Alan Barker

ESN Conference September 2013: Why write speeches?

 

And so to the main business of the European Speechwriter Network conference, on Friday 20 September.  (Notes on the pre-conference proceedings are here.)  Here are my selected highlights.

Denise Graveline, our capable Chair, set the tone.  (Check out Denise's website, doing its bit to redress the gender imbalance that has damaged the world of public speaking for - how long?)

English – the conference language on this occasion – is not one language but many.  (Cue customary jokes about American and English.)  When we say “I’m speaking your language,” we don’t just mean “I’m speaking your native language,” but “I agree with you.  I see things your way.”  Language generates both meaning and filters of meaning.  Never more so than in the TED age, when audiences are both diverse and – often – remote.  Technology, humour, public opinion: so many filters can alter a speaker’s meaning. 

(The theme was echoed later by Max Atkinson, who reminded us how much English is spoken by non-native speakers to audiences of non-native speakers.  How do the filters work?)

 

Rune Kier Nielsen energized us with his advice on how to exploit the new filters of social media.  Drawing on his work in Brazil and with ethnic minorities in Copenhagen, and inspired by his young daughter’s love of fairy stories, Rune offered us the seven dwarves of social media and their essential rules.

In summary:

Share what you find.  Share your research, using LinkedIn groups and others.  And use those groups also for inspiration.
Get to know the others.  Follow the opinion makers and hashtags, the debates and the conversations.  Poll functions can be ‘ideation platforms' to help you develop your ideas.  Challenge and form opinion on YouTube.  Let your audience become participants.  We’re talking co-creation.
Light the path for the one in front.  Being a speechwriter means analysing the speaker as much as the audience.  Use social media to guide and promote your speakers; link their speeches to websites and groups.  Make them visible.
Shout to be heard.  We can piggyback on others’ success.  We can find popular blogs on our subject, link the speech to it and ask our network to share.
Remember your talks.  Storify collates all the social media in one place.  Pinterest does the same thing for visuals.  They’re good for inspiration, too.
Follow your word around.  “One feather is worth five chickens.”  (Did I hear that right?  Danish proverb, I think.  I didn’t get to ask.  Google has so far not helped me.)  Speechwriters don’t have to be outnumbered by others in cyberspace.  Use Tweetreach.
Share to succeed.  If your speaker is a woman, share her speech on Denise’s site.  Use Vital Speeches of the Day. (Of which more below.)  And nothing, but nothing, will increase your credibility with your speaker than telling them that they’re on a site with Obama, Elizabeth I and the Pope. 

My big takeaway: every tweet must have content.  Tweets should lead somewhere.  No content?  Stay silent.

Jonathan Parish reminded us of the problems of translation and the horrors of sending speech texts through multiple layers of authorization.  Parish works for NATO, which has a 300-page glossary of acronyms.  Speechwriters in this organization need to translate wonkery into plain language, but they also need to recognize the effects of eight (or more) layers of intervention on their lovingly crafted tricolons.  In his words: "Each of us has the hide of a rhinoceros." 

Mia Doornaert offered us a privileged insight into her work as a speechwriter at the highest level of politics.  Three moments stand out for me. 

First:  her view on the status of speechwriters.   In Anglo-Saxon countries, she suggests, we are seen as craftsfolk, professional wordsmiths.  In Latin countries, a speechwriter has the status somewhat of a mercenary.  Speakers using others’ words are seen as dishonest.

Second: her disdain for ‘mail-order catalogue speeches’, with no clear line and no message.  “A good speech,” she says, “generates headlines automatically.”  She admired the minister who told her: “I don’t want just to speak; I want to say something.”

And third, her closing quotation, from Bill Bernbach (and thank you, Mia, for allowing me to copy it down):

 

The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you.  And they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying.  And they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you.  And they wont listen to you if you’re not interesting.  And you won’t be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.

 

Amélie Crosson-Gooderham, Senior Analyst and Writer at the Bank of Canada, feels noticeably at ease working in a multi-lingual environment.  “For me,” she says, “Babel is a very comfortable place.”  Her advice on how to write for non-native speakers was wise. 

