The following article is expanded from points
based on my slide notes for my 30-minute workshop, “The Instant Language
Evaluator”, which is about getting Toastmasters to step up as language
evaluators by providing them with the basic tools to undertake that role, and
gain proficiency. This is part of the
wider Moneynomist “Seize the Advantage” programme, along with Eric Tan Shi Wei,
Gerald Yong Kim Heong, Margrette Lo Foong Quan, Oh Cheng Kok, and Zhuo Shu
Zhen. The Moneynomist team is from AIA
Toastmasters Club, and are all past presidents.
I have been a Toastmaster
since July 2018. In that time, I have
held several appointments at club, and District level, I have given almost a
hundred project speeches in that time, and twice more, project
evaluations. However, the one thing I am
known for, in District 80, is language evaluation. The purpose of this workshop is to prove my
point that with the correct motivation, and guidance, any competent Toastmaster
can step forward and become a language evaluator.
This workshop has been
crafted to be flexible, being from 20-minites to a full seminar with three
hours of material, depending on the needs of the club. By the end of this session, I hope that we
have equipped the average Toastmaster, with average command of language, with
the skills to become a language evaluator.
Becoming a language evaluator is easy.
Mastering the role is a learning journey in and of itself.
The process of the
programme is as follows. We will begin
with the definition of what a language evaluation actually is, the purpose of
the language evaluation, some key rhetorical devices that a language evaluator
should be familiar with, the checklist for the language evaluator, and the
structure of the language evaluator report.
Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad
ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali at-Tus (r.a.), the Persian philosopher and
theologian once said that before we speak of a cup, it is important to know
what a cup is. It has always been my
practise to begin with definitions. A
proper definition sets the parameters of understanding.
Language evaluation is a
process to evaluate the effectiveness of communication, in putting forward a
coherent argument for or against a position.
It is more than the art of rhetoric.
It is the art of breaking down what is said in a chapter meeting, and
looking to enhance it. Like any
evaluation, the language evaluator is meant to inspire the people in a meeting
to greater heights in the art of rhetoric.
There are three primary
attributes that we must have to become competent language evaluators. These are skills we should expect in every
Toastmaster.
Firstly, we need to hone
our skill of active listening, which is the process of discerning the speaker
intent - why what was said, was said at that moment on the speech, and how can
it be better. We do not merely consider
the apparent meaning of the words, but also the metaphorical and allegorical
context.
Secondly, we require a
logical mind to look for the connection between points, and understand why they
are in that order, and how it could be enhanced, or shortened. An effective communicator does not speak a
lot. Rather, he uses as little words as
possible to say as much as possible.
Finally, we need to have
a love of poetry and music, because that is what a good speech is. That is why we look for rhetorical devices,
turns of phrase that make a speech pleasant to hear. A moving speech speaks to the symphony of the
soul. This is what we encourage.
On the other hand,
contrary to what most Toastmasters believe, it is not required to have a mastery
of the English language. What we
prioritise is effective communication, not correctness in language.
We do not require a vast vocabulary. The best speeches use simple words, because
it is about connecting with the audience, not cowing them into submission with
bombast. For example, in Winston Leonard
Spencer Churchill’s famous “Never Surrender” speech, he availed himself to
simple words, that were understood by the common man in uncertain terms. Whilst it was not a particularly long speech,
we consider this section:
“We shall fight in
France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing
confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island,
whatever the cost may be. 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 ...”
We do not require a command
of grammar. The best speeches tend to be
narrative speeches, meaning that they are in the past tense. Factual speeches are in the present
tense. This makes it easy for the
audience to follow the story. A novice
language evaluator will , over time, gain some mastery of the basic tense.
Now that we have defined
what a language evaluation is, and the basic requirements to be a language
evaluator, we have to understand the purpose of a language evaluation. A language evaluation is the process of
elevating the argument, by encouraging good use of rhetorical devices, and
eliminating elements of speech that diminish the speaker, or the argument. As such, we look for things like direct
speech, oblique references, uncertainty in wording, and the structure of the
argument, and whether the points are elaborated with rhetorical devices. These are points that either enhance speech
or detract from the message intended.
