Last words on Australia regaining the Ashes by Geoffrey Boycott?

Geoffrey Boycott's verdict on Australia regaining the Ashes in Perth. But will anyone who matters take any notice?

Or will it appear on Twitter as yet another #QTWTAIN from @johnrentoul ?

Don't ever be the first to stop applauding

The barmy list of 'crimes' for which the uncle (top left) of North Korea's supreme leader (top right) was executed included half-hearted clapping that apparently 'touched off towering resentment' among those in the audience:

'When his cunning move proved futile and the decision that Kim Jong Un was elected vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea at the Third Conference of the WPK in reflection of the unanimous will of all party members, service personnel and people was proclaimed, making all participants break into enthusiastic cheers that shook the conference hall, he behaved so arrogantly and insolently as unwillingly standing up from his seat and half-heartedly clapping, touching off towering resentment of our service personnel and people' (more on the offences of this 'despicable human scum' HERE).

The accountability of not clapping or not clapping vigorously enough is something I've blogged about before HERE and HERE.

But the most alarming, if slightly less ruthless, precursor to last week's execution in North Korea was the fate of any audience member daring enough to be the first to stop clapping Stalin in the former Soviet Union, as described by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago (pp. 60-70):

At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name).... For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the 'stormy applause, rising to an ovation,' continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin.

However, who would dare to be the first to stop?... After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who quit first!... At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly - but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them?... With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers!...

Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel.

That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:

‘Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.’

Will Geoffrey Boycott's sporting similes be enough to save England's batsmen?

After Adelaide, England are two test matches down and Australia only have to win the third match in Perth to win back the Ashes.

At the close of play on the first day, our bowlers haven't left us in a very promising position and we still have to wait to see whether or not our batsmen take any notice of Geoffrey Boycott's profound advice after the second test match (above).

I was rather less impressed by his statements of the obvious - such as "You can't win a test match if you can't bat"- than by his use of sporting similes:

"We're playing cricket like a 50 over game: crash, bang, wallop - and out."

"It's like climbing a mountain without any shoes and socks on" 

and

"it's like playing chess: you can't win a chess game in the first few moves; you can sure as hell lose it."

My fear, alas, is that the question at the top of today's blog will turn out to be what Twitter followers of @johnrentoul will recognise as a #QTWTAIN...

How Obama the student discovered he could move a crowd at an anti-apartheid demonstration

In his speech at today's memorial service for Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama referred to his first political experience at a student anti-apartheid demonstration.

He did not, however, mention the fact that it also appears to have been the moment when he discovered that he had an ability to move and interact with an audience - as described in his own words (Chapter 5 of his book Dreams from my Father - with some key passages highlighted in italics):

   It was around that time that I got involved in the divestment campaign. It had started as something of a lark, I suppose, part of the radical pose my friends and I sought to maintain, a subconscious end run around issues closer to home. But as the months passed and I found myself drawn into a larger role-contacting representatives of the African National Congress to speak on campus, drafting letters to the faculty, printing up flyers, arguing strategy-I noticed that people had begun to listen to my opinions. It was a discovery that made me hungry for words. Not words to hide behind but words that could carry a message, support an idea. When we started planning the rally for the trustees’ meeting, and somebody suggested that I open the thing, I quickly agreed. I figured I was ready, and could reach people where it counted. I thought my voice wouldn’t fail me.

   Let’s see, now. What was it that I had been thinking in those days leading up to the rally? The agenda had been carefully arranged beforehand-I was only supposed to make a few opening remarks, in the middle of which a couple of white students would come onstage dressed in their paramilitary uniforms to drag me away. A bit of street theater, a way to dramatize the situation for activists in South Africa. I knew the score, had helped plan the script. Only, when I sat down to prepare a few notes for what I might say, something had happened. In my mind it somehow became more than just a two-minute speech, more than a way to prove my political orthodoxy. I started to remember my father’s visit to Miss Hefty’s class; the look on

Coretta’s face that day; the power of my father’s words to transform. If I could just find the right words, I had thought to myself. With the right words everything could change-South Africa, the lives of ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own tenuous place in the world.

   I was still in that trancelike state when I mounted the stage. For I don’t know how long, I just stood there, the sun in my eyes, the crowd of a few hundred restless after lunch. A couple of students were throwing a Frisbee on the lawn; others were standing off to the side, ready to break off to the library at any moment. Without waiting for a cue, I stepped up to the microphone.

“There’s a struggle going on,” I said. My voice barely carried beyond the first few rows. A few people looked up, and I waited for the crowd to quiet.

