Public Speaking and Advocacy for Change

By Claudia Simone Ene

Have you ever watched a TEDx Talk? Have you ever been part of a group graduating any course and listening to a presenter having a speech? Did you enjoy it? Or did you got bored after some minutes?

I believe it takes a lot of courage and preparation to be able to entertain and send the right message to your audience and keep them engaged, because performing in front of more than one person is not an easy thing. More than this, becoming a good speaker involves knowledge, confidence, proper pacing, tone of voice, articulation and these can be learned with patience and a lot of practice.

In public speaking, the lecturer has the purpose of transmitting information, persuade or entertain the audience focusing on a specific subject for an amount of time. The speech contains interactions with the listeners and arguments very well organized, so the public can understand and receive the proper information from the speaker. Public speaking is more than a message, it’s a practice, and its importance has grown in time, and in today's jobs, the ability to speak in front of a group of people has become very important.

Nowadays, this process is known as public speaking, but in the old times, it was referred to as rhetoric and was developed in Rome and Greece. Any citizen who wished to succeed in court, politics or social life had to learn public speaking techniques. Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and Cicero are known for their public speaking theories and their contribution to this interest of study. Rhetoric had the purpose of preparing people for oral communication. More than this was an excellent method to build societies with people who can share important ideas, create policies, and take part in civil society. The idea of public speaking has grown so much and made a difference in every society, becoming a vital tool for any difference that needs to be done on the planet.

Further in history, throughout the 19th, 20th Century, men and women have started to use public speaking as advocacy for change and make a difference in the world through their rhetoric.

Some of the speakers that advocated for change through large audiences and the press are Frances Wright, the first female public speaker in the United States, advocating for equal education for women and men, Maria Stewart speaking about educational opportunities and abolition for young girls. Furthermore, Martin Luther King called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States in "I have a dream" public speech. Theodore Roosevelt with “Duties of American Citizenship," Winston Churchill with “We shall fight on the beaches," Nelson Mandela with “I am the first accused," Hillary Clinton with "Women's rights are human rights," Emmeline Pankhurst with "Freedom or Death," John F. Kennedy with “Inauguration Speech” and Franklin D Roosevelt with the “Inauguration Speech” are some of the most famous persons who made a change through their rhetoric. And nowadays, in the 21st Century, people are still pursuing their dreams to transform the world for better with different speeches addressing to nations for various causes. And so, public speaking has become more than a way of sending to masses of people. It allows citizens to participate in democracy at its basic level, support ideas and sustain the society, and listen more carefully to other people’s speeches.

Public speaking has many benefits for self-development and communities, offering the most significant advantage of supporting a cause. More than this, it provides the appropriate circumstances for advocating a movement in front of people using different forms such as traditional public speaking in particular places, or multimedia presentations with video clips, sounds effects, and laser, covering a more extensive range of listeners. The most popular global community which allows people to spread ideas, in the form of short and powerful talks, is TED, which has converged technology, entertainment, and design from all topics and is successfully supporting speeches that can change attitudes, lives, and the world.

As stated earlier, public speaking has many benefits for individuals but for communities as well. It has a strong relationship with the changes in the past Century regarding segregation, women's rights, gender equality, quality education, sustainability, peace, and the environment. And so, public speaking has developed into a necessary outlet to advocate for different concerns and on behalf of a community or the entire world, engaging people civically. Public speaking has become a tool that can be used by those who have the knowledge, courage, ambition, and desire to provide a perspective and to promote a cause. By advocating for change through public speaking, the speaker engages in developing an idea or information, offering actions towards a goal, and finding solutions to problems. So the first step to a better substitute is taking shapes and starts growing.

If thinking about promoting and boosting a new idea for a change in the world, public speaking might be the best way to do this and get quick results from worldwide support.

Sources:

• Public speaking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_speaking

• 7 speeches that changed the world in the 20th Century. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/46840111

• Public speaking as advocacy. https://speakupcallin.pressbooks.com/chapter/chapter-one-public-speaking-as-advocacy/