Depending on how we
classify them, the English language has between 50 to over 60 rhetorical
devices. It is not required for a
language evaluator to know every single one of them, and master them. It is enough that we have an understanding of
these few.
An allusion is any
reference in the speech to an event, person, thing, or place. It may be direct or indirect. It may be self-referencing. There are six major types in the English
language, but we are looking for allusions that reference the meeting, the
people in it, and common events and experiences. This is to diminish the distance between
speaker and audience.
The word
“allusion” is derived from Late Latin, “alludere”, which denotes a pun,
metaphor, or parable. However, in
English, an allusion is a figure of speech, a rhetorical device, in which an
object, an event, or, indeed, anything, from a distinct, unrelated context, is
referred to. This may be a direct
reference, such as phenomenon from popular culture, or is may be a subtle
reference known only within a certain group.
This makes allusions a useful device to make a crowd feel like they are
part of an in joke, and create intimacy with the audience. Technically, an allusion is a passing or a
casual remark that has a wider meaning. It
is an incidental mention of something, whether direct or indirect, which has a
broader implication. For example, you
could say, of someone whose business venture failed spectacularly, “His Titanic
has sunk.”
Richard F.
Thomas, in “Virgil’s Georgics and the Art of Reference, from Harvard Studies in
Classical Philology, distinguished six specific categories of allusive
reference applicable to a wider cultural sphere: casual reference, which is “the use of
language which recalls a specific antecedent, but only in a general sense” that
is relatively unimportant to the new context; single reference, where the audience
is intended to “recall the context of the model and apply that context to the
new situation”; self-reference, where you reference your own body of work, or
even the same speech; corrective allusion, where the imitation is clearly in
opposition to the original source’s intentions, perhaps, a parody; apparent
reference, where the allusion seems to refer to something specific, but is
found to be otherwise upon closer inspection; and multiple reference or
conflation, which is several simultaneous allusions to several sources, but
fusing them into something new.
Martin Luther
King, Jr., famously alluded to the Gettysburg Address in the beginning of his
“I Have a Dream” speech, by starting it with “Five score years ago ...”;
reminding the audience of Abraham Lincoln’s “Four score and seven years ago”,
which opened the Gettysburg Address.
This was a clever attempt at equating the gravity of his speech with the
Gettysburg Address.
Another form of
an allusion is a sobriquet. A sobriquet
is a title or phrase we associate with something else. For example, instead of referring to
Singapore, we call it “The Lion City”; or New York is “the Big Apple”, or “the
city that never sleeps”.
Certain
allusions should be avoided in speech because they have been diminished through
overuse, becoming trite and a cliché.
An example is
“15 minutes of fame”. This is based on a
quote by Andy Warhol, the 20th century American artist. He commented on his sudden popularity, saying,
“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Today, every time someone gets airtime on the
news, we hear someone talk about those “15 minutes of fame”, an allusion to
Andy Warhol’s remark.
Another famous
example is “Catch-22”. This phrase
originates from a 1961 Joseph Heller novel by that name. Catch-22 is set on a U.S. Army Air Force base
in World War II; “Catch-22” itself refers to a regulation that states an
airman’s request to be relieved from flight duty can only be granted if he is
judged to be insane. However, since
anyone who does not want to fly dangerous missions is obviously sane, there is
no way to avoid flying those missions.
Next, we consider
the alliteration. “Alliteration” is from
the Latin, “ad” meaning, in this case, “more”; and “littera”,
which means “letters”. In essence, alliteration
is conspicuous and obvious repetition of identical initial consonant sounds in
successive or closely associated syllables within a group of words, regardless
of spelling since it is about how the words sound, not how they are written.
Whilst some
literary experts may accept the repetition of vowel sounds, or repetition at
the end of words, as alliteration; alliteration narrowly refers to the
repetition of a letter in any syllables that, according to the poem’s meter,
are stressed.