   “I say, there’s a struggle going on!” The Frisbee players stopped. “It’s happening an ocean away. But it’s a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we

know it or not. Whether we want it or not. A struggle that demands we choose sides. Not between black and white. Not between rich and poor. No-it’s a harder choice than that. It’s a choice between dignity and servitude. Between fairness and injustice. Between commitment and indifference. A choice between right and wrong...”

   I stopped. The crowd was quiet now, watching me. Somebody started to clap. “Go on with it, Barack,” somebody else shouted. “Tell it like it is.” Then the others started in, clapping, cheering, and I knew that I had them, that the connection had been made. I took hold of the mike, ready to plunge on, when I felt someone’s hands grabbing me from behind. It was just as we’d planned it, Andy and Jonathan looking grim- faced behind their dark glasses. They started yanking me off the stage, and I was supposed to act like I was trying to break free, except a part of me wasn’t acting, I really wanted to stay up there, to hear my voice bouncing off the crowd and returning back to me in applause. I had so much left to say.

   But my part was over. I stood on the side as Marcus stepped up to the mike in his white T-shirt and denims, lean and dark and straight-backed and righteous. He explained to the audience what they had just witnessed, why the administration’s waffling on the issue of South Africa was unacceptable.... 

Thanks to Nelson Mandela for making an uninspiring speech on release from prison

Having been wondering for weeks how to mark the 1,000th post on this blog, the death of Nelson Mandela has solved my dilemma. 

The speech he made on release from prison initially stunned me by what an unimpressive example of how to inspire an audience it was. - until I realised that, had he done otherwise, it would have triggered the start of a civil war in South Africa. 

His genius was, among other things, to have understood exactly what had to be done to accommodate his (and FW de Klerks') dreams of getting rid of apartheid by holding things together long enough to allow time for the successful and peaceful reconstruction of the country. 

So, for my 1,000th post, here's what I wrote on the 20th anniversary of his release from prison:

None of the news reports on the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison that I've seen have replayed any excerpts from the speech he made at City Hall in Cape Town.

This doesn't really surprise me, as it was far from being the barnstorming piece of oratory that many (including me) were expecting at the time.

Speaking into a microphone held by someone standing next to him, a bespectacled Mr Mandela clutched closely to the clip board holding his script - from which he read extremely carefully (see video below).

Given what might have happened had he done otherwise, it reminded me of the Queen's Speech as an example of the relatively rare occasions when there are very good reasons for not conveying any passion about what you are saying.

Something I posted a while back on The Queen's Speech: an exception that proves the ruler included the following thoughts about Mandela release-day speech.

Why such a 'low key' speech?

A much more surprising case was Nelson Mandela’s first speech after being released from prison in 1990. Here was a highly effective communicator, whose words at his trial 27 years earlier are to be found in most books of great speeches, and who had had the best part of three decades to prepare an inspiring and memorable text.

But it was not to be. As if modeling his performance on the Queen’s Speech, he buried his head in the script and spoke in a flat measured tone that came across as completely lacking in the kind of passion everyone was expecting from someone who had suffered so much and was held in such high regard by his audience.

Having waited for years for this historic event, anticipating something on a par with Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, I remember being disappointed and surprised by what I saw and heard from the balcony of City Hall in Cape Town. It was only later that it dawned on me that this was another case where rousing rhetoric would have been completely counter-productive.

The political situation in South Africa was poised on a knife-edge and his release from prison had only happened at all because the apartheid regime was crumbling. It was a moment when anything more inspiring from Mandela might have come across as a call to arms and could easily have prompted an immediate uprising or civil war.

But the political understanding with the minority white government was that the African National Congress would keep the lid on things for long enough to enable a settlement to be negotiated.* As when the Queen opens parliament, Mr Mandela knew exactly what he was doing, how to do it and that he could not have done otherwise.

(* On which it's interesting to note that, at the end of this clip, the reporter actually comments on Mr Mandela's concern for keeping things orderly among the crowd).

SCRIPT OF EXCERPT IN THE VIDEO:

The sight of freedom looming on the horizon should encourage us to redouble our efforts.

It is only through disciplined mass action that our victory can be assured. We call on our white compatriots to join us in the shaping of a new South Africa. The freedom movement is a political home for you too. We call on the international community to continue the campaign to isolate the apartheid regime. To lift sanctions now would be to run the risk of aborting the process towards the complete eradication of apartheid.

Our march to freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way. Universal suffrage on a common voters' roll in a united democratic and non-racial South Africa is the only way to peace and racial harmony.

In conclusion I wish to quote my own words during my trial in 1964. They are as true today as they were then. I wrote:

'I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.'

