essay on art of speech

Essay on Art

500 words essay on art.

Each morning we see the sunshine outside and relax while some draw it to feel relaxed. Thus, you see that art is everywhere and anywhere if we look closely. In other words, everything in life is artwork. The essay on art will help us go through the importance of art and its meaning for a better understanding.

What is Art?

For as long as humanity has existed, art has been part of our lives. For many years, people have been creating and enjoying art.  It expresses emotions or expression of life. It is one such creation that enables interpretation of any kind.

It is a skill that applies to music, painting, poetry, dance and more. Moreover, nature is no less than art. For instance, if nature creates something unique, it is also art. Artists use their artwork for passing along their feelings.

Thus, art and artists bring value to society and have been doing so throughout history. Art gives us an innovative way to view the world or society around us. Most important thing is that it lets us interpret it on our own individual experiences and associations.

Art is similar to live which has many definitions and examples. What is constant is that art is not perfect or does not revolve around perfection. It is something that continues growing and developing to express emotions, thoughts and human capacities.

Importance of Art

Art comes in many different forms which include audios, visuals and more. Audios comprise songs, music, poems and more whereas visuals include painting, photography, movies and more.

You will notice that we consume a lot of audio art in the form of music, songs and more. It is because they help us to relax our mind. Moreover, it also has the ability to change our mood and brighten it up.

After that, it also motivates us and strengthens our emotions. Poetries are audio arts that help the author express their feelings in writings. We also have music that requires musical instruments to create a piece of art.

Other than that, visual arts help artists communicate with the viewer. It also allows the viewer to interpret the art in their own way. Thus, it invokes a variety of emotions among us. Thus, you see how essential art is for humankind.

Without art, the world would be a dull place. Take the recent pandemic, for example, it was not the sports or news which kept us entertained but the artists. Their work of arts in the form of shows, songs, music and more added meaning to our boring lives.

Therefore, art adds happiness and colours to our lives and save us from the boring monotony of daily life.

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Conclusion of the Essay on Art

All in all, art is universal and can be found everywhere. It is not only for people who exercise work art but for those who consume it. If there were no art, we wouldn’t have been able to see the beauty in things. In other words, art helps us feel relaxed and forget about our problems.

FAQ of Essay on Art

Question 1: How can art help us?

Answer 1: Art can help us in a lot of ways. It can stimulate the release of dopamine in your bodies. This will in turn lower the feelings of depression and increase the feeling of confidence. Moreover, it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Question 2: What is the importance of art?

Answer 2: Art is essential as it covers all the developmental domains in child development. Moreover, it helps in physical development and enhancing gross and motor skills. For example, playing with dough can fine-tune your muscle control in your fingers.

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How to be heard: the art of public speaking

In an age of blanket social media use, getting your voice across has never been more important or difficult. But what are the secrets of winning over your audience?

O ver the years, comedy scriptwriter Heidi Ellert-McDermott must have put thousands of words into mouths more famous than hers. But even she didn’t find it easy to stand up and make a speech at her own wedding.

“Even though I felt like I’d written a good one, I was still surprised on the day that I was nervous,” she recalls. “I suddenly found myself thinking, ‘Whoa, it’s my turn’ and the nerves overwhelmed me. It’s only now that I understand a few techniques people should use – and one of them is not alcohol.”

A wedding is one of the few times even those genuinely terrified of public speaking can’t decently get out of, a time-honoured trial of nerves for the self-conscious. But the growing willingness of women to opt in even when tradition allows them to duck out – think Meghan Markle proposing her own toast after marrying Prince Harry this spring – suggests a wider cultural shift. To have a voice, to speak up rather than sit there mute, feels increasingly charged and significant. And not just for women, but for anyone who might previously have struggled to be heard in public life.

“The good thing about a bride’s speech is there are no rules. You can choose to take on some of the duties of the groom or just do something off the wall – tell a story, do a poem, whatever,” says Ellert-McDermott, who now runs Speechy , an agency producing bespoke wedding orations that is receiving an increasing number of inquiries from brides-to-be. “We all know the statistics about how few female speakers there are at conferences. Well, this is one area where women actually do have the control and can put themselves on the lineup – and that’s why it’s disappointing when brides don’t even consider it.”

Public speaking can sound like a rather stuffy skill, redolent of dreary Rotary Club dinners and those polishing future ministerial CVs at Oxbridge. (William Hague, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, the education secretary, Damian Hinds, and universities minister, Sam Gyimah, are all former Oxford Union presidents; for the sake of diversity, former leader Michael Howard was president of its Cambridge equivalent.) This kind of formal oratory isn’t dead, of course; just think of Johnson packing in the crowds on the party conference fringe or the hitherto obscure attorney general Geoffrey Cox QC’s positively Shakespearean warm-up speech for Theresa May a few weeks ago. But the bad news for the one in four who (according to a 2014 survey by Chapman University) is frightened of public oratory is that speaking and presentation skills matter well beyond the obvious fields of politics and the bar. They regularly come close to the top of employer wishlists when hiring and, if anything, matter more for the self-employed when pitching for work, money or just a higher profile in a world where the art of self-promotion is constantly evolving.

Twenty years ago, TED was a fairly obscure annual technology conference held in Vancouver. Now it is a global brand, its 20-minute talks from experts on everything from architecture to the female orgasm downloaded more than a billion times. From podcasts and vlogs to pop-up feminist salon nights where anyone can take the mike, Generation Z is developing new ways to speak, debate, argue and raise professional profiles.

“Some people are wary of being the person who loves the sound of their own voice, but I think that has become quite old-fashioned now,” says Viv Groskop , the standup comedian and author of the forthcoming How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking , who runs workshops coaching businesswomen on public speaking. “Now that you can broadcast 24/7 on YouTube or Instagram Stories, there’s a whole generation who are not afraid of their own voice and wouldn’t even understand the sort of 1950s concept of ‘don’t be the one who’s always talking out of turn’. People want to own the room but not be obnoxious about it, let other people have their turn too.”

What they do worry about, she says, is doing it memorably enough to be heard. “In this particular post-#MeToo moment, women don’t worry so much about what they’re going to say. They know exactly what they want to say and they’re going to say quite a bit about it. But they want to say it in such a way that it’s powerful.”

And that raises serious questions about who has the skills and the opportunity to speak up. In theory, anyone can just nominate themselves to do a TED talk, or chip in at a meeting. In practice, it’s rarely that simple.

It’s a long time since Margaret Thatcher was advised to lower her voice by an octave if she wanted to be taken seriously but women may still have to work slightly harder than men to sound authoritative on a stage, according to research suggesting a lingering subconscious association between deep voices and leadership. ( One study of 792 male chief executives, in affiliation with Duke University, found the ones with lower voices led larger companies and made more money.) Prejudice also lingers around regional accents, with the BBC political correspondent Chris Mason recently admitting he was told as a young journalist that he’d never get on the radio with his Yorkshire Dales burr, while the shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, is dogged on social media by people suggesting her Mancunian vowels somehow make her sound “thick” .

There is, Groskop argues, still some unspoken resistance to being lectured by people who don’t fit a received idea of leadership. “Clearly Hillary Clinton is an excellent speaker but, as Jennifer Palmieri [her director of communications] has written , throughout Clinton’s career she received constant advice about how to change her speaking style. She would always reply, ‘If you could just tell me now who I need to talk like, tell me who’s perfect?’ – and there was never an answer.”

But fear of criticism is no reason to duck out of a presentation, she argues; the key is to find a speaking style that works for you. “It’s a terrible misnomer, this idea that somehow, if you’re scared of something, that’s an indicator you’re not suited to it. If you remember the speech Oprah gave at the Golden Globe awards [about #MeToo], which was universally acclaimed as brilliant, she said afterwards one of the reasons it was so good is she got so nervous she was dry mouthed. She could hardly move her lips and so she had to enunciate every syllable just to get through it.”

Planning in advance for how you’ll cope if something goes wrong helps considerably, says Groksop, as can simple tricks such as speaking more slowly than feels natural or doing breathing exercises before going on stage. But arguably the best means of conquering fear is practice, and the earlier it starts the better. Rhetoric, or the art of oral persuasion, was taught to ancient Greek and Roman students as an essential tool for taking part in a civic life, in a culture where written texts were still relatively new forms of communication. To this day, a nodding acquaintance with Cicero or Demosthenes remains a staple of a classic public-school education (the old Etonian Tory MP Jesse Norman once explained his alma mater’s dominance of politics by arguing that it excelled both at letting pupils take the initiative and at “things like rhetoric and poetry and public speaking and performance”).

Schools such as Eton no longer have a monopoly on perhaps the most valuable skill gained from learning to debate – developing the critical thinking skills needed to formulate an argument in the first place. Godwin junior school is a large primary school serving a relatively deprived area of Forest Gate, east London. More than a fifth of its pupils have free school meals and more than a third don’t have English as a first language. Yet, two years ago, it won the national schools debating cup organised by Debate Mate , a not-for-profit organisation that sets up debating clubs, hosted by students from top universities, in inner-city schools.

“Our school is about preparing pupils for lifelong success and a lot of research shows that it’s not just academic results that count. They’re very important, of course, but it’s also about children and young people being confident and articulate,” says the headteacher, Sine Brown. “Whether it’s job interviews, university interviews, starting your own business and wanting a loan to do so, it’s not just what you put on paper – it’s how you present yourself. The debating club helps develop confidence and articulacy and we’ve really seen the difference it’s made to our children.”

The club is popular, with about 80 children enrolled, and Brown thinks it has boosted their self-esteem. “It’s about our children knowing that they’re as good as anyone else, as capable of holding a room. To be 10 or 11 and stand up in front of a roomful of people you don’t know and present an argument not only teaches them a skill but gives them a mindset. The shift is, ‘I can do this.’ Those children you might not naturally think would gain a lot, you can see it in their confidence, in the way they hold themselves. You can see they feel they have a right to be heard.”

The bonus, she says, is that learning how to marshal evidence, and how to predict and counter opposing arguments verbally, has also improved the children’s written work. The advantage of teaching children not merely to speak in public but to debate is that it encourages different ways of thinking, according to Jessica Rolfe-Dix, a former teacher and managing director of Debate Mate.

“We have a thing called points of information – interruptions from the other side – and if you don’t accept them then you don’t get as high marks,” she explains. “You see them listening and then having to respond. That skill is one they’ll take into university or the workforce – it’s being able to not fold under pressure and to take a challenge in a non-confrontational way.” For some older children growing up in London’s “postcode wars” between rival gangs, she says, debating competitions are one of the few chances they have to mix safely with teenagers from other estates. For others, learning to anticipate and rebuff the opposition is an early exercise in staying one step ahead of the argument, which is perhaps why university debating clubs have traditionally been such a training ground for politicians.

The Labour MP and former education minister Kevin Brennan doesn’t have the traditional background some might expect for a former president of the Oxford Union. The son of a steelworker and a school dinner lady, both of whom left school before 16, he was the first child from his school to get into Oxbridge. But as Brennan puts it, “Being from south Wales I was used to the idea that you should be able to orate, to speak, to use language to persuade people. And one thing I did feel going into that environment as a young man was that most of the people who went to university weren’t geniuses, but a lot of them had been imbued with a great degree of self-confidence, not always justified, by their educational backgrounds.”

He resolved, he says “never to let that group of people lord it over others because of that confidence”. What the union gave him was the chance to learn from the cream of guest speakers. Brennan still remembers the former Tory MP Matthew Parris giving a “brilliant” speech about being gay, without ever specifically mentioning that he was gay (this was after all the early 80s), and the formative experience of debating alongside Neil Kinnock: “I learned from him how to use a little bit of humour to make your point – Neil was very good at that – and something about the rhythms of speech. He was of that old-time, chapel-preacher-from-the-valleys tradition, brilliant at speaking without notes.”

Brennan taught for a while after graduating and introduced a debating club to the comprehensive he worked in. “What I tried to do was to say, ‘Yes, it’s important to be able to present your views on world peace or whatever, but actually what really matters is if someone challenges your views, can you defend them?’ Because that means you understand them.” It is this ability to confront and dismantle counter-arguments, rather than simply clinging to the line, that arguably distinguishes political sheep from goats.

The classicist Mary Beard once argued, in a lecture for the Almeida theatre’s Figures of Speech series, that political oratory in the strict sense died when politicians stopped writing their own speeches. Audiences could, she argued, tell the difference between a leader articulating their own thoughts and one speaking someone else’s lines.

No modern leader has time to write all their own material, of course. Arguably, though, big set-piece political speeches no longer matter as much as we tend to think. Croaking through a party conference speech while the set collapsed around her did not finish Theresa May off in 2017, while this year’s infinitely better performance hasn’t magically revived her either. Donald Trump is a terrible speaker but, if anything, his fanbase sees that as a mark of authenticity.

Yet shining in a televised debate – as Nick Clegg famously did in 2010 , or Nicola Sturgeon in 2015 – where politicians have to think on their feet can still be a game-changer. Short, highly emotive outbursts in parliamentary debates increasingly have the capacity to go viral, too. (Think Anna Soubry furiously pointing out that Brexiters on her own side won’t be the ones losing their “gold-plated pensions” if it all goes wrong or those clips of Jeremy Corbyn at prime ministers’ questions that do so well on Facebook.)

The prepared speeches that still make the hair rise on the back of one’s neck, meanwhile, tend to be those that aren’t just selling a policy or playing to the gallery, but actively confronting elements of the audience. Kinnock’s extraordinary denunciation of Militant Tendency; Hugh Gaitskell’s “fight, fight and fight again” speech on nuclear disarmament; Margaret Thatcher’s declaration that the “lady’s not for turning”; Robin Cook’s resignation speech over Iraq – all are examples of speakers tackling more than just an abstract argument.

“Speeches where you’re genuinely trying to persuade and change the opinion of the room are more electric,” says Brennan. “If you’re just preaching to the faithful and pushing their buttons, that’s a different thing from when there’s a transformational issue at stake and the leader is trying to lead people somewhere they didn’t know they wanted to go.”

And that’s perhaps the difference, in the end, between giving a great speech and genuinely owning the room. The former is nerve-racking for the speaker. But the latter is not wholly comfortable for the room. And that’s what makes the question of who gets to be on the podium in the first place so significant. Who, exactly, is now afraid of whom?

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Rhetoric 101: The art of persuasive speech

By Lisa LaBracio on January 17, 2017 in TED-Ed Lessons

How do you get what you want, using just your words? Aristotle set out to answer exactly that question over 2,000 years ago with a treatise on rhetoric. Below, Camille A. Langston describes the fundamentals of deliberative rhetoric and shares some tips for appealing to an audience’s ethos, logos, and pathos in your next speech.

Rhetoric, according to Aristotle, is the art of seeing the available means of persuasion. Today we apply it to any form of communication. Aristotle focused on oration, though, and he described three types of persuasive speech. Forensic, or judicial, rhetoric establishes facts and judgments about the past, similar to detectives at a crime scene.

Epideictic, or demonstrative, rhetoric makes a proclamation about the present situation, as in wedding speeches.

But the way to accomplish change is through deliberative rhetoric, or symbouleutikon. Rather than the past or the present, deliberative rhetoric focuses on the future. It’s the rhetoric of politicians debating a new law by imagining what effect it might have, and it’s also the rhetoric of activists urging change. In both cases, the speakers present their audience with a possible future and try to enlist their help in avoiding or achieving it.

