Oratory is the art of public speaking. When we study speeches in class we look at how an orator can stir emotion through speech. In the following three examples public speaking has been raised to a performing art. You may have seen some of them as they have all been popular on youtube but they are worth watching again.
The first speech is by Paul Hawken who was speaking at Bioneers 2006. Hawken has spent over a decade researching organisations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. He speaks softly but he is very persuasive in delivering his very powerful message. Note how well he connects to his audience.
The second speaker Taylor Mali has been very popular on the internet. The title of the speech is ‘What do teachers really make.’ Mali is both a teacher and a slam poet and his delivery style is very powerful. Slam poetry is a form of performance poetry that occurs within a competitive poetry event, called a “slam”, at which poets usually perform their own poems that are “judged” on a numeric scale by randomly picked members of the audience. Taylor Mali is considered to be the most successful poetry slam strategist of all time, having led six of his seven national poetry slam teams to the finals stage and winning the championship itself a record four times. This speech is the best example of public speaking as performance.
The last speaker Randy Pausch has had a great deal of media coverage. Professor Pausch suffers from pancreatic cancer and was told he had three to six months of good health left and as a result he crafted this speech as his last lecture. Pausch has said that the lecture really was for his kids, “but if others are finding value in it, that is wonderful.” He modestly commented “but rest assured; I’m hardly unique.” I am sure you will disagree after you have watched the clip.
The whole lecture is available at Google Video. It does have quite a long introduction (about 8 minutes) that you might like to skip.
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