Alliteration is
actually part of a broader literary device known as consonance. Consonance is a broader literary device
identified by the repetition of consonant sounds at any point in a word. Alliteration, however, is a special case of
consonance where the repeated consonant sound is in the stressed syllable. Alliteration may also refer to the use of
different but similar consonants, such as alliterating “z” with “s”, such as
from the medieval poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”.
Symmetrical alliteration
is a specialised form of alliteration containing parallelism, or chiasmus. In this case, the phrase must have a pair of
outside end words both starting with the same sound, and pairs of outside words
also starting with matching sounds as one moves progressively closer to the
centre. An often-cited example would be
“rust brown blazers rule”. In that
sense, a symmetrical alliteration is similar to palindromes because of their
language symmetry.
The following are some
examples of alliteration in speech:
Winston Churchill, referring
to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Russia, said, “I see also the dull, drilled,
docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of crawling
locusts.” The reference to the Germans
as Huns is a historical allusion.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
in his inaugural address, said, “To those people in the huts and villages of
half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best
efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not
because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but
because it is right.”
Finally, when have Gaius
Julius Caesar, speaking of his exploits in Gaul, saying, “Veni, vidi,
vici.”
An assonance is a rhetorical
device in which the repetition of similar vowel sounds takes place in two or
more words in proximity to each other within a line of poetry or prose. Assonance, here, refers to the repetition of
internal vowel sounds in words that do not end the same. Assonance is derived from the French, “assonance”,
from “assonant”; and in turn derived from Latin “assonantem”
meaning, “to sound”.
For example, Edgar Allen Poe’s
most famous poem, “The Raven”, uses assonance consistently and to great poetic
effect:
“Ah, distinctly I
remember it was in the bleak December;
And
each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly
I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow
From
my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For
the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Nameless here for
evermore.”
Another example is found
in Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson’s satirical piece, “The Feast of Famine””
“The quiet passage
of souls over his head in the trees;
And
from all around the haven the crumbling thunder of seas.
‘Farewell,
my home,’ said Rua. ‘Farewell, O quiet
seat!
To-morrow in all your
valleys the drum of death shall beat.’”
The next
rhetorical device is the anaphora. In
rhetoric, it is simply the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of
successive clauses. An anaphora is a
rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the
beginnings of neighbouring clauses, lending them emphasis. The opposite of an anaphora is the epiphora,
or epistrophe. An epiphora is repeating
words at the end of clauses.
The combination
of anaphora and epistrophe results in symploce. In rhetoric, symploce is a figure of speech,
in which a word, or phrase, is used successively, at the beginning of two, or
more, clauses or sentences, and another word, or phrase, with a similar
wording, is used successively at the end of the clauses. It derives from the Greek word, meaning
“interweaving”.
The term
“anaphora” is itself derived from the Greek “ana”, which means, “back”,
and “pherein” which means, “to bear”. In Greek, “anaphora” (ἀναφορά)
literally means, “repetition”. It
arrived in the English through Latin.
Aside from the
obvious function of emphasising ideas, an anaphora is a rhetorical device which
adds rhythm to a word, making it more pleasurable to read and easier to
remember. The repetition at the
beginning of a sentence creates emphasis.
Anaphoras may also create an artistic effect to a passage. It is also used to appeal to the emotions of
the audience in order to persuade, to inspire, and to move them for, or against
a position.
The following
are three examples of anaphoras. In
each, there is an emphasis on a certain theme. For Charles John Huffam Dickens, it was about
the complexities of the time. And for Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., it was an expansive call to action, for unity.
Charles Dickens
wrote , in “A Tale of Two Cities”, “It was the best of times, it was the worst
of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the
epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all
going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way ...” This is one of the best literary passages
utilising anaphoras to juxtapose contrast.
Winston
Churchill, in his famous “Never Surrender” speech, said, “We shall not flag or
fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on
the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing
strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, 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.”