But what makes for good deliberative rhetoric, besides the future tense?According to Aristotle, there are three persuasive appeals: ethos, logos and pathos. Ethos is how you convince an audience of your credibility. Logos is the use of logic and reason. This method can employ rhetorical devices such as analogies, examples, and citations of research or statistics. But it’s not just facts and figures. It’s also the structure and content of the speech itself. The point is to use factual knowledge to convince the audience — but, unfortunately, speakers can also manipulate people with false information that the audience thinks is true. And finally, pathos appeals to emotion, and in our age of mass media, it’s often the most effective mode. Pathos is neither inherently good nor bad, but it may be irrational and unpredictable. It can just as easily rally people for peace as incite them to war. Most advertising, from beauty products that promise to relieve our physical insecurities to cars that make us feel powerful, relies on pathos.

Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals still remain powerful tools today, but deciding which of them to use is a matter of knowing your audience and purpose, as well as the right place and time. And perhaps just as important is being able to notice when these same methods of persuasion are being used on you. Below, watch the TED-Ed Lesson:

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The Art of Public Speaking: Steve Jobs and His Messages Essay

What makes a public speech good, gesture: opening to others, delivery: excite, surprise, inspire, content: precision and accuracy, people go, the message stays: quality of the speech.

Speaking in public often makes people anxious, and it does so for a good reason – getting a message across to a range of people without being misinterpreted is a challenging task. However, by using the techniques that help grasp people’s attention and introducing a product or an idea in an inspiring and intriguing manner is bound to help make the speech successful. The 2007 speech made by late Steve Jobs is a stellar example of how to capture the audience’s attention and introduce not only a product but an innovative idea so that it could remain impressively huge even a decade later (Lucas, 2008b).

In retrospect, clever use of rhetoric and the nonverbal elements of communication was what made Jobs’ speech so memorable. While one must give credit to the groundbreaking ideas that the innovator introduced to the audience, the delivery of the information also played a significant part in the success of the performance. Moreover, the sincerity of the speech and the lack of artificial elements contributed to the overall positive impression and made Jobs’ ideas stand out.

When considering the way in which Jobs used non-verbal elements of communication to render a specific idea or concept, one must give him credit for using “natural and spontaneous” (Lucas, 2008a, p. 257) gestures that created the impression of honesty and, therefore, made the audience trust the speaker. One might argue that, at some point, Jobs folded his hands on his chest, therefore, creating the impression that is typically viewed as uninviting. Indeed, the gesture of hands folded on one’s chest has been viewed as hostile and unwelcoming, especially when trying to reach out to the viewers and appeal to them emotionally.

However, further studies have shown that the identified idea is a myth that has nothing to do with reality. In fact, the realm of nonverbal communication used to have a plethora of theories that would, later on, prove to be completely detached from reality: “Over the years, more nonsense has been written about gesturing than any other aspect of speech delivery” (Lucas, 2008a, p. 257). Therefore, the fact that, at some point in his speech, Jobs folds his hands on his chest is not to be viewed as the factor that would make the audience feel alienated, and nor should he placed his hands behind his back be considered a positive communication technique. Instead, the amount of gesturing and the appropriateness thereof needs to be analyzed.

Although Jobs did use gestures quite a lot in his performance, the movement of his hands was always appropriate as it served a specific purpose. When he wanted to emphasize a particular aspect of the presentation, he would lift his hands or wave them slightly to mark that the on-coming piece of information is crucial to understanding his idea better. Therefore, he created the impression of a confident speaker who knows what he is talking about; as a result, the overall delivery of the speech could be viewed as of rather high quality. The gestures that Jobs used seemed to be spontaneous and natural, yet they also contribute to making his speech convincing and his ideas inspiring.

Addressing technology-related issues and at the same time keeping the general audience invested is not an easy task. Numerous problems also arise when the need to simplify the technology-related concepts, at the same time acknowledging the audience’s intelligence, appears.

When analyzing the speech delivered by Jobs and determining the goals that he pursued in his performance, one may believe that informing the audience was the primary goal of his and that Jobs’ main endeavor concerned shedding light on the nature and specifics of his invention. While there is an element of informative speaking in his delivery, it is also very clear that Jobs wanted to persuade the viewers that his idea was worth admiring as a groundbreaking concept in the world of informational technology.

On the one hand, Jobs tried to inform the audience about the ample amount of opportunities that the iPhone could offer. The identified delivery of information aligns with the key principles of the speeches about concepts as they are interpreted by Lucas (2008c). Indeed, there is an evident focus on the specific elements of the concept in question, i.e., the three components that constitute an iPhone (including an iPod, a phone, and the Internet). As soon as Jobs mentioned that the underlying idea of the three elements in question is the focus of his speech, it became clear that he was trying to introduce the members of the audience to a larger concept that was bound to herald a new era in the information technology development. In other words, three is a purpose, the central idea, and the main points that Jobs wanted to convey to the audience. The presence of the identified elements aligns with the framework for an informative speech suggested by Lucas (2008c).

However, there are also elements of a persuasive speech in Jobs’ performance. Apart from tricking people into paying attention, he also tried to convince them that the iPhone was going to become the future of the IT industry. Jobs mentions the concept of a breakthrough several times, saying at some point that the iPhone is “five years ahead of any other phone” (Jobs, 2007, 00:08:41). Thus, it could be argued that he tried to plant the idea of the iPhone being a crucial part of the IT development process into the audience’s minds. From the perspective of the persuasive speech framework, Jobs’ performance gains additional significance and weight.

At this point, one must mention that the concept of persuasion has not been defined accurately yet despite years of extensive studies (Lucas, 2008c). Furthermore, it could be argued that the difficulties associated with defining the phenomenon arise from numerous theories that strive to explain it: “There are a number of scientific models of the persuasive process and a wide range of respected theories about how persuasion works” (Lucas, 2008c, p. 324). As a result, assessing Jobs’ speech through the lens of the persuasive speech format is a rather tricky task.

Jobs managed to use the language that was understandable to an average viewer, also appealing to their sense of humor: “You can do multi-fingers gestures on it… And, boy, have we patented it” (Jobs, 2007, 00:07:31-00:07:37). As a result, the audience was amused, invested, and surprised at the drastic changes that the iPhone as an invention inflicted upon the industry. It should be noted that using humor as the means of reaching out to the audience is the approach that should be taken with a grain of salt. On the one hand, a joke that guarantees to get the audience to laugh or, at least, get a chuckle of most of the viewers, is likely to create a more comfortable environment both for the speaker and the audience. On the other hand, making a joke that is bound to work in any environment is a rather complicated task since it is impossible to produce the one that will appeal to all members of the population regardless of their age, culture, sense of humor, etc. In addition, there is always a possibility that a joke will hurt some of the vulnerable members of the population at whom it may be directed. In his performance, Jobs, however, managed to use humor in a most welcome and appropriate manner by directing it at himself and his company. As a result, the threat of offending some of the members of the audience was avoided, and the joke was made easily understandable by all viewers.

Even though Jobs did not overload his speech with engineering- and computer-related terminology, the essential information was represented to the audience in a very accurate and concise manner. The imagery described by him, e.g., the stylus and the associated problems, was vivid and memorable. The identified characteristic of Jobs’ presentation can be deemed as quite positive since “One sign of a good novelist is the ability to create word pictures that let you ‘see’” (Lucas, 2008a, p. 231). As a result, the audience was capable of memorizing the product and the innovative features that it had to offer.

Because of the use of gestures, a careful choice of words for framing the concept of an iPhone, and the elaborate presentation of the content, the speech made by Steve Jobs at MacWorld 2007 remains powerful even nowadays, when an iPhone seems to have become part and parcel of the communication process is not only the business environment but also in people’s personal life. When analyzing the performance to understand what made it so powerful and why its impact has an incredibly strong staying power, one must admit that the use of the elements of a persuasive and informative speech made Jobs’ delivery very efficient.

Furthermore, the use of gestures that could be observed during Jobs’ performance allowed subverting some of the most common myths about nonverbal communication. For instance, the supposition that, by folding one’s hands on one’s chest, one is likely to create an impression of hostility, was proven quite wrong given the levels of excitement and investment during Jobs’ speech, when he used the identified gesture. Furthermore, the theory about the appropriateness of gestures as the means of gaining the viewers’ trust and making them inclined to believe the speaker was proven after an analysis of the nonverbal communication used by Jobs.

Therefore, the performance under analysis can be viewed as a graphic representation of how a public speech can be made non-trivial and engaging. Despite the fact that Jobs did not resort to any unique speech techniques, the overall quality of his performance was very high because of the clarity of the message and the elaborate choice of tools for getting the message across to the target audience. Therefore, the performance can be deemed as exemplary.

Lucas, S. E. (2008a). Presenting the speech. In The art of public speaking (10th ed.) (pp. 222-297). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Lucas, S. E. (2008b). Speech preparation: Organizing and outlining. In The art of public speaking (10th ed.) (pp. 164-221). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Lucas, S. E. (2008c). Varieties of public speaking. In The art of public speaking (10th ed.) (pp. 298-410). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Jobs, S. (2007). Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone at MacWorld 2007. YouTube . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2021, September 3). The Art of Public Speaking: Steve Jobs and His Messages. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-art-of-public-speaking-steve-jobs-and-his-messages/

"The Art of Public Speaking: Steve Jobs and His Messages." IvyPanda , 3 Sept. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/the-art-of-public-speaking-steve-jobs-and-his-messages/.

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IvyPanda . 2021. "The Art of Public Speaking: Steve Jobs and His Messages." September 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-art-of-public-speaking-steve-jobs-and-his-messages/.

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IvyPanda . "The Art of Public Speaking: Steve Jobs and His Messages." September 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-art-of-public-speaking-steve-jobs-and-his-messages/.

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Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking

Gain critical communication skills in writing and public speaking with this introduction to American political rhetoric.

Associated Schools

Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences

What you'll learn.

When and how to employ a variety of rhetorical devices in writing and speaking

How to differentiate between argument and rhetorical technique

How to write a persuasive opinion editorial and short speech

How to evaluate the strength of an argument

How to identify logical fallacies in arguments

Course description

We are living in a contentious time in history. Fundamental disagreements on critical political issues make it essential to learn how to make an argument and analyze the arguments of others. This ability will help you engage in civil discourse and make effective changes in society. Even outside the political sphere, conveying a convincing message can benefit you throughout your personal, public, and professional lives.

This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of rhetoric, the art of persuasive writing and speech. In it, you will learn to construct and defend compelling arguments, an essential skill in many settings. We will be using selected addresses from prominent twentieth-century Americans — including Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Margaret Chase Smith, Ronald Reagan, and more — to explore and analyze rhetorical structure and style. Through this analysis, you will learn how speakers and writers persuade an audience to adopt their point of view.

Built around Harvard Professor James Engell’s on-campus course, “Elements of Rhetoric,” this course will help you analyze and apply rhetorical structure and style, appreciate the relevance of persuasive communication in your own life, and understand how to persuade and recognize when someone is trying to persuade you. You will be inspired to share your viewpoint and discover the most powerful ways to convince others to champion your cause. Join us to find your voice!

Course Outline

Introduction to Rhetoric

• Define the term "rhetoric."
• Articulate the importance of effective communication.
• Summarize the history of rhetorical study, from the ancient Greeks to the modern-day.
• Identify the parts of discourse.
• Define the three modes of appeal.
• Identify tropes and schemes, and explain their use in composition.
• Compose an opinion editorial on a topic of your choice.

Civil Rights - Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Analyze Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream…” speech
• Define inductive reasoning and some of its associated topics
• Identify instances of inductive reasoning in writing and speech
• Define deductive reasoning and some of its associated topics
• Identify instances of deductive reasoning in writing and speech
• Recognize and evaluate the strength of an argument's refutation
• Apply the elements of rhetoric you have learned so far into the final draft of your op-ed

Gun Control - Sarah Brady and Charlton Heston

• Analyze Sarah Brady’s Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech.
• Analyze Charlton Heston’s speech on the Second Amendment.
• Define “inductive reasoning” and some of its associated topics
• Define “deductive reasoning” and some of its associated topics
• Recognize and evaluate the strength of an argument’s refutation
• Apply the elements of rhetoric you have learned so far in the final draft of your op-ed

Introduction to Oratory

• Describe the origins of the practice of oratory.
• Recognize ways in which orators tailor their writing for the spoken word.
• Describe techniques for effective public speaking, both prepared and extemporaneous.
• Brainstorm ideas for your own short speech.

The Red Scare - Joseph McCarthy and Margaret Chase Smith

• Analyze Joseph McCarthy’s “Enemies Within” speech.
• Analyze Margaret Chase Smith’s "A Declaration of Conscience" speech.
• Identify the modes of appeal and the logical reasoning of the featured speeches.
• Identify both common and special topics used in these speeches, like cause and effect, testimony, justice and injustice, and comparison, and begin to recognize their use in other speeches.
• Identify examples from these speeches of logical fallacies including the either/or fallacy, the fallacy of affirming the consequent, the argument ad hominem, the argument ad populum, begging the question, the complex question, and the use of imprecise language.
• Discuss the importance of winning and keeping an audience’s trust and the pros and cons of attempting to tear down their confidence in an opponent.
• Define for yourself the definition of "extremist rhetoric," debate its use as a political tool.
• Consider the moral responsibilities of those who would seek to persuade others through language.

Presidential Rhetoric - John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan

• Discuss how the audience and the desired tone for a speech can influence diction (word choice).
• Compare the effects of using passive vs. active voice, and first-person vs. other tenses in a speech.
• Discuss the effectiveness of the use of symbolism in writing and speech.
• Define hyperbole, antimetabole, and polysyndeton, and identify when these devices might be appropriate and useful in terms of persuasion.
• Describe techniques for connecting with your audience, including storytelling and drawing on shared experience.

Instructors

James Engell

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Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking

Gain critical communication skills.

This Harvard online course introduces learners to the art of persuasive writing and speaking and teaches how to construct and defend compelling arguments.

What You'll Learn

We are living in a contentious time in history. Fundamental disagreements on critical political issues make it essential to learn how to make an argument and analyze the arguments of others. This ability will help you engage in civil discourse and make effective changes in society. Even outside the political sphere, conveying a convincing message can benefit you throughout your personal, public, and professional lives.

We will be using selected addresses from prominent twentieth-century Americans—including Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Margaret Chase Smith, Ronald Reagan, and more—to explore and analyze rhetorical structure and style. Through this analysis, you will learn how speakers and writers persuade an audience to adopt their point of view.

Built around Harvard Professor James Engell’s on-campus course, “Elements of Rhetoric,” this course will help you analyze and apply rhetorical structure and style, appreciate the relevance of persuasive communication in your own life, and understand how to persuade and recognize when someone is trying to persuade you. You will be inspired to share your viewpoint and discover the most powerful ways to convince others to champion your cause. Join us to find your voice!

