Conversational Speeches: Shades of Meaning

Video Transcript

"Now we want to talk about vocal expressions that give shades of meaning. There's lots of different things you could call this. You could call it operative words, you could call it stressing certain words, important words, whatever it is. I like to refer to it as giving different words different values. Think in terms of what is the most important part of the sentence that you're saying. I'll go back to my example from earlier where I said the building is on fire. All of those words have the same value. Nothing meant more than anything else. Now that would change if I said, the building's on fire. I put a stress on building. Or I might say, the building's on fire. That would put an emphasis on fire. So you want to find those words that you can give an extra stress to, or a shade of coloring to, to make sure you emphasize your point. If I were to say we really need to do this. I'm trying to, maybe I'm giving a persuasive speech and I'm trying to encourage people to take an action. It would be very good for me to say we really need to do this. Need means something must happen that's very important and it's up to you to do it. So I always recommend you take your speech, you think out your speech, you've outlined your speech. Whatever it is, go through it and think in terms of what are the most important words. What if you had twenty words to give your speech, what would those twenty words be?"