In 1897, a 23 year old Winston Churchill published a paper entitled “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric”. In it, he singled out 5 qualities that make up good rhetoric. Because last night went so poorly for young Mr. Jindal, I’m going to try to systematically apply these qualities to Jindal’s speech, while contrasting it with a historically known “good speech”. That speech is Ronald Reagan’s famous “A Time for Choosing”. I’ll start with Churchill’s second quality: rhythm. Here’s how Churchill described it:
The sentences of the orator when he appeals to his art become long, rolling and sonorous. The peculiar balance of the phrases produces a cadence which resembles blank verse rather than prose.
I’m going to focus on the variation of syllables spoken per second. Since sentences are largely not breaking points in a speech, I decided to make what seemed like “natural” breaks. For instance, here’s how I separated a passage of Reagan’s speech:
In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the “Great Society,” or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people (break). But they’ve been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations (break). For example, they have voices that say, “The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism” (break). Another voice says, “The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state.” Or, “Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century” (break).
I’ve recorded the number of syllables spoken, and the amount of time spent speaking, in between the breaks. I’ve then used simple division to come up with the number of syllables spoken per second in each section. Here are my results for the beginning chunk of the Jindal speech (until just after he finished that sheriff story):
5.15, 4.64, 5.3, 5.23, 4.93, 4.85, 4.54, 3.67, 5.08, 4.75, 5.29, 4.4, 4.8, 4.78, 5
Here’s maybe an easier to understand format; think of rising and falling action in a play or film:
Steady, Falling, Rising, Steady, Falling, Steady, Falling, Falling, Rising, Falling, Rising, Falling, Rising, Steady, Rising
Here’s the first of two Reagan excerpts in the numerical format:
4.22, 5, 4.67, 5.06, 4.25, 5.55, 6.14, 4.75, 4.13, 5, 4.83, 5, 5.63, 5.31, 4.18, 5.1
Now in the rising/falling format:
Steady, Rising, Falling, Rising, Falling, Rising, Rising, Falling, Falling, Rising, Falling, Rising, Rising, Falling, Falling, Rising
Here’s the second Reagan excerpt in numerical format:
5.31, 5.33, 5, 4.53, 5, 7, 4.89, 4.43, 6, 5.2, 4.88, 4.27, 4.25, 3.4, 4.88, 2.71, 4.65, 5.2, 3.87
Now in the rising/falling format:
Steady, Steady, Falling, Falling, Rising, Rising, Falling, Falling, Rising, Falling, Falling, Falling, Falling, Falling, Rising, Falling, Rising, Rising, Falling
Looking at the 3 data-sets you’ll notice a few things. First, you’ll notice that Reagan has fewer “Steady’s” then Jindal does. He’s always varying the rhythm of his rhetoric. Jindal is just flat at various points. Next, you’ll notice that Reagan’s Rising and Falling action is just…well, neat. He’ll go back and forth between rising and falling speech, and then start to rattle multiple falling’s off in a row. In other words, he’ll slow his speech down, gradually until he hits a sort “connecting” moment (these are the warm moments that Reagan has). He’ll then, start to gradually speed up again, reaching greater heights until he hits a summit, or a “forceful” moment (think “there is a price we will not pay, there is a point beyond which they must not advance). He’ll mix it up in this vein, so he’s always alternating “connecting” moments with “forceful” moments. The action progresses the way one would expect action to progress: it has the air of excitement. There’s another important thing you’ll notice if you look at the actual numbers. Reagan doesn’t simply vary his rhythm; he hits very high highs (7 syllables per second at one point) and very low lows (2.71 syllables per second at one point). Even when Jindal varies his rhythm, he doesn’t have anything like this range. Furthermore, Jindal rarely varied his speech gradually: instead it went from rising, to falling and back again, without building towards anything. This may explain the “sing-songy” feel that some folks noticed. It would seem then, that Churchill’s first “quality” seems to reflect a real fact of rhetoric: varying rhythm in a certain way helps create memorable, exciting speeches., while failing to vary it can result in disaster.
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