1. INTRODUCTION

It is known that public speaking is a transaction between you and your audience. Just as the language you choose for your message should reflect the nature of your audience, so too should your delivery. Specifically, we discuss choosing an appropriate method of delivery, adapting to diverse audiences, and adapting delivery to the speech occasion.

2. CHOOSING AN APPROPRIATE METHOD OF DELIVERY

There is more than one way to deliver a speech:

2.1 MANUSCRIPT DELIVERY

Manuscript delivery involves writing out the speech completely aand reading it to the audience. This method may be the best choice when your audience requires precise information from you. Similarly, if you expect your words to be quoted by others, having a manuscript of your speech helps ensure accuracy.

However, anytime you use a manuscript the dynamics of delivery are restricted. Eye contact, movement, and gesture are important dimensions of nonverbal behavior that may enhance (sustiprina) your delivery. Manuscript speaking also impedes spontaneity between you and your audience because tthe manuscript restricts opportunities to survey and creatively respond to audience feedback. A manuscript demands a lectern (pultas kalbetojui), which can stand as a barrier between a speaker and the audience. This method of delivery can sound artificial because the llanguage of a written message generally is more formal than spoken language.

It is advisable to mark up your manuscript with notes to yourself and underline main ideas. Be sure pages are numbered so that they will not get out of order. Use a large typeface and double or even triple spacing. The success of manuscript speaking depends on practice and skill in converting words on a page into a living speech.

2.2 MEMORIZED DELIVERY

A speaker using memorized delivery writes out the speech and commits it to memory before presenting it to the audience without the use of notes. In fact, an obviously memorized speech would probably strike audience as odd. Although memorization allows you to concentrate on eye contact, movement, and ggesture, it does so at a price. You may forget parts of your speech and it requires a greater investment of time than any other method.

2.3 IMPROMPTU DELIVERY

Impromptu (improvizuotas [im’promptju:]) delivery is a spontaneous, unrehearsed method of presenting a speech. Usually, these short speeches are given in response to someone who asks you to say a few words, make a toast, or respond to an inquiry.

Impromptu speaking frees you from any impediments (kliutys)to using the full range of nonverbal behaviors aavailable to speakers, but you are most likely so busy concentrating on what you are going to say that you ignore delivery. Thus, impromptu delivery is not effective.

2.4 EXTEMPORANEOUS DELIVERY

For most students who are still learning to give a speech, extemporaneous ( neparengtas) speaking remains their best choice of delivery method. Extemporaneous delivery combines careful preparation with spontaneous speaking. The speaker generally uses brief notes rather than a manuscript or an outline. Extemporaneous speaking enables you to maintain eye contact, move, gesture, and spontaneously adapt to audience feedback. It allows the speaker to remain in contact with the audience, so does it allow the audience to remain connected to the speaker. However, extemporaneous speaking has drawbacks. Note cards can restrict the range of gestures used when you refer to them. Finally, you can get carried away with note cards, writing down so many of your thoughts that note cards become almost a manuscript.

3. DELIVERING SPEECHES TO DIVERSE AUDIENCE

Both the method and style of delivery should reflect the diversity of your audience. A particular nonverbal behavior means one thing to one culture and something entirely different to another. For example, as you speak, a North American audience returns your eye ccontact and nods in agreement with you. A British audience also returns your eye contact, but heads remain motionless. And a West African audience avoids making direct eye with you altogether. Remember, when the British agree with a speaker, they sometimes blink rather than nod their head. Further, the more direct the eye contact of West Africans, the less they respect the person to whom it is directed.

4. CHARACTERISTICS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR

Delivery involves the nonverbal behavior by which a speaker conveys his or her message to an audience. Delivery is what brings mere words to life in the public speaking transaction. Nonverbal behavior is a wordless system of communicating. Although scholars argue about the exact definition of nonverbal behavior, most agree that it is continuous; it uses multiple channels simultaneously, and is spontaneous.

4.1 THE CONTINUOUS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR

Consider the expression of happiness as you speak. What the audience sees is a complex message that involves the entire face. The muscles of the face contract, affecting the eyebrows, the corners of the mouth, and the corners of the eye. Unlike verbal behavior, these involuntary movements cannot be broken down into compositional elements. There are no rules of grammar to explain tthe meaning conveyed by these facial expressions. Only the total, continuous combination of these elements can constitute the nonverbal expression of happiness.

4.2 THE SIMULTANEOUS USE OF MULTIPLE CHANNELS

Nonverbal behavior also involves the simultaneous use of multiple channels. For example, try conveying an emotional expression, such as happiness, anger, sorrow, through a single channel of communication, for example, your mouth or eyes or hands. You will soon see that it is difficult if not impossible. At the same time, you will recognize that we use these multiple channels simultaneously rather than sequentially. When happy, we express the emotion all over our face, not with our eyes first, mouth second, eyebrows and forehead third and fourth.