The course will be delivered via  edX  and connect learners around the world. By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• When and how to employ a variety of rhetorical devices in writing and speaking
• How to differentiate between argument and rhetorical technique
• How to write a persuasive opinion editorial and short speech
• How to evaluate the strength of an argument
• How to identify logical fallacies in arguments

Course Outline

• Define the term "rhetoric."
• Articulate the importance of effective communication
• Summarize the history of rhetorical study, from the ancient Greeks to the modern-day
• Identify the parts of discourse
• Define the three modes of appeal
• Identify tropes and schemes, and explain their use in composition
• Compose an opinion editorial on a topic of your choice
• Analyze Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream…” speech
• Define inductive reasoning and some of its associated topics
• Identify instances of inductive reasoning in writing and speech
• Define deductive reasoning and some of its associated topics
• Identify instances of deductive reasoning in writing and speech
• Recognize and evaluate the strength of an argument's refutation
• Apply the elements of rhetoric you have learned so far into the final draft of your op-ed
• Analyze Sarah Brady’s Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech
• Analyze Charlton Heston’s speech on the Second Amendment
• Define “inductive reasoning” and some of its associated topics
• Define “deductive reasoning” and some of its associated topics
• Recognize and evaluate the strength of an argument’s refutation
• Apply the elements of rhetoric you have learned so far in the final draft of your op-ed
• Describe the origins of the practice of oratory
• Recognize ways in which orators tailor their writing for the spoken word
• Describe techniques for effective public speaking, both prepared and extemporaneous
• Brainstorm ideas for your own short speech
• Analyze Joseph McCarthy’s “Enemies Within” speech
• Analyze Margaret Chase Smith’s "A Declaration of Conscience" speech
• Identify the modes of appeal and the logical reasoning of the featured speeches
• Identify both common and special topics used in these speeches, like cause and effect, testimony, justice and injustice, and comparison, and begin to recognize their use in other speeches
• Identify examples from these speeches of logical fallacies including the either/or fallacy, the fallacy of affirming the consequent, the argument ad hominem, the argument ad populum, begging the question, the complex question, and the use of imprecise language
• Discuss the importance of winning and keeping an audience’s trust and the pros and cons of attempting to tear down their confidence in an opponent
• Define for yourself the definition of "extremist rhetoric," debate its use as a political tool
• Consider the moral responsibilities of those who would seek to persuade others through language
• Discuss how the audience and the desired tone for a speech can influence diction (word choice)
• Compare the effects of using passive vs. active voice, and first-person vs. other tenses in a speech
• Discuss the effectiveness of the use of symbolism in writing and speech
• Define hyperbole, antimetabole, and polysyndeton, and identify when these devices might be appropriate and useful in terms of persuasion
• Describe techniques for connecting with your audience, including storytelling and drawing on shared experience

Your Instructor

James Engell  is Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature, also a member of the Committee on the Study of Religion, and a faculty associate of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.  He has also directed dissertations in American Studies, as well as Romance Languages & Literatures (French).

Education:   B.A. 1973, Ph.D. 1978 Harvard

Interests:  Romantic, Eighteenth-Century, and Restoration British Literature; Comparative Romanticism; Criticism and Critical Theory; Rhetoric; Environmental Studies; History and Economics of Higher Education

Selected Works:   The Call of Classical Literature in the Romantic Age  (2017, ed. with K. P. Van Anglen) and contributor, "The Other Classic: Hebrew Shapes British and American Literature and Culture."  William Wordsworth's  Prelude  (1805), edited from the manuscripts and fully illustrated in color (2016, ed. with Michael D. Raymond).   Environment: An Interdisciplinary Anthology  (2008, ed. with Adelson, Ranalli, and Van Anglen).   Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money  (2005, with Anthony Dangerfield).   The Committed Word: Literature and Public Values  (1999).   Coleridge: The Early Family Letters  (1994, ed.).   Forming the Critical Mind  (1989).   Johnson and His Age  (1984, ed. and contributor).   Biographia Literaria  for the  Collected Coleridge  (1983, ed. with W. Jackson Bate).   The Creative Imagination:  Enlightenment to Romanticism  (1981).

Ways to take this course

When you enroll in this course, you will have the option of pursuing a Verified Certificate or Auditing the Course.

A Verified Certificate costs $209 and provides unlimited access to full course materials, activities, tests, and forums. At the end of the course, learners who earn a passing grade can receive a certificate. 

Alternatively, learners can Audit the course for free and have access to select course material, activities, tests, and forums.  Please note that this track does not offer a certificate for learners who earn a passing grade.

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Can Art Reimagine Freedom of Speech?

Curators carin kuoni and laura raicovich discuss studies into darkness.

Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech. Edited by Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich. Published by Amherst College Press and Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, 2022. Designed by Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Julia Novitch.

Curators Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich recently collaborated on their open access second book, Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech , co-published by Amherst College Press and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics—a center for research at The New School that examines the intersection of art, culture, and politics through fellowships, public events, and publications. The book project, which arose from the center’s thematic focus for 2018-2020, “ If Art Is Politics ,” is a carefully considered collection of essays that attempts to reframe our current understanding of free speech from the perspectives of artists and activists. The inspiration for the project came, in part, from the work of multidisciplinary artist Amar Kanwar . Within Kanwar’s film Such a Morning , Kuoni and Raicovich found a methodology from which to reconsider free speech and what it means in our culture. In a conversation with Public Seminar ’s Lindsey Scharold, Kuoni and Raicovich share the thoughtful curatorial sense behind Studies into Darkness. Lindsey Scharold [LS]: Let’s begin by talking about how this book came to be. Carin Kuoni [CK]: At the Vera List Center, we structure all of our programs around two-year research topics. We call them “focus themes.” And for two years we embark on a joint learning journey with the public, and with the presenters at our events, in order to grapple with and gain a deeper understanding of something that’s “in the air.” By that, I mean a subject that’s pressing, that’s urgent, that is of broad general concern far beyond the art world. Building up to the Trump presidency in the U.S. and, at the same time, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian regimes in democracies in Europe, Hungary, and Italy years prior to that, it seemed very important to look at the Right and its complete embrace of freedom of speech in a skeptical way. That thinking was informed partially by our collaboration with Indigenous artists some years prior—but also by looking back at the very beginnings of the Vera List Center in 1992, which emerged out of the culture wars in the early nineties, when freedom of speech and questions of censorship were incredibly pressing. Reliving some of these questions and formulating a different approach to them almost 30 years later was really important to us. Laura Raicovich [LR]: It actually comes out of the previous book that Carin and I worked on together, Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production . Working on that book, we followed this structure of engaging with a topic that we felt was in need of excavation and reconsideration. Essentially, the evolution of this project took place over the course of seminars that we planned, and resulted in commissioned essays for this book. At the beginning of what we now understand to be Trumpism, it was clear in that moment that freedom of speech—particularly American free speech absolutism—had become a keystone of many people’s conceptions of what freedom of speech actually means as a right. We decided that this was something we wanted to delve into and, with what we learned from our previous collaboration, we wanted to be sure that we were not only excavating this on historical, political, intellectual or rhetorical terms, but also on poetic and artistic registers that might further inform these subjects. LS: How did you choose to work with these authors? Tell us about how that process went. CK: Considering the resources that make the Vera List Center what it is in an expanded way—not just looking at the staff, not just looking at its history, but also looking at the history of, for instance, the buildings and the land we’re sitting on or working from, and the organizations that we draw from—it seemed really important not simply for us to produce these seminars, but to tap into the deep knowledge and expertise that we don’t have through other organizations here in the city. We can bring this conversation to students, faculty, and The New School’s various centers and networks, but it would be presumptuous, unproductive, and silly not to use the experience that is available to us through these organizations. The first organization that came to mind was the National Coalition Against Censorship , which has been presenting events with us over two or three decades. The New York Peace Institute curated one of our seminars as well. And then the last organization is Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn. Each of them curated a program, so it became a very dispersed collective of people and organizations strung together through this initiative, who looked at speech from very different experiences. LR: There were many more people involved in the seminars—given their breadth and where they took place—than we could possibly include in the book. We invited certain participants in the seminars to make contributions to the book in very particular ways. For example, we really wanted the National Coalition Against Censorship contributions to flow through the book as a history, a really straight up history of free speech and moments of historical importance. We also didn’t want that to be the only reading of the way that speech, or withholding speech, could be framed. I think we all agreed that troubling some of the assumptions about free speech, particularly free speech absolutism, was really important in this project. We wanted to make sure that this wasn’t the predominant, overarching voice, but to acknowledge that there are certain historical events on which a lot of our contemporary questions are pinned. Then we very particularly commissioned different writers and poets and artists to make contributions that we thought would nuance, interrupt, and question that baseline. LS: You write that Studies into Darkness is an “art-informed overview of recent debates on freedom of speech.” Could you talk a little bit more about why that’s an important political framework, perhaps, like you’ve said, as an alternative to the political and historical ways we tend to look at the issue? CK: Being at The New School—and looking at our own history of building this university, from the get-go, on art and nonacademic practices and disciplines—that’s one reason that it feels absolutely natural to include practices that are not necessarily discursive, but that are visual, that are more emotional. The affective must be invited to play a significant role in shaping our community. On the one hand, it’s this deep belief that art and creative practices contribute to community-making. On the other hand, it’s also an expanded notion of what politics means and how the political space gets constituted. But if you look at politics as a way of creating community or solidarity and dedication to a shared enterprise—educational, environmental, social—then it’s pretty clear that straightforward traditional politics or academic disciplines are not sufficient. LR: Carin and I both share a very strong belief in the power of art and the imagination to transform the ways we think about received knowledge. Part of each of our ongoing desires in the world, but also in working with one another, has always been to mind the ways in which artistic and cultural production can actually open the imagination in ways that, perhaps, are not typical, or even encouraged by other disciplines and other ways of thinking. Particularly on a subject like freedom of speech—when you’re thinking about how to reconsider that whole body of received knowledge, it’s often not very nuanced. We needed disruption that wasn’t reliant solely on the argumentative or rhetorical, but perhaps from a place that one might not at first consider, and which might be only accessible through cultural production. LS: Could you go into more detail about “Letter 7” from Amar Kanwar’s Such a Morning that you reference throughout the book? LR: Such a Morning is a very layered and complex artwork. It comprises a film, several installations, even paper making, and these several letters. These are letters from a professor who hides himself away and removes himself from day-to-day life to reconsider everything. He retreats to a train car in the middle of the forest. He attempts to block out all the light coming from the sun, to really sit in darkness quite literally. These are the letters that he writes once he begins to understand what his reconsiderations mean. “Letter 7” was particularly important to us because it talked about how you might structure a curriculum for whatever subject you wanted to unpack in that darkness. Part of what our conversation had been from the beginning with Amar was around devising a curriculum for studies into the darkness of freedom of speech. LS: I think it’s really interesting that the book sets up a relationship between darkness and speech. Would you speak about that relationship more, as you see it? LR: We imagine needing a space of darkness because if we think that freedom of speech needs to be reconsidered, then what kind of darkness do you need to be in? What we provide in the book, they’re all studies into the darkness that is necessary to reconsider freedom of speech. What were the conditions, the tools, the things that we needed to know, in order to reimagine what freedom of speech might be? CK: I think that’s also the approach that these incredible designers, Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Julia Novitch, really reflected in the design of the book. The salient information that we collected comes to you as a combination of various colors and inks that is combined to eventually render black lettering.

LR: It was such a joy to work with Nontsikelelo and Julia: not only did they embody the full concept of the project, they actually made the material presence of the book create the darkness that we were trying to evoke. To me, it makes the physical presence of the book actually rhyme with the intellectual and conceptual underpinnings of the project in a way that doesn’t usually happen. For me, this is a very special book because of that rhyming and constant going back and forth. It’s been one of the most rewarding knowledge-producing projects I’ve ever worked on because of that recursive element. Because it also defines this process—I’ll say this because it also defines what, to me, is special about the making of knowledge—not as a linear enterprise, but as one that is recursive and as one that is oftentimes disjointed. LS: Is there an essay in the book that you’re fond of, or that you feel is particularly resonant in terms of what you wanted to accomplish? LR: I think the Natalie Diaz presentation is really very important, in part because it takes the form of both a poem and an image. I think that, in some ways, it combines the desire to contend with a different register of knowledge production and conveyance. What she says in that poem is really important around knowledge that we might not have access to in traditional ways, particularly around indigenous knowledges. I think that the literal gesture of her self-portrait as blurry is also about what our desire to study freedom of speech was: it was not about clarifying to a point of new definition. Perhaps it was about muddying the waters a bit more, and complicating the ways in which freedom of speech is understood or utilized—or embodied.

CK: An interesting counterpoint, to me, is the ending piece, “In the Mouth of This Dragon.” It is partially because they move away from the individual body and occupy different spaces. At the seminars, they produced this most beautiful and haunting concert where five or six singers sang different tunes and spoke different lyrics from the book. These lyrics become maps—maps of the sites where incidents that are part of the concept of the suite took place. But rather than having territory or geography or street names define a place, they use lyrics and songs. Merging time spans, and a dismissal of linear time and physical space is a lovely counterpoint to Natalie’s piece.

Click here to read an excerpt from Amar Kanwar ’s introduction to Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech (Amherst College Press and Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, 2022) .

Carin Kuoni is the Senior Director and Chief Curator of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, editor and co-editor of several anthologies, and the recipient of a 2014 Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Fellowship. Laura Raicovich is a curator, former President and Executive Director of the Queens Museum, and author of several books, including Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest (Verso 2021). Lindsey Scharold is a journalist and MA candidate in Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism at The New School, whose arts writing has appeared in Cultured Magazine and Mn Artists .

Carin Kuoni

Senior Director and Chief Curator, Vera List Center for Art and Politics

Laura Raicovich

Curator and author

Lindsey Scharold

MA candidate in Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism at the New School for Social Research

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15 Powerful Speech Opening Lines (And How to Create Your Own)

Hrideep barot.

• Public Speaking , Speech Writing

Powerful speech opening lines set the tone and mood of your speech. It’s what grips the audience to want to know more about the rest of your talk.

The first few seconds are critical. It’s when you have maximum attention of the audience. And you must capitalize on that!

Instead of starting off with something plain and obvious such as a ‘Thank you’ or ‘Good Morning’, there’s so much more you can do for a powerful speech opening (here’s a great article we wrote a while ago on how you should NOT start your speech ).

To help you with this, I’ve compiled some of my favourite openings from various speakers. These speakers have gone on to deliver TED talks , win international Toastmaster competitions or are just noteworthy people who have mastered the art of communication.

After each speaker’s opening line, I have added how you can include their style of opening into your own speech. Understanding how these great speakers do it will certainly give you an idea to create your own speech opening line which will grip the audience from the outset!

Alright! Let’s dive into the 15 powerful speech openings…

Note: Want to take your communications skills to the next level? Book a complimentary consultation with one of our expert communication coaches. We’ll look under the hood of your hurdles and pick two to three growth opportunities so you can speak with impact!

1. Ric Elias

Opening: “Imagine a big explosion as you climb through 3,000 ft. Imagine a plane full of smoke. Imagine an engine going clack, clack, clack. It sounds scary. Well I had a unique seat that day. I was sitting in 1D.”

How to use the power of imagination to open your speech?

Putting your audience in a state of imagination can work extremely well to captivate them for the remainder of your talk.

It really helps to bring your audience in a certain mood that preps them for what’s about to come next. Speakers have used this with high effectiveness by transporting their audience into an imaginary land to help prove their point.

When Ric Elias opened his speech, the detail he used (3000 ft, sound of the engine going clack-clack-clack) made me feel that I too was in the plane. He was trying to make the audience experience what he was feeling – and, at least in my opinion, he did.

When using the imagination opening for speeches, the key is – detail. While we want the audience to wander into imagination, we want them to wander off to the image that we want to create for them. So, detail out your scenario if you’re going to use this technique.

