This is a list of everything posted since the blog started in September 2008.
It's updated at the end of each month, and you can access direct links to each post by clicking HERE or from the monthly lists on the left.
JULY 2009
• Impersonators as masterful analysts of non-verbal communication
• Televised interviews and political communication
• Thatcher had more teleprompter troubles than Obama
• Jargon & gobbledygook refresher course
• How many numbers can you get into a minute?
• Will The Times be investigating Lord Rees-Mogg’s House of Lords expenses?
• Why is the MoD involved in planning Harry Patch’s funeral?
• Clarke has more to say about Brown than a few weeks ago
• Book plugging news
• Why doesn’t Amazon have a Spanish site?
• Media debilitated by swine flu news pandemic
• More standup comedy from Gordon Brown
• Standing ovation for Gordon Brown after anecdotes about Reagan, Cicero and Demosthenes
• Gordon Brown’s tough decisions and/or rehearsal for defeat
• White paint, red lights and fuel conservation
• Are you ahead of reading this post?
• Nudging in a more enlightened direction
• Moon rhetoric from Neil Armstrong, JFK & Werner von Braun
• Rhetoric revival?
• Book plugging
• How to stay awake during a repetitive ceremony
• BBC plug-a-book shows: how and why is so much offered to so few?
• Puzzle-Solution formats
• BBC rediscovers the 'Lost Art of Oratory' (again)
• Welcome to visitors from the BBC website
• D-Day memorabilia from Normandy to Lüneburg
• More on body language & non-verbal behavior
• Guinea pigs
• Non-verbal communication
• A commentator likely to keep his job
• Non-verbal communication and height
• Welcome to visitors from the BBC website
• How to use video to study body language, verbal & non-verbal communication
• Is the 'Daily Telegraph' borrowing from blogs?
• More bad news for Gordon Brown
• Translation and fantasies of global domination
• Pious and expensive twaddle from strong man Straw
• There’s no such thing as a boring subject
JUNE 2009
• Monty Python, conversation and turn-taking
• Margaret Thatcher, body language and non-verbal communication
• NLP: No Linguistic Proof
• Body language and non-verbal communication video
• The 250 posts landmark
• Another body language & non-verbal communication cartoon
• 'Check against delivery'
• Body language, non-verbal communication and the myth about folded arms & defensiveness
• Another expenses dilemma
• The urgent need for EU directives on tea-making and lunch times
• Expenses?
• Imagery worthy of Obama in speech by the Governor of the Bank of England
• News on BBC radio is sometimes very good indeed
• Dudley Moore’s ‘Little Miss Muffet’ by Benjamin Britten
• BBC Television News slideshow Quiz
• No flies on Obama!
• ‘Sound-formed errors’ and humour
• BBC Television News informs, educates and entertains without slides!
• Politician answers a question: an exception that proves the rule
• Combining rhetoric and imagery to get your point across
• Did the MP's manure come by appointment?
• Interview techniques, politicians and how we judge them
• Banksy officially on show in Bristol
• Is the media no longer interested in what goes on in parliament?
• “Labour’s not for turning” – Peter Hain
• Presidential heights
• Why it suited Brown and Blair to take House of Lords reform no further
• Monty Python’s Election Night Special
• Euro-election coverage: was the BBC’s graphical overkill a violation of its charter?
• Lord Mandelspin strikes again
• Brown does a better job than Obama at the 65th anniversary of D-Day
• How Caroline Flint gave the game away about expecting a post in the cabinet
• Gordon Brown’s honesty about the death of New Labour
• D-Day 65th Anniversary (2): a reminder for Sarkozy and a challenge for Obama
• D-Day 65th Anniversary: (1) A British soldier returns to Gold Beach
• The end of free speech?
• Obama: Echoes of Berlin in Cairo
• Inspiring speech for polling day by Peter Sellers
• Pre-delicate hitches from the White House
• Body language and non-verbal communication
• 'Pre-delicate hitches' from Brown as he avoids answering a question about the Queen
• The end of the beginning
• How NOT to use PowerPoint
• Why has Gordon Brown become a regular on the Today programme?
