Left Brain, Right Brain

The best speeches appeal to both sides of the brain. That is, they appeal to the creative, emotional aspect of the human mind as well as the factual and logical side.

This point was brought home to me recently when I watched the 1991 film Other People’s Money starring Gregory Peck and Danny DeVito. Only in this movie, Gregory Peck addresses his audience’s right-brain sensitivities with appeals to their humanity; DeVito uses left-brain facts to sell his point of view.

It’s worth watching these speeches. They are instructive on not only how to make different appeals, they also show how to handle a hostile audience and win them over.

Peck plays the role of the head of a New England wire and cable manufacturing company that is losing money, and DeVito plays a corporate raider who buys dying companies and liquidates them. The scene is a stockholders meeting, which is being held to determine who will take control of the company.

Peck speaks first and makes an emotional appeal to the audience, many of whom are his employees and neighbors.

“A business is worth more than the price of its stock,” he says. “It is the place where we earn our living, where we meet our friends and dream our dreams. It is in every sense the very fabric that binds out society together.”

Then DeVito, who just came into town in his limousine from the big city, takes the microphone and lays out a logical argument for voting his way. He tells them the company is dead and nothing can revive it.

“You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence.”

His appeal to the audience’s self-interest won in this battle of speeches, which are excellent examples of how to effectively appeal to both sides of the human brain.

Shorter is Sweeter

I couldn’t have said it more succinctly myself. Mark Allen’s Opinion piece “A Shorter Route to Communication” on NPR sings the praises of brevity. In this case, he’s talking about keeping to the point and cutting down verbiage in emails and other electronic communications. But this is good advice for speakers as well.

In my book, Seven Steps to the Podium , I point out that shorter is always better when it comes to speeches. Ever notice how audiences tend to get restless and inattentive after a speech goes on for longer than 20-25 minutes?

If a speaker is particularly gifted and a speech is well-crafted, audiences can stay engaged for much longer. But that kind of public speaking experience is a rarity. Most of the time, listeners are grateful when speakers get to their key message and wrap up their comments in 20 minutes or less.

So, like Mark Allen, the next time you have to endure a 45-minute speech that could have been delivered in 15, just put one word on the evaluation form: “Shorter.”

Crying over spilled grammar

It’s enough to make a Speechwonk shed a tear once in awhile. Listening to public discourse is not for the faint-hearted speechwriter. If it’s not a public speaker pairing the right subject with the wrong verb, it’s a pundit misusing a perfectly good word.

This is nothing new. As Ragan Communications’ Larry Ragan points out in a column he wrote in the 1960s, the English language has a troubled past.

One reason for this disturbing state of affairs is that the public schools don’t teach grammar any more. I found this out when I taught copyediting to a bunch of college seniors at a state university.

One student admitted to me that he had never had grammar in his K-12 years and that the entire subject was new to him. It was clear he was not alone in this predicament. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trying to teach the class grammar basics. But in one semester, it was a lost cause. I would have been better off sticking to quizzing them on the AP Stylebook.

I live and write in Texas, where the teaching of grammar in public schools became the subject of great controversy among members of the State Board of Education in 2008. Many more traditional educators wanted to bring back a singular focus on grammar in English/language arts classes. Many, who were described as more progressive, preferred a more subtle approach which would incorporate grammar instruction into writing exercises.

This is a very simplified explanation of what turned out to be a long and very drawn-out and vigorous debate. In the end, the traditionalists won, and I’m glad. Call me old-fashioned, but the correct use of grammar, punctuation and spelling is the nuts and bolts of the English language.

For the grammar-challenged, I recommend the excellent book When Words Collide: A Media Writer's Guide to Grammar and Style by Lauren Kessler and Duncan McDonald. It covers the subject nicely and in a very readable format.