Signed, Sealed, Delivered

With respect to the five cannons of rhetoric, delivery is by far the most important of the bunch. Even if an individual were to word-for-word memorize a speech with perfect style and arrangement, a poor delivery will void all compositional significance within the speech. One thing I noticed from studying Winston Churchill in class, is that the mechanics of his speeches were pretty wack. It seemed like within a four-minute speech he could include all the words in just a few sentences. From as far back as I can remember, run-on sentences always cost me points off my essays. However, when it comes to the rhetoric within speeches, if you can include a strong and passionate delivery of a speech, the mechanics that compose the words seem insignificant. Therefore, in my opinion, Winston Churchill could make a mechanically sloppy written speech sound like a passage that could unite an entire country.

Another way to show how delivery is the most important cannon is by displaying how a lack of delivery can be catastrophic in a speech. One personal example of how a lack of delivery can destroy a greatly composed speech is when I went to Big Blue Madness this year. Coach John Calipari delivered a speech that was meant to motivate and excite the fans for the upcoming UK basketball season. His speech had great structure, and was very clear, but his tone of delivery was monotone, unenthused, and in turn, delivered no impact of his intended motivation and excitement upon the fans.