MAY 2009
• Ronald Reagan's moving tribute on the 40th anniversary of D Day
• Driving a car can make you look younger than you really are
• Planning to say 'um' and 'uh'
• The ‘delicacy’ of Mrs Clinton’s ‘consequences’ for North Korea
• Clinton on North Korea: "There are consequences to such actions"
• Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Oscar acceptance speech
• Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor received five times more applause than ‘normal’
• Two tips for David Cameron after today’s speech on political change
• Bishops' attendance rates and allowances in the House of Lords
• Climbing out of the manure?
• Since when were Archbishops experts on democracy?
• Disputing the meaning of applause
• House of Lords expenses: Lord Rees-Mogg on gravy trains
• House of Lords expenses
• Goodbye from Mr Speaker
• What a fine Speaker!
• What a poor speaker!
• Sky Sports swindle
• Is the MPs' expenses scandal a hidden legacy of Thatcherism?
• Rhetoric wins applause for questioners on BBC Question Time
• Applause for Dimbleby's questions on BBC Question Time
• The liveliest Question Time ever?
• Why it's so easy for politicians not to answer interviewers' questions - and what should be done about it
• MPs expenses claims merely reflect British attitudes towards home ownership
• Well, well Wells!
• A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s questions
• UK Speechwriters' Guild
• Gordon Brown's interview technique: the tip of a tedious iceberg
• Eye contact, public speaking and the case of President Zuma
• Chicago!
• Weatherization
• Notes from a large continent
• Are there more longer words in American English than in British English?
• Virgin mile-high poetry
APRIL 2009
• The Turnip Prize
• What’s the difference between a flu 'pandemic' and a flu 'epidemic'?
• Oxford professor models jeans
• A great source of videos for anyone interested in speaking and presentation
• A Tory leader's three evasive answers to the same question
• Jobsworthy News: Council official to walk along a path that doesn’t exist
• Was Kenneth in Wallanderland worth a BAFTA?
• A Labour leader with no interest in spin!
• David Cameron's attack on the Budget used some well-crafted rhetoric
• Gordon Brown seems to agree that Labour is ‘savage’ and ‘inhuman’?
• Poems for St George's Day
• Inspiring banking imagery for Budget day from Martin Luther King
• Budget speech boredom and television news tedium
• When the young Paddy Ashdown surprised himself by the power of his own rhetoric
• Obama’s rhetoric identifies with Martin Luther King but appeals to a wider audience
• A day when LibDems cheered at being told they all read a broadsheet newspaper
• Time for Gordon Brown to say "sorry" to savers
• Burnham, Kinnock and the danger of speaking in a sports stadium
• Derek Draper – another psycho-therapist who talks too much and listens too little?
• A smear that never was
• Derek Draper breaks a basic rule of conversation
• INTERLUDE
• Gordon Brown’s G20 address ignores an important tip from Winston Churchill
• Is there an open-mouthed school of acting?
MARCH 2009
• Gordon Brown is finding the Jacqui Smith expenses story more ‘delicate’ than he says
• ‘The Lost Art of Oratory’ by a BBC executive who helped to lose it in the first place
• Another Tory speech that marked the beginning of the end for a prime minister
• Rhetorical techniques and imagery in Hannan’s attack on Gordon Brown – edited highlights
• Did the media ignore Hannan because they think speeches are ‘bad television’?
• Does Daniel Hannan’s attack on Brown tell us what makes a speech memorable?
• UK media slowly wakes up to Daniel Hannan’s speech
• Media Coverage of Daniel Hannan’s attack on Gordon Brown
• It’s time Brown stopped recycling other people’s lines
• Daniel Hannan v. Gordon Brown at the European Parliament
• Jargon and gobbledygook comedy sketch
• Check the fixtures and fittings before you speak
• Why haven't the Lib Dems learnt from Obama’s use of the internet?
• If Bill Gates doesn’t read bullet points from PowerPoint slides ...
• An imaginative innovation in a PowerPoint presentation?