Make your audience feel like they too are in the same circumstance as you were when you were in that particular situation.

2. Barack Obama

Opening: “You can’t say it, but you know it’s true.”

3. Seth MacFarlane

Opening: “There’s nowhere I would rather be on a day like this than around all this electoral equipment.” (It was raining)

How to use humour to open your speech?

When you use humour in a manner that suits your personality, it can set you up for a great speech. Why? Because getting a laugh in the first 30 seconds or so is a great way to quickly get the audience to like you.

And when they like you, they are much more likely to listen to and believe in your ideas.

Obama effortlessly uses his opening line to entice laughter among the audience. He brilliantly used the setting (the context of Trump becoming President) and said a line that completely matched his style of speaking.

Saying a joke without really saying a joke and getting people to laugh requires you to be completely comfortable in your own skin. And that’s not easy for many people (me being one of them).

If the joke doesn’t land as expected, it could lead to a rocky start.

Keep in mind the following when attempting to deliver a funny introduction:

• Know your audience: Make sure your audience gets the context of the joke (if it’s an inside joke among the members you’re speaking to, that’s even better!). You can read this article we wrote where we give you tips on how you can actually get to know your audience better to ensure maximum impact with your speech openings
• The joke should suit your natural personality. Don’t make it look forced or it won’t elicit the desired response
• Test the opening out on a few people who match your real audience. Analyze their response and tweak the joke accordingly if necessary
• Starting your speech with humour means your setting the tone of your speech. It would make sense to have a few more jokes sprinkled around the rest of the speech as well as the audience might be expecting the same from you

4. Mohammed Qahtani

Opening: Puts a cigarette on his lips, lights a lighter, stops just before lighting the cigarette. Looks at audience, “What?”

5. Darren Tay

Opening: Puts a white pair of briefs over his pants.

How to use props to begin your speech?

The reason props work so well in a talk is because in most cases the audience is not expecting anything more than just talking. So when a speaker pulls out an object that is unusual, everyone’s attention goes right to it.

It makes you wonder why that prop is being used in this particular speech.

The key word here is unusual . To grip the audience’s attention at the beginning of the speech, the prop being used should be something that the audience would never expect. Otherwise, it just becomes something that is common. And common = boring!

What Mohammed Qahtani and Darren Tay did superbly well in their talks was that they used props that nobody expected them to.

By pulling out a cigarette and lighter or a white pair of underwear, the audience can’t help but be gripped by what the speaker is about to do next. And that makes for a powerful speech opening.

6. Simon Sinek

Opening: “How do you explain when things don’t go as we assume? Or better, how do you explain when others are able to achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions?”

7. Julian Treasure

Opening: “The human voice. It’s the instrument we all play. It’s the most powerful sound in the world. Probably the only one that can start a war or say “I love you.” And yet many people have the experience that when they speak people don’t listen to them. Why is that? How can we speak powerfully to make change in the world?”

How to use questions to open a speech?

I use this method often. Starting off with a question is the simplest way to start your speech in a manner that immediately engages the audience.

But we should keep our questions compelling as opposed to something that is fairly obvious.

I’ve heard many speakers start their speeches with questions like “How many of us want to be successful?”

No one is going to say ‘no’ to that and frankly, I just feel silly raising my hand at such questions.

Simon Sinek and Jullian Treasure used questions in a manner that really made the audience think and make them curious to find out what the answer to that question is.

What Jullian Treasure did even better was the use of a few statements which built up to his question. This made the question even more compelling and set the theme for what the rest of his talk would be about.

So think of what question you can ask in your speech that will:

• Set the theme for the remainder of your speech
• Not be something that is fairly obvious
• Be compelling enough so that the audience will actually want to know what the answer to that question will be

8. Aaron Beverley

Opening: Long pause (after an absurdly long introduction of a 57-word speech title). “Be honest. You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

How to use silence for speech openings?

The reason this speech opening stands out is because of the fact that the title itself is 57 words long. The audience was already hilariously intrigued by what was going to come next.

But what’s so gripping here is the way Aaron holds the crowd’s suspense by…doing nothing. For about 10 to 12 seconds he did nothing but stand and look at the audience. Everyone quietened down. He then broke this silence by a humorous remark that brought the audience laughing down again.

When going on to open your speech, besides focusing on building a killer opening sentence, how about just being silent?

It’s important to keep in mind that the point of having a strong opening is so that the audience’s attention is all on you and are intrigued enough to want to listen to the rest of your speech.

Silence is a great way to do that. When you get on the stage, just pause for a few seconds (about 3 to 5 seconds) and just look at the crowd. Let the audience and yourself settle in to the fact that the spotlight is now on you.

I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something about starting the speech off with a pure pause that just makes the beginning so much more powerful. It adds credibility to you as a speaker as well, making you look more comfortable and confident on stage. 

If you want to know more about the power of pausing in public speaking , check out this post we wrote. It will give you a deeper insight into the importance of pausing and how you can harness it for your own speeches. You can also check out this video to know more about Pausing for Public Speaking:

9. Dan Pink

Opening: “I need to make a confession at the outset here. Little over 20 years ago, I did something that I regret. Something that I’m not particularly proud of. Something that in many ways I wish no one would ever know but that here I feel kind of obliged to reveal.”

10. Kelly McGonigal

Opening: “I have a confession to make. But first I want you to make a little confession to me.”

How to use a build-up to open your speech?

When there are so many amazing ways to start a speech and grip an audience from the outset, why would you ever choose to begin your speech with a ‘Good morning?’.

That’s what I love about build-ups. They set the mood for something awesome that’s about to come in that the audience will feel like they just have to know about.

Instead of starting a speech as it is, see if you can add some build-up to your beginning itself. For instance, in Kelly McGonigal’s speech, she could have started off with the question of stress itself (which she eventually moves on to in her speech). It’s not a bad way to start the speech.

But by adding the statement of “I have a confession to make” and then not revealing the confession for a little bit, the audience is gripped to know what she’s about to do next and find out what indeed is her confession.

11. Tim Urban

Opening: “So in college, I was a government major. Which means that I had to write a lot of papers. Now when a normal student writes a paper, they might spread the work out a little like this.”

12. Scott Dinsmore

Opening: “8 years ago, I got the worst career advice of my life.”

How to use storytelling as a speech opening?

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.” Steve Jobs

Storytelling is the foundation of good speeches. Starting your speech with a story is a great way to grip the audience’s attention. It makes them yearn to want to know how the rest of the story is going to pan out.

Tim Urban starts off his speech with a story dating back to his college days. His use of slides is masterful and something we all can learn from. But while his story sounds simple, it does the job of intriguing the audience to want to know more.

As soon as I heard the opening lines, I thought to myself “If normal students write their paper in a certain manner, how does Tim write his papers?”

Combine such a simple yet intriguing opening with comedic slides, and you’ve got yourself a pretty gripping speech.

Scott Dismore’s statement has a similar impact. However, just a side note, Scott Dismore actually started his speech with “Wow, what an honour.”

I would advise to not start your talk with something such as that. It’s way too common and does not do the job an opening must, which is to grip your audience and set the tone for what’s coming.

13. Larry Smith

Opening: “I want to discuss with you this afternoon why you’re going to fail to have a great career.”

14. Jane McGonigal

Opening: “You will live 7.5 minutes longer than you would have otherwise, just because you watched this talk.”

How to use provocative statements to start your speech?

Making a provocative statement creates a keen desire among the audience to want to know more about what you have to say. It immediately brings everyone into attention.

Larry Smith did just that by making his opening statement surprising, lightly humorous, and above all – fearful. These elements lead to an opening statement which creates so much curiosity among the audience that they need to know how your speech pans out.

This one time, I remember seeing a speaker start a speech with, “Last week, my best friend committed suicide.” The entire crowd was gripped. Everyone could feel the tension in the room.

They were just waiting for the speaker to continue to know where this speech will go.

That’s what a hard-hitting statement does, it intrigues your audience so much that they can’t wait to hear more! Just a tip, if you do start off with a provocative, hard-hitting statement, make sure you pause for a moment after saying it.

Silence after an impactful statement will allow your message to really sink in with the audience.

Related article: 5 Ways to Grab Your Audience’s Attention When You’re Losing it!

15. Ramona J Smith

Opening: In a boxing stance, “Life would sometimes feel like a fight. The punches, jabs and hooks will come in the form of challenges, obstacles and failures. Yet if you stay in the ring and learn from those past fights, at the end of each round, you’ll be still standing.”

How to use your full body to grip the audience at the beginning of your speech?

In a talk, the audience is expecting you to do just that – talk. But when you enter the stage and start putting your full body into use in a way that the audience does not expect, it grabs their attention.

Body language is critical when it comes to public speaking. Hand gestures, stage movement, facial expressions are all things that need to be paid attention to while you’re speaking on stage. But that’s not I’m talking about here.

Here, I’m referring to a unique use of the body that grips the audience, like how Ramona did. By using her body to get into a boxing stance, imitating punches, jabs and hooks with her arms while talking – that’s what got the audience’s attention.

The reason I say this is so powerful is because if you take Ramona’s speech and remove the body usage from her opening, the entire magic of the opening falls flat.

While the content is definitely strong, without those movements, she would not have captured the audience’s attention as beautifully as she did with the use of her body.

So if you have a speech opening that seems slightly dull, see if you can add some body movement to it.

If your speech starts with a story of someone running, actually act out the running. If your speech starts with a story of someone reading, actually act out the reading.

It will make your speech opening that much more impactful.

Related article: 5 Body Language Tips to Command the Stage

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Final Words

So there it is! 15 speech openings from some of my favourite speeches. Hopefully, these will act as a guide for you to create your own opening which is super impactful and sets you off on the path to becoming a powerful public speaker!

But remember, while a speech opening is super important, it’s just part of an overall structure.

If you’re serious about not just creating a great speech opening but to improve your public speaking at an overall level, I would highly recommend you to check out this course: Acumen Presents: Chris Anderson on Public Speaking on Udemy. Not only does it have specific lectures on starting and ending a speech, but it also offers an in-depth guide into all the nuances of public speaking. 

Being the founder of TED Talks, Chris Anderson provides numerous examples of the best TED speakers to give us a very practical way of overcoming stage fear and delivering a speech that people will remember. His course has helped me personally and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to learn public speaking. 

No one is ever “done” learning public speaking. It’s a continuous process and you can always get better. Keep learning, keep conquering and keep being awesome!

Lastly, if you want to know how you should NOT open your speech, we’ve got a video for you:

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EXPERIENTIAL PERSPECTIVES: REFLECTIONS ON VOICE AND SPEECH TRAINING

What has changed in the field of voice training for the theatre in the past 100 years ? I cannot speak personally for the full century of actors’ voice training since 1915 but I will boldly claim some personal knowledge of what has happened in the English-speaking world of actor-training in the last half-century. I hope, thus, to frame my reflections on what constitutes the craft of training the speaking voice within the context of the art of theatre. [1]

I started teaching in 1958 at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) under the tutelage of a woman named Iris Warren who had developed her own approach to voice training. She was interested in the emotional roots of voice and she was opening up a new world of exploration in a profession that had clearly defined its aesthetic parameters and set the boundaries of successful vocal performance. In the early twentieth century vocal standards in the English theatre world were plain: sufficient projection to be heard in the back row of the theatre, a pleasantly modulated range of vocal dynamics, and crisp articulation. The actor’s voice was a musical instrument to be well managed and expertly played. But Iris was dealing with successful actors on the West End stage who were losing their voices through the effort and strain of pushing for those desired effects. According to ‘unofficial,’ orally transmitted accounts of her practice, at some time in the 1930s Iris was asked by a Freudian analyst if she could help a patient of his who was unable to speak about his traumatic experiences. Iris got him to relax, breathe deeply and feel the sound of his voice in his body. He immediately began crying, and with the flood of tears came a flood of words. The emotion had freed his voice. Iris started adapting her voice exercises to include emotional impulse. Time and again her clients recovered their voices as emotion was released. Her exercises were revolutionized to find their origins deep inside the emotional body rather than be managed by abdominal and intercostal regulation.

It took another twenty years or more for English actor training to catch up with Iris. It was not until the 1950s that mainstream English theatre evolved from its somewhat external, boulevard style of performance to an acceptance of the psychological realism of Stanislavsky. John Osborne’s  Look Back in Anger  (1956) was certainly a breakthrough for emotional realism and, since the 1940s, Jacques Copeau’s explorations into character work had begun to influence actor training in England but, in my judgment, it was the raw naturalism of American film acting that finally cracked the façade of English acting technique in the 1970s, 80s and on.

American acting was steeped in Stanislavsky’s methodology and Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio approach, which dominated American actor training from the 1950s to the 1980s. (Strasberg’s teachers were Maria Ouspenskaya and Richard Boleslavsky who had studied with Stanislavsky and set up their school in New York after the famous visit there in 1923 of the Moscow Art Theatre). But at that time the training for voice and movement was largely rooted in singing techniques and dance. These techniques required physical management and manipulation that distanced the performer from emotional and psychological impulse.

I was lucky enough to enter the American theatre-training world in 1963. I had been teaching at LAMDA for six years and wanted a change. I thought I would visit New York for a year. I remained in the States for 50 years. Iris’s emotion-based voice work spoke the same psycho-physical language as the Method and over the next years, I developed her techniques in the rich climate of psycho-physical exploration that became the human potential movement of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. My work is deeply rooted in the body, in the freedom of emotion and in the subtlety of thought impulse.

Before I went to the United States, I knew nothing of anatomy. My American students, however, wanted to know the facts behind the exercises I taught. The first related voice book I read was  Training the Speaking Voice  by Virgil Anderson (1961). This led me to Mabel Elsworth Todd’s  The Thinking Body  (1937). Todd’s work was the basis for the development of  ideokinesis —the use of visual imagery to stimulate body movement. These books gave anatomical language to the approach to vocal exercise that Iris Warren had constructed and it became clear to me that her intuitive understanding of vocal anatomy was impeccable.

Still, it is one thing to help an actor gain vocal strength, range and freedom in the classroom but quite another to transfer that success to the rehearsal room and into performance. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, I experimented with strategies that would bring language out of the head and into the body. Working with Shakespeare’s texts, I created ‘Sound and Movement,’ a systematic series of exercises that reconstitutes every component of a word and then all the building blocks of grammar as physical, sensory, emotional experiences. This is the practical research I have pursued in the classroom, on the rehearsal floor, and as an actor. [2]

THE ACTOR’S QUARTET

The ‘geography’ of an actor’s creative and expressive process is complex because the raw material of an actor’s performance is the human being who performs. In order to simplify the picture for training purposes I sometimes talk about the ‘Actor’s Quartet.’ The Actor’s Quartet is made up of Body, Voice, Emotion, and Intellect—played (conducted, led, inspired) by the Creative Imagination. The four instruments must be trained both separately and together and must balance equally for optimum performance. Optimum performance means transformation; body, voice, emotion, intellect transmute into a character under the alchemical guidance of the imagination. My focus will be on the instrument of the voice but it is quickly apparent that the whole quartet is involved in this most human of musical instruments.

