The Duty invites you to the back roads of university life. A proposal that is both scholarly and intimate, to be picked up all summer long like a postcard. In this last meeting of the season, we reflect on the transformations of public speech in the digital age.
As the American Democratic convention has just ended and elected officials and stars are praising the merits of America, their approach to democracy and the importance of voting for this party, while Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama have amazed the audience and captured our imagination, it is worth wondering where the great speakers have gone in Quebec and elsewhere in the world.
Part of the answer to this question lies in the transformation of speech in the digital age. We now live in a world where we are overwhelmed, even hypersaturated, by information coming from all sides.
This speech was initially disrupted by the media (radio then television) and more recently by social media (social media platforms, in particular).
A new digital rhetoric
Speaking is no longer done only live in front of an audience, but through social media platforms that are transforming the way we communicate and convince. It is TED Talks and clips on Instagram and TikTok that fuel the imagination of citizens. It is therefore necessary to produce short, punchy, lively, even spectacular speeches to attract the attention of audiences.
Digital platforms are shaping what has been called the new digital rhetoric (following Fiona Rossette-Crake), which influences the way we receive and perceive discourses. This new rhetoric must be learned and mastered in order to use strong and convincing arguments, but also to detect those that are misleading or fragile. This seems all the more important in a context where fake news and truthful speeches compete for our attention.
How to make your speech convincing?
For the writing of my book Speaking Up and Arguing: How to Move from Thinking to Action in Person and Online (PUQ, 2024), I was interested in the transformations of speech in the digital age in order to see what are the different forms of speeches, debates and plans that allow us to structure the speech in order to make it more convincing. The book is intended to be pragmatic and is based on a variety of concrete examples in order to help those who want to succeed in getting their messages across effectively and without stress.
It is possible to apply these principles to the speeches of the great female speakers at the Democratic convention. While the speakers dazzled us during the convention, speaking in the digital world remains a major challenge. To be able to meet this challenge, it is important to:
Master the storytelling. First of all, these speakers know how to tell a story. They master the storytellingor storytelling. This storytelling helps to strengthen the sense of belonging, it brings issues to life by allowing them to be embodied and simplified. Mastering this art allows you to touch the public and make them vibrate.
In her speech, Kamala Harris spoke about her childhood and the teachings of her immigrant mother, a researcher who wanted to find cures for cancer. She also presented her career as a lawyer and prosecutor in a way that closely linked it to her desire to serve the entire country. Thanks to this storytellingshe portrayed her childhood and her life as a young girl from the middle class who lived in a working-class neighborhood.
This story served to highlight the fact that she was an American, like her audience, and that she would represent her fellow citizens well and fight for them. The family values offered by her mother were at the heart of her speech and served to illustrate how she had built herself as a woman, a lawyer, a prosecutor, a governor and now as a candidate for the presidency of the United States.
Take care of your image. This speech allowed her to work on her image. Great speakers always think about their image and the effect it will have on the audience. Clothing and gestures were put at the service of her message and aimed to support it, not distract us from it. Kamala Harris chose the blue present in the American flag and also the color of her party. The jacket rather than the dress also evoked her image as vice president and also as a prosecutor.
Adapt to your audience. These speakers also know how to adapt to their audience. Before speaking, they learn about the values, ideals and interests of their audience. This allows them to draw on these elements in order to construct a speech that will touch this audience. Kamala Harris, in her acceptance speech as a Democratic representative, knew how to thrill her audience by drawing on themes dear to Americans, such as freedom, the key role of her mother and her education in her life, the family being central in the United States.
Think about clips. In the context of the new digital rhetoric, it is necessary to be short, punchy, simple and embodied. This was the case for the speeches of these female politicians. They were built in segments of one minute and a half to three minutes. Sentences like “Trump and his millionaire friends who only work for themselves”, ” Kamala Harris for the people ” and the final ” from the courthouse to the White House » could easily be picked up in X-rated posts, Internet memes and media clips.
To practice. Jean-Luc Mongrain, an important figure in the Quebec media, in his work Speakwrote: “we are all communicative beings,” but “it remains that this natural disposition must be channeled, trained and shaped.” Great orators practice, over and over again. Their credo is: “twenty times on the loom you will put your work back on.” Even if they are great orators, they always take the time necessary to put their speech in their mouth and make it their own. Even if it is skillfully constructed, a speech must be rehearsed so that the speaker avoids searching for words or stammering.
After this great American mass, it is worth asking where are the great orators and great tribunes in Quebec and Canada. Who can make us dream? Who can give us hope through their words? It is clear that today’s politicians have abandoned rhetoric in favor of short sentences that they use as leitmotifs (e.g.: ” Axe the tax “, “It’s the immigrants’ fault”…).
Whether we are trying to convince an audience about small or big things, the manner of speaking will always be important; so let us take inspiration from these great ladies and reconnect with the art of rhetoric.