• ‘From Stalin to Mr Bean’: putting two parts of a contrast in the right order
• How to improve impact by sequence, repetition and a rhetorical technique
• Brown’s ‘poetry’ heads up news of his speech to Congress
• Unexpected poetry in Gordon Brown's speech to the US Congress
• The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation
• Gordon Brown’s model example of how to express condolences
February 2009
• The day Barack Obama discovered his powers of oratory and rhetoric
• How to make reading a slide sound interesting
• PowerPoint style presentation continues to dominate BBC News – courtesy Robert Peston (again)
• The 'magic' of Oscar acceptance speeches
• Does Mrs Clinton really know someone everywhere she goes?
• Personality cult as an antidote to tribalism?
• Kenya holiday reading
JANUARY 2009
• Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose is the fairest democracy of all ?
• Rhetoric and imagery in President Obama’s inauguration speech
• The good news from the House of Lords
• Memorable lines in President Obama's inaugural speech?
• The great camcorder con-trick
• 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
• A line I don't want to hear in today's speech by President Obama
• The enduring challenge and importance of funeral orations
• Has talking the economy down become a dangerous self-fulfilling prophesy?
• Kate Winslet ignores Paul Hogan’s advice to award winners
• Slidomania epidemic contaminates another BBC channel
• How would Obama's rhetoric and oratory sound from a London back street?
• Clinton, Palin and the legacy of Margaret Thatcher
• 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 II. ‘ The Iron Lady’
• Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of charismatic woman: Part I. Cultural and vocal challenges
• “May we bring hope” – 30 years since Margaret Thatcher took office as Prime Minister
DECEMBER 2008
• Ready made words for Mr Obama from a previous president’s inaugural speech
• Neutrality in the Queen’s Christmas speech
• What did Santa say before “Ho, ho ho!”
• You don’t have to be Barack Obama to use rhetoric and imagery
• High-risk practical joke for an office Christmas party speech
• End of year poll on PowerPoint presentations
• Obama’s rhetoric renews UK media interest in the ‘lost art’ of oratory
• Gordon’s gaffe explained
• The Office Christmas Party Speech: roads to failure and success
• The Queen's Speech, 2008
• Rhetoric, oratory and Barack Obama's 'The Speech', 2004
• "There's nothing wrong with PowerPoint - until there's an audience"
• What’s in a place name?
NOVEMBER 2008
• Content-free sermon by Alan Bennett
• 50 years since Peter Sellers recorded his memorable political speech
• Talking the economy up
• Talking the economy down
• Why lists of three: mystery, magic or reason?
• Tom Peters: High on rhetoric but low on content?
• Bobby Kennedy nearly got it right about Obama
• ‘Reliable sources' on where Obama’s 'Yes we can' came from
• Will there be any ‘rhetorical denial’ from the Obama camp?
• The Queen’s Speech: an exception that proves the ruler
• Rhetoric & imagery in Obama's victory speech
• Not Clinton, not McCain but Obama
• How the BBC handled one complaint about Ross
OCTOBER 2008
• Another BBC News Slideshow
• Don't put the clocks back
• BBC Television News: produced for or by morons?
• Experience and inexperience in presidential campaigns
• Presidential debates – tedious television but better than commercials
• A secret of eternal youth?
• PowerPoint Peston
• Hair today, win tomorrow: baldness and charisma
• Pesky Peston?
• ConVincing Cable
• 'Mature, grown-up and statesmanlike' at the lectern
SEPTEMBER 2008
• Cameron takes to the lectern in a crisis
• Objects as visual aids
• Powerpoint comes to church
• Mediated speeches -- whom do we really want to hear?
• Wisdom of forethought?
• Time for Cameron to surf applause?
• Did Gordon Brown take my advice?
• Eternity, eternity and eternity
• More tips for Gordon Brown
• Tips for Gordon Brown's conference speech
Impersonators as masterful analysts of non-verbal communication
The recent debate on various blogs about some of the myths about body language and non-verbal communication (on which see HERE and HERE) has reminded me of a minor frustration from my days as a full-time academic.When I worked in Oxford during the 1970s-80s, there were quite a few social psychologists doing research into body language and non-verbal communication.
