Subtitles section Play video
-
Speech writing must be one of the weirdest jobs in the world.
-
No matter how carefully the words have been prepared,
-
you are never quite sure how they are gonna be delivered.
-
Yesterday, I was in London,
-
and I was watching one of my clients, who is a big Australian businessman,
-
deliver a speech that I'd written for him.
-
I'd written for him this passage, kind of with Winston Churchill in mind,
-
about how we've got to fight for our future,
-
fight to protect our position, fight our competitors.
-
And I'd forgotten about the Australian accent.
-
And I watched from the back of the room with horror as I saw him go,
-
"We've got to 'fart' for our future, 'fart' to protect our position,
-
and I'll tell you what, folks, when I wake up every morning,
-
there is one thing I know for sure I'm gonna do that day; 'fart'!"
-
(Laughter) (Applause)
-
So today I'm gonna share with you some speechwriter secrets.
-
I don't know whether you know this,
-
but there is a secret language of leadership;
-
a secret language of leadership that we all used to be taught at school.
-
Ancient rhetoric.
-
This was a core part of the curriculum in Ancient Rome, part of the trivium.
-
In London, right the way through to the 19th century,
-
it was possible to get a free education in rhetoric, but not in mathematics,
-
reflecting the importance that was placed on the topic.
-
Today, teaching in rhetoric is restricted; restricted to a powerful, privileged few.
-
So what I'm gonna do in my speech is revive this ancient art of rhetoric
-
and share with you six techniques so that you can all speak like leaders.
-
So right, okay, stop.
-
Right, stop listen.
-
Look left, look right, look center.
-
How are you feeling?
-
Distressed? Anxious? Little bit edgy?
-
That's because I'm mimicking, hyperventilating.
-
This is the authentic sound of fear,
-
and that fear transfers to you.
-
This is an ancient Roman rhetorical device;
-
they used to call it asyndeton.
-
And it's one leaders still use today.
-
So David Cameron uses it:
-
"Broken homes,
-
failing schools,
-
sink estates."
-
Tony Blair used to use it as well:
-
"Education,
-
education.
-
education."
-
Barack Obama too:
-
"A world at war,
-
a planet in peril,
-
the worst financial crisis in a generation.
-
Why three?
-
Well, three is the magic number in rhetoric.
-
"Government of the people, by the people, for the people."
-
(In German) "One people, one empire, one leader."
-
(In Italian) "Eat well, laugh often, love much."
-
(Applause)
-
That was the hardest part of this speech to practice,
-
so thank you for the applause.
-
This is also an ancient Roman rhetorical device.
-
They used to call it tricolon,
-
which makes it sound like a peculiar part of the digestive system.
-
But it's just putting things in threes.
-
You put your argument in threes,
-
it makes it sound more compelling, more convincing, more credible.
-
Just like that.
-
And so we find the rule of three here, there, and everywhere.
-
And so indeed you can tell the history of Verona
-
through nothing more than the rule of three.
-
If you think that Caesar used to come here 2,000 years ago,
-
"Veni, vidi, vici."
-
400 years ago,
-
Shakespeare wrote "Romeo and Juliet,"
-
which was set here.
-
"Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?"
-
But of course,
-
far and away the most momentous event in Verona's history -
-
today's TEDx;
-
"Reinvent. Rethink. Relay."
-
Right.
-
Let's move on; number two.
-
(Applause)
-
Three sentences in which the opening clause is repeated.
-
Now this is what Winston Churchill did with his,
-
"We shall fight on the beaches,
-
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
-
we shall fight on the fields and in the streets."
-
Of course, he could have said this a whole lot quicker.
-
But he wanted to communicate his emotion, so he repeated it.
-
When we are emotional about things, our perspective distorts.
-
And this then manifests in our speech.
-
And so this is the authentic sound of passion.
-
I love Verona.
-
I love Italy.
-
I love pasta.
-
I love tiramisu.
-
I love all of you.
-
I love the excitement,
-
I love the energy,
-
I love the enthusiasm here in this room;
-
Are you feeling my passion?
-
You should be because I am a speech writer and I know how to make a point.
-
It sweeps people away.
-
And this is why this technique is used by slick salesmen and by market traders.
-
"I'm not asking £20, I'm not asking £15,
-
I'm not even asking 10 pounds."
-
It sweeps people onto the next point, which is free balance in statements.
-
"Ask not what your country can do for you,
-
ask what you can do for your country."
-
"There is nothing wrong with America
-
that can't be cured by what's right with America."
-
"To be or not to be."
-
If the sentence sounds as if it's balanced,
-
we imagine that the underlying thinking is balanced,
-
and our brain is tuned to like things that are balanced.
-
Balanced minds, balanced diets, balanced lives.
-
And so we are drawn to these kinds of sentences,
-
we are attracted to them even if that balance is actually just an illusion.
-
Like, we're looking to the future, not the past.
-
We're working together, not against one another.
-
We're thinking about what we can do, not what we can't.
-
Now let's move on to number four.
-
Metaphor.
-
Metaphor is probably the most powerful piece of political communication.
-
But it's the bit no one ever talks about, the elephant in the room, so to speak,
-
which is extraordinary because we use metaphor once every 16 words on average.
-
So our conversation is littered with metaphors, scattered with metaphors.