Finally, this
is an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have Dream Speech”, from the
28th August 1963:
“Let us not
wallow in the valley of despair. I say
to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of
the moment, I still have a dream. It is
a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream
that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
creed, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created
equal.’
I have a dream
that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons
of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of
brotherhood.
I have a dream
that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state, sweltering with the heat
of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into
an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream
that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not
be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream
today.”
The opposite of the
anaphora, as mentioned above, is the epiphora.
One of the most famous examples of epiphora is from Abraham Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address, on the 19th November 1863, where he said, “…
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from
the earth.” There is the repetition of
“the people” in three successive clauses, an epistrophic triad, to emphasise
his point.
Another example would be John
F. Kennedy’s, “The Strategy for Peace”, from the 10th June 1963, where he said, “The United States, as
the world knows, will never start a war.
We do not want a war. We do not
now expect a war.” Again, it is an epiphora,
and it is a triad.
We come back to the
famous “I Have a Dream“, by Martin Luther King Jr., where we have this passage:
“With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to
struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing
that we will be free one day.”
To help us remember, an
alliteration starts with the letter “A”, so we know that the sounds are at the
beginning of the sentence. An assonance
has two “s” in the middle, which helps us remember that the repetition is of
vowel sounds in the middle of the sentence.
An anaphora is the same word or words at the beginning of a sentence,
since we have “A” for the beginning of the alphabet, whereas an epiphora is the
same word or words at the end of the sentence, with the letter “E”, meaning the
end.
It is the job of the
language evaluator to spot similar examples, in the speeches delivered in a
chapter meeting, and highlight them.
And then, we
consider the analogy. “Analogy” is from
Greek, “analogia” (ἀναλογία), meaning “proportion” which is derived from
two Greek words: “ana”, “upon”, and “logos” “reckoning”. More than merely a rhetorical device, it is a
cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular
subject to another, the analogue to the target. This may be a linguistic expression
corresponding to such a process, or a deductive argument.
An analogy is a
comparison in which an idea, an object, or even a person, is compared to
another idea, an object, or person, distinct from it. The purpose of such a comparison is to explain
the unfamiliar idea, an object, or person with the familiar idea, an object, or
person which it is compared to. Within
the concept of rhetoric, it is explanation through parallel cases. Metaphors and similes are used to draw an
analogy. An analogy is much more
extensive and elaborate when compared to either a simile or a metaphor. A simile is an expressed analogy, while a
metaphor is an implied one.
The function of
analogy is, therefore, to link an unfamiliar or a new idea with common and
familiar objects. This makes it is
easier for the audience to comprehend the new idea, which may be difficult to
grasp, otherwise. Analogies, used
properly, bring ideas to life, and create a bridge to the audience.
An example of
an analogy would be George Orwell’s “A Hanging”: “They crowded very close about
him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all
the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still
alive and may jump back into the water.”
Another example
would be the satirist, Peter De Vries’ “Let Me Count the Ways”: “If you want my
final opinion on the mystery of life and all that, I can give it to you in a
nutshell. The universe is like a safe to
which there is a combination. But the
combination is locked up in the safe.”
The humourist, Douglas
Noel Adams, wrote in “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time”,
“Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy,
Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard
in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner. In fact, it’s not so much a country as such,
more a sort of thin crust of semi-demented civilisation caked around the edge
of a vast, raw wilderness, full of heat and dust and hopping things.”
And finally,
there is William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, Act II, Scene 2:
What’s
in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other word would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would,
were he not Romeo called …”
In all cases,
analogies were used for humorous, or dramatic effect. An analogy is a useful tool for bringing a
dry subject to life, and is a good combination with allusions to create a
relationship with the audience. Entire
speeches may be built around a good analogy, and that method is also a basis in
stand-up comedy.
A metaphor is a
rhetorical device, where an expression is used to describes a person or an object
by referring to something that is considered to have similar characteristics to
that person or object. It is a figure of
speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it
is not literally applicable, or a thing regarded as representative or symbolic
of something else. The word is from the late
15th century, and is derived from French “métaphore”, via
Latin, from the Greek “metaphora”, from “metapherein”, meaning “to
transfer”. For example, we could say,
metaphorically, “She is an angel.” We
could also say that humanity is an ocean, or the world is a jungle. These are all metaphors.
