PUBLIC SPEAKING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22048, 2 September 1933, Page 10

PUBLIC SPEAKING

The judge of the elocutionary and debating sections at the local competitions festival has expressed the opinion that the standard of public speaking in Dunedin, as in all parts of the Dominion, is deplorably low. There may be room for the suggestion that a competitions festival is in any case not exactly the place to look for good public speaking or for evidence upon which to draw conclusions with respect to community standards. But there is no particular reason why it should not be so. These competitions offer encouragement to adventures on the public platform, and in so far as they provide a test of public speaking the results attained should form a basis for a judgment of some value. Mr Russell-Wood’s verdict, whether considered as restricted to competitors at elocutionary festivals or regarded in a much wider application, will cause little surprise. It coincides with competent views that have been more than once expressed on the same subject, and with the general impression which a reasonably intelligent public is quite capable of forming of the quality of the utterances which are addressed to it from the public platform. It is only necessary to inquire, with a view to enumeration, how many really good public speakers the community possesses in order to establish the correctness of the judgment that the standard of public speaking in the Dominion is distinctly low. Parliament, which should or might be a home of good speaking, is the reverse. It would almost be possible to count on the fingers of one hand the names of members who could be described as good public speakers. This is the more deplorable in the light of the verbosity of the representatives of the people. It is a case of quantity rather than of quality. Most of the members owe a debt of gratitude to the Hansard staff for the manner in which their speeches are made presentable for preservation as historic records. Few members may be supposed to have had the advantage of a training in the art of public speaking, and too many of them appear to be content to remain poor speakers. The impression may obtain to some extent that to excel in public speaking presupposes possession of a natural gift in that direction, and that idea has its measure of justification, though unfortunately too many of those who occupy the public platform evidently imagine without any justification whatever that they possess the

gift. Certainly there is inequality in natural endowments, and some achieve easily what others attain with difficulty. The fact remains, however, that success in public speaking, as in so many other directions, is very largely a matter of training, intelligence, and perseverance. The classic example in point is, of course, our old friend Demosthenes, who apparently lacked by nature all the physical qualifications of a great orator, and acquired them only by indefatigable selfdiscipline and labour. The tests to which good public speaking conforms are not after all so very severe. They relate to matter and manner. A good platform delivery can be acquired by the study and observance of certain rules, and it is to the non-observance of some of these on the part of many of the performers at the competitions that the judge of elocution has drawn attention. The finer shades of good public speaking may be regarded as in the main an intellectual product. It is probably safe to say that the low standard of public speaking in the Dominion is due to the fact that the value and importance of good public speaking are not sufficiently appreciated. Primarily the defect must be one of education. The instruction that is being given in elocution, and the encouragement offered by Competitions Societies in the way of awards for platform utterances, should be helpful in combating that defect,, but evidently a wider interest in the subject is needed. For when all is said the standard of public speaking in a community is a reflection of its culture.