Although they were always good company and interesting to talk to over lunch, they knew and I knew that there were some quite important methodological differences between their approach and that of conversation analysts like me.
Put briefly, and from my point of view, they didn't seem to let empirical data constrain their claims to the same extent as we did.
Invite an impersonator to give a seminar?
Some of the people I knew used to arrange for visiting academics to speak at their regular seminars, and I was continually trying to persuade them to invite Mike Yarwood. He wasn’t an academic, but was the top showbiz impersonator at the time (and, if I were still there today, I’d no doubt be trying to get them to invite Rory Bremner, for the same reason).
As for why I thought Yarwood would have some interesting things to say, it was because, for his impersonations to convince the mass television audience so successfully, he must have developed some very effective techniques for observing the way celebrities speak and behave – and for analyzing at such fine levels of detail that he was then able to reproduce instantly recognisable versions of them in his own performances.
In fact, as far as I could see, he must have been better at it than those of us who were supposed to be ‘experts’, and should therefore be able to teach us a thing or two that would help us to improve our own observational skills.
Some of the people I knew used to arrange for visiting academics to speak at their regular seminars, and I was continually trying to persuade them to invite Mike Yarwood. He wasn’t an academic, but was the top showbiz impersonator at the time (and, if I were still there today, I’d no doubt be trying to get them to invite Rory Bremner, for the same reason).
As for why I thought Yarwood would have some interesting things to say, it was because, for his impersonations to convince the mass television audience so successfully, he must have developed some very effective techniques for observing the way celebrities speak and behave – and for analyzing at such fine levels of detail that he was then able to reproduce instantly recognisable versions of them in his own performances.
In fact, as far as I could see, he must have been better at it than those of us who were supposed to be ‘experts’, and should therefore be able to teach us a thing or two that would help us to improve our own observational skills.
What's the point?
My conversations with the psychologists about this always ended in failure, so we never did get to hear Mr Yarwood revealing any of his secrets.
In retrospect, I suspect my argument may have too threatening, or perhaps too undiplomatic, for them to agree to invite him to a seminar.
When they asked “Why?”, “What would the point of that be?”, etc., my reply went along the following lines:
“Because his observations and analyses have to be accurate enough not just to describe their behaviour in detail, but to be able to reproduce it so effectively that anyone can recognize who it is. If Yarwood gets it wrong, his shows will fail and he’ll be out of a job, whereas academics can be wrong for the next 30+ years and still get paid.”
Such were the luxuries of the academic life.
My conversations with the psychologists about this always ended in failure, so we never did get to hear Mr Yarwood revealing any of his secrets.
In retrospect, I suspect my argument may have too threatening, or perhaps too undiplomatic, for them to agree to invite him to a seminar.
When they asked “Why?”, “What would the point of that be?”, etc., my reply went along the following lines:
“Because his observations and analyses have to be accurate enough not just to describe their behaviour in detail, but to be able to reproduce it so effectively that anyone can recognize who it is. If Yarwood gets it wrong, his shows will fail and he’ll be out of a job, whereas academics can be wrong for the next 30+ years and still get paid.”
Such were the luxuries of the academic life.
Televised interviews and political communication
If you’re a new reader of this blog and are interested in the problems associated with the growing importance of interviews as the major form of political communication in the UK, there are a number of posts, both serious and not so serious that you might like to catch up on.
They include the following, most of which are illustrated by short video clips:
• Why it’s so easy for politicians not to answer questions - and what should be done about it
• Interview techniques, politicians and how we judge them
• Gordon Brown’s interview technique: the tip of a tedious iceberg
• Why has Gordon Brown become a regular on the Today programme?
• A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s question
• A Tory leader’s three evasive answers to the same question
• A Labour leader with no interest in spin
• Politician answers a question: an exception that proves the rule
And here’s another classic from the early 1980s BBC series Not the Nine o’clock News:
They include the following, most of which are illustrated by short video clips:
• Why it’s so easy for politicians not to answer questions - and what should be done about it
• Interview techniques, politicians and how we judge them
• Gordon Brown’s interview technique: the tip of a tedious iceberg
• Why has Gordon Brown become a regular on the Today programme?
