#4 – How to Say It – “Barren Words and Metaphors”

I delivered this speech on Monday July 7th, 2008.

The goals of this speech

The purpose of the “How to Say It” speech is to use words that best describe what the speaker wants to say. Some instructions in the Competent Communication(CC) manual are ‘Be Specific’: “You want concrete, specific words that communicate what you mean.” ‘Vivid Words’: [Your words] should stir the audience’s imagination and be so descriptive that the audience can visualize what you are saying.” The manual also suggests using figurative language(metaphors, similes), using words economically, correctly, and watching for jargon(“Use specialized terminology only when speaking to people familiar with those terms.”).

Because the use of words was the goal of the speech, I decided to talk about one of my favorite topics – the language of poetry.

Preparation

Compared to my other speeches, this one had been bouncing around in my head without definition for a long time. Around four weeks had passed since my speech, and for four weeks I, in brief moments, pondered what my next speech would be. Finally, a few days before I was set to give the speech(right around Thursday) I knew I had really buckle down and force myself to build my speech. First, I narrowed down the topic – I was going to speak about poetry; I knew my topic would be something something language, but I wasn’t sure how to frame it – so I began to consider what I wanted to say.

I used the idea of the ‘big’ purpose and the ‘little’ purpose I learned in my previous speech. After I had figured out what specifically I wanted to talk about, it became easier to begin creating modules(parts) for the speech. But when I say easier, I don’t mean I just did it lickity-split…This speech was hard to come up with! I came up with the opening quote right away, but after that it was a wash. Only on Sunday, the day before the speech was I able to come up with a real organization, and some real modules. To say the least, I was a bit frightened. Here I was, set to deliver a speech the next day, and I had just barely written out a first draft(and it was a first draft). I went over it a few times on Sunday but life took me out of the house and away from my speech.

Monday morning, I asked my brother for his opinion, and got a few organizational ideas. But this sure wasn’t going to work the way it was – I had to do something. So Monday mid-morning(after breakfast at Ihop with the brother) I sat and began saying the speech that I had. It worked. As soon as I began to say the thing aloud, pieces began to fall into place; I could immediately pick out the parts that were awkward and rearrange them so they made sense, further, I could time parts of the speech and figure out what needed to be cut(I did quite a lot of cutting that morning, to the benefit of the speech; it seems most cuts are beneficial in speech-making). After getting a decent version of the speech, I began to try to stand and say it. In the middle of the day, from 1:30-5pm, I had class, so no speech practice there. I came home after class and said the speech once or twice, and I had to go. I was slightly nervous, my practice sessions were not up-to-par; I was having brain farts, memory lapses, my delivery was a little flat, and I didn’t have ANY of the speech memorized. All I had was the outline wallowing around in my brain. I decided to take my whole speech up with me(I’d have to ‘read’ the opening quote and the poem in the end anyway).

Before the speech

I got to the meeting room a little early and was shocked to find several unfamiliar faces. With the leaving of our club president(Brett Yollis), a new guard has stepped in. There were two people I knew from before, but everybody else was veteran Toastmasters members, except for one guest. Perfect! I thought, not being sarcastic, I’ll be speaking to strangers. It has been a running concern for me that I don’t get too comfortable in Toastmasters speaking only to people I’ve met before. I think having these strange new people at the meeting would have been scary during my first speeches, but this is my fourth speech, I’m ready to embrace the situation. I was the second of four speakers, this is the speech I gave when I was called to the podium:

The speech itself: “Barren Words and Metaphors”

I’d like to start by reading a quote from Milan Kundera’s novel, Immortality:

…And the body was more than what is visible in a mirror; the most valuable part was inside. That’s why references to the body’s organs and functions became a favorite part of her vocabulary. If she wanted to express that her lover had driven her to desperation the night before, she would say, “The moment he left I had to throw up.” Even though she often talked of vomiting, Agnes wasn’t sure whether her sister had ever actually done so. Vomiting was not Laura’s truth but her poetry: a metaphor, a lyrical image of pain and disgust.

Language, like time, is an invention. It is a random assortment of sounds organized in a way that allows us to communicate. Words don’t exist in the world outside of the human mind; we’ve created them to label objects outside ourselves and the feelings inside. Words have the ability to abstract reality or lead to a deeper connection with it; to show this, I’ll first show the arbitrary quality of “barren words”, second, we’ll see how poetry can impregnate language, finally I will give an example, demonstrating the potency of using poetic language in place of “barren words”, all of with the hope of persuading you that only through art, in this case poetry, can we truly communicate.

