U.S. mayor shows that eloquence still lives
English teachers everywhere received a reminder last week that a study of our language and its uses is not limited to prose and poetry, grammar and spelling.
The reminder that speaking is or should be a significant element any curriculum about the uses of our language came in the form of a speech by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu on the removal from that city of four monuments celebrating heroes of the Confederacy.
Arriving just in time as it did, when hope for eloquence on the part of leadership was all but lost, Landrieu’s speech is a riveting example of why a great speech has sometimes been a turning point of history and why its structure and delivery should be studied in English class.
As New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote about Landrieu’s speech: “These are hard days of coarse language — of tweets and catcalls that appeal to the worst in us, not the best.”
Bruni’s column continued: “Although outrage is the order of the day, his speech trafficked in empathy. It felt like a holdover from a past that we left behind without exactly meaning to, and that we’d be wise to get back to.”
Landrieu’s spoke concisely and powerfully of the “historical malfeasance” of monuments that celebrated four dark years in the history of the United States.
His speech simply and logically pursued his purpose — to explain why it was time for shrines to division to be set aside in a country whose motto is “e pluribus unum” — out of many one, the 13-letter traditional motto of the United States of America.
Like other great speeches of our time that are well worth studying, Landrieu’s speech demonstrated the power of language and will be included alongside similar speeches by Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King — all demonstrating the skilful use of words conveying visions, beliefs and aspirations.
Canadian examples include the speech by Lester Pearson addressing the Royal Canadian Legion during the height of the Flag Debate or Pierre Trudeau’s 1980 referendum speech at the Paul Sauvé Arena — these also fall into the category of eloquence that shaped a nation.
According to Demosthenes, the father of Greek oratory, there are four elements of a great speech: the prominence of the person making the speech, a noteworthy event, a compelling message and a masterful delivery. Demosthenes might also have included the literacy of the content as a factor.
Psychologists tell us that effective communication in any speech is substantially based on trust, and if we don’t trust the speaker, we’re not going to listen to the words.
Sometimes defeating the purpose of a speech is the speaker’s body language; facial expressions and tone of voice communicating any form of stress will convey a message of distrust.
Like a good editorial, a great speech, and Landrieu’s is an excellent example, rests on a cascading series of facts and references to events that lead the listener to a series of evident conclusions.
His speech lists the racial and cultural mix that became New Orleans, “a bubbling cauldron of many cultures” before he lists “the other truths about our city that we must confront” instancing the slave market and lynchings as examples of what history must move beyond.
The subject of John McWhorter’s new book Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care is concerned not just with the contemporary apparent loss of eloquence, but the loss of respect for eloquence and an understanding that its loss is a loss.
McWhorter writes: “There is indeed something that we’re losing in terms of the English language. The artful use of English, formerly taken for granted as crucial for legitimate expression on the civic stage, has virtually disappeared.”
But all is not lost. Eloquent simplicity, with some help from English teachers, might yet win the day, and there is plenty of material with which to work.
In his book, Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong With the Language of Politics? author Mark Thompson issues a timely warning about the disappearing boundary between entertainment and civic life and the endangered concept of “truth.” Thompson cautions admirers of the spoken word about “the two rhetorics” of public life, “the poetry of campaigning and the prose of governance.”
Yet despite all evidence to the contrary and the stumbling utterances of some political leaders, Landrieu’s speech comes as a reassuring confirmation that inspirational eloquence by leadership has not completely disappeared in a flurry of barely literate tweets and that it is time for the importance of the elegance of spoken words once again to become part of a full education.