8.1: Vivid Language

When persuading, whether orally or in writing, language choice matters. This chapter discusses language choices that can influence mental imagery, memory/recall, and cadence. In addition, several types of inclusive language–which greatly foster connection and credibility–are explored.

Vivid Language

Vivid language helps your listeners create strong, distinct, clear, and memorable mental images. Good vivid language usage helps audience members truly understand and imagine what a speaker is saying. Two common ways to make your speaking more vivid are through the use of imagery and rhythm.

Imagery

Imagery is the use of language to represent objects, actions, or ideas. The goal of imagery is to help an audience member create a mental picture of what a speaker is saying. A speaker who uses imagery successfully will tap into one or more of the audience’s five basic senses (hearing, taste, touch, smell, and sight). Two common tools of imagery are concreteness and metaphor.

When we use language that is concrete, we attempt to help our audiences see specific realities or actual instances instead of abstract theories and ideas. The goal of concreteness is to help you, as a speaker, show your audience something instead of just telling them about it. Imagine you’ve decided to give a speech on the importance of freedom. You could easily stand up and talk about the philosophical work of Rudolf Steiner, who divided the ideas of freedom into freedom of thought and freedom of action. Would such a talk captivate an audience?

Instead of defining what those terms mean and discussing the philosophical merits of Steiner, you could use real examples where people’s freedom to think or freedom to behave has been stifled. For example, you could talk about how Afghani women under Taliban rule have been denied access to education, and how those seeking education have risked public flogging and even execution ("The Taliban's War" 3). You could further illustrate how Afghani women under the Taliban are forced to adhere to rigid interpretations of Islamic law that functionally limit their behavior. As illustrations of the two freedoms discussed by Steiner, these examples make things more concrete for audience members and thus easier to remember. Ultimately, the goal of concreteness is to show an audience something instead of talking about it abstractly.

The other commonly used form of imagery is the metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech where a term or phrase is applied to something in a non-literal way to suggest a resemblance. In the case of a metaphor, one of the comparison items is said to be the other (even though this is realistically not possible). Let’s look at a few examples:

• Love is a battlefield.
• Upon hearing the charges, the accused clammed up and refused to speak without a lawyer.
• Every year a new crop of activists are born.

In these examples, the comparison word has been italicized. In the second example, the accused “clams up" which means that the accused refused to talk in the same way a clam’s shell closes. In the third example, we refer to activists as “crops” that arise anew with each growing season, and we use “born” figuratively to indicate that they come into being. We say this metaphor even though it is understood that people are not newborn infants at the time when they become activists.

To use a metaphor effectively, first determine what you are trying to describe. For example, maybe you are talking about a college catalog that offers a wide variety of courses. Second, identify what it is that you want to say about the object you are trying to describe. Depending on whether you want your audience to think of the catalog as good or bad, you’ll use different words to describe it. Lastly, identify the other object you want to compare the first one to, which should mirror the intentions in the second step. Let’s look at two possible metaphors:

• Students groped their way through the maze of courses in the catalog.
• Students feasted on the abundance of courses in the catalog.

While both of these examples evoke comparisons with the course catalog, the first example is more negative and the second is more positive.

One mistake people often make in using metaphors is to create two incompatible comparisons in the same sentence or line of thought. Here is an example:

• “That’s awfully thin gruel for the right wing to hang their hats on” (Nordquist).

This is known as a mixed metaphor, and it often has an incongruous or even hilarious effect. Unless you are aiming to entertain your audience with a fractured use of language, be careful to avoid mixed metaphors.

Rhythm

Our second guideline for vivid language use in a speech or in writing is to use rhythm. When most people think of rhythm, they immediately think about music. What they may not realize is that language is inherently musical. Rhythm refers to the patterned, recurring variance of elements of sound or speech. Whether someone is striking a drum with a stick or standing in front of a group speaking, or leading readers to conclusions in writing, rhythm is an important aspect of human communication. Think about your favorite public speaker. If you analyze their speaking pattern, you’ll notice that there is a certain cadence to the speech. Writers also use cadence and pattern; some writers are quite terse and use more direct sentences, while others use more complex sentence structures and more nuanced cadences. In speaking situations, much of this cadence is a result of the nonverbal components of speaking, some of the cadence comes from the language that is chosen as well. In writing, punctuation, pace and literary devices tend to drive the fluidity and rhythm of the writing. Let’s examine four types of rhythmic language: parallelism, repetition, alliteration, and assonance.

Parallelism

When listing items in a sequence, audiences will respond more strongly when those ideas are presented in a grammatically parallel fashion, which is referred to as parallelism. For example, look at the following two examples and determine which one sounds better to you:

• “Give me liberty, or I’d rather die.”
• "Give me liberty or give me death!"

Technically, you’re saying the same thing in both, but the second one has better rhythm, and this rhythm comes from the parallel construction of “give me.” The lack of parallelism in the first example makes the sentence sound disjointed and ineffective.

Repetition

One of the major differences between oral and written language is the use of repetition. Because speeches are communicated orally, audience members need to hear the core of the message repeated consistently. Repetition as a linguistic device is designed to help audiences become familiar with a short piece of the speech as they hear it over and over again. By repeating a phrase during a speech, you create a specific rhythm. Probably the most famous and memorable use of repetition within a speech is Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of “I have a dream” in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In that speech, Martin Luther King Jr. repeated the phrase “I have a dream” eight times to significant effect.

Alliteration

Another type of rhythmic language is alliteration. Alliteration is repeating two or more words in a series that begin with the same consonant. In the Harry Potter novel series, the author uses alliteration to name the four wizards who founded Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. There are two basic types of alliteration: immediate juxtaposition and nonimmediate juxtaposition. Immediate juxtaposition occurs when the consonants clearly follow one after the other—as we see in the Harry Potter example. Nonimmediate juxtaposition occurs when the consonants are repeated in nonadjacent words, e.g., “It is the poison that we must purge from our politics, the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late” (Obama). Sometimes you can use examples of both immediate and non-immediate juxtaposition within a single speech. The following example is from Bill Clinton’s acceptance speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention: “Somewhere at this very moment, a child is being born in America. Let it be our cause to give that child a happy home, a healthy family, and a hopeful future” (Clinton 421).

Assonance

Assonance is similar to alliteration, but instead of relying on consonants, assonance gets its rhythm from repeating the same vowel sounds with different consonants in the stressed syllables. The phrase “how now brown cow,” which elocution students traditionally used to learn to pronounce rounded vowel sounds, is an example of assonance. The iconic "I Like Ike" campaign slogan from the 1950's is another example. While rhymes like “free as a breeze,” “mad as a hatter,” and “no pain, no gain” are examples of assonance, speakers should be wary of relying on assonance because when it is overused, it can quickly turn into bad poetry.

 

• Imagery is the use of language to represent and help visualize objects, actions, or ideas.
  • Concrete language is language we use to help our audiences see specific realities or actual instances instead of abstract theories and ideas.
  • A metaphor is a figure of speech where a term or phrase is applied to something in a non-literal way to suggest a resemblance.
• Rhythm refers to the patterned, recurring variance of elements of sound or speech.
• Parallelism is used when a speaker is listing items in a sequence using a grammatically parallel fashion.
• Repetition  is designed to help audiences become familiar with a short piece of the speech as they hear it over and over again.
• Alliteration is repeating two or more words in a series that begin with the same consonant.
• Assonance gets its rhythm from repeating the same vowel sounds with different consonants in the stressed syllables.