The craft of voice training depends on a detailed understanding of how the voice works anatomically. The voice is forged in the body. But a voice is set in motion by impulses in the brain. The art of voice training implicates not only the physicality of the voice but the psyche of the voice which has an indivisible union with the body in its original meaning from the Greek of ‘breath.’ [3]  Every human being’s voice is forged and shaped by the emerging emotions of that human as a baby and then as a gradually more and more sentient child—think of the power and resilience of a baby’s crying voice or of a toddler’s tantrum voice. Emotion, breath and voice are the stuff of the art of vocal communication. As babies we are born voice artists.

Later, comes speech. Sadly our inevitable induction into the normal modes of communication, a necessary acceptance of communal grammar, often diminishes the artistic expression of who we are. [4]  The emphatic message we get as we learn to speak and, later when we go to school, is to ‘ think !’ and ‘ make sense !’ Seldom are children told to  feel  and  find the words for the feeling . Grammar, reason, logic are our gods. If training in this field wants to achieve any kind of artistic depth, it must take the time to undo the acquired defensive habits and the internalization of societal norms that inevitably inhibit emotional speaking in favor of ‘being nice and polite.’ ‘Nice and polite’ is fine for daily use but it is not going to take an actor very far who may one day wish to play Oedipus, Medea, Lear, Queen Margaret or a character in a play by Sarah Kane or Tracy Letts. Actors need to be emotional warriors with voices to match. [5]

In the Introduction to the 1976 edition of my book  Freeing the Natural Voice , I say that this approach to voice work

is designed to liberate the natural voice rather than to develop a vocal technique. The basic assumption of the work is that everyone possesses a voice capable of expressing, through a two-to-four octave natural pitch range, whatever gamut of emotion, complexity of mood and subtlety of thought he or she experiences. The second assumption is that the tensions acquired through living in this world, as well as defenses, inhibitions and negative reactions to environmental influences, often diminish the efficiency of the natural voice to the point of distorted communication. Hence, the emphasis here is the removal of the blocks that inhibit the human instrument as distinct from the development of a skillful musical instrument… The objective is a voice in direct contact with emotional impulse, shaped by the intellect but not inhibited by it.

(Linklater 1976: 1)

When training focuses on results—on the clarity of speech, the effectiveness of voice and the control of the act of speaking—the emotional origins of voice and speech are ignored and a whole world of creative connections is by-passed. The artistry of the Actor’s Quartet is compromised. As teachers of voice and speech we are faced with the fact that the voices in our classrooms have already been trained—by upbringing, family and school. They have been unconsciously trained to speak in a certain way and to conform to certain rules of social behaviour. Our job, initially, is to undo habits of speaking acquired in childhood that restrict the potential of the voice.

VOICE AND SPEECH

It is worth noting that voice can communicate without speech but speech cannot communicate without voice, which indicates that voice is the master of verbal communication and speech the servant of that master. Our training must recognize that fact. Voice carries the tonality, the nuance, the intensity, the emotionality of verbal communication. Speech delivers the specific information that explicates the need for communication. Voice and speech training, therefore, delves into an interface of extremely complex neural activity. We must invest in strategies and indirect stimuli that will persuade the involuntary, autonomic nervous system to change its habitual (though not natural) behaviour from one of inhibition and defense to one of openness and vulnerability. Muscles in the diaphragmatic region must re-learn how to receive and transmit emotional impulses rather than repress them.

This intense exploration needs the motivation of a worthwhile goal. For the actor that goal might be said to be honest speaking and the ability to communicate authentically the whole range of human experience from the most delicately beautiful to the most cruel, the ugliest extremity. This goal demands a conscious dedication to re-conditioning neuro-physiological connections from brain to body to brain and back again to body. Training is available for such vocal and verbal authenticity but there are no quick fixes. We are re-routing causal impulses—restoring them to their original neuro-physiological pathways. We are training the brain.

‘Voice and Speech’ is a subject deemed necessary for any actor-training programme but we need to look beneath the surface of a job description for a voice and speech teacher that only references the latest methodologies plus phonetics and an expertise in dialects. These criteria suggest that the voice is regarded as a skill rather than an integral part of the creative act. It is at best inefficient, and at worst destructive, to separate the training of voice and body from the acting process. The Actor’s Quartet demands a deep integration of all the ingredients that combine in performance; actors develop on an artistic level when acting, movement and voice are interwoven in the course of training.

An actor must have a voice that can carry from the stage to the balcony and can, in other media, communicate the subtleties and nuances of inner psychological dramatic truth for the camera and the microphone. The voice needs to be both intimately connected with emotional veracity and have extroverted power. The  art  of voice is rooted in emotion and grows by refining a sensibility and an ear that knows how to listen in to a text. The  craft  of training voice for an actor means freeing the voice and the instruments of speech from inhibitory habits.

ANATOMY OF THE VOICE AND ANATOMY OF THE TEXT

Here, I must deliver a paean to the glory and brilliance of the involuntary physical processes that activate the voice. What a miracle of cooperation! You have the desire to speak and lo! a multitude of involuntary activities brings in breath via a myriad coordinating muscles in the diaphragm, the  crura  and the intercostals, simultaneously activating a posse of tiny laryngeal muscles that pull the vocal folds together. Breath meets the resistance of the vocal folds and the vibrationary response reverberates in bony cavities and on resonating surfaces within the body. At the same time as all this, the muscles of lips and tongue are galvanized—and behold! words emerge… and someone hears what you think and feel.

All these activities are far too complex and multifarious for the organized, regulated, sensible, conscious mind to deliver. Thus it is futile for any training of this miraculous activity to say: ‘Breathe like this. Put your voice here. Organize your diction in this way.’ Ultimately, all we can do is say (and this is a mental  via negativa  that goes in defiance of every dictate of achievement advertised by the current climate of success): ‘Let go of the result. Commit yourself to the feeling of what you want to say. Feed in the desire to communicate that feeling. Release the desire into your breath and the vibration of your voice. See what happens.’ This is a commitment to causal thought. Voice and speech are the result of that causal impulse. Communication is a by-product of desire and freedom.

Putting it as simply as possible: There’s a desire to speak—an impulse. It runs down the spinal column and through the central nervous system galvanizing simultaneously the breathing mechanism and the laryngeal mechanism into an activity that creates a vibration which is immediately amplified by surrounding resonating surfaces into voice. At the same time the impulse activates movements of lips and tongue that deliver words. [6]  In neuro-anatomical theory this sounds fairly simple. ‘I feel, I breathe, I speak.’ But in practice we are in thrall to countervailing impulses that warn that ‘it’s not safe to say what I feel,’ bringing us back to those cultural norms that, from the earliest age, cut the voice off from its natural nutritional roots in the emotions. This lack of emotional freedom manifests in tensions in the breathing area, tension in the throat, the tongue and the jaw, thin (often nasal) sound, limited range, poor diction.

Voice teachers teach relaxation, diaphragmatic breathing, resonance and range and articulation. What about the ‘Speech’ part of the training requirement ? What is speech ? Words ? Is speech the way words are spoken or the meaning of the words that are spoken ? Who decides the way ? Is that way informed by the place the speaker grew up in and was formed linguistically ? Does that speaker speak with a specific accent ? Is there a ‘correct’ way ? Who decides ‘the meaning’ ? Is there one meaning—or several possible meanings ? Speech training involves much more than the activation of lips and tongue.

Speech training involves the component parts of words—vowels and consonants, words themselves, grammar, syntax, text, the script—and thought. ‘Text’ involves the question of prosody. Jody Kreiman and Diana Sidtis, in  Foundations of Voice Studies , define prosody thus:

Voice quality (broadly and narrowly considered) is the stuff of speech prosody, an area of intensive study in speech science, psycholinguistics, and neuropsychology. Prosody traditionally encompasses average pitch and pitch variability (or the mean and variability of fundamental frequency), loudness (or intensity) mean and variation, the large array of temporal factors that determine perceived speech rate and rhythm, and voice quality narrowly defined (for example, creakiness and breathiness, which function subtly—and sometimes not so subtly—in everyday speech to communicate meaning). [...] the four primary components of prosody—pitch, loudness, timing and voice quality—serve as indicators of linguistic structure.

(2013: 261)

For my purposes here, however, I prefer the simplicity of  Wikipedia ’s definition because it includes the emotional state and intentionality of the speaker:

In  linguistics , prosody is concerned with [...] such linguistic functions as the  rhythm ,  stress , and  intonation  of  speech . Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance (statement, question, or command); the presence of  irony  or  sarcasm ; emphasis,  contrast , and  focus ; or other elements of language that may not be encoded by  grammar  or by choice of  vocabulary .

(Prosody 2015)

We each have our own personal prosody and every writer—playwright, poet, prose-writer—also has his or her own prosody that reflects the back story of the story, the back story of the character, the back story of the writer. The actor must listen in to these three prosodic ‘back stories’ while being conscious that his or her own prosody may distort that of the character. The actor’s voice must be alive and elastic and unconfined by the dynamics of personal speaking habits.

DYNAMICS OF THE VOICE

The actor learns to listen in with a sensitive inner ear to the intrinsic prosody and dynamics of text.  Dynamics are built-in human energies. Dynamics can be neatly labelled ‘Pace, Volume, and Pitch’ but they are: the ‘pace’ of our inner thoughts and feelings from slow to fast and everything in between including rhythm; the ‘volume’ that emerges from the shifting intensities of our inner states of being—intensities that require loud to soft and everything in between; ‘pitch,’ meaning the frequencies of our inner energies from high to low and everything in between. ‘Pitch’ is made manifest in resonators extending from the chest to the skull. Any playwright with an ear and a sensibility tuned to human speech reflects and records human dynamics. A poetic playwright, such as Shakespeare, is tuning in to the dynamics of heightened emotion, heightened action, and the dynamics rev up to poetic energy levels.

Listening in, tuning in to a text comes under the heading of what I described as the  art  of voice and speech training. One of the attributes of a talented actor is that he or she instinctively goes to the heart of a character and intuitively reincarnates the dynamics and the prosody of that character’s thinking and feeling life.  A good acting exercise in an acting class will lead to the source of the character’s need to speak and thus activate the necessary dynamics of that character’s voice and speech. But voice and speech training must also develop a conditioned approach to text that merges with the actions of the play.

Acting teachers often say: ‘Get out of your head’ and sometimes ‘Stop thinking’ and even ‘The words don’t matter.’ Voice teachers say: ‘Your voice is in your body; your thought-feeling impulses are generated in your body; words are images and feelings and sensory experiences.’ Good voice and speech training help clarify the acting instructions thus: ‘If I experience thought in my head, I’m thinking  about  the thing. When I experience thought in my body and my breath, I am  thinking and feeling  the thing at the same time. The words are no longer mere cognition; they have become imagination, consciousness, intention. They connect through breath with instinct and intuition and the creative spark.’

The key psycho-physical connection is through the intimate connection between the diaphragm and the solar plexus, a nerve centre which is generally experienced as being the primary receiving and transmitting centre of emotion. [7]  In a rich involuntary collaboration, the inner abdominal (or  crura ) breathing muscles weave down from the diaphragm through the sacral nerve centre to the pelvic region and react to stimuli on the level of instinct. Breath must be free from conscious or habitual muscular control for emotion and instinct to be free. The release of breath is crucial for the freedom and release of the complex energies of the psychological, sensory and intellectual life of an imagined character’s story.

When the breath is free from inhibitory constriction and the throat, tongue and jaw have relaxed their compensatory tensions, the voice begins to flow through the bones, the cavities, the multitudinous passageways of the body. Vibrations reverberate through the rumbling chest, the legs, the beckoning roof of the mouth, the buzzing teeth, the astonishing corridors and caverns that create the intricate architecture of the face. The sharp convexity of the nose, the smooth round ringing chambers of the cheek bones, the surprise of the sinuses below and above the eyes, the eye sockets, the clarion call of the forehead, and the giddy euphoria of the skull. The resonators reflect the dynamics of emotional energy. The involuntary nervous system and the involuntary musculature play on the voice as on the most multi-toned organ imaginable.

FREEING THE NATURAL VOICE: THOUGHTS AND A PRACTICE-DRIVEN EXAMPLE

My approach to voice training is known as ‘freeing the natural voice’ (see Linklater 1976, 2006 and 2010). The ‘freeing’ part of it refers to letting go of habitual defensive tensions in the breathing and vocal tract musculature. The ‘natural’ part refers to what is nature before nurture interferes. More than that, however, we can play with the idea that the organs of the body contain frequencies of sound—that the voice, indeed, already exists in the body waiting to be liberated. Mentally, there is a wonderful letting go of effort when one pictures the voice existing in vibrationary readiness in the organs, the pelvic basin, the hollows of the hip sockets, the thighs, the feet. I love the experience recorded by John Cage of his entry into an anechoic chamber—a space designed to absorb all resonance and electro-magnetic waves creating complete and utter silence. His account has a poetic form which I reproduce here: [8]

I am constantly telling it.

in that silent room,

I heard two sounds,

one high and one low.

I asked the engineer in charge 

why, if the room was so silent,

I had heard two sounds.

He said, ‘Describe them.’

‘The high one was your nervous system

in operation.

The low one was your blood

in circulation.’

(Cage 1967: 134)

What a huge, organic and active range of sound is built in to our living systems! We are full of sounds. We are full of feelings. Full of impulses. Full of rhythm. If we have the courage to follow our impulses of feeling and of sound, our only job as vocal/verbal artists is to feed our imaginations intelligently, provide accurate information to the back stories, think clearly, find the motivation (the desire to speak) and let go! But what does that entail ? If we unconsciously think that the voice emanates exclusively from the throat then that’s what it will do. It takes a conscious re-routing of the unconscious processes to arrive at the rewarding realities of how the voice works.

It is now well-known on an anatomical and medical level that our human condition is activated as much from neurons in the gut and the heart as from the familiar brain in the head (see Gershon 1999 and Rajvanshi 2011). Most of the research in this area focuses on the medical and psychological implications of this knowledge but those of us who have, empirically, been working with this understanding for years (half a century in my case) can now guide our students with scientific authority—as well as imaginative stimulus—to the re-routing of thought out of the skull brain and into the body. We experience words emerging from the gut brain and the heart brain into the skull brain, re-routing the feeling of voice out of the throat and into the body.

I am going to focus on a well-known passage from Shakespeare to try and convey how this re-routing can be conditioned so that the complex dynamics of the act of speaking merge with the embodied imagination and unify in the Actor’s Quartet. This is the Prologue that introduces Act IV in  Henry V :

Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. From camp to camp through the foul womb of night The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fixed sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch: Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other's umber'd face; Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night's dull ear, and from the tents The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation: The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, And the third hour of drowsy morning name.

In my Sound and Movement work, first we have to prime the body so that it can receive and transmit the imagination through words. We are looking for imagination experienced in the body and in the words as we speak them. As preparation for incarnating words, we imagine the body being light and diaphanous so that breath can move it from inside out and outside in. Then we imagine mouths opening out from each part of the body—soles of the feet, knees, buttocks, belly, between the shoulder-blades, from the centre of the upper chest, armpits, elbows, palms of the hands, finger-tips. Then we visualize vibrations of sound emanating from the solar plexus centre, activating and animating whichever part of the body they travel through to escape through each mouth. We are conditioning neuro-physiological pathways into an experience of embodied thinking. Then we explore colours that vibrate, activate and animate the body-mouths with their emotional content. Then comes the exploration of what I call primitive articulation—a fanciful, improvised evocation of the evolution of language that leads on to embodied vowels and consonants. Vowels and consonants live experientially in the body, in the senses and the emotions. Slowly, we connect vowels and consonants with each other to form images and words. Words that are units of sensual, sensory energy. Words that move the body from inside out. Words that are revealed through the voice, not described by it.