As with any audience, your intention and language should be clear.  The narrative arc and the signposts matter just as much, if not more. 

Preparation also matters more.  Speakers will need to rehearse the difficult words and phrases, when to 'breathe, stop and sip'.  The text will benefit from more visuals, especially on slides.  Use paintings to make your point metaphorically. (Linguistic metaphors might be more problematic).  The writer needs to coach their speaker.  Practise with them; attend the event; take notes and give feedback.

Richard Toye showed us that audience reaction can be complex, even when the language is shared.  Churchill’s wartime speeches (discussed in Professor Toye's new book, The Roar of the Lion) were not the universally inspiring events of post-war myth.  Interestingly, the moments when he offered his audience detailed, depressing accounts of setbacks and defeats actually increased his authority (his ethos) when the war’s momentum turned in the allies’ favour; the good news became more credible. 

Professor Toye suggested that, if there is any lesson from Churchill for today's speechwriters, it is that the famous soundbites were actually less important at the time than his detailed arguments and explanations.

And David Murray brought matters to a satisfying conclusion.  Murray runs Vital Speeches of the Day, an essential resource for any speechwriter.  He began by asking the most important question of all.

Why are we here? 

After all, a speech is about the least efficient way to deliver information – or arguments or explanations, for that matter.  Why do we gather to listen to speeches?  Why do we seem to crave them?  What are we seeking?

His answers: community, charm, courage.  (Yeah. I know.  That's my triad, not his.)

Audiences want to feel safe; they want to feel that they are united and enlivened. Hatred will unite them; hatred of incompetence, he hastened to add, quoting Mencken.  But shared goals will also bind an audience together, as will a sense that the speaker cares passionately about the cause. 

Murray quoted Kafka:

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

As with books, he suggests, so with speeches.

The most common complaint that he hears from speechwriters?  That speakers want to share facts, when audiences want inspiration.

Perhaps Murray’s right.  Correction:  of course Murray's right.  Why give a speech simply to give the audience information?  Why make a speech at all?  As Amélie Crosson-Gooderham had reminded us earlier in the day: to create awareness, build community and inspire action.  Those are the reasons that matter.

An inspiring note on which to end an inspiring day.

(Find more conference photos here.)

 

Finding a new language for Europe: Luuk van Middelaar in conversation with Frank van Hoorn

The French apparently have a favoured descriptor for the European project: la construction.  The metaphor seemed apt last Thursday evening, as the European Speechwriter Network opened its conference in the Residence Palace in Brussels, currently being renovated for use by the European Council.  (Estimated completion date: last year...) 

 

Having negotiated the tarpaulins, scaffolding and concrete heaps, we settled down to a searching conversation about the role of language in fostering Europe’s future, with a man who is helping to create both.

As an opening session, this set the bar high.

 

 

Luuk van Middelaar is a political philosopher impatient with scholarly solitude.  His hero is Machiavelli, not just because he’s a good writer but because he understands that politics is about how events shape the systems by which we rule ourselves.  (A copy of The Prince made its way to the podium during his interview with Frank van Hoorn, and leaned approvingly against van Middelaar’s new book, The Passage to Europe.)

We need, says van Middelaar, a new vocabulary for Europe.  Enough with the acronyms. 

 

The fights in the Union have always been about words.  De Gaulle and Thatcher both resisted the translation of the Assembly into the Parliament, a word that threatened their sacred notion of sovereign states.  They lost.  Since then, according to van Middelaar’s analysis, the European dream has been described in two ways: as a membership of states; and as a unified community.  Each metaphorical frame has its intellectual adherents.  Economists love the metaphor of integration and align themselves with the Commission.  Historians prefer to talk of cooperation and collaboration, and focus on the political dance of European states.   

Our metaphors determine our political positions.  So much of the European conversation is ideological.  Van Middelaar sees his role as helping to articulate a third description: ‘the intermediate space’ between the teleological – even theological – ambitions of the federalists and the apocalyptic scaremongering of the eurosceptics. 

Van Middelaar has a way with imagery.  His ability to figure forth the complexity of European institutions as three spheres helps to make The Passage to Europe clear, navigable and - shout it loud - deeply enjoyable. 