To start, merely comparing different languages is enough to show the arbitrary nature of words; we can take the adjective “sad” as an example, in Russian, it is translated “pechalne” in Spanish, “triste”. It is clear that these words sound completely different, but they refer to the same feeling, right? I don’t think so. Similarly, in English, when we think of the word “bad” it is meaningless unless defined in relation to its antonym, “good”. this brings us to the language of poetry; a language which lives beyond the dictionary. If instead of someone saying they had a “bad” date, she says “He was a pig,” we understand much better what she intends to communicate.

A while ago, I was teaching poetry to a group of high school students most of whom were Spanish speakers. One of the poems we read was called “Puedo escribir” or “Tonight I can write” by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda – it’s a poignant poem where the poet is reminiscing about a former lover, and in the the course of his poem purging her from his heart. We read the Spanish and the English side-by-side and when we were done, one of the questions I asked was how the poem was affected by the translation. A student raised her hand and offered that in Spanish the poem seemed more passionate. It was difficult to explain how until we took a common saying in Spanish, “te quiero” and its English translation, literally, “I want you” or figuratively “I love you”. There is no way to translate the mixing of loving tenderness and uncontrollable lust that te quiero represents to English. Translating good poetry is impossible because like in a painting, there can be no way to equal the exact combination of shades in any other but the original.

This is the language of poetry – one we use everyday. Our final example comes from a poem called “Getting Through” by Deborah Pope, who instead of saying the meaningless “breaking up is hard to do”, writes:

Like a car stuck in gear,
a chicken too stupid to tell
its head is gone,
or sound ratcheting on
long after the film
has jumped the reel,
or a phone
ringing and ringing
in the house they have all
moved away from,
through rooms where dust
is a deepening skin,
and the locks unneeded,
so I go on loving you…(the poem continues)

The language of poetry exposes words, poking at meanings we knew they had, but could never express. Like the first quote I read to you, Agnes’s sister exchanged “my lover had driven me to desperation” for “The moment he left I had to throw up” because only the idea of nausea and vomiting could truly express how she was feeling. The mere adjectives given to something as open-ended as emotions cannot be very descriptive. We need more! That’s why we put poetic language in place of barren words and call it metaphor.

Afterwards, and for the future

The speech went well, I feel like I held control of the audience and even got reactions at the correct moments. Over the course of my four speeches, my feeling for the audience seems to be improving – it’s becoming easier to know when to pick it up, or change my tone, or cut out a part mid-speech. Also, I actively tried to keep my body language turned from high (as I usually have off the stage) to medium; there good moments where my hands rested on the podium and at my sides and this really helped me stay calm and collected, speaking slowly. The comment I took with me from my evaluator was that I didn’t make enough pauses/or pause long enough. I agree. Even though I did pause several times during my speech, I think there were moments which I could have savored more(at the same time, letting the audience catch up to my ideas). I finished my speech at around 6:45, which is perfect time for me.

A note I got from another member of the club who isn’t a big fan of poetry is not to present my ideas as facts because they aren’t to everybody. In a way, I think she’s right, but I do believe what I said in my speech, and though it’s not the only truth – I can argue that poetic language is the only way to communicate certain things using words. Still, her suggestion is well taken – it is important to always remember the audience when preparing and delivering a speech. In this case, it may have been useful to qualify certain suppositions differently.

I also got to be an evaluator during this meeting. Even though I’m a relatively new member, Brian Hebb, who was the Toastmaster for the meeting, let me evaluate a veteran member. I guess I did a good job because I was voted best evaluator of the meeting(maybe it’s because they knew it was my first time?). Evaluating was a fascinating experience; I had to listen very carefully to a speech and write opinions and answer to the questions in the manual at the same time. Then, in two or so minutes, I went up to the podium and relayed my findings – I tried to convey the good things about the speech mixed in with a few constructive criticisms, all with humor.

Both in my speech and during my evaluation I felt very comfortable speaking to the audience, this allowed me to share my thoughts articulately. Even outside of Toastmasters I’m seeing slight improvements in my public speaking situations, I’m more in control, not giving way to nervousness or scattered thoughts.

This leads me to think that almost everybody can benefit from Toastmasters. It really can improve one’s life in several different ways.