 years earlier are to be found in most books of great speeches, and who had had the best part of three decades to prepare an inspiring and memorable text. But it was not to be. As if modeling his performance on the Queen’s Speech, he buried his head in the script and spoke in a flat measured tone that came across as completely lacking in the kind of passion everyone was expecting from someone who had suffered so much and was held in such high regard by his audience.
Having waited for years for this historic event, anticipating something on a par with Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, I remember being disappointed and surprised by what I saw and heard from the balcony of City Hall in Cape Town. It was only later that it dawned on me that this was another case where rousing rhetoric would have been completely counter-productive. The political situation in South Africa was poised on a knife-edge and his release from prison had only happened at all because the apartheid regime was crumbling. It was a moment when anything more inspiring from Mandela might have come across as a call to arms and could easily have prompted an immediate uprising or civil war. But the political understanding with the minority white government was that the African National Congress would keep the lid on things for long enough to enable a settlement to be negotiated. As when the Queen opens parliament, Mr Mandela knew exactly what he was doing, how to do it and that he could not have done otherwise.
Having waited for years for this historic event, anticipating something on a par with Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, I remember being disappointed and surprised by what I saw and heard from the balcony of City Hall in Cape Town. It was only later that it dawned on me that this was another case where rousing rhetoric would have been completely counter-productive. The political situation in South Africa was poised on a knife-edge and his release from prison had only happened at all because the apartheid regime was crumbling. It was a moment when anything more inspiring from Mandela might have come across as a call to arms and could easily have prompted an immediate uprising or civil war. But the political understanding with the minority white government was that the African National Congress would keep the lid on things for long enough to enable a settlement to be negotiated. As when the Queen opens parliament, Mr Mandela knew exactly what he was doing, how to do it and that he could not have done otherwise.
Displaying neutrality
So as well as listening to the content of the Queen’s Speech on 3rd December, it is also worth close inspection as an object lesson on how to address an audience if you’re ever in a position of having to convey complete neutrality and detachment. Or, if you’d rather rise to the much more usual challenge of trying to inspire your audience, pay close attention to the way she delivers it -- and then do exactly the opposite.
(Click here or on title to see her in action at the State Opening of Parliament in 2006).
Max Atkinson is author of Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy: Seven Essential Steps to Success ( 2008), and Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations (2004) and was a speechwriter and coach to Paddy Ashdown (website: www.speaking.co.uk).
So as well as listening to the content of the Queen’s Speech on 3rd December, it is also worth close inspection as an object lesson on how to address an audience if you’re ever in a position of having to convey complete neutrality and detachment. Or, if you’d rather rise to the much more usual challenge of trying to inspire your audience, pay close attention to the way she delivers it -- and then do exactly the opposite.
(Click here or on title to see her in action at the State Opening of Parliament in 2006).
Max Atkinson is author of Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy: Seven Essential Steps to Success ( 2008), and Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations (2004) and was a speechwriter and coach to Paddy Ashdown (website: www.speaking.co.uk).
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