Since December 2009, van Middelaar has been a member of the cabinet of Herman Van Rompuy, the first permanent president of the European Council.  Imagine the Council, he suggests, as a kind of Purgatory through which Europe is passing from the Inferno of 1945 to the federalist Paradiso.  The Council emerged, almost without anyone noticing, as a by-product of the treaty-based Union: a space where national leaders can meet as members of the European club. 

This space is deeply paradoxical.  To begin with, it's easy to confuse with the Council of the European Union, otherwise known as the Council of Ministers.  They even sit next door to each other on the Rue de la Loi.  The European Council, formalized as an institution in 1974, has no legislative power, but it’s charged under the Lisbon treaty with defining  "the general political directions and priorities" of the Union.  It’s a kind of collective presidency. Van Rompuy is known as both president of the Council and president of the Union.  Prime ministers and national presidents can enter this space only if they’re members of the Union; but their conversation is not bound by the treaty of membership. 

This curious space, van Middelaar suggests, is where new hybrid European institutions and agreements can be made.  (Think of the contradiction contained in the term ‘constitutional treaty’.)  It’s where European and national interests meet; the place – perhaps the only place – where European leaders can rise above the rule-bound institutionalism of the community and address the crises that threaten the Union.  

Van Middelaar detects a kind of invisible glue holding Europe together; a glue manufactured by the language of deliberation and debate, carefully spread by the Council of Europe and its president.  And it seems, sometimes, to work; witness the Union’s survival of the euro crisis in the last year or so.   

“Reinforce the intermediate sphere”: that is what van Middelaar has tried to do in his four years at the Council.

As Van Rompuy’s speechwriter, van Middelaar occupies a privileged position.  Van Rompuy is that rare animal, a politician who composes haiku.  (He also has a fondness, apparently, for Elvis.)  Perhaps the high point of their collaboration was the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.    Van Rompuy knew that his words had to rise, in a Shakespearean way, to the occasion.  Van Middelaar wanted, he told van Hoorn, to “open up the space, to open up the time” of the occasion. 

The opening of the second part of his speech achieves this ambition with breathtaking simplicity.

War is as old as Europe. Our continent bears the scars of spears and swords, cannons and guns, trenches and tanks, and more.

2500 years of history, as van Middelaar put it, in 23 words.

He has learnt much in his four years as speechwriter.  Engaging the speaker’s trust is essential.  The writer needs to observe and understand how the speaker’s very body alters as he shifts between languages.  The goal must be to bring the speaker’s natural speaking habits into their formal speeches.  When the arguments don’t – can’t – convince, tone becomes vitally important to define the direction of the conversation. 

In 2013, Europe’s most urgent task is to engage with its citizens, for whom the Union remains distant, monolithic and irrelevant.  We need a vision for Europe.  Many are now calling for a new language to conjure that vision; something more than platitudes, brochures and directives. 

If anyone can help us find the words we need, it is Luuk van Middelaar.

 

Framing for wonks (and others)

Photo by mnadi

A very good blogpost by Athene Donald set me thinking the other day, about writing policy papers, position papers, committee papers, and other kinds of persuasive document.  She was responding to this article by Stian Westlake on the Guardian Political Science blog.

Both pieces concentrate on matters stylistic.  Athene Donald quotes three key suggestions from Westlake’s piece.

• Neither glibness nor prolixity make for useful advice.

(I think it should be ‘makes’ – but let that pass.)

• Clarity, brevity and a sense of narrative are all important parts of good advice.

“It takes an eagle eye,” comments Professor Donald wisely, “to remove unnecessary circumlocutions and hesitancies.”

• Good advice is not just a matter of providing information, or summarising research. It also involves making a judgment about the balance of facts, helping frame the issue, and communicating in a way that the person you’re counselling will understand and act on.

To which she adds:  “Scientists aren’t always familiar with the idea of framing, or at least that is my personal experience.”

An important point is lurking here, which needs to be dragged out for scrutiny.

