The Importance of Delivery

I think that all five canons of rhetoric hold relatively the same level of “importance” when it comes to attempting to persuade an audience, but in the realm of spoken word delivery takes the top spot. The TED talk we watched today in class mentioned that the people you meet will give you on average just four minutes to make your first impression, which means factors like tone of voice, body language, and maintaining eye contact are often deciding factors on whether you will be accepted or rejected.

The four other canons are certainly still important, as it is impossible to create rhetoric without inventing a strategy, arranging ideas, developing a stylistic voice, and memorizing lines to ultimately deliver a successful oration. But delivery stands out due to its exceptional power; a well-delivered speech can synthesize significance from words and sentences that are shallow on paper.

Some of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches provide an excellent example of this type of technical know-how in public speaking. King’s delivery during “I Have a Dream” is masterful, from his slow, sermon-like cadence to his booming and overwhelmingly confident tone of voice. Even having not listened to the speech recently, I would bet there are many of us that can clearly hear his voice delivering those words, and that’s because of his skillful delivery.

Of course, a speech cannot rely entirely on delivery to persuade an audience. A lecture that is front-heavy on delivery will lack essential organization and substance, rendering a perfectly good delivery strategy fundamentally pointless. In sum, delivery is the capstone of any great speech, but nevertheless vulnerable without a proper foundation.