4.3 THE SPONTANEOUS NATURE OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR

Moreover nonverbal behavior is spontaneous. Smiles, gestures, and body language occur at a subconscious level. This does not mean that people never plan or orchestrate gestures when they speak. Sometimes they do, and their nonverbal behavior is likely to look phony (apsimestinis). Most of us learn to distinguish between authentic and phony nonverbal behavior by the time we reach our teens.

5. THE NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

A system is a collection of interdependent and interrelated components. A change in one component will produce

change in them all. The nonverbal system has as its components several interdependent dimensions of behavior that profoundly affect the delivery of a speech. The specific dimensions are the environment, appearance, the face and eyes, the voice, gestures and movement, posture, touch, and time. You need to approach these dimensions systematically.

5.1 THE ENVIRONMENT

Environment refers to our physical surroundings as we speak and the physical distance separating us from our audience. Both our surrounding and our physical space have an undeniable iimpact not only on our delivery but also on how the speech is perceived by our audience. The physical characteristic of the room in which you speak – for example, lighting, temperature, comfort, and aesthetics – will influence both you and your audience physically and psychologically.

Sometimes you have no alternative but to do the best you can in situations, where you cannot change the environment. At other times, however, you will have the opportunity to physically arrange the room iin which you will speak. This may include the position of a lectern, elevation (pakelimas) of a stage, and configuration of an audience. Speakers who are much less formal in their style of delivery may want the room to be aarranged so that they can move from side.

Both the traditional and informal styles of delivery can be equally effective. However, the room layout consistent with the traditional style is more restrictive than its counterpart in two ways. The first way concerns the zone of interaction, the area in which speakers can easily make eye contact with audience members. The second way concerns the amount of space physically separating speakers from their audience.

The zone of interaction is limited to the range of your peripheral vision. The immediate zone of interaction between speakers and their audience diminishes, as a room gets larger. To compensate for this fact, speakers have two choices. Either they can shift the zone of interaction by looking from sside to side or they can physically move from one point to another when they deliver their speeches. Obviously, in a very large room the traditional style of delivery limits you to looking from side to side in the attempt to shift the zone of interaction. This means that you cannot help but ignore part of your audience part of the time. The traditional style of delivery allows less flexibility in manipulating the physical distance separating speakers from their audiences. WWhereas a speaker who moves about the room can reduce or increase distance physically as well as psychologically, a relatively stationary speaker is restricted to the latter.

To summarize: the relationship of the speaking environment to delivery is a significant one. Not only does it influence your style of delivery, it also influences how you are perceived by your audience.

5.2 APPEARANCE

Appearance often has a disproportionately significant effect on audience perceptions of a speaker’s message and delivery. Speakers never get a second chance to make a first impression with an audience. First impressions largely are based on appearance, including body type and height, skin and hair color, and clothing and accessories.

Audience members use appearance to initially make judgments about a speaker’s level of attractiveness. The consequences of such judgments are far-reaching for speakers. Speakers perceived as attractive by audience members also are perceived as smart, successful, sociable, and self-confident.

Although some facets of your appearance and their impact on audience perception are outside your control – for example, body type and height – there is one facet you can easily control: your dress. Simply said, your dress should be appropriate to the situation.

5.3 THE FACE AND EYES

What is true of immediate language iis even truer of nonverbal behavior. The face and eyes are very useful in communicating friendliness to an audience and reducing undesirable feelings of distance between the speaker and audience.

Yet making the delivery of your speech more immediate is only one of the roles the face and eyes play in enhancing your delivery. The face and eyes, for example, can communicate happiness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, sadness, and interest.

We can use the face and eyes to intensify our delivery. In most cases, we intensify what we say in this manner with little or no conscious thought. As we grow angry, the muscles in our face tense and eyes narrow spontaneously. In a sense, what we give an audience in our face and eyes will determine what we can expect to get back from our audience.

5.4 THE VOICE

Much of the emotional impact of your delivery is conveyed in your voice. Drama, irony, sarcasm, and urgency are a few of the emotions we can convey vocally. To gain maximal control of your voice you need to know two things: the mechanics of the voice, and the importance of finding your own voice rather than imitating the voice of someone else.

5.4.1 VOLUME

Volume iis how loudly you project your voice. It is a consequence of both the amount of air you expel when speaking and the force with which you expel it. As a public speaker, you need to have enough volume to be heard by your audience. Too soft a voice will simple not be heard. On the other hand, shouting at the top of your lungs can turn off your audience. The key is to speak loudly enough to be heard, while not speaking too loudly for the room. It is also useful to vary your volume during the speech, using either an increase or decrease in volume as a means of emphasis.

5.4.2 PITCH

Pitch refers to the degree our voices are high or low. Effective speakers vary their pitch during their speech.

