12.3 Five Elements of Language
Jacqueline Gianico
Learning Objectives
- Understand the five elements of language important for public speakers.
- Utilize the five elements of language in your own public speeches.
Language is a very important aspect of anyone’s public speaking performance. Whether a speaker uses lots of complicated words or words most people have in their vocabularies, language will determine how an audience experiences the speech. To help you think through your language choices, we are going to talk about five important elements of language and how they affect audience perceptions.
Clarity
The first important element of language is clarity, or the use of language to make sure the audience understands a speaker’s ideas in the way the speaker intended. While language, or verbal communication, is only one channel we can use to transmit information, it is a channel that can lend itself to numerous problems. For example, as discussed earlier, if people have different connotative definitions for words, the audience can miss the intended meaning of a message.
The clearer your language, the more likely your audience is to stay engaged and understand your message. Imagine you’re listening to a speaker who uses the phrase, “Rapidly prepared, mass-produced culinary commodities,” or “An aspirational socio-economic construct rooted in Western ideals of prosperity, individual achievement, and upward mobility.” If you’re like most people, these phrases might leave you scratching your head. To clarify, the first refers to fast food, and the second is a verbose way of saying the American Dream. Notice how the overly complex versions are far less clear than the commonly understood terms.
Accessibility
Obscure language and jargon are two terms that closely relate to each other. Obscure language refers to language choices that are not typically understood or known by most of your audience. Imagine you’re listening to a speech and the speaker says, “Today I’ve given you a plethora of ideas for greening your workplace.” While you may think the word “plethora” is commonly known, we can assure you that many people have no idea that plethora means many or an abundance of something. Similarly, you may think most people know what it means to “green” a workplace, but in fact many people do not know that it means to make the workplace more environmentally friendly, or to reduce its impact on the environment. In the case of this example, plethora simply means the speaker has given many ideas for greening the workplace. You can still use the word “plethora,” but you should include a definition so that you’re sure all will understand.
Jargon, on the other hand, refers to language that is commonly used by a highly specialized group, trade, or profession. For example, there is legal jargon, or the language commonly used by and understood by lawyers. There is also medical jargon, or the language commonly used by and understood by health care practitioners. Every group, trade, or profession will have its own specific jargon. The problem that occurs for many speakers is not realizing that jargon is group, trade, or profession specific and not universal. One common form of jargon is the acronym, a word formed by taking the first letters or groups of letters of words, such as NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations), PET (positron emission tomography) scan, or IHOP (International House of Pancakes). Another form of jargon is initialism, formed by pronouncing the initials rather than the name of an organization or other entity. For example, CDC stands for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fMRI stands for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and B of A stands for Bank of America. In political discussions, you may come across various CFRs, or Codes of Federal Regulations. If you are going to use a specific acronym or initialism within your speech, you need to explain it the first time you use it. For example, you could say,
“According to the United States Code of Federal Regulations, or CFR, employment discrimination in the Department of Homeland Security is not allowed based on biological sex, religion, sexual orientation, or race. Furthermore, the US CFR does not permit discrimination in receiving contracts based on biological sex, religion, sexual orientation, or race.”
By defining the jargon upon first mention, we are subsequently able to use the jargon because we can be certain the audience now understands the term.
While you probably wouldn’t intentionally make your speech harder to understand by using such convoluted language, this example shows how important it is to use clear, direct wording. This is also related to the next important element of language: economy.
Economy
A mistake among new public speakers is thinking that more words are more impressive. On the contrary, fewer or more carefully selected words are usually the preference. When people ramble on and on without making a point, audiences become bored and distracted, or even annoyed. To avoid this problem, we recommend word economy, or the use of only those words necessary to accurately express your idea. If the fundamental idea you are trying to say is, “that stinks,” then saying something like “while the overall outcome may be undesirable and definitely not recommended” becomes overkill. We do have one caveat here: you want to make sure that your language isn’t so basic that it turns off your audience. If you are speaking to adults and use vocabulary appropriate for school children, you’ll end up offending your audience. So, while economy is important, you don’t want to become so overly basic that you are perceived as “talking down” to your audience.
Power
Power is an individual’s ability to influence another person to think or behave in a manner the other person would not have otherwise done. DeVito examined how language can be used to help people gain power over others or lose power over others (DeVito, 2009). Table 12.3 “Powerful and Powerless Language” provides examples of both powerful language and powerless language a speaker can use during a speech. Powerless language should generally be avoided in public speaking because it can damage audience perceptions of the speaker’s credibility.
| Language Strategy | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Powerful Language | ||
| Direct Requests | Asking the audience to engage in a specific behavior. | “At the conclusion of today’s speech, I want you to go out and put your phone in your bag or pocket and focus on the people and world around you.” |
| Bargaining | An agreement that affects both parties of a situation. | “If you vote for me, I promise to make sure that our schools get the funding they so desperately need.” |
| Ingratiation | Attempting to bring oneself into the favor or good graces of an audience. Warning: avoid telling the audience what they want to hear, which can be perceived as manipulative. |
“Because you are all talented people who have dedicated so much to this community, I know that you see why we need to boost funding for local service.” |
| Powerless Language | ||
| Hesitations & Vocalized Pauses | Language and utterances that make the speaker sound unprepared or uncertain. | “Well, uhh, as best I was able to find out, or I should say, from what little material I was umm able to dig up, I kind of think that this is a pretty umm interesting topic. So, yeah.” |
| Intensifiers & Empty Adjectives | Words that overemphasize aspects of the speech without substance | “Great! Fantastic! This topic is absolutely amazing and fabulous!” |
| Disqualifiers & Self-critical Statements | Language that downplays one’s qualifications and competence about a specific topic or publicizing one’s lack of confidence | “I’m not really an expert on this topic, and I’m not very good at doing research, but here goes nothing.” |
| Tag Questions | Short questions added to the end of a phrase seeking the audience’s consent for what was said | “This is a very important behavior, isn’t it?” or “You really should do this, don’t you think?” |
| Kinda/Sorta/Maybe Words | Modifiers used to indicate that one isn’t completely sure of the statement just made. | “I really believe this may be sort of true.” “Maybe my conclusion is a good idea; maybe it isn’t.” |
Variety
The last important aspect of language is variety, or a speaker’s ability to use and implement a range of different language choices. In many ways, variety encompasses all the characteristics of language previously discussed in this chapter. You have probably heard of the cliché, variety is the spice of life. You don’t want your speech to be bland! Your audience will stop listening. Using a variety of language tools ensures that your speech is interesting. Be careful, though. Often speakers find one language device and then beat it into the ground like a railroad spike. Unfortunately, when a speaker starts using the same language device too often, it will start to lose the power that it may have had. For this reason, we recommend that you always think about the language you plan on using in a speech and make sure that you use a range of language choices.
