Friday November 20, 2009

More soundbites

RAMBLINGS
By DR LIM CHIN LAM

THE article entitled “Obama’s soundbites” by Ben Feller in MOE (Oct 16, 2009) set my mind rambling. Yes, I shall follow up on it. No, my piece will not be a know-how manual but a rambling assemblage of anecdotes and trivia on who-did-or-does-what. Let us look at some aspects of making a speech or announcement or proclamation – calling for attention, addressing the audience, delivering the message, making a point, etc.

Addressing the audience

In old England, the town-crier would go round ringing a bell while calling out, “Oyez! Oyez!” (Old French: imperative, second person plural, of oir “to hear”) before making an announcement. The equivalent call in pre-Norman times must have been “Hear ye! Hear ye!” In Islam, the bilal or muezzin calls the faithful to prayer five times a day. Long before there were microphones and amplifiers and loudspeakers, the bilal would of necessity be one chosen for his stentorian voice.

In most parts of the world, one formally addresses the audience before making a speech. The usual form of address in English would be “Ladies and gentlemen”. A dignitary or guest of honour would, of course, be mentioned first.

In Malaysia, a speaker at an official function begins, if the speaker is a Muslim, with greetings of peace and compassion and blessing (as salaamu ‘alaikum, wa rahmat u’llahi, wa barakaatuh) before he addresses all the dignitaries and officials by rank and title and in order of protocol, and finally “ladies and gentlemen”. Such a lengthy address, even before the text of the speech, could take a few minutes, but – no matter – it is protocol and etiquette.

I remember one occasion at the welcoming dinner of a sports association when a self-important minor official complained about his having been left out of the pre-dinner address. He was so miffed that he left in a huff – and without dinner.

What of the speaker? The British monarch uses we (the royal “we”) for the first-person singular pronoun instead of the common “I”. Here in Malaysia, the first-person pronoun for royalty is beta, and that for the commoner addressing royalty is patek.

I have to add that there are situations which do not require any special way of addressing the audience. Example: “Listen, you guys, ...” (heard in Edmonton, Canada, where I learnt that the term guys can mean “boys and girls, and men and women”).

And for emergency situations – Mayday! Mayday! (representing a pronunciation of French m’aidez “help me”) – there is even no need to address any person in particular!

The message

The message could be in the form of a report, a harangue (as by a demagogue like Adolf Hitler), a declaration of war, a call to defy and fight (as by Winston Churchill), or a call for change (as by Barack Obama). Each of these forms requires a different vocabulary and a different strategy in delivering the message.

The delivery

In days of yore – before telegraphy and telephony and real-time audio-visual communication over the ether – messages to faraway places were necessarily delivered in person or through a messenger. I do wonder about the messengers – their job, like cigarettes, must have been hazardous to health. Think of Pheidippides who, after the Battle of Marathon where the Greeks defeated the invading Persians in 490BC, reportedly ran 42km to Athens to announce Nike! (“Victory”) – and then collapsed from exhaustion and died. (Note to aspiring athletes: Pheidippedes had no training for the run!) Think also of a messenger delivering an unwelcome message (e.g. his master’s demand of a surrender or of a tribute). On delivering the message, he was likely to be killed on the spot by the irate recipient!

Effectiveness of delivery

Diction (“the manner of enunciation in speaking or singing”) determines how one rates the speaker. “An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him. The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him,” so says Prof Henry Higgins (in the musical My Fair Lady). The North Americans may be no better. Just see the movies and hear some of the actors mumbling away. The mumbling is supposed to pass for speech?

Oratory (“the art of and eloquence in public speaking”) adds to the effectiveness of a message. It is said that the orator and statesman Demosthenes (383-322BC), who stoutly defended the independence of Athens against Philip of Macedon, honed his oratorical skill by practising speaking with his mouth full of pebbles. (Readers may recall a parallel in the musical My Fair Lady, where Eliza Doolittle is made to practise speaking with a mouthful of marbles – with Prof Henry Higgins at hand to replace any marble she swallows!)

Oratory plus rhetoric (“the art of using language impressively or persuasively”) – what feats the both can achieve! Barack Obama illustrated this point when, initially against all odds, he succeeded in getting elected as the first black president of the United States. Winston Churchill is another exemplar. He was Britain’s Prime Minister during World War II. In the early days of the war, when much of Europe had fallen to Nazi Germany, he galvanised a beleaguered nation to fight on alone against the Nazi juggernaut. Listen to him speak: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

“The nation had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to give the roar.”

In the ending days of the war, with the Allied Forces closing in on Berlin, he was able to say: “We have tracked the Nazi beast to its lair.” Of Churchill’s achievement, then US President John F. Kennedy best summed it up (on April 9, 1963, when he conferred honorary citizenship on him): “He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.”

Emphasising a point

It is not unusual to emphasise a point in a speech or even in a conversation. In the latter context, the interspersing of “you see” (or “you know”) in the conversation is not the way to make a point. After a while, you know, I begin, you know, to tot up – silently of course, you know – the number of “you see’s” that have been used, you know. What of the message? Oops, I got distracted, counting. Equally ineffective is to start by saying: “I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times.”

Back to Ben Feller’s article cited above. He reported that President Obama in his speeches was wont to use the stock phrase, “Let me be clear”, or some variation thereof. There is nothing wrong about that. At least, Obama was clear on that point, as was Feller.

An earlier president, George Herbert Walker Bush, emphasised a point by saying: “Read my lips.” (Aside: Methinks it odd his reference to anatomical parts. Maybe he was being aware of the dealings of the early settlers with the native peoples of the New World – with the natives accusing that “white man speak with forked tongue.”)

On the matter of emphasising a message, I have my favourite, viz the opening lines of a speech by Prof A. Oppenheim (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya, then in Singapore) to an assembly of freshmen: “First I tell you what I am going to tell you, then I tell you what I want to tell you, and then I tell you what I have told you.” The message was perhaps verbose, but the delivery was indeed very telling!

Parting remarks

There we now have the low-down on making a speech – or have we? Note how the rambling mind has worked – it wandered from my usual terrain of grammar and syntax and orthography and etymology and ... Sorry-lah.