5.4.3 RANGE

Range is the extent of the pitch, from low to high, that lies within a person’s vocal capacity. Some speakers have a great vocal range; others are like an electric bass guitar, which no matter how well played, does not have much range. As a speaker, you need to make the fullest use of your normal conversational vocal range. Raising or lowering the pitch of your voice can emphasize

a particular word or phrase in your speech. Avoid a monotone () delivery, which can lull your audience to sleep.

5.4.4 RHYTHM

Rhythm is extremely important to the delivery of your speech. It involves the characteristic pattern of your volume, pitch, and range. Although variation in the rhythm of your voice is certainly to be encouraged, the exact pattern of variation should not be completely predictable as your speech begins to unfold.

5.4.5 TEMPO

Tempo is the rate at which you produce sounds. How qquickly or slowly you speak will influence how you are perceived. Tempo also tends to vary across and even within cultures. An excessively rapid pace can be perceived as a sign of nervousness. An excessively slow pace may suggest a speaker is not well prepared. When audiences perceive speech rates as similar to their own, they are more likely to find the speaker socially attractive.

Your tempo is also affected by pauses. Sometimes a brief moment of silence can convey aa lot to an audience. Pausing just before delivering the crucial word or phrase helps grab the audience’s attention. Pausing after you have made an important point gives it time to sink in. Do not be afraid to use pauses wwhen appropriate. It is better to pause a moment than to fill the air with “ums,” “uhs,” and “you knows,” which are really “vocalized pauses”.

5.4.6 ARTICULATION

Articulation refers to the distinctness with which we make individual sounds. A common articulation problem comes from either running together differing sounds or dropping parts of a word: “goin’” instead of “going,” “wanna” instead of “want to,” or “whatcha doin’?” in place of “what are you doing?” If you expect an audience to understand what you are saying, you need clear articulation. A good way to test your articulation is to tape-record your speech and listen critically to yourself.

5.5 GESTURES AND MOVEMENT

Your gestures and your movements as you grow as a public speaker should be aa refined reflection of what you do naturally.

As is the case with the face and eyes, gestures and movements also can be used to intensify or lessen the emotional impact of verbal messages. Gesturing and moving can complement your delivery in several ways. These include making your delivery more emblematic, making your delivery more illustrative (, and regulating the speech transaction.

5.5.1 EMBLEMS

The speeches of the best public speakers are usually rich in emblems. An emblem is a nonverbal behavior that ccan be directly translated into words and phrases and may replace them. For example, Winston Churchill’s “V” was an emblem for victory. Thus, emblems must meet the following criteria:

1. The emblem means something specific to the audience members.

2. The emblem is used intentionally by the speaker to stimulate meaning.

3. The emblem can be easily translated into a few words.

5.5.2 ILLUSTRATORS (

Illustrators are nonverbal behaviors that accompany speech and “show” what is being talked about. Although a lot like emblems, they are more general and seldom translate into a few words. The most common way we nonverbally illustrate is with our hands. Verbal directions or descriptions beg for the use of our hands.

5.5.3 REGULATORS

Regulators are gestures that influence the amount and type of feedback received from the audience. Using gestures and movement to regulate feedback, however, requires planning and rehearse. An unplanned or inappropriate gesture or specific movement may elicit a response from the audience that you had not expected. Regulating audience feedback is particularly important when a speaker answers audience questions.

5.6 POSTURE

Posture is very important to your delivery and the manner in which it is received. People make all kinds of attributions about speakers on the basis of their posture, ranging from how cconfident a speaker is to how seriously the speaker takes the topic and the situation. Because the norms governing appropriate posture vary across cultures, there are no hard and fast rules for speakers to follow.

Guidelines for Posture While Delivering the Speech

• Find your center of balance. Usually this means standing with your feet apart at about shoulder width.

• Pull your shoulders back, sticking your chest out and holding your stomach in.

• Keep your chin up and off your chest.

• Initially let your arms rest at your side with palms open, which will allow you to gesture easily as you speak.

5.7 TOUCH

Touch, which is by far the most intimate and reinforcing of the nonverbal dimensions, can affect your delivery in at least two ways. The first involves self-adapting behaviors, which are distracting touching behaviors that speakers engage in unconsciously.

Frequently in arousing situations, we touch our face, hair, or clothes without realizing it. Just as frequently we touch some convenient object. We may squeeze the arm of a chair, roll our fingers on a tabletop, or trace the outside edge of a glass with our fingertip. We do these things unconsciously.

Because public speaking is arousing, it too can provoke these self-adaptive forms of ttouch. Further, they can needlessly detract (menkina, mazina) from your deliver. Tugging the earlobe (ausies spenelio tampymas), rubbing the outside of your upper arm, or jingling the change in your pocket will not help your delivery.