• A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s question
• A Tory leader’s three evasive answers to the same question
• A Labour leader with no interest in spin
• Politician answers a question: an exception that proves the rule
And here’s another classic from the early 1980s BBC series Not the Nine o’clock News:
Thatcher had more teleprompter troubles than Obama
Bert Decker has just posted a very interesting piece arguing that President Obama’s use of the teleprompter isn’t doing any favours for his reputation as a great communicator.
This doesn’t surprise me, because I’ve always thought it a rather mixed blessing since seeing Margaret Thatcher’s performance deteriorate after she moved from using a script on a lectern to reading from teleprompter screens.
Before 1982, she never used a teleprompter. But, on seeing Ronald Reagan using it in a masterly speech to both houses of parliament that year, she was apparently so impressed that she told her aides that she wanted one too - and, a few months later she tried it out at the annual conference of the Conservative Party.
The immediate result was a dramatic fall in the amount of applause she received. In her 1981 Conference speech, she’d achieved the astonishing average of one burst of applause for every three sentences she uttered. A year later, aided, or rather abetted, by the teleprompter, her applause rate fell by about 35%.
One reason for this was that it interfered with an extremely regular part her delivery. When using a script on a lectern, she would routinely lower her eyes and head towards the text during the last two or three syllables as she approached a completion point (e.g. the end of the second part of a contrast or the third item in a list).
If anyone in the audience still wasn't sure that she’d finished and it was time to respond (i.e, applaud), any such doubt was eliminated by two more non-verbal signals: she would close her mouth tightly and audibly clear her throat.
In some of her speeches from a lectern, this didn’t just happen now and then, but on every single occasion she was applauded. You can see examples of the routine as she delivers two consecutive contrasts at the start of her third successful general election campaign in 1987:
Whereas this all worked pretty smoothly to trigger instantaneous applause, it was a very different story when Mrs Thatcher's eyes were fixed on teleprompter screens instead of a lectern. She no longer looked down towards the script as she came to a completion point, but gazed beyond the screens into thin air.
The removal of these decisive and unambiguous signals that she’d definitely finished and it was time to applaud meant that it didn’t happen as often as it did when could return her eyes to the lectern.
The line in this first example should have been guaranteed to get applause from any Tory party audience in 1982:
THATCHER “.. this is why we need nuclear weapons, because having them makes peace more secure.”
But, as you'll see, nothing happens, other than some rapid eye-blinking and a long pause from Mrs Thatcher before continuing, perhaps indicating that she’d both noticed and was surprised by the lack of applause:
In the next example, the audience does applaud after the second part of a contrast, but only after a delay of about half a second and then for noticeably less than the ‘standard’ 8 seconds (for more on ‘standard’ bursts of applause, see HERE) .
THATCHER: “We all want peace, but not peace at any price; peace with justice and freedom.”
Once the slight delay is over and the applause is underway, you can see that Mrs Thatcher half closes her mouth and then, looks down towards the lectern – after the applause had started rather than before it, as would have happened had she been reading from the lectern:
Although these may seem to be small details, there were so many of them in her 1982 conference speech that it's easy to pick out enough similar examples to be unsurprised that she got so much less applause than in the previous year.
For Mrs Thatcher, it brought with it other new, and rather odd-looking, changes to the way her eyes and body had previously moved. Sometimes, her eyes would remain fixed on one screen as her shoulders started moving towards the other one. Then, once the shoulders were in position, her head and eyes would dart very quickly and suddenly from one screen to the other, as if she wasn't going to take any chances about losing her place.
So this is why I started by saying that teleprompters are a mixed blessing for speakers. Few, including, it appears, President Obama can match Ronald Reagan's mastery of the technology. And some, like Margaret Thatcher, were considerably more effective reading from a script on sheets of paper resting on a lectern than when reading from transparent screens in front of them.
I first came across teleprompters when writing Our Masters' Voices 25 years ago. In those days, they used to be called 'sincerity machines' – and that, perhaps, is precisely the problem with them.