For working purposes, I organize the experience of vowels into their resonating sequence. This is the vowel resonance ladder as I have crafted it as a physical practice:

                                                            RREE-EE crown RREE-EE

                                                KI                      forehead         KI  as in ‘kick’

                                          PE-EY                       eyes                 PE-EY      as in ‘pale’

                                    DEh                             cheekbones            DEh    as in ‘den’

                              BA                                    mid-cheeks                BA   as in ‘bat’

                        HU-UH-UH                                mouth                       HU-UH-UH   as in ‘hurt’

                   FUh                                                   lips                                FUh   as in ‘fun’

               MAA-AAH                                         heart                                MAA-AAH   as in ‘mark’

            GOh                                                    chest center                               GOh as in ‘got’

       SHAW-AW                                             solar plexus                                 SHAW-AW as in ‘short’

  WO-e                                                                   belly                                           WO-e   as in ‘woe’

ZZOO-OO                                                      pelvis   and legs                                   ZZOO-OO   as in ‘zoo’

In this practice, I invite you to start with ZZOO-OO and go up to RREE-EE, then come down the ladder to ZZOO-OO. We are not looking for ‘correct’ vowels but for the feeling of the different parts of the body resonating with the different frequencies on shifting planes of outgoing soundwaves. We are opening up to the different energies of the vowels, their colours and their emotional content. We are noting that some vowels are intrinsically short and others intrinsically long. We are allowing the vowels to move the body from inside out. Next, isolating consonants, we find, again, their homes in the body—some buzzing and murmuring, some explosive and shocking, some hushing and some sharp. With these awareness-es, we approach the speech. It is poetry. The man who wrote it had a conscious or unconscious ear for the music of vowels and consonants. They are keys to understanding his purpose. We have to plunge vertically into the sounds of his words before we can understand his meaning.

I have found that I must invent some quite far-fetched strategies to dislodge an actor’s habitual pattern of thinking and speaking. Most speakers’ personal prosody confines them to signature patterns of inflection and unconscious habitual rhythms. Our voices are conditioned more by daily utilitarian necessity than by the expression of our sensory, sensual, emotional thoughts and feelings. This utilitarian usage emphasizes the tunes of grammar and syntax more than the music of imagery. The rational brain is imprinted with grammatical inflection. When we are given a piece of paper with lines of words on it, we habitually read those words in order to make sense. We read horizontally through the lines to the end, hoping to be in charge of the information we have gleaned. We are in the grip of linear, logical, grammatical thought, which is then delivered through personal inflectionary patterns of voice. Through our own personal prosody.

To attempt entry into Shakespeare’s prosody, we have first of all to arrest the linear habit—as if it were a criminal. Then we must enter the adventure of vertical thinking. This process is very fully presented in my book  Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice  (Linklater 2010) but, for my purpose here, I will pick certain words from the Act IV Chorus and suggest that you ‘listen in’ as if your ears were in your body, feeling the effect of vowels and consonants and seeing, hearing, sensing the images. [9]  Then speak the words as if your voice comes out of your solar plexus and your heart. [10]

The first word is

which is not to be ignored. The first job the Chorus must do is to bring the audience into the present moment—NOW.

The next words are two of the very few Latin-based, polysyllabic words in this speech. It is easy for us to take them for granted but they are asking the audience to do something very specific and are worth lingering over. After ‘now,’ the Chorus says (and I suggest you also say the word out loud feeling it in your body and your mouth)

ENTERTAIN  

which comes from the Latin ‘ inter ’ and ‘ tenire ’ meaning ‘hold inside.’ The meaning in English developed into bringing guests into one’s home. The guest, in this case, is

CONJECTURE.

Etymologically, this means ‘throw together.’ The Chorus asks the audience to accommodate a throwing together of things. Once this request has been made, we, as the Chorus, proceed to the things themselves that must be thrown together and the language becomes more directly embodied.

The first thing to be entertained is

Then, as the speaking Chorus, we must see and hear the next things—with their vertical sensory imagery dislodged from their grammatical linearity:

CREEPING MURMUR             UNIVERSE           FOUL WOMB              NIGHT             HUM        ARMY              

Then see, hear and sense:

STILLY SOUNDS            FIXED SENTINELS                 RECEIVE                

 SECRET WHISPERS           EACH OTHER’S WATCH

The darkness of the night emerges from the sounds in the first set of words. In the second set, the ‘S’s and ‘CH’s and unvoiced consonants cut through the dark, creating the scene through the actual sounds of whispering. Our logical skull brain knows that this is onomatopoeia but it is the gut and heart brains that can incarnate the knowledge and lead us to the feelings that underlie the words.

CAMP TO CAMP                                          FOUL WOMB OF NIGHT

The sharp high vowel ‘A’ spits from the sharp consonant ‘C,’ cutting the heavy vowels and thick consonants of the ‘foul womb.’ [11]

The scene is being vividly painted in sound and rhythm. There is the ongoing forward movement of the iambic pentameter and there is the contrapuntal internal rhythm of the long and short vowels and consonants:

FIRE ANSWERS FIRE (long vowels, soft consonants)   

PALY FLAMES (high, long vowels, flicking consonants)

BATTLE (sharp, strong consonant to start, sharp high vowel)         

SEES (long, high vowel—suspends the middle of the line)             

UMBER’D (weighty consonants) FACE (light consonants and vowel)

Switching vertiginously from the visual to the aural, we now hear:

STEED THREATENS STEED IN HIGH AND BOASTFUL NEIGHS

The ‘neighs’ are audible in the vowels of the steeds and ‘threaten’ while the trochaic start to the line is challenged by the stress of the strongly active verb, echoing ‘Fire answers fire’—adding urgency. Halfway through the next line, we are dropped from the high neighing that pierces the night’s ear into the sounds of human activity:

AND FROM THE TENTS (short and sharp)

THE ARMOURERS (it is almost impossible to say this word fast—its vowels and consonants are heavy with foreboding)

ACCOMPLISHING THE KNIGHTS

GIVE DREADFUL NOTE OF PREPARATION

Most of the words up to this point have been Anglo-Saxon and Old French based, living naturally in the body. ‘Accomplishing’ and ‘preparation’ with their polysyllabic Latin-based nature bring us back to the conjecture we are entertaining.

But the sounds break through with vivid clarity:

WITH BUSY HAMMERS CLOSING RIVETS UP

—nailing the knights into their steel armour.

And then, the simple sounds of the countryside make themselves heard in internal rhyme and alliteration:

THE COUNTRY COCKS DO CROW, THE CLOCKS DO TOLL

AND THE THIRD HOUR OF DROWSY MORNING NAME

Gradually, we juxtapose the images and sounds into the sequence of each line. We feel how the iambic pentameter organizes the emphasis and makes sense of the vertical energies. Then we give ourselves over to the contrapuntal joyride that jazzily plays long and short vowels, heavy and light images, voiced and unvoiced consonants against the powerful forward thrust of the iambic beat.

Only now can the actor playing the Chorus contribute to the story of the play.

The scene must be painted and sound-scaped into the imaginations of the audience. Of course, for an Elizabethan audience attending the play in mid-afternoon this scene-painting was part of the drama. The only way the audience will see and hear and feel the scene is if the speaker sees and hears and feels it. The speaker’s voice must reveal the scene rather than describe it. And this is true for all of Shakespeare.

It is slow, detailed work/play. Each ingredient must be mixed in carefully, slow-cooking in the oven of our sensory bodies until the whole meal is ready. We must not leap to interpretation but allow meaning to be revealed. It will, I think, be abundantly clear that all the instruments of the Actor’s Quartet are engaged in the processes I have described. The mind-body quest for connection of voice and speech with text, of text and voice and speech with imagination and emotion, the connection of voice with character and story and back story, the connection of speech and voice with the dynamics of prosody, the exercising of voice and speech with styles and heightened language, is set in motion—marrying craft with art in the Actor’s Quartet.

Anderson, V. (1961),  Training the Speaking Voice , New York: Oxford University Press.

Cage, J. (1967),  A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings , Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Cavarero, A. (2005),  For More than One Voice: Toward a Vocal Philosophy of Uniqueness , (trans. P.A. Kottman), Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Damasio, A. (1999),  The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness , New York: Harcourt Brace.

---. (1995),  Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain , New York: Harper Perennial.

Elsworth Todd, M. (1937),  The Thinking Body , New York: Dance Horizons.

Gershon, M. (1999),  The Second Brain , New York: Harper Collins.

Joseph, B.L. ([1951] 1964),  Elizabethan Acting , London: Oxford University Press.

Karpf, A. (2007),  The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent , London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Keleman , S. (1985),  Emotional Anatomy: The Structure of Experience , Berkeley, CA: Center Press.

Kreiman, J. and Sidtis, D. (2013),  Foundations of Voice Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Voice Production and Perception , Malden, MA & Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

Linklater, K. (2010),  Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice: The Actor’s Guide to Talking the Text , London: Nick Hern Books.

---. (2009), ‘The alchemy of breathing,’ in J. Boston and R. Cook (eds.),  Breath in Action: The Art of Breath in Vocal and Holistic Practice , London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, pp.101-12.

---. (2006),  Freeing the Natural Voice: Imagery and Art in the Practice of Voice and Language. Revised and Expanded , London: Nick Hern Books.

---. (1997), ‘Thoughts on theatre, therapy, and the art of voice,’ in M. Hampton and B. Acker (eds.),  Vocal Vision , New York: Applause Books, pp.3-12.

---. (1976),  Freeing the Natural Voice , New York: Drama Book Publishers / Quite Specific Media.

McGilchrist, I. (2009),  The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Ong, W. (1967),  The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Prosody (linguistics) (2015),  Wikipedia ,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_ (linguistics). Accessed 30 June 2015.

Rajvanshi, A. (2011, May), ‘The three minds of the body - Brain, heart and gut,’  http://www.nariphaltan.org/gut.pdf . Accessed 30 June 2015.

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The Art of Persuasion: Writing a Compelling Speech

Discover the art of persuasion and learn how to write a compelling speech that captivates your audience. This blog post provides expert insights and practical tips for crafting an impactful persuasive speech.

Understanding the Power of Persuasion

Understanding the power of persuasion is crucial when it comes to writing a persuasive speech. Persuasion is the art of influencing and convincing others to adopt your point of view or take a specific action. By understanding the principles behind persuasion, you can effectively communicate your ideas and sway your audience.

One key aspect of persuasion is understanding the psychological factors that influence decision-making. People are often motivated by emotions, personal beliefs, and social influences. By tapping into these factors, you can tailor your speech to resonate with your audience and increase the likelihood of them being persuaded by your arguments.

Additionally, understanding the power dynamics at play can also enhance your persuasive abilities. Recognizing the authority or expertise you possess on the topic can lend credibility to your arguments, while acknowledging and addressing counterarguments can help you anticipate and overcome potential objections.

In summary, understanding the power of persuasion involves recognizing the psychological factors and power dynamics that influence decision-making. By leveraging these insights, you can effectively craft a persuasive speech that resonates with your audience and achieves your intended goals.

Analyzing Your Audience

Analyzing your audience is a crucial step in writing a persuasive speech. By understanding who your audience is, their beliefs, values, and attitudes, you can tailor your arguments to appeal to their specific needs and interests.

Start by conducting research or surveys to gather information about your audience. Consider their demographics, such as age, gender, education, and socioeconomic background. This information can provide valuable insights into their preferences and perspectives.

Furthermore, analyze your audience's psychographics, which include their interests, values, and motivations. What are their concerns and aspirations? What do they care about? By understanding their psychographics, you can identify common ground and frame your arguments in a way that resonates with their values.

Remember, effective persuasion requires connecting with your audience on an emotional level. By tailoring your speech to address their specific concerns and interests, you can create a compelling case that is more likely to persuade them.

In conclusion, analyzing your audience is essential for writing a persuasive speech. By understanding their demographics and psychographics, you can tailor your arguments to resonate with their needs and interests, increasing the chances of persuading them.

Selecting a Relevant and Timely Topic

Selecting a relevant and timely topic is crucial for capturing your audience's attention and maintaining their interest throughout your persuasive speech.

Firstly, consider the current issues and trends that are relevant to your audience. What are the pressing concerns or debates in their lives? By choosing a topic that is timely, you can tap into their existing interests and create a sense of urgency.

Additionally, selecting a topic that is relevant to your audience's lives or experiences can make your speech more relatable and engaging. Consider their needs, challenges, and aspirations. How can your speech address these aspects and provide valuable insights or solutions?

Furthermore, it is important to choose a topic that aligns with your own expertise and interests. By selecting a topic that you are passionate about and knowledgeable in, you can deliver a more authentic and compelling speech.

In summary, selecting a relevant and timely topic involves considering the current issues and trends that are relevant to your audience, as well as their needs and interests. By choosing a topic that aligns with your expertise and resonates with your audience, you can create a persuasive speech that captures their attention and maintains their interest.

Crafting a Strong Thesis Statement

Crafting a strong thesis statement is essential for creating a persuasive speech that effectively communicates your main argument or point of view.

A thesis statement serves as the foundation of your speech, providing a clear and concise statement of your main idea. It should be specific, debatable, and focused on the main argument you want to make.

To craft a strong thesis statement, start by clearly stating your position on the topic. Avoid vague or general statements and strive for clarity and precision. Additionally, ensure that your thesis statement is debatable, meaning that there are valid arguments on both sides of the issue.

Furthermore, consider the structure of your thesis statement. It should be concise and to the point, capturing the essence of your argument in a single sentence or two.

In conclusion, crafting a strong thesis statement involves clearly stating your position on the topic, ensuring that it is debatable, and structuring it in a concise and focused manner. A strong thesis statement sets the tone for your persuasive speech and guides your audience in understanding your main argument.

Using Emotional Appeals

Using emotional appeals is a powerful technique for persuading your audience and eliciting a strong response to your persuasive speech.

Emotions play a significant role in decision-making, and by tapping into your audience's emotions, you can create a deeper connection and increase the likelihood of them being persuaded.

To effectively use emotional appeals, start by identifying the emotions that are relevant to your topic and your audience. Consider the desired emotional response you want to evoke, whether it's empathy, excitement, fear, or hope. By understanding your audience's emotional triggers, you can tailor your speech to generate the desired emotional response.

Additionally, use storytelling and personal anecdotes to make your speech more relatable and emotionally engaging. Humanizing your arguments and connecting them to real-life experiences can create a powerful emotional impact.

However, it is important to use emotional appeals ethically and responsibly. Avoid manipulating or exploiting your audience's emotions, and ensure that your emotional appeals are supported by logical arguments and evidence.

In summary, using emotional appeals involves identifying the relevant emotions for your topic and audience, using storytelling and personal anecdotes to make your speech more relatable, and maintaining ethical standards in your use of emotional appeals. By effectively using emotional appeals, you can create a persuasive speech that resonates with your audience on an emotional level.

Supporting Your Arguments with Evidence

Supporting your arguments with evidence is essential for building credibility and persuasiveness in your speech.

Evidence can take various forms, including statistics, research findings, expert opinions, and real-life examples. By incorporating relevant and reliable evidence, you can strengthen your arguments and make them more convincing.

When selecting evidence, ensure that it is up-to-date, accurate, and relevant to your topic. Use credible sources and cite them appropriately to maintain credibility.