A simile is a rhetorical
device involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different
kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid. It is the use of an expression comparing one
thing with another, always including the words “as” or “like”, or similar. The word is from late Middle English, derived
from Latin, neuter of “similis”, meaning, “like”. For example, using the above metaphors, we
could say, “She is like an angel”, “Humanity is like an ocean”, and “The world
is like a jungle”.
As can be seen, it is not
difficult to identify an analogy, and the two subsets, the metaphor, which is
an implied analogy; and the simile, which is an expressed one.
The antithesis
is a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else. It comes to us from late Middle English, where
it originally denoted the substitution of one grammatical case for another;
from late Latin; from Greek, before that.
Antithesis is
originally from Greek, “antitithenai”, from “anti” (ἀντί), which
means “setting opposite”, and “tithenai” (θέσις), which means “placing”.
The plural of antithesis is antitheses. It is used as both a rhetorical and literary
device as a proposition that contrasts with or reverses a previously mentioned
proposition, or when two opposites are introduced together for contrasting
effect. Parallelism of expression serves
to emphasise opposition of ideas in antitheses.
An antithesis
must always contain two ideas within a single statement. Whilst the ideas may not be structurally
opposite, they serve to be functionally opposite when comparing two ideas for
emphasis. Aristotle said the use of an
antithesis enhances the audience understanding of the point the speaker is
trying to make. This comparison of two
situations or ideas makes choosing the correct one simpler. Aristotle further stated that the use of
antithesis in rhetoric is similar to syllogism due to the presentation of two
conclusions within a statement.
An antithesis
is used to strengthen an argument by using either exact opposites or
contrasting ideas, but it may include both.
They typically make the argument memorable. In rhetoric itself, the
antithesis is a figure of speech which involve highlighting a contrast in the
ideas by an obvious contrast in the words, clauses, or sentences, within a
parallel grammatical structure. The
following are some examples of antitheses, many taken from Aristotle’s “On
Rhetoric” itself.
Marcus Tullius
Cicero said, “I defended the Republic as a young man; I shall not desert her
now that I am old.” Here, the antithesis
is a simple statement contrasting two things, using a parallel structure.
“Man proposes,
God Disposes,” is a common antithesis of unknown origin. This is what we call a double antithesis,
where “man” is opposed to “God”, and “proposes” contrasts with “Disposes”.
This passage,
from the Gospel according to Matthew, the point made is emphasised by first
being contrasted with its negative:
Matthew 10:34
34 Do not imagine that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I
have come to bring not peace, but a sword.
Then there is
John F. Kennedy’s famous line from his 1961 inauguration speech, where he said,
“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your
country.” This is an example of a
negative-positive antithesis, and the chiasmus-antithesis, combined.
As can be seen,
an antithesis gives depth to an idea by providing contrast. It is a simple way of making a pithy statement
profound. Once we understand how they
work, an antithesis is easy to spot.
In rhetoric, an epizeuxis
is the repetition of a word or a phrase in immediate succession, typically
within the same sentence, and used for vehemence, impact, or emphasis. A closely related rhetorical device is a diacope,
which involves word repetition that is broken up by a single intervening word,
or a small number of intervening words. As
a rhetorical device, an epizeuxis is utilised to create an emotional appeal,
inspiring, and motivating the audience.
A famous example is the
opening track for Star Wars: “A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”
A more sober example is
the speech by Winston Churchill, on the 29th October 1941, where he
said, “Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small,
large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the
apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Another common example is
the phrase associated with real estate since the 1920s, “Location, location,
location.”
An idiom is a phrase or
expression which has a figurative, non-literal meaning. The words of the phrase or expression are
understood differently from the meaning of the words by themselves. Essentially, an idiom is a phrase or
expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached
to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the
literal meaning of the phrase. Idioms
are categorised as formulaic language, where the figurative meaning is
different from the literal meaning. In
English alone, there are an estimated twenty-five thousand idiomatic
expressions, and as language evolves, more are added, just as many fall into
obsolescence.
