Unit 1: Why study public speaking?

In the course of your life, you will have to, or already have had to, deliver a number of public speeches. In order to do this successfully, you need to understand the basic principles of the oral communication that takes place in everyday life. We mostly speak to communicate a certain idea, but as you know, there may be any number of reasons why people speak. Sometimes we just want to “make conversation”, or inform others of the decisions we have made, while at other times we want to receive feedback from the listener. And as much as we sometimes hate to communicate, the decision is not optional: we have to. We need to communicate and even if we refuse to, we still communicate something.

Oral communication can take different forms: face-to-face, on the phone, and by means of the radio, television or other media. In all of these forms, there are five main elements which are always present: the speaker, the message, the audience, the effect and the occasion. We will talk in detail about the first four elements in the units that follow. Let us now consider the fifth element: the occasion.

Depending on the occasion, the speaker will adjust the formality level of his/her speech accordingly. For example, if we talk to our colleagues at work, we use language that which we use to talk to our children. Our public speeches also differ - we would speak in a different way in front of the government officials than. in front of good friends gathered at a wedding.

The main levels of formality are:

• frozen,
• formal,
• standard,
• casual,
• intimate.