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The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein onlineIII EFFICIENCY THROUGH EMPHASIS AND SUBORDINATIONpage 1 of 5 | table of contents  In a word, the principle of emphasis...is followed best, not by remembering particular rules, but by being full of a particular feeling. --C.S. BALDWIN, _Writing and Speaking_. The gun that scatters too much does not bag the birds. The same principle applies to speech. The speaker that fires his force and emphasis at random into a sentence will not get results. Not every word is of special importance--therefore only certain words demand emphasis. You say Massa_CHU_setts and Minne_AP_olis, you do not emphasize each syllable alike, but hit the accented syllable with force and hurry over the unimportant ones. Now why do you not apply this principle in speaking a sentence? To some extent you do, in ordinary speech; but do you in public discourse? It is there that monotony caused by lack of emphasis is so painfully apparent. So far as emphasis is concerned, you may consider the average sentence as just one big word, with the important word as the accented syllable. Note the following: "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice." You might as well say _MASS-A-CHU-SETTS_, emphasizing every syllable equally, as to lay equal stress on each word in the foregoing sentences. Speak it aloud and see. Of course you will want to emphasize _destiny_, for it is the principal idea in your declaration, and you will put some emphasis on _not_, else your hearers may think you are affirming that destiny _is_ a matter of chance. By all means you must emphasize _chance_, for it is one of the two big ideas in the statement. Another reason why _chance_ takes emphasis is that it is contrasted with _choice_ in the next sentence. Obviously, the author has contrasted these ideas purposely, so that they might be more emphatic, and here we see that contrast is one of the very first devices to gain emphasis. As a public speaker you can assist this emphasis of contrast with your voice. If you say, "My horse is not _black_," what color immediately comes into mind? White, naturally, for that is the opposite of black. If you wish to bring out the thought that destiny is a matter of choice, you can do so more effectively by first saying that "_DESTINY_ is _NOT_ a matter of _CHANCE_." Is not the color of the horse impressed upon us more emphatically when you say, "My horse is _NOT BLACK_. He is _WHITE_" than it would be by hearing you assert merely that your horse is white? In the second sentence of the statement there is only one important word--_choice_. It is the one word that positively defines the quality of the subject being discussed, and the author of those lines desired to bring it out emphatically, as he has shown by contrasting it with another idea. These lines, then, would read like this: "_DESTINY_ is _NOT_ a matter of _CHANCE_. It is a matter of _CHOICE_." Now read this over, striking the words in capitals with a great deal of force. In almost every sentence there are a few _MOUNTAIN PEAK WORDS_ that represent the big, important ideas. When you pick up the evening paper you can tell at a glance which are the important news articles. Thanks to the editor, he does not tell about a "hold up" in Hong Kong in the same sized type as he uses to report the death of five firemen in your home city. Size of type is his device to show emphasis in bold relief. He brings out sometimes even in red headlines the striking news of the day. |