Additionally, consider the counterarguments and potential objections that your audience may have. Anticipate these objections and address them with counter-evidence or logical reasoning. By acknowledging and refuting opposing viewpoints, you can strengthen your overall argument.

Furthermore, use clear and concise language when presenting your evidence. Avoid jargon or complex terminology that may confuse or alienate your audience. Present the evidence in a logical and organized manner, making it easy for your audience to follow and understand.

In conclusion, supporting your arguments with evidence involves incorporating relevant, reliable, and up-to-date evidence to strengthen your persuasive speech. By addressing potential objections and presenting the evidence in a clear and organized manner, you can build credibility and persuade your audience effectively.

Structuring an Engaging Speech

Structuring your speech in an engaging manner is crucial for capturing and maintaining your audience's attention throughout your persuasive speech.

Start by organizing your speech into a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction should grab your audience's attention, provide a brief overview of your topic, and present your thesis statement. The body should be structured logically, with each main point supported by evidence and examples. The conclusion should summarize your main arguments and leave a lasting impression on your audience.

Additionally, consider incorporating storytelling, anecdotes, or rhetorical questions to make your speech more engaging and interactive. These techniques can help create a connection with your audience and enhance their overall experience.

Furthermore, use transitions and signposts to guide your audience through your speech. Clear and concise transitions help your audience follow your thoughts and maintain a sense of flow.

Lastly, consider the use of visual aids, such as slides or props, to enhance your speech and make it more visually appealing. Visual aids can help illustrate your points and make complex ideas more accessible to your audience.

In summary, structuring an engaging speech involves organizing it into a clear introduction, body, and conclusion, incorporating storytelling and rhetorical techniques, using transitions to guide your audience, and considering the use of visual aids. By structuring your speech effectively, you can capture and maintain your audience's attention throughout your persuasive speech.

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2 Minute Speech On Art & Craft [Best Example]

In this article, we are sharing an example of speech on art and craft. This example is written in easy-to-understand English language. This example will help you get an idea of how to compose a speech on a similar topic.

Speech On Art And Craft

First of all, good morning to the honourable principal, respected teachers and loving friends and all of you gathered here. In your special presence, I would like to deliver a speech on arts and crafts.

Whenever I hear the word “Art”, the first thing that comes into my mind is mother Nature. Have you ever noticed how artistic is our mother nature? Observe nature’s beauty to understand the meaning of art. How beautifully it has crafted every element that leaves us mesmerised.

In fact, the artwork done by artists and craftsmen is more or less inspired by nature . Art is an open-ended phenomenon, it has no limits just like the universe. An artist can never run out of ideas to create a new piece of art.

The human brain is designed in a way that seeks newness in everything. Art can bring newness but It can not be done through the skill of crafts. It is because the craft is a branch of art that reproduces a piece of art that already exists.

Art teaches us that there are an unlimited number of possibilities in the world. If one starts thinking just like an artist, he can find opportunities in each area of life, that no one noticed before. In fact, many people generated unique business ideas with the help of artistic thinking.

Due to the uniqueness of art pieces, many people wish to acquire them. Artists arrange bidding exhibitions in big cities to sell their art. You might be surprised to know that this industry did a business of 65 billion dollars this year.

On the other side, the craft industry sells more products than the art industry. People also like crafts. They buy handmade products crafted by artisans that possess expertise in a specific skill. Most importantly, this industry provides more jobs to people and helps them earn their living.

All in all, our life will become boring without art and craft. We can make our life beautiful and pleasing by embracing art. It is a skill that applies to music, painting, poetry, dance and more. Similarly, we can apply art in every aspect of life.

When you start thinking like an artist, you will see that we don’t know much about this world. This will inspire you to explore new possibilities. Thank you for listening to me.

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Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks

Published on February 9, 2015 by Shane Bryson . Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

This example guides you through the structure of an essay. It shows how to build an effective introduction , focused paragraphs , clear transitions between ideas, and a strong conclusion .

Each paragraph addresses a single central point, introduced by a topic sentence , and each point is directly related to the thesis statement .

As you read, hover over the highlighted parts to learn what they do and why they work.

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Other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay, an appeal to the senses: the development of the braille system in nineteenth-century france.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

In France, debates about how to deal with disability led to the adoption of different strategies over time. While people with temporary difficulties were able to access public welfare, the most common response to people with long-term disabilities, such as hearing or vision loss, was to group them together in institutions (Tombs, 1996). At first, a joint institute for the blind and deaf was created, and although the partnership was motivated more by financial considerations than by the well-being of the residents, the institute aimed to help people develop skills valuable to society (Weygand, 2009). Eventually blind institutions were separated from deaf institutions, and the focus shifted towards education of the blind, as was the case for the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, which Louis Braille attended (Jimenez et al, 2009). The growing acknowledgement of the uniqueness of different disabilities led to more targeted education strategies, fostering an environment in which the benefits of a specifically blind education could be more widely recognized.

Several different systems of tactile reading can be seen as forerunners to the method Louis Braille developed, but these systems were all developed based on the sighted system. The Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris taught the students to read embossed roman letters, a method created by the school’s founder, Valentin Hauy (Jimenez et al., 2009). Reading this way proved to be a rather arduous task, as the letters were difficult to distinguish by touch. The embossed letter method was based on the reading system of sighted people, with minimal adaptation for those with vision loss. As a result, this method did not gain significant success among blind students.

Louis Braille was bound to be influenced by his school’s founder, but the most influential pre-Braille tactile reading system was Charles Barbier’s night writing. A soldier in Napoleon’s army, Barbier developed a system in 1819 that used 12 dots with a five line musical staff (Kersten, 1997). His intention was to develop a system that would allow the military to communicate at night without the need for light (Herron, 2009). The code developed by Barbier was phonetic (Jimenez et al., 2009); in other words, the code was designed for sighted people and was based on the sounds of words, not on an actual alphabet. Barbier discovered that variants of raised dots within a square were the easiest method of reading by touch (Jimenez et al., 2009). This system proved effective for the transmission of short messages between military personnel, but the symbols were too large for the fingertip, greatly reducing the speed at which a message could be read (Herron, 2009). For this reason, it was unsuitable for daily use and was not widely adopted in the blind community.

Nevertheless, Barbier’s military dot system was more efficient than Hauy’s embossed letters, and it provided the framework within which Louis Braille developed his method. Barbier’s system, with its dashes and dots, could form over 4000 combinations (Jimenez et al., 2009). Compared to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, this was an absurdly high number. Braille kept the raised dot form, but developed a more manageable system that would reflect the sighted alphabet. He replaced Barbier’s dashes and dots with just six dots in a rectangular configuration (Jimenez et al., 2009). The result was that the blind population in France had a tactile reading system using dots (like Barbier’s) that was based on the structure of the sighted alphabet (like Hauy’s); crucially, this system was the first developed specifically for the purposes of the blind.

While the Braille system gained immediate popularity with the blind students at the Institute in Paris, it had to gain acceptance among the sighted before its adoption throughout France. This support was necessary because sighted teachers and leaders had ultimate control over the propagation of Braille resources. Many of the teachers at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth resisted learning Braille’s system because they found the tactile method of reading difficult to learn (Bullock & Galst, 2009). This resistance was symptomatic of the prevalent attitude that the blind population had to adapt to the sighted world rather than develop their own tools and methods. Over time, however, with the increasing impetus to make social contribution possible for all, teachers began to appreciate the usefulness of Braille’s system (Bullock & Galst, 2009), realizing that access to reading could help improve the productivity and integration of people with vision loss. It took approximately 30 years, but the French government eventually approved the Braille system, and it was established throughout the country (Bullock & Galst, 2009).

Although Blind people remained marginalized throughout the nineteenth century, the Braille system granted them growing opportunities for social participation. Most obviously, Braille allowed people with vision loss to read the same alphabet used by sighted people (Bullock & Galst, 2009), allowing them to participate in certain cultural experiences previously unavailable to them. Written works, such as books and poetry, had previously been inaccessible to the blind population without the aid of a reader, limiting their autonomy. As books began to be distributed in Braille, this barrier was reduced, enabling people with vision loss to access information autonomously. The closing of the gap between the abilities of blind and the sighted contributed to a gradual shift in blind people’s status, lessening the cultural perception of the blind as essentially different and facilitating greater social integration.

The Braille system also had important cultural effects beyond the sphere of written culture. Its invention later led to the development of a music notation system for the blind, although Louis Braille did not develop this system himself (Jimenez, et al., 2009). This development helped remove a cultural obstacle that had been introduced by the popularization of written musical notation in the early 1500s. While music had previously been an arena in which the blind could participate on equal footing, the transition from memory-based performance to notation-based performance meant that blind musicians were no longer able to compete with sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997). As a result, a tactile musical notation system became necessary for professional equality between blind and sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997).

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

Bullock, J. D., & Galst, J. M. (2009). The Story of Louis Braille. Archives of Ophthalmology , 127(11), 1532. https://​doi.org/10.1001/​archophthalmol.2009.286.

Herron, M. (2009, May 6). Blind visionary. Retrieved from https://​eandt.theiet.org/​content/​articles/2009/05/​blind-visionary/.

Jiménez, J., Olea, J., Torres, J., Alonso, I., Harder, D., & Fischer, K. (2009). Biography of Louis Braille and Invention of the Braille Alphabet. Survey of Ophthalmology , 54(1), 142–149. https://​doi.org/10.1016/​j.survophthal.2008.10.006.

Kersten, F.G. (1997). The history and development of Braille music methodology. The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education , 18(2). Retrieved from https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/40214926.

Mellor, C.M. (2006). Louis Braille: A touch of genius . Boston: National Braille Press.

Tombs, R. (1996). France: 1814-1914 . London: Pearson Education Ltd.

Weygand, Z. (2009). The blind in French society from the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

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Bryson, S. (2023, July 23). Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks. Scribbr. Retrieved April 2, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/example-essay-structure/

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5 Minute Speech on Art in English for Students

Art has played a role so important since time immemorial. We can trace this back to the Victorian era when the importance and significance of art were strengthening to its peak. Art spoke the loudest when words couldn’t justify it. This is still the case today. Art helps one communicate. It helps one emotionally and mentally. This is amazing and the wonders of it are off limits. It has scientifically helped lots and lots of people. People suffering from various mental issues find peace in art. It saved a lot of lives. It still does. It helps in enhancing creativity and ideas. In today’s world, there are so many talented artists. There is an artist who uses their art to work for the betterment of the world, to fight for change and to express their concerns about the environment. It is vital to teach children that art is important. Some children are born with the talent of art in them. Keeping that in mind, parents can offer them the best art schools and places where they can do what they love to do rather than force them to do things they don’t want to do and get the stereotypical jobs. True art comes from the heart, It comes from the soul and it comes from true sincerity and dedication. It plays a role so important, so vital and so significant.  Some say that art has saved the world and I agree. It saved people from depression. Through art, people can learn and gain knowledge. Even the uneducated can learn through art. Through art, people can communicate feelings and ideas. Some people are better off communicating through art rather than spoken words. It has paved a way for the disabled to live a more colourful life. 

In today’s world, more artists have grown and people are seeing the importance of art even more than before. The Demand for it is increasing year by year. The pay is also very high. 

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April 14, 2024 Essay: Four Freedoms in Art

“Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.” — Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Our parish lecture series this year has been (and it’s not over yet!) dedicated to the Four Freedoms enunciated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his State of the Union address of 1941. As I mentioned in my essay of January 7 th , FDR considered freedom, “the supremacy of human rights everywhere.” The speech evidently inspired the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, cited above in its Preamble where it mentions the four freedoms: freedom of speech and belief, and freedom from fear and want.

Norman Rockwell, the master of Americana, captured the essence of daily life in hundreds of 20th-century magazine covers, and 80 years ago, he accomplished a greater feat, translating the nation’s ideals into indelible images known as the Four Freedoms, also inspired by President Roosevelt’s vision.

By illuminating rights that every American—and every person—should enjoy, Rockwell’s Four Freedoms validated the U.S. decision to enter World War II and overcome powerful enemies whose actions devalued human life. His enduring messages have lingered in the national consciousness, remaining as significant today as they were when the Saturday Evening Post published them in four consecutive weeks during the winter of 1943.

Immediately after publishing Rockwell’s four paintings—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear—the magazine received 25,000 requests to purchase copies. Color reproductions of all four sold for 25 cents apiece. The paintings became the basis for 4 million war posters sold as part of the War Bonds effort, raising $132,992,539. “They were received by the public with more enthusiasm, perhaps, than any other paintings in the history of American art,” The New Yorker reported in 1945.

At the beginning of 1941, when isolationist sentiments still held sway over many Americans, Roosevelt’s goal was a simple one: to convince voters that standing alone ultimately could sacrifice freedoms at home and abroad.

“By an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to the proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers,” he told Americans. “We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom.”

Rockwell faced the difficult task of transforming governmental phraseology into evocative tableaux on canvas. He had expected to finish all four scenes in two months, but the work dragged on through seven months of false starts and revisions.

Nonetheless, Rockwell was fully committed to the Four Freedoms. “I just cannot express to you how much this series means to me. Aside from their wonderful patriotic motive,” he told his impatient editors, “there are no subjects which could rival them in opportunity for human interest.”

To complement the educational, inspirational, and personal lectures that have lifted our spirits and raised our consciousness, I invite you to allow the paintings to speak to you about the timeless meaning of freedom, perhaps now more imperative than in the past eight decades.

— Michael Hilbert, S.J., Associate Pastor

The fifth and final lecture in the series will be on Monday, May 6 th , at 7:00 pm in Wallace Hall. The topic will be “Freedom from Fear” and the guest speaker will be Senator Angus King of Maine.

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Title: art: the alternating reading task corpus for speech entrainment and imitation.

Abstract: We introduce the Alternating Reading Task (ART) Corpus, a collection of dyadic sentence reading for studying the entrainment and imitation behaviour in speech communication. The ART corpus features three experimental conditions - solo reading, alternating reading, and deliberate imitation - as well as three sub-corpora encompassing French-, Italian-, and Slovak-accented English. This design allows systematic investigation of speech entrainment in a controlled and less-spontaneous setting. Alongside detailed transcriptions, it includes English proficiency scores, demographics, and in-experiment questionnaires for probing linguistic, personal and interpersonal influences on entrainment. Our presentation covers its design, collection, annotation processes, initial analysis, and future research prospects.

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PaMLA 2024: Translating Silence: Alternative Forms of Voice Beyond Speech

121st PAMLA Conference

Thursday, November 7 - Sunday, November 10, 2024

Margaritaville Resort | Palm Springs, California

Inspired by the conference theme “Translation in Action,” this panel seeks papers that explore conceptualizations of silence in literature not as a void but as a generative space where alternative forms of voice beyond linguistic speech might exist. Silence is a key concept in multiple fields including trauma studies, ecocriticism, and postcolonial studies. Although the key concept is often tied to literary discussions of language, panelists are encouraged to work across multiple disciplines and consider silences beyond speech, perhaps attending to other sensory modes, visual culture, and multispecies approaches.