The battle for audience attention (3): Why audiences fall asleep

This is the third of a three part series of posts, prompted by last week's news that proceedings of the Court of Appeal were being televised for the first time.

Earlier parts were (1) The battle for audience attention and (2) Why stay awake in conversation.

Why audiences fall asleep

Speeches and presentations are much longer than turns in a conversation

Compared with the talk we’re used to listening to in conversations, the most unusual thing about a speech or presentation is its sheer length. In essence, all forms of public speaking involve the production of exceptionally long turns at talk, in which one person is given the floor for far longer than anyone ever gets to speak during a conversation. Rather than having to pay attention to short conversational turns lasting an average of seven or eight seconds, members of an audience are faced with the daunting prospect of having to listen to one person speaking continuously for 10, 20 or 30 minutes – and often for even longer than that.

Audiences know they won’t have to speak for a while

This may seem a grim enough prospect in itself, but it’s only part of the attentiveness problem we face when sitting in an audience. What makes life really difficult is that our only job is to listen. We can therefore relax in the knowledge that we’re not going to have to speak for however long the speech or presentation lasts. The absence of any immediate threat of having to say something at a moment’s notice amounts to a massive reduction in the incentives to pay attention that work so efficiently in everyday conversation. This goes a long way towards explaining why we are so much more likely to fall asleep when in an audience than when participating in a conversation.

If audiences get confused, they stop listening

Another extremely important and taken-for-granted feature of conversation that also changes dramatically in speeches and presentations is the relative ease with which we’re able to deal with any difficulties we may have in understanding what someone just said. If, at some point in a conversation, we’re unclear about something, we can use our next turn to ask for clarification, and get an immediate solution to the problem. But, when sitting in an audience, most of us are much more inhibited. For one thing, it involves interrupting, and therefore runs the risk of offending the speaker. Not only that, but a request for clarification can all too easily sound like a public complaint about the speaker’s incompetence at explaining things clearly enough.

Our reluctance to intervene may also be fuelled by a fear of exposing our own ignorance in public – because, for all we know, everyone else in the audience may be finding it perfectly easy to follow the argument. So the safest and commonest option is not to ask for clarification. Instead, we start reflecting on what the speaker has been saying in a bid to disentangle what it was all about for ourselves. The trouble is that trying to make some kind of retrospective sense of what we’ve just heard takes priority over concentrating on whatever comes next. And if we miss some or all of that, we become even more muddled and confused, sometimes to a point where we simply give up on making any further effort to understand, listen or stay awake.

Presentations and speeches are not always designed so that audiences can follow them

Our reluctance to ask for clarification from a speaker is only one deviation from routine conversational practice that poses problems of understanding for audiences. Another is the way the subject matter is selected and managed. In conversation, there are no restrictions on the topics we can talk about, and everyone involved can play an active part in influencing the direction it takes. As a result, the subjects covered in conversations are constantly changing, and can suddenly take off in completely unexpected and unplanned directions.

Compared with the more or less infinite range of topics we can talk about in conversation, the subject matter of speeches and presentations is much narrower and more restricted. As members of an audience, we may not even be particularly interested in the topic to begin with. Worse still, and unlike in conversation where we can do something about our lack of interest by changing the subject, we have no control over how the subject of a presentation or speech will be developed. It’s the speaker who has sole responsibility both for selecting the material and organising it into an orderly sequence.

Nor do we have much idea about exactly what’s going to be included, or how the subject matter is going to be divided up – until or unless the speaker gives us advance notice of what’s to come, and the order in which the points will be covered. In other words, having a sense of sequence and structure plays a crucially important part in helping us to make sense of what we’re hearing. All too often, speakers either fail to do this or, having done it, make no further reference to how any particular item under discussion fits in with the overall structure announced at the start. And if we’re confused about where things have got to in relation to where they were supposed to be going, our ability to understand and keep on paying attention will go into a progressive decline.

The problems of understanding faced by audiences and the difficulty of doing something about them are therefore very different from the way they arise and are dealt with in conversation. This means that the speaker’s main challenge is to make sure that the subject matter is presented in a way that the audience can follow. If our problem as members of an audience is trying to pay attention to a continuous stream of talk many hundreds of times longer than anything we ever have to listen to in a conversation, the parallel problem for speakers is producing such an abnormally long turn.

To make matters worse, they are deprived of a very efficient means of checking on understanding that we use continuously during conversations. This is the way in which we routinely inspect other speakers’ responses to gauge whether or not our previous turn was understood in the way we intended. If it was, we can safely carry on; if it wasn’t, we can elaborate, revise or otherwise expand on the point we were trying to get across.