-
We can't speak for very long without reaching for a metaphor,
-
and metaphors are very loaded.
-
See, metaphors are all over the place,
-
and they are political in that they are used by people
-
to lead people towards things, or indeed to make them recoil.
-
And so we use beautiful images, images of people, images of love,
-
images of family, of sunshine, in order to draw people towards things,
-
and we use disgusting images- vermin, scary monsters, disease, sickness,
-
in order to make people recoil.
-
And they're all lies, and they are never challenged.
-
And yet they have an enormous impact on the way that people behave and respond.
-
There's been research showing changing nothing more than the metaphor
-
in a piece of text
-
can lead to fundamentally different reactions from people
-
on questions ranging from
-
whether or not they'll invest in a company,
-
whether or not they will back particular crime policies
-
to even whether or not they'll support a foreign war.
-
And so this is really important stuff. and it's all around us.
-
So let me just take three of the big metaphors -
-
three is the magic number -
-
three of the big metaphors that are around at the moment.
-
"The Arab Spring".
-
You've all heard of The Arab Spring.
-
You can't talk about
-
what's going on in the Middle East without calling it an Arab Spring.
-
"The Arab Spring".
-
Sun's shining, flowers blooming.
-
This is a time of regrowth, rebirth, rejuvenation.
-
And yet it's a big lie, isn't it?
-
Even the most optimistic, geopolitical experts
-
look at the Middle East and say
-
this is going to take two generations to recover.
-
It's not an Arab Spring; it's an Arab Inferno.
-
Take another one; "The Calais Jungle".
-
Now this a phrase that has really taken root,
-
metaphorically speaking, in the last year or so.
-
If you Google "Calais" and "jungle," you get 70 million results.
-
If you google "Calais" and "croissant," you get just half a million results.
-
And what's the image this is planting in your mind?
-
It's planting in your mind the idea that migrants are like wild animals,
-
to be afraid of, they are dangerous, they represent a threat to you.
-
And this is a very dangerous metaphor because this is the language of genocide,
-
it's the language of hate.
-
It's the same metaphor that Hitler used against the Jews depicting them as snakes.
-
It's the same language which was used in Rwandan genocide
-
by the Hutu against the Tutsi; they were described as cockroaches.
-
And so it should be of intense concern to us
-
that this is a phrase that is being used now by the mainstream media
-
to talk about some of the most vulnerable people on our planet.
-
Let's take one more; "The financial storm".
-
The financial storm for the financial crisis.
-
Was the financial crisis really an act of nature
-
as the storm metaphor suggests?
-
So it has nothing to do with greedy bankers?
-
Or timid politicians?
-
Or ineffective regulators?
-
The storm plants a phoney image in our minds
-
that this is something that just swept in, naturally
-
and equally, will just sweep away with no need for action on our parts.
-
It's a big lie.
-
Pope Francis knows that it's a big lie.
-
And so he doesn't speak using the financial storm metaphor.
-
He has a different metaphor.
-
He talks about the dung heap of capitalism.
-
And so there he is using the metaphor of shit,
-
which is wonderful because what he is calling for,
-
he is demanding a clean-up of the whole system.
-
And this is a metaphor that every human being on the planet
-
can instantly understand, will be instantly disgusted by,
-
and this is a metaphor that can get a giggle from time to time.
-
So falling into this metaphorical space is one that
-
some of our funnier politicians do from time to time.
-
Boris Johnson, back in the UK,
-
he's talked about how the labor leader
-
emanated from the bowels of the trade union movement.
-
In my time working in government
-
we had Tony Blair and Gordon Brown described as two cheeks of the same arse.
-
And Ronald Reagan once talked about government as a baby
-
with a huge appetite at one end,
-
no sense of responsibility at the other.
-
So let's move on to number five.
-
Exaggeration.
-
When we're emotional, our perspective distorts.
-
This manifests in our speech.
-
And people who are emotional about something
-
will therefore go over the top.
-
So, "My god, I've been waiting to give this talk my whole life.
-
I didn't sleep at all last night,
-
and I am going to give my heart and soul to you."
-
Okay, these are all exaggerative statements.
-
Leaders do this kind of stuff all the time.
-
You might think it's out of order, but in actual fact,
-
exaggeration is just part and parcel of ordinary conversation.
-
So they're just replicated in the kind of things that we do naturally
-
when we do that.
-
Let's move on to number six; rhyme.
-
There is research showing people are more likely
-
to believe something is true if it rhymes than if it does not rhyme,
-
which feels absurd but it's down to what linguists talk about
-
as the processing fluency of language; how easy is language to swallow?
-
If you speak using long words and long sentences,
-
it's like giving someone a steak and asking them to swallow it.
-
Whereas if you give them something pithy, like a rhyme,
-
it's like asking them to just sip on some Prosecco.
-
And we learn things through rhymes from the moment that we're toddlers.
-
"One, two, buckle my shoe."
-
And so rhymes are signifiers of truth in our society,
-
so they can often be used therefore to conceal fallacies.
-
I don't know if any of you remember the OJ Simpson case.
-
"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
-
Yeah?
-
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away."
-
It sounds simple, it sounds true,
-
but my god we could save some healthcare spending
-
if that really was up to it, wasn't it?
-
Another one in the UK;
-
we all learn spelling through this line "I before E, except after C,"