Examples of idiomatic
phrases or expressions, include the following:
1. A blessing in disguise;
2. A dime a dozen;
3. Beat around the bush;
4. Better late than never;
5. Bite the bullet;
6. Break a leg;
7. Call it a day;
8. Cut somebody some slack;
9. Cutting corners;
10. Get out of hand;
11. Get your act together;
12. Give someone the benefit of the doubt;
13. Go back to the drawing board;
14. Hang in there; and
15. Make a long story short.
Finally, we consider the
simplest of rhetorical devices, the quote.
A quote is the repetition or recounting of the words of another person;
it is borrowed credibility. In a situation
where we have to speak about a subject matter we may be viewed as less than credible;
we borrow that credibility by quoting a known authority on the subject.
Alternatively, it is
possible to build a good speech around a meaningful quote, and making it the
call to action. An excellent quote can
bring people together, by putting something profound in a succinct sentence. Examples of some profound quotes include the
following.
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie
Wills Wilde said, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the
stars.”
Lord
Alfred Tennyson said, “If I had a flower
for every time I thought of you... I could walk through my garden forever.”
Friedrich
Wilhelm Nietzsche said, “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship
that makes unhappy marriages.”
Lao
Tzu said, “Being deeply loved by someone
gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
However, I would caution
against doing a Donald John Trump. This
is because of Donald Trump has this propensity to retweet quotations without
checking the source, and many of them are from unsavoury characters. Unless you are the President of the United
States, accidentally quoting Adolf Hitler or Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini,
or some war criminal, or anti-Semite – none of that will be good for your
career, and it may take years to live it down.
It is also important to
check quotes, the context, the attribution, and what was actually said. As a language evaluator, we strive for accuracy. If a quote is misattributed, or someone is
misquoted, it is the language evaluator’s job to point it out.
Now that we have the
parts of the evaluation, and what to look out for, we can put together the
whole process.
The language evaluator,
at the beginning of the chapter meeting, introduces the Word of the Day. The Word of the Day is where we introduce the
concept of mental and rhetorical flexibility.
This is an important skill for any person serious about becoming an
effective communicator. When we speak to
people, and we use their vocabulary, their phrases, their words; they are more
likely to be amendable to us, and agree with us. This is what the Word of the Day trains us
for.
When introducing the Word
of the Day, explain its meaning, and its etymology. Civilisation is built on language. The moment one person was able to convince a
group of people to accomplish something as a group, we started living for things
larger than ourselves. Words have a
story, a history, a gravity. They evolve,
just as society evolves. The word should
challenge the audience, and stretch their vocabulary.
During the report, after
highlighting the correct, and sometimes incorrect uses of the Word of the Day,
the language evaluator highlights the good uses of language. This would all the rhetorical devices we ran
through earlier, for starters. In this,
the language evaluator names the speaker, and elevates them. This is meant to inspire them, by encouraging
them.
When it comes to uses of
language that can be improved, we must understand that the role of the language
evaluator is not to be a grammar Nazi.
We recognise that for many speakers in a chapter meeting, English may
not be their mother tongue. As such, we
do not pick out every egregious misuse of language, every error, every
mistake. Rather, we pick some of the
more common errors, and focus on addressing them. The intent is that as people attend more
meetings, and speak more, they gradually get more proficient, more confident,
more fluent. It is a process, not an
event.
Finally, we summarise the
evaluation. We do this by picking on the
theme, and one rhetorical device. We
then expound on how the art of rhetoric enlivens the theme, and give them a
small point about how rhetoric is about us seeking a form of immortality by
touching the hearts of others.
Language evaluation is
the art of taking elements of the speech delivered in a chapter meeting, and
elevating it, by highlighting enhancements, and diminishing the sins of
language. As long as the people in that
meeting are inspired to try again, and be better, we have succeeded.
