Just sayin’.

We’re drowning in a river of words: blogs, emails, text messages, tweets, comments, speeches, oratory, rhetoric, verbal engineering, commentary, and spin, spin, spin.  Sure, we contribute our fair share right here on Scanning the Dial, but our contribution to the torrent hopefully sets just the right tone, is just clever enough and feels just right. *wink*

There are good words, hate words, and comic words. When you think of good communicators, who comes to mind? President Obama? Jesse Jackson? Jon Stewart? What kind of words tend to capture your imagination? Depends on our mood and needs, doesn’t it.

© 2006 Seán Duggan

Our discussion on this topic at All Classical FM recently has been around inspiring words, soaring speeches, and the true art of rhetoric, one of the 3 ancient arts of discourse. We wondered if there were any fun ways to tip the hat to President’s Day on a music station. We gravitated to great leaders whose great words are clear, concise, and inspiring.

Think:

  • “…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
  • “We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be…”
  • “…a day that shall live in infamy…”
  • “Ask not what your country can do for you…”
  • “I had a dream…”
  • “…tear down this wall…”

Here’s a website that compiles the American  “Top 100 Speeches” with audio.

The five canons of rhetoric are: memory, invention, delivery, style, and arrangement. Think of these aspects of rhetoric when you listen to great speeches. The ancient Greeks knew this, moving audiences to action with arguments.

As always, here in radio land it’s important to connect the power of transparent speech (honesty) to trust, inspiring speech (creativity) to loyalty and visionary speech (roadmap to the future) to funding. There’s no getting around how important our words are to our community and our listeners. Just sayin’.

Happy President’s Day!

Onward & upward.

About Jack Allen

Jack Allen is a self-proclaimed dreamer, raconteur, rapscallion and radio guy. He got his start in radio, a second career, in 1992 at WMRA in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The broadcasting ethers have carried him through stints in St. Paul and Austin. He can now be found leading the team at All Classical Public Media, KQAC in Portland, Oregon.

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