In case anyone thinks that the last posting was intended as a criticism of Vince Cable’s rhetorical skill, I haven't forgotten that his most famous line came when, as acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, he produced a devastating contrast at Question Time in the House of Commons (see below).
If he had said that Mr Brown ‘had become more like Mr Bean than Stalin’, the contrast between a bumbling fool and an autocratic dictator would still have been there and would no doubt have raised a laugh or two.
But on that occasion, he got the order of the two parts of the contrast the right way round, and not only had a tremendous impact there and then, but also did his own longer term reputation no harm at all.
The line also inspired a purely visual representation of his point on you YouTube that can be seen HERE.
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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.
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.
Brown’s ‘poetry’ heads up news of his speech to Congress
The previous post highlighted the frequency with which Gordon Brown used 'poetic' devices, like alliteration and imagery, in his speech to the US Congress earlier this week.
When it comes to getting key messages across, the advantage of using these and other rhetorical techniques is that they are they much more likely to be noticed (and perhaps even remembered) by the audience than if the same point had been made in a more bland or mundane way.
I first discussed how the way a message is packaged in a speech can affect its chances of reaching a wider audience in my book Our Masters' Voices (1984), using examples from speeches by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and other leading politicians of the day.
Luckily for politicians, then and now, their audiences also include the media, whose reporters and editors react in much the same way as any other member of an audience, and are therefore likely to turn similar lines into prime-time soundbites.
A nice example of this came from the top of Sky News reports of Mr Brown’s speech to Congress, which opened by quoting his most-repeated alliterative phrase and one of his more powerful metaphors:
When it comes to getting key messages across, the advantage of using these and other rhetorical techniques is that they are they much more likely to be noticed (and perhaps even remembered) by the audience than if the same point had been made in a more bland or mundane way.
I first discussed how the way a message is packaged in a speech can affect its chances of reaching a wider audience in my book Our Masters' Voices (1984), using examples from speeches by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and other leading politicians of the day.
Luckily for politicians, then and now, their audiences also include the media, whose reporters and editors react in much the same way as any other member of an audience, and are therefore likely to turn similar lines into prime-time soundbites.
A nice example of this came from the top of Sky News reports of Mr Brown’s speech to Congress, which opened by quoting his most-repeated alliterative phrase and one of his more powerful metaphors:
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