This doesn’t surprise me, because I’ve always thought it a rather mixed blessing since seeing Margaret Thatcher’s performance deteriorate after she moved from using a script on a lectern to reading from teleprompter screens.
Before 1982, she never used a teleprompter. But, on seeing Ronald Reagan using it in a masterly speech to both houses of parliament that year, she was apparently so impressed that she told her aides that she wanted one too - and, a few months later she tried it out at the annual conference of the Conservative Party.
The immediate result was a dramatic fall in the amount of applause she received. In her 1981 Conference speech, she’d achieved the astonishing average of one burst of applause for every three sentences she uttered. A year later, aided, or rather abetted, by the teleprompter, her applause rate fell by about 35%.
One reason for this was that it interfered with an extremely regular part her delivery. When using a script on a lectern, she would routinely lower her eyes and head towards the text during the last two or three syllables as she approached a completion point (e.g. the end of the second part of a contrast or the third item in a list).
If anyone in the audience still wasn't sure that she’d finished and it was time to respond (i.e, applaud), any such doubt was eliminated by two more non-verbal signals: she would close her mouth tightly and audibly clear her throat.
In some of her speeches from a lectern, this didn’t just happen now and then, but on every single occasion she was applauded. You can see examples of the routine as she delivers two consecutive contrasts at the start of her third successful general election campaign in 1987:
Whereas this all worked pretty smoothly to trigger instantaneous applause, it was a very different story when Mrs Thatcher's eyes were fixed on teleprompter screens instead of a lectern. She no longer looked down towards the script as she came to a completion point, but gazed beyond the screens into thin air.
The removal of these decisive and unambiguous signals that she’d definitely finished and it was time to applaud meant that it didn’t happen as often as it did when could return her eyes to the lectern.
The line in this first example should have been guaranteed to get applause from any Tory party audience in 1982:
THATCHER “.. this is why we need nuclear weapons, because having them makes peace more secure.”
But, as you'll see, nothing happens, other than some rapid eye-blinking and a long pause from Mrs Thatcher before continuing, perhaps indicating that she’d both noticed and was surprised by the lack of applause:
In the next example, the audience does applaud after the second part of a contrast, but only after a delay of about half a second and then for noticeably less than the ‘standard’ 8 seconds (for more on ‘standard’ bursts of applause, see HERE) .
THATCHER: “We all want peace, but not peace at any price; peace with justice and freedom.”
Once the slight delay is over and the applause is underway, you can see that Mrs Thatcher half closes her mouth and then, looks down towards the lectern – after the applause had started rather than before it, as would have happened had she been reading from the lectern:
Although these may seem to be small details, there were so many of them in her 1982 conference speech that it's easy to pick out enough similar examples to be unsurprised that she got so much less applause than in the previous year.
For Mrs Thatcher, it brought with it other new, and rather odd-looking, changes to the way her eyes and body had previously moved. Sometimes, her eyes would remain fixed on one screen as her shoulders started moving towards the other one. Then, once the shoulders were in position, her head and eyes would dart very quickly and suddenly from one screen to the other, as if she wasn't going to take any chances about losing her place.
So this is why I started by saying that teleprompters are a mixed blessing for speakers. Few, including, it appears, President Obama can match Ronald Reagan's mastery of the technology. And some, like Margaret Thatcher, were considerably more effective reading from a script on sheets of paper resting on a lectern than when reading from transparent screens in front of them.
I first came across teleprompters when writing Our Masters' Voices 25 years ago. In those days, they used to be called 'sincerity machines' – and that, perhaps, is precisely the problem with them.
Jargon & gobbledygook refresher course
Ahead of the holiday period, this video might help you to get your ducks in a row when it’s time to get up to the plate again going forward - and two earlier posts might help to get the issues up the flag pole HERE and HERE.
But Sky News can hardly claim to be innocent when it comes to telling us that something is happening ahead of something else when what they mean is 'before'.
But Sky News can hardly claim to be innocent when it comes to telling us that something is happening ahead of something else when what they mean is 'before'.
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