1. INTRODUCTION
It is known that public speaking is a transaction between you and your audience. Just as the language you choose for your message should reflect the nature of your audience, so too should your delivery. Specifically, we discuss choosing an appropriate method of delivery, adapting to diverse audiences, and adapting delivery to the speech occasion.
2. CHOOSING AN APPROPRIATE METHOD OF DELIVERY
There is more than one way to deliver a speech:
2.1 MANUSCRIPT DELIVERY
Manuscript delivery involves writing out the speech completely and reading it to the audience. This method may be the best choice when your audience requires precise information from you. Similarly, if you expect your words to be quoted by others, having a manuscript of your speech helps ensure accuracy.
However, anytime you use a manuscript the dynamics of delivery are restricted. Eye contact, movement, and gesture are important dimensions of nonverbal behavior that may enhance (sustiprina) your delivery. Manuscript speaking also impedes spontaneity between you and your audience because the manuscript restricts opportunities to survey and creatively respond to audience feedback. A manuscript demands a lectern (pultas kalbetojui), which can stand as a barrier between a speaker and the audience. This method of delivery can sound artificial because the language of a written message generally is more formal than spoken language.
It is advisable to mark up your manuscript with notes to yourself and underline main ideas. Be sure pages are numbered so that they will not get out of order. Use a large typeface and double or even triple spacing. The success of manuscript speaking depends on practice and skill in converting words on a page into a living speech.
2.2 MEMORIZED DELIVERY
A speaker using memorized delivery writes out the speech and commits it to memory before presenting it to the audience without the use of notes. In fact, an obviously memorized speech would probably strike audience as odd. Although memorization allows you to concentrate on eye contact, movement, and gesture, it does so at a price. You may forget parts of your speech and it requires a greater investment of time than any other method.
2.3 IMPROMPTU DELIVERY
Impromptu (improvizuotas [im’promptju:]) delivery is a spontaneous, unrehearsed method of presenting a speech. Usually, these short speeches are given in response to someone who asks you to say a few words, make a toast, or respond to an inquiry.
Impromptu speaking frees you from any impediments (kliutys)to using the full range of nonverbal behaviors available to speakers, but you are most likely so busy concentrating on what you are going to say that you ignore delivery. Thus, impromptu delivery is not effective.
2.4 EXTEMPORANEOUS DELIVERY
For most students who are still learning to give a speech, extemporaneous ( neparengtas) speaking remains their best choice of delivery method. Extemporaneous delivery combines careful preparation with spontaneous speaking. The speaker generally uses brief notes rather than a manuscript or an outline. Extemporaneous speaking enables you to maintain eye contact, move, gesture, and spontaneously adapt to audience feedback. It allows the speaker to remain in contact with the audience, so does it allow the audience to remain connected to the speaker. However, extemporaneous speaking has drawbacks. Note cards can restrict the range of gestures used when you refer to them. Finally, you can get carried away with note cards, writing down so many of your thoughts that note cards become almost a manuscript.
3. DELIVERING SPEECHES TO DIVERSE AUDIENCE
Both the method and style of delivery should reflect the diversity of your audience. A particular nonverbal behavior means one thing to one culture and something entirely different to another. For example, as you speak, a North American audience returns your eye contact and nods in agreement with you. A British audience also returns your eye contact, but heads remain motionless. And a West African audience avoids making direct eye with you altogether. Remember, when the British agree with a speaker, they sometimes blink rather than nod their head. Further, the more direct the eye contact of West Africans, the less they respect the person to whom it is directed.
4. CHARACTERISTICS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR
Delivery involves the nonverbal behavior by which a speaker conveys his or her message to an audience. Delivery is what brings mere words to life in the public speaking transaction. Nonverbal behavior is a wordless system of communicating. Although scholars argue about the exact definition of nonverbal behavior, most agree that it is continuous; it uses multiple channels simultaneously, and is spontaneous.
4.1 THE CONTINUOUS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR
Consider the expression of happiness as you speak. What the audience sees is a complex message that involves the entire face. The muscles of the face contract, affecting the eyebrows, the corners of the mouth, and the corners of the eye. Unlike verbal behavior, these involuntary movements cannot be broken down into compositional elements. There are no rules of grammar to explain the meaning conveyed by these facial expressions. Only the total, continuous combination of these elements can constitute the nonverbal expression of happiness.
4.2 THE SIMULTANEOUS USE OF MULTIPLE CHANNELS
Nonverbal behavior also
involves the simultaneous use of multiple channels. For example, try conveying an emotional expression, such as happiness, anger, sorrow, through a single channel of communication, for example, your mouth or eyes or hands. You will soon see that it is difficult if not impossible. At the same time, you will recognize that we use these multiple channels simultaneously rather than sequentially. When happy, we express the emotion all over our face, not with our eyes first, mouth second, eyebrows and forehead third and fourth.
4.3 THE SPONTANEOUS NATURE OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR
Moreover nonverbal behavior is spontaneous. Smiles, gestures, and body language occur at a subconscious level. This does not mean that people never plan or orchestrate gestures when they speak. Sometimes they do, and their nonverbal behavior is likely to look phony (apsimestinis). Most of us learn to distinguish between authentic and phony nonverbal behavior by the time we reach our teens.
5. THE NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
A system is a collection of interdependent and interrelated components. A change in one component will produce change in them all. The nonverbal system has as its components several interdependent dimensions of behavior that profoundly affect the delivery of a speech. The specific dimensions are the environment, appearance, the face and eyes, the voice, gestures and movement, posture, touch, and time. You need to approach these dimensions systematically.
5.1 THE ENVIRONMENT
Environment refers to our physical surroundings as we speak and the physical distance separating us from our audience. Both our surrounding and our physical space have an undeniable impact not only on our delivery but also on how the speech is perceived by our audience. The physical characteristic of the room in which you speak – for example, lighting, temperature, comfort, and aesthetics – will influence both you and your audience physically and psychologically.
Sometimes you have no alternative but to do the best you can in situations, where you cannot change the environment. At other times, however, you will have the opportunity to physically arrange the room in which you will speak. This may include the position of a lectern, elevation (pakelimas) of a stage, and configuration of an audience. Speakers who are much less formal in their style of delivery may want the room to be arranged so that they can move from side.