Public Speaking

“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” - Mark Twain

More concepts from the lecture series, Way with Words: the Medieval Sermon and the five-part essay. One of most tested forms of public speaking is the church sermon. Did you know that Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale were founded for the express purpose of training clergymen to give effective sermons? Over a thousand years of sermons, one pattern emerged as the “optimal” structure for addressing an audience and getting your message across. It contains six parts:

1. Theme (describe the topic of this talk)
2. Protheme (introduce the theme with a reference to scripture or other authoritative source)
3. Dilation (explain the reference you just cited)
4. Exemplum (provide an example or story)
5. Peroration (apply the story, what is the moral?)
6. Closing (request for action)

Here’s a brief example

1. Today I'd like to talk to you about Go-Kits.
2. According to the FEMA website, AreYouReady, “You may need to survive on your own after a disaster. This means having your own food, water, and other supplies in sufficient quantity to last for at least three days. Local officials and relief workers will be on the scene after a disaster, but they cannot reach everyone immediately.”
3. FEMA goes on to explain that, following a disaster, you might get help in hours or it might take days. This is NOT due to negligence or ill will on behalf of the government but rather this is just a fact of logistics. There could be millions of people in need of rescue and only a few hundred or at best thousands of emergency vehicles. It just takes time to clear the roads of debris and reach everyone.
4. During the great Kentucky Ice Storm of 2009, FEMA had "plenty of folks ready to go, but [were] are some limitations with roads closed and icy conditions." In effect the roads were too dangerous for the Emergency Teams to use! According to newspaper reports, “Some in rural Kentucky ran short of food and bottled water, and resorted to dipping buckets in a creek. … Rural communities feared it could be days or even weeks before [power company] workers got to areas littered with downed power lines.
5. Someday this might happen to you! No power, no water, and no rescue. You have no choice but to be resilient and survive on your own for at least three days.
6. I urge each and everyone one of you to go home today and build a three-day cache of food, water, flashlights, blankets, medicine and anything else you think you’ll need to survive while waiting for disaster responders to knock on your door.

Bottom Line

Many people are frustated when asked to give a talk. Where do I start? The formula above is the answer to this question. Just fill in the blanks.

Today college English courses teach a simplified version of the six-part sermon. It’s called the five-part essay. You have an opening introduction and a closing conclusion. The meat of your talk fills a three-part body. Why three? Because the human mind likes the number three and starts to become confused when asked to remember four things. To turn the six-part sermon into a five-part essay try merging parts 1 and 2 as the introduction or merging parts 5 and 6 into the conclusion.