Public speaking 2 - Tone

1143: 

I think it’s important to tell it like it is, not pretend that becoming an activist for animals or taking on a vegan lifestyle is either easy or difficult.  Honesty about this particular matter is appreciated – to get across what one might be letting oneself into.

Whoever we are talking to, whether meat eaters (about their shopping choices) or farmers (about their animals) or teachers or students (about veganism), everything we say should eventually come back to our own attitude towards animals.  We all have a strong connection with animals, whether we eat them or try to protect them.  For our part, vegans need to talk about animals as if every hen, pig or fish are irreplaceable individuals.  In that way we can talk about them as if they are different to us but equal to us, since they, like us, each deserve the right to a life.

         

Most people don’t think that way; most consider animals to be easily replaceable, expendable items.  It’s our job, at a gathering like this, to introduce a different concept, by talking about animals as if they really mattered!  But how is this done?

How do we bring a listening audience round to this attitude?  Most people condone the use of animals, they support the Animal Industries, they eat them, and they can probably defend their own approach to ‘animals’.  Even though we strongly disagree, it’s important to let everything be aired.  No opinion should be belittled.  Indeed, we should encourage any audience member who wants to, to speak with the courage of their convictions.

But it’s me giving a talk, conducting the direction it takes.  I prefer to welcome interruption to what I’m saying, welcome disagreement, listen to anyone’s stories and opinions, let people ask questions.  This makes the ‘talk’ less of a lecture and more of an open discussion.  But it hasn’t got to be a loose-ended, anything-goes conversation.  It’s a public address after all, where spontaneous openness isn’t allowed to continue indefinitely.  A talk always returns to the prepared script, but at least, at some stage in ‘the talk’, I would want to give people the impression that it is of benefit to me, by my learning and listening, as well as speaking.

Let’s say that I’m speaking to a group of people seated in a hall.   It’s my job to create the right atmosphere, rather like there would be if we were sitting around a kitchen table, in discussion.   Because this is an intimate subject, full of contentious issues, it needs a certain intimacy, even between the most vocal adversaries.  The success of any public talk comes down to the tone of voice of the speaker.  In the end, it’s the atmosphere the speaker creates, that people take home with them, which helps them think-about and digest what has been talked about.