The Four Parts of a Speech

If you want to be influential, you need to speak in public: you must be able to present your ideas and proposals effectively. It helps if you know the four parts of a speech. A speech is a combination of performance, prose, poetry, and storytelling.

The performance part of a speech involves standing confidently in front of a group, using vocal variety, purposeful movements, facial expressions and eye contact. If you are moderately afraid of standing in front of people, participating in a Toastmasters club is a good way to desensitize yourself. To practice with your voice, movements, expressions, and eye contact, you need stage time and feedback. A Toastmasters club will give you plenty of practice.

The prose part of a speech is the presentation of facts and ideas. If you've been through school and written essays, you have a good grounding for that. The danger is thinking that a speech is just a verbal presentation of an essay. An essay tends to shortchange feeling, but it is feeling that connects with people and helps them be receptive to your ideas. Feeling comes through the poetry and storytelling.

The poetry of a speech is the part that emphasizes the sounds of the words, the cadence, and the imagery. Winston Churchill provides an excellent example of the poetry of speech. He had his speeches typed out in lines. He could look down, read the next line to himself, look up, and say it. Typing speeches in lines not only made it easy for him to keep track of where he was in the text, it converted the speech into a kind of non-metrical, unrhymed poetry -- free verse intended to be spoken. The line breaks had to work with both meaning and breath.

Once the speech is in lines, it becomes easier to play with sounds. The most common techniques Churchill used were

• Antithesis: putting opposite ideas or words close to each other,
• Anaphora: beginning successive lines, or groups of lines, with the same word or phrase,
• Alliteration: starting syllables with the same consonant sounds, and
• Rhyme: ending stressed syllables with the same vowel and trailing consonant sounds. The rhymes are mostly internal, inside lines, not only at the ends.

The storytelling aspect of speeches is related to metaphor. The stories are not just literal illustrations of ideas. Although they contain specific details, stories are interpreted as applying generally, as being analogies. We understand other people and ourselves by our stories. We remember stories. Stories move us. We relate stories to our own lives.

Together, metaphor and story build connections, and since "meaning" means connections, it is the metaphors and stories in a speech that conveys the meaning. The facts and ideas of a speech cannot work in isolation, but must be connected through metaphor and story to have a meaning for your audience.

If you speak before groups, people will think of you as a leader. Speak well and you will magnify your influence. To speak well, you need to master all four parts of a speech.

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