Westlake quotes Alan Clark, who once wrote a paper advocating deep cuts in military spending. Clark crows:

...not only was my paper first in, it was only five pages long. All this stuff [civil servants are] sending up now is ten, twenty pages per memo. On-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand balls. No one will bother, and in any case all will be read in the context of my argument.  Julian told me that the Treasury had commented that mine was 'the first decently written paper' they had seen for thirty years.

 

Ignore, if you can, the schoolboyish glee.  Clark’s success, I suggest, wasn’t principally due to style.  Clark got his way, as Westlake notes nearby, “by force of argument and cunning.”

Scientists are often frustrated by the irrationality of non-scientists.  Creationists ignore the overwhelming success of evolution as an explanatory theory.  Climate change sceptics scoff at sophisticated meteorological analysis.  Nigerian citizens refuse to inoculate their children against polio because they believe, against all the evidence, that the vaccine causes infertility.

Why do people resist good arguments so often and so persistently?

Because argument doesn’t operate by reason alone.  At least, most arguments don’t.  To succeed, an argument has to be framed to fit the assumptions, values and beliefs of the audience. 

Frames are the mental models through which we perceive and make sense of the world.  Some frames seem to be genetically imprinted; most are learned and reinforced through experience.  The choices we make, the decisions we take, and the arguments we believe, are determined by the frames we use. 

The idea of framing has been around for some decades.  The great rhetorician Kenneth Burke talked about ‘terministic screens’; Gregory Bateson and Ervin Goffmann developed the idea further in the 1970s.  More recently, framing has become seriously trendy through the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahnemann on ‘cognitive biases’.

In the field of informal logic, framing serves to establish what Stephen Toulmin calls an argument’s warrant.  A warrant is a generally held assumption, value or belief that justifies (or warrants) the word ‘because’ as a link between claim and reason.  We’ll be convinced by an argument if, and only if, we accept the warrant underlying it. 

Imagine a nutritionist making this case to a five-year-old.

Eat your vegetables because they’re good for you.

What chance of success here?  The warrant is the unstated assumption that ‘we should eat what’s good for us’.  Show me a five-year-old who holds that truth to be self-evident.  They don’t buy it.  The argument is unwarranted.  Failure of helpless nutritionist.

Of course, there are other methods of persuasion.  We could use force, social proof (‘your best friend Sam eats his vegetables’), or any of Robert Cialdini’s other patterns of influence. 

We could hire Brian Cox or Dara Ó Briain to do the job; but that’s not reason.  That’s charisma: a version of what Aristotle called ethos.

Now look at what Alan Clark was doing.  As Timothy Johnson points out in his comment to Westlake’s piece, Clark was preaching to the converted: trying to convince the Treasury to make spending cuts.  Perfect framing.  When does the Treasury ever not want to make spending cuts?  That warrant – ‘spending cuts are goooooooooood’ – pretty well acts as the Treasury’s motto.

Hardly deep; but definitely cunning.

According to political communication researcher Jim Kuyper, frames operate in four ways:

• they define problems;
• they diagnose causes;
• they make moral judgments; and
• they suggest remedies.

When we’re constructing an argument, then, we could usefully ask four questions about our audience.

• How do they define the problem?
• What do they think the cause is?
• What’s their moral view of the problem?
• What kind of remedy are they looking for?

We then have to frame our argument to address the answers to those four questions.

Now, I can see that this might be a horrifying suggestion for many scientists.  After all:

• How do they define the problem?  As a hypothesis.
• What do they think the cause is? Whatever the research tells them; and the causes may be complex and various.
• What’s their moral view of the problem? Whatever can’t be falsified is likely to be true.
• What kind of remedy are they looking for? One that respects the complexity of the truth uncovered by the research.

That’s the frame through which (I hope) they view reality.  Which is fine if their audience for their argument frames in the same way.  But if they don’t – as many politicians, journalists, activists, members of faith communities or ordinary folk so often don’t – then the argument will fail.

Framing, it seems to me, is a powerful tool for constructing more effective arguments.  Anyone arguing across intellectual, social or political boundaries will find it helpful.  Not just policy wonks.

(Thanks also to Timothy Johnson for pointing us to this article, which takes the conversation still further...)