Winston Churchill analyses the Scaffolding of Rhetoric

Winston Churchill In 1897, while serving as a 22-year-old Army officer in India, Winston Churchill wrote an unpublished essay The Scaffolding of Rhetoric. It begins, with considerable prescience given Churchill’s later career, with an appreciation of the lasting power of public speaking:

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world. Abandoned by his party, betrayed by his friends, stripped of his offices, whoever can command this power is still formidable.

Churchill refutes the idea that oratory and rhetoric are no longer relevant. Today, this might be claimed because of the influence of YouTube and Twitter, in 1897 people blamed “the newspaper … and the growing knowledge of men”.

He states that the orator “is the embodiment of the passions of the multitude.” But warned that “before he can inspire them with any emotion he must be swayed by it himself.”

He notes the features all great speeches and public speakers have in common:

  1. A “striking presence” is necessary. But this does not mean classic good looks. “Often small, ugly or deformed he is invested with a personal significance…”. Indeed, Churchill claims from first-hand experience that “a slight and not unpleasing stammer or impediment has been of some assistance in securing the attention of the audience…”
  2. Correctness of diction and an exact appreciation of words. It’s best the speaker use “short, homely words of common usage so long as such words can fully express their thoughts and feelings.”
  3. Rhythm, or a cadence that more resembles blank verse than prose. In other words, he’s reminding us we must write for the ear, not the eye. Indeed, James Humes notes in Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln that he once critiqued the text of a speech by Anthony Eden because there were too many semi-colons and never a dash.
  4. The accumulation of argument, via a series of facts pointing in a common direction, coupled with “waves of sound and vivid pictures.”
  5. The use of analogy which “leads to conviction rather than to proof” and has an electrifying effect on an audience.
  6. A “tendency to wild extravagance of language…so wild that reason recoils.” Indeed, Churchill notes that the power of oratory is so great that, were it not for the need for the speaker to be sincere before he can be persuasive, oratory could easily incite violence, and be judged a crime.

Churchill, like the young Cicero who spent two years studying rhetoric, was focused early in his career on learning the art and science of public speaking. Both prospered as a result.

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