The second way touch can affect your delivery concerns people. Sometimes it is as simple but as important as shaking a person’s hand. At other times, however, it may involve guiding someone by the hand, patting someone on the back, or even giving a more demonstrative tactile sign of approval. At the same time, one must avoid touch that can be interpreted as inappropriate. Unwelcome touching can, in fact, be grounds for accusations of sexual harassment.

5.8 TIME

First, time varies from one individual to the next. To the extent that one can arrange speaking times, attempt to schedule a time when you know your mind and body will be alert.

Time affects our delivery in other ways as well. As a result of attempting to cover too much material, for example, time limits may cause you to “hurry” your delivery. Conversely, if you find that you are about to finish your speech under the minimum time requirement of an assignment, you may slow down the

delivery of your speech in the attempt to meet the time requirement. The audience’s perception of your delivery also will be affected by your “timing.”

Because the norms that govern the use of time vary across cultures, how fast or how slowly you deliver your speech may be a consideration.

Finally, whether you are “on time” or late not only for a speech but just in general, affects your credibility (patikimumas). People who are on time are perceived as efficient and ppolite, both of which affect perceptions of competence and trustworthiness. People who are routinely late give the impression they are disorganized and not especially considerate of the time needs of an audience.

6. THE FUNCTION OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DELIVERY

The dimensions of nonverbal behavior we have been talking about perform a number of important functions in speech delivery. These dimensions interact to make our speeches more emblematic and illustrative. They also can help us regulate audience feedback and intensify or llessen the emotional impact of what we say during a speech. Other ways that nonverbal dimensions such as the face, eyes, and voice function to facilitate the delivery of our messages include complimenting, contradicting, and repeating the message; substituting for aa verbal cue (replika); increasing the perception of immediacy (betarpiskumas ; exciting the audience; and delivering a powerful speech.

6.1 COMPLEMENTING YOUR MESSAGE

A complementary nonverbal cue serves to reinforce what you verbally share with your audience. A genuine smile on your face as you thank your audience for the opportunity to speak carries more weight than either message standing on its own. There are many ways to complement the delivery of your message nonverbally. Changing the expression on your face, raising the pitch of your voice, or even breaking off eye contact are just a few of them.

6.2 CONTRADICTING YOUR MESSAGE

Often, people contradict themselves nonverbally while communicating interpersonally. In the case of public speaking we can use contradiction to enhance our ddelivery, for example, by rolling our eyes, shrugging our shoulders, or having a sarcastic expression.

6.3 REPEATING YOUR MESSAGE

Repetition is one of the most common ways speakers manipulate their message nonverbally. A repetitious () cue serves to make the message redundant. Some examples include nodding your head up and down while communicating agreement and shaking your head from side to side when communicating disagreement.

6.4 SUBSTITUTING FOR VERBAL CUE

Shrugging your shoulders, reaching out with open palms, and raising your eyebrows may mmore clearly communicate your bewilderment ( sumišimas) than to actually say you are puzzled by something.

6.5 INCREASING THE PERCEPTION OF IMMEDIACY

Nonverbal behavior can also increase the perception of immediacy between you and your audience. Immediacy concerns how psychologically close or distant people perceive each other, as well as the degree to which they perceive each other as approachable.

Generally, the perception of immediacy between people is desirable. This is because people who are perceived as immediate are also perceived as friendly and approachable, stimulating, open to dialogue, and interpersonally warm.

The easiest and most effective way to make the delivery more immediate is through nonverbal channels. Eye contact is the perfect case in point. Greater immediacy with the audience can be also achieved with facial expressions such as a smile, with conversational rather than condescending ( maloningas) tone of voice, and others.

6.6 EXCITING THE AUDIENCE

One way we gauge ( the effectiveness of a speech is the degree to which it stimulated us. An audience’s degree of excitement can be traced to the degree of excitement the audience senses in the speaker. The level of excitement of public speakers is most noticeable in their nonverbal behavior. This includes rate of speech, vvolume of speech, and vocal as well as facial expressions.

6.7 DELIVERING A POWERFUL SPEECH

The power of words depends on the manner in which they are delivered. Posture is an obvious way you can control the power of delivery. Standing tall and self-assured, in and of itself, communicates power. You also can enhance the power of your delivery with your eyes, with your voice, and through movement and gestures.

7. SUMMARY

To sum everything up, we can say that effective speech delivery begins by focusing on your audience. Choosing among manuscript, memorized, impromptu, and extemporaneous delivery methods depends on the audience and the situation you face. Unlike language, nonverbal behavior is a wordless system of communicating. Nonverbal behavior is continuous, uses multiple channels simultaneously, and is spontaneous.

The system of nonverbal behavior is composed of the following interdependent dimensions: the environment, appearance, the face and the eyes, the voice, gestures and movement, posture, touch, and time. They function to enhance the delivery of speeches.