This panel was inspired by postcolonial studies scholar Gayatri Spivak’s renowned essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, environmental humanists such as Bruno Latour in relation to his actor-network theory (ANT), and biosemiotics scholars such as Eduardo Kohn and Jesper Hoffmeyer. While silence is sometimes figured as a lack of speech and indeed agency, literary works often incorporate silent protagonists who express their perspectives and histories using modes of voice other than speech. In fact, some of these literary figures may not even be human and demonstrate communication through multispecies signs in the environment. This panel invites scholars to reflect on literary representations of silence and its stakes for their fields of study. Since this panel proposal works across disciplines, panelists are encouraged to situate their ideas within their respective fields in the abstract.

Some guiding questions include: What do these silences reveal or conceal within the larger political structures of these texts? How do the chosen literary texts call for an attention to and translation of silences into powerful and/or agential forms of voice? What kinds of reading methodologies are useful for interpreting and translating silences in literary texts? How do the terms of translation change when moving beyond the realm of linguistic speech? What are some forms of silence that are resistant to translation and might even be untranslatable?

Please submit a title, 50-word abstract, 250-500 word proposal, and a brief bio via the panel submission portal – https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19259 .

The PAMLA 2024 conference will be held in person (participation via Zoom is not possible). For more information, see  https://www.pamla.org/pamla2024/ .

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Posts misrepresent White House Easter egg contest, Day of Transgender Visibility proclamation

FILE - Eggs designed by children of members of the military adorn the East Colonnade of the White House ahead of the White House Easter Egg Roll, Thursday, March 28, 2024, in Washington. Social media users are misrepresenting the contest for which the eggs were designed, as well as a proclamation about Day of Transgender Visibility. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

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As millions celebrated Easter this weekend, the Biden administration was criticized by many on social media, including several Republican politicians, for supposedly disrespecting the Christian holiday.

The criticism centered on two separate claims. One, that President Joe Biden declared Easter Sunday to now be Transgender Day of Visibility and two, that he banned religious symbols from an Easter egg art contest at the White House.

But both allegations are missing important context and misrepresent what actually happened.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: Biden declared that Easter Sunday is now a holiday celebrating transgender people.

THE FACTS: Transgender Day of Visibility has been celebrated on March 31 since 2009 , when the holiday was created. Every year since becoming president, Biden has issued a proclamation around the observance on that date. It was a coincidence in 2024 that the day corresponded with Easter Sunday, which falls on a different date each year.

Nonetheless, social media users are saying that Biden chose March 31 for Transgender Day of Visibility as an affront to Christians. Many Christians oppose greater recognition of trans people as part of their religious beliefs and took offense at the two days being paired, even though it was only a byproduct of the calendar.

“He could pick any day to declare a Transgender day,” reads one X post. “For Joe Biden to select Easter Sunday is a insult to Christians. This was intentional. It was done with the intent to flip the middle finger at Christians. His staff knew exactly what they were doing.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the claims “untrue” at a White House briefing on Monday, saying that the administration was “really so surprised by the misinformation that has been out there around this.”

“Every year for the past several years on March 31 Transgender Day of Visibility is marked. And as we know, for folks who understand the calendar and how it works, Easter falls on different Sundays every year,” she told reporters . And this year it happened to coincide with Transgender Visibility Day. And so that is the simple fact. That is what has happened. That is where we are.”

Following the proclamation, the Trump campaign criticized Biden , a devout Roman Catholic, of being insensitive to religion, and fellow Republicans piled on.

Jean-Pierre said at the briefing that it is “unsurprising” that “politicians are seeking to divide and weaken our country with cruel, hateful and dishonest rhetoric.” She added that Biden “will never abuse his personal faith for political purposes or for profit.”

Biden first issued a proclamation about Transgender Day of Visibility in 2021 , about two months after his inauguration. He continued this recognition in 2022 and 2023 . Proclamations are generally statements about public policy by the president.

Rachel Crandall-Crocker, the executive director and co-founder of the nonprofit Transgender Michigan, organized the first International Transgender Day of Visibility in 2009 to bring attention to a population that is often ignored, disparaged or victimized.

It was designed as a contrast to Transgender Day of Remembrance , which is held annually on Nov. 20 to honor the memory of transgender people who were killed in anti-transgender violence . Crandall-Crocker selected March 31 to give the holiday space from the day of remembrance and Pride Month in June, which celebrates all types of LGBTQ+ people. ___ CLAIM: Biden banned religious symbols from a White House Easter egg art contest.

THE FACTS: A flier soliciting children from National Guard families to submit an egg design for a White House exhibit organized in collaboration with the American Egg Board specified that submissions should not include “religious symbols” or “overtly religious themes.”

But such restrictions are nothing new.

“The American Egg Board has been a supporter of the White House Easter Egg Roll for over 45 years and the guideline language referenced in recent news reports has consistently applied to the board since its founding, across administrations,” Emily Metz, its president and CEO, said in a statement.

Elizabeth Alexander, a spokesperson for first lady Jill Biden, similarly wrote in an X post that “the American Egg Board’s flyer’s standard non-discrimination language requesting artwork has been used for the last 45 years, across all Dem & Republican Admins — for all WH Easter Egg Rolls—incl previous Administration’s.”

After the flier spread online, social media users falsely claimed that it was Biden who had decided to prohibit such imagery as part of the contest, which is part of many Easter traditions at the White House, including the annual Easter egg roll .

“Joe Biden just told all the Easter egg art decorators in the White House that NO RELIGIOUS IMAGERY is allowed,” reads one X post. “He’s just spit in the face of Christ on the cross who died for our sins to lift up the ULTIMATE sinners.”

The American Egg Board is a commodity checkoff program , meaning that it promotes and researches a particular agricultural commodity without referencing specific producers or brands.

All such programs must follow federal guidelines, including prohibitions on religious discrimination. This has been the case since the American Egg Board was established in 1976, according to Metz.

Children from National Guard families submitted egg designs showcasing their lives for the third annual “Colonnade of Eggs” exhibit at the White House, which honors the first lady’s support of military-connected families. Artists brought their designs to life on real eggs.

The American Egg Board has historically presented a commemorative egg to the first lady that reflects her passions, causes and contributions. Since 2022, the board has collaborated with the White House to curate larger exhibits displaying egg art throughout the spring.

Dating to 1878 , the first White House Easter egg roll was held by President Rutherford B. Hayes, who agreed to open the White House lawn to children after they were kicked off the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. ___ This is part of the AP’s effort to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP .

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Opinion Guest Essay

An Idyll on the Shores of a Toxic Lake

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Text by Jaime Lowe

Photographs by Nicholas Albrecht

Ms. Lowe is the author of, most recently, “Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires.” Mr. Albrecht is a photographer based in Oakland, Calif.

• March 29, 2024

There are two ways to experience the town of Bombay Beach, Calif., as a visitor: gawk at the spectacle or fall into the vortex. Thousands of tourists cruise through each year, often without getting out of their cars, to see decaying art installations left over from an annual mid-March gathering of artists, photographers and documentarians known jokingly as the Bombay Beach Biennale. When I went to the town for the first time in 2021, I was looking for salvation in this weird desert town on the Salton Sea south of Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park. I dropped in, felt vibes and left with stories. I stared at the eccentric large-scale art, posted photos on Instagram of ruin porn and a hot pink sign on the beach that said, “If you’re stuck, call Kim.” I posed in front of a mountain of painted televisions, swung on a swing over the edge of the lake’s retreating shoreline and explored the half-buried, rusted-out cars that make up an abandoned ersatz drive-in movie theater. On that trip, it felt as if I were inside a “Mad Max” simulation, but I was only scratching the surface of the town.

I returned in December to try to understand why Bombay Beach remains so compelling, especially as extreme weather — heat, hurricanes and drought — and pollution wreak ever more intense havoc on it. Summer temperatures can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit, tremors from the San Andreas Fault strike regularly, bomb testing from nearby military facilities can be heard and felt, and the air is so toxic from pesticide use, exhaust fumes, factory emissions and dust rising from the retreating Salton Sea that one study showed asthma rates among children in the region are three times the national average. By the end of the decade, the Salton Sea, California’s largest inland body of water, at about 325 square miles, may lose three-quarters of its volume; in the past 20 years, the sea’s surface area has shrunk about 38 square miles .

But people who live in Bombay Beach stay because the town offers a tight-knit community in the midst of catastrophe. Though its residents contend with environmental adversity on a daily basis, they’re also demonstrating how to navigate the uncertain future we all face — neglect, the fight for scarce resources, destruction of home, the feeling of having no place to go. They are an example of how people can survive wild climate frontiers together.

The 250 or so town residents live in the low desert on the east shore of the Salton Sea, which formed in 1905 when the then-flush Colorado River spilled into a depression, creating a freshwater lake that became increasingly saline. There used to be fish — mullet and carp, then tilapia. In the 1950s and ’60s, the area was marketed as a tourist destination and was advertised as Palm Springs by the Sea. More tourists visited Bombay Beach than Yosemite. There were yacht clubs, boat races and water skiing. It became a celebrity magnet: Frank Sinatra hung out there; so did the Beach Boys and Sonny and Cher.

Eventually, as agricultural runoff kept accumulating in a body of water with no drainage, it became toxic and created a lake with salinity that is now 50 percent greater than that of the ocean. In the 1980s, dead fish washed up on the sand, car ruins rusted in the sun, tires rotted on the shore. Tourism vanished. But some in the community hung on. One way to define Bombay Beach is through environmental disaster, but another way is as an example of how to live through disaster and how to live in general.

Candace Youngberg, a town council member and a bartender at the Ski Inn, remembers a very different Bombay Beach. When she was growing up in the 1980s, she’d ride bikes with neighborhood children and run from yard to yard in a pack because there were no fences. But over time, the town changed. With each passing year, she watched necessities disappear. Now there’s no gas station, no laundromat, no hardware store. Fresh produce is hard to come by. A trailer that was devoted to medical care shut down. In 2021, 60.9 percent of Bombay Beach residents lived below the poverty line, compared with the national average of 12.6 percent.

As painful as it was to witness the town of her youth disappear and as deep as the problems there go, Ms. Youngberg admits that adversity bonded those who stayed. She wanted to return Bombay Beach to the version of the town she remembered, to recreate a beautiful place to live year-round, not just in winter, not just during the art season, not just for the tourists posing in front of wreckage. She wanted people to see the homes, the town, the community that once thrived thrive again. With the art came attention and the potential for more resources. She got on the Bombay Beach Community Services District, a town council, and started to work toward improvements like fixing the roads and planting trees to improve air quality.

It might just be that Bombay Beach is a small town, but when I visited last winter, there was something that felt more collaborative, as though everybody’s lives and business and projects overlapped. I’m not sure the community that’s there now started out as intentional, but when fragmented groups of people come together as custodians of an enigmatic space, responsible for protecting it and one another, community is inevitable. Plus, there’s only one place to socialize, one place to gossip, one place to dance out anxiety and only about two-thirds of a square mile to wander. Whether you like it or not, your neighbors are your people — a town in its purest form.

When I was there, I walked the streets with Denia Nealy, an artist who goes by Czar, and my friend Brenda Ann Kenneally, a photographer and writer, who would shout names, and people would instantly emerge. A stranger offered a handful of Tater Tots to Czar and me in a gesture that felt emblematic: Of course a complete stranger on an electric unicycle would cruise by and share nourishment. I was given a butterfly on a stick, which I carried around like a magic wand because that seemed appropriate and necessary. I was told that if I saw a screaming woman walking down the street with a shiv in her hand, not to worry and not to make eye contact and she’d leave me alone; it was just Stabby. There was talk of the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the beach, the weekly church sermon led by Jack the preacher (who is also a plumber), a potluck lasagna gathering.

Last year Ms. Kenneally created a trash fashion show/photo series for the Biennale in which she created couture designs out of trash collected from the beach, enlisted regulars in town to model the outfits, then photographed them. (She exhibited a similar series at this year’s festival as well.) The work was a way to showcase the people and the place. Jonathan Hart, a fireworks specialist who slept on the beach, posed like a gladiator; a woman who normally rode through town with a stuffed Kermit the Frog toy strapped to her bike was wrapped in a clear tarp and crown, looking like royalty emerging from the Salton Sea. The environment was harsh, the poses striking. Each frame straddled the line between glamour and destruction but also showcased a community’s pride in survival. Residents were undaunted by the armor of refuse; in fact, it made them stronger. The detritus, what outsiders might think of as garbage, became gorgeous. The landscape that is often described as apocalyptic became ethereal and magical. And that’s because it is.

On my second day, we went down to the docks at noon, and I found myself sitting on a floral mustard couch watching half a dozen or so people taking turns riding Jet Skis into the sun. The sun was hot, even though it was the cool season. Time felt elastic. Mr. Hart told me that he and some friends had fixed up the water scooters to give everyone in town the chance to blow off some steam, to smile a little. It had been a rough couple of months in the region. In preparation for Hurricane Hilary, which hit Mexico and the southwestern United States last August, 26 volunteers made 200 sandbags and delivered them door to door. Neighbors helped secure as many structures as possible.

Most media outlets reported that the hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm because that’s the weather system that hit Los Angeles, but it was close to a hurricane in Bombay Beach, with winds hitting 60 miles per hour, and most properties were surrounded by water. Roofs collapsed or blew away entirely. “When faced with something like that, they were like, ‘Boom, we’re on it,’” Ms. Youngberg told me. They were together in disaster and in celebrating survival.

It reminded me of the writer Rebecca Solnit’s book “A Paradise Built in Hell,” which considers the upside to catastrophe. She finds that people rise to the occasion and oftentimes do it with joy because disaster and survival leave a wake of purposefulness, consequential work and community. Disasters require radical acts of imagination and interaction. It seemed that because Bombay Beach lived hard, surviving climate catastrophes like extreme weather on top of everyday extremes, it celebrated even harder. It seemed that in Bombay Beach there’s enough to celebrate if you just get through the day, gaze at the night sky and do it all again in the morning.

A lot of the residents who live there now arrived with trauma. Living there is its own trauma. But somehow the combination creates a place of care and physical and emotional presence. People experience life intensely, as one. It’s a town that is isolated, but in spite of a loneliness epidemic, it doesn’t seem so lonely to be there. I felt unexpected joy in what, from everything I’d read from afar, was a place that might as well have been sinking into the earth. I felt so safe and so happy that if we had sunk into the earth together, it wouldn’t have felt like such a bad way to go.

On my last night in Bombay Beach, I went to the Ski Inn, a bar that serves as the center of all social activity. I’d been in town for only two days, and yet it felt as if I’d been to the Ski Inn a million times, as if I already knew everyone and they knew me. A band was playing, we danced and drank, and I forgot about the 8 p.m. kitchen cutoff. The chef apologized, but he’d been working since 11:45 a.m. and had already cleaned the grill and fryer. He’d saved one mac and cheese for the bartender, and when she heard I hadn’t eaten, she offered to split it with me, not wanting me to go hungry or leave without having tried the mac and cheese.

Bombay Beach is a weird place. And this was an especially weird feeling. I had been instantly welcomed into the fold of community and cared for, even though I was a stranger in a very strange land.

I realized I didn’t want to leave. There were lessons there — how to live with joy and purpose in the face of certain catastrophe, how to exist in the present without the ever presence of doom. Next time, I thought, I’d stay longer, maybe forever, and actually ride a Jet Ski.

Jaime Lowe is a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan and the author of, most recently, “Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires.” Nicholas Albrecht is a photographer based in Oakland, Calif. His first monograph, “One, No One and One Hundred Thousand,” was the culmination of a multiyear project made while living on the shores of the Salton Sea.

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