Becoming a speaker with... Sir Winston Churchill
5 lessons from Sir Winston Churchill
A great speaker
To find your speaking style, the one you are most comfortable with, and to enjoy your speeches, we believe in observing the greatest speakers . Through their speeches, they teach us many lessons and thus help us to progress rapidly.
Sir Winston Churchill, a remarkable politician, one of the most influential in contemporary history, notably as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the midst of the Second World War, was also recognised for his writing by being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.
Winston Churchill was a great orator who made thousands of speeches during his career, some of which immediately became a hallmark of rhetoric, and spoke no less than 5 million words.
Lesson No. 1 by Sir Winston Churchill
Loving and respecting your language
Winston Churchill was madly in love with the English language. He cherished it and did his utmost to sublimate it in his speeches. The result? For a 40-minute speech, he spent between 6 and 8 hours preparing, correcting and crossing out his notes over and over again.
This preparation time allowed him to choose the most effective structure to present his arguments and to select the ideas that would make the most lasting impression. But the work did not stop there. He replaced long words, which were often too complicated, with shorter, more powerful synonyms (Martin Luther King did the same thing).
An excellent speech, especially if it is important, can never be improvised, it must be prepared conscientiously, by determining a relevant structure and even by choosing your words with the greatest of care.
Lesson No. 2 by Sir Winston Churchill
A speaker repeats ... out loud!
In view of Churchill's oratorical talent, it would be easy to conclude that he always expressed himself with ease and great clarity. This is obviously not the case! As a child, Winston Churchill had difficulty articulating and pronouncing certain words correctly. His father even called in a voice specialist to find out if he was suffering from a particular disorder. But Winston Churchill turned this early handicap into a real strength by choosing words that were easy for him to pronounce and which gradually gave a real poetry to his words. And above all, he would rehearse out loud to put his text in his mouth and make the final adjustments.
Among his many speeches, some are magnificent in the rhythm of the sentences. This is the case of the one he gave on 4 June 1940 in the House of Commons of the British Parliament:
"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender.
A successful speech is always rehearsed out loud, as close to the way it is spoken as possible.
Lesson No. 3 by Sir Winston Churchill
Read and be educated
As closely as possible to the definition given by the ancient rhetors, Sir Winston Churchill considered that an orator should be able to express himself on a wide variety of subjects, in ever-changing contexts. That is why he read a lot. He thus built up an ever-growing pool of ideas that could convince a wide range of audiences. Greek authors, such as Aristotle, called these topos, i.e. a sum of arguments and examples on many topics.
And all his reading gave him the opportunity to use rich analogies and to handle a vocabulary estimated at over 65,000 words... when the average is 25,000!
To speak on many subjects, with relevance and intelligence, you have to dig into it in detail. To do this, you have to find new references in all your reading, and today we could add, listening and viewing.
Lesson No. 4 by Sir Winston Churchill
Logos of course... but also pathos!
Churchill's speeches are masterpieces of argumentation. To win over his audiences, he made what he called "accumulations of arguments". And these, each time, all led to an implacable conclusion. Like a gradation, he organised his ideas so that the arguments made a stronger and stronger impression and proved point by point that he was right.
But far from being an apologist for rationality, he knew that to convince and persuade, it was equally essential to be emotionally involved in what he was saying. If the aim is to convey a serious and solemn message, it must also take you by storm; if an idea makes you angry, it must be real and perceptible. The speaker must be sincere with himself and with his audience in order to win their support.
Winston Churchill said it all himself in an early text, The Scaffolding of Rhetoric:
"If we examine this strange being [the orator] by the light of history we shall discover that he is in character sympathetic, sentimental and earnest... Before he can inspire them with any emotion he must be swayed by it himself. When he would rouse their indignation his heart is filled with anger. Before he can move their tears his own must flow. To convince them he must himself believe."
Conviction is achieved through excellent argumentation as well as through the mobilisation of emotions. The brain and the heart of the audience are thus touched at the same time.
Eloquence
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