5.
Speech that persuades others should also be
fluent
, the fifth important vocal quality.
Fluent speech is speech that flows smoothly. A nonfluent utterance, as you may
recall, includes vocal activity such as hesitations, vocal buffers, repetitions, stutters,
and conspicuous pauses. We have already suggested that these vocal cues can
negatively affect your listener’s perceptions of your credibility.
6.
Finally,
effective pauses
can be used to call attention to particular ideas. A silent
pause just before or after a statement can make that statement seem very
important, a key element of your message. Unfilled pauses used in strategic locations
can enhance a speech. However, filled pauses, those that interrupt the smooth flow
of messages, serve no useful purpose but tend only to detract from fluency. They
may signal that you are grasping for ideas that are not there and consequently may
cause your listeners to conclude that you were not prepared to deliver the persuasive
message.
Video Notes
~ Why don’t you like the sound of your voice
If you ask evolutionary biologists when did humans become humans, some of them will say
that, well, at some point we started standing on our feet, became biped and became the
masters of our environment. Others will say that because our brain started growing much
bigger, that we were able to have much more complex cognitive processes. And others
might argue that it's because we developed language that allowed us to evolve as a
species. Interestingly, those three phenomena are all connected. We are not sure how or in
which order, but they are all linked with the change of shape of a little bone in the back of
your neck that changed the angle between our head and our body. That means we were able
to stand upright but also for our brain to evolve in the back and for our voice box to grow
from seven centimeters for primates to 11 and up to 17 centimetres for humans.
And this is called the descent of the larynx. And the larynx is the site of your voice. When
baby humans are born today, their larynx is not descended yet. That only happens at about
three months old. So, metaphorically, each of us here has relived the evolution of our whole
species. And talking about babies, when you were starting to develop in your mother's
womb, the first sensation that you had coming from the outside world, at only three weeks
old, when you were about the size of a shrimp, were through the tactile sensation coming
from the vibrations of your mother's voice.
So, as we can see, the human voice is quite meaningful and important at the level of the
species, at the level of the society -- this is how we communicate and create bonds, and at
the personal and interpersonal levels -- with our voice, we share much more than words and
data, we share basically who we are. And our voice is indistinguishable from how other
people see us. It is a mask that we wear in society. But our relationship with our own voice is
far from obvious. We rarely use our voice for ourselves; we use it as a gift to give to
others. It is how we touch each other. It's a dialectical grooming.