Ideally, of course, a speech or presentation should be designed so that anyone in the audience will be able to follow it. This is why the selection and structuring of the subjects to be covered is (or should be) at the heart of the preparation process, and why it is an important enough topic to have the whole of Chapter 9 in Lend Me Your Ears devoted to it.

The battle against boredom

The greatly reduced pressure on audiences to listen means that winning and holding their attention can never be taken for granted. It poses a far greater challenge than many speakers realise, and is a battle that has to be fought relentlessly for the entire duration of a speech or presentation....

(Continued in Lend Me Your Ears pp. 30-371)

The battle for audience attention (2): why stay awake in conversation?

Yesterday's televising of Supreme Court proceedings got me thinking about my attempts to use recordings to study courtroom language - and how conversation analysis had led my later works to focus on public speaking and presentation more  generally. 

This is a continuation of yesterday's excerpt from 'Lend Me Your Ears':

… becoming an effective public speaker depends on having as clear a picture as possible of the key differences between conversation on the one hand, and speeches and presentations on the other. The most important of all of these is the dramatic change in our motives for paying attention that occurs as soon as we stop conversing with other members of the audience, and settle down to listen to the speaker of the day. When I ask audiences if any of them ever find it difficult to stay awake during speeches, presentations, lectures or sermons, a typical result is that 100 per cent of them put up their hands. When asked how many have trouble staying awake listening to what someone is saying during conversations, the typical result is zero per cent.

The first statistic is proof that everyone knows that speeches and presentations have a tremendous capacity for boring audiences out of their minds, and that holding the attention of an audience is a major challenge for speakers. The second statistic points to something that people know when they think about it, but probably never give much thought to most of the time: most of us have little or no trouble in staying awake while engaged in conversation with a small number of others. This is because there are powerful incentives to pay attention built into the way conversation works. And these incentives are underpinned by implicit

rules that are not written down and formally taught, but are understood by everyone capable of having a conversation.

One at a time

The most obvious feature of conversation is that we take it in turns to talk: one speaker says something and, when that one’s turn comes to an end, a next speaker starts, and so on until the end of the conversation:

Speaker A: ——————|

Speaker B:                       |——————|

Speaker C:                                             |———————|

If someone else suddenly starts speaking when you are still in the middle of your turn, it’s natural to feel annoyed. In fact, you’re likely to regard anyone who trespasses on your space as ‘rude’ or ‘impolite’. You are not only within your rights to complain, but are equipped with the necessary vocabulary for referring to the

misdemeanour: the words ‘interrupt’ and ‘interruption’. When you complain of being ‘interrupted’, you are actually drawing attention to the fact that a basic, though implicit, rule of conversation has been broken: only one speaker should speak at a time, and others in the conversation should wait until the end of any current turn before starting the next one.

Occasional failures to observe this rule may be tolerated, but anyone who makes a regular habit of starting to speak in the middle of other people’s turns soon finds that there’s a heavy price to pay. Your reputation will go into a nosedive. At best, you’ll be regarded as impolite or inconsiderate; at worst as a pushy, domineering

control freak who’d rather ‘hog the conversation’ than listen to what anyone else has to say. If you’d rather not be seen like this, you have a strong incentive to pay attention at least closely enough to know when the previous speaker has finished, and when you can launch into a turn of your own without being accused of interrupting.

Coming in on cue

The incentive to listen during conversations isn’t just a matter of paying close enough attention to notice when a speaker gets to the end of a turn, as there is another rule about when you can start the next turn. Fail to get this right, and people will have another reason for wondering about your manners and motives. You only

have to think of how you react if, after greeting someone with the turn ‘Good morning’, the other person doesn’t reply at all.

Charitable explanations are that they must be half asleep, or perhaps a little deaf. But you’re much more likely to start worrying about why they aren’t speaking to you, what you’ve done to offend them or what’s gone wrong with the relationship. So the only way to stop other people from thinking such negative thoughts about you is to make sure that you start speaking before the silence has lasted long enough to be deemed ‘awkward’ or ‘embarrassing’.

This raises the question of just how long you’ve got before the silence starts to make things difficult? The answer is that you can’t afford to let the silence last for more than a split second. Research into conversation shows that silences of less than half a second are not only long enough to be noticed, but are enough to start us thinking that some kind of trouble is on its way. Studies of how people respond to invitations, for example, have found that an immediate reply usually means that the speaker is about to accept, whereas a delay of even a fraction of a second means that a refusal is on its way. The same is true of the way people reply to offers of various kinds: positive replies start straight away, and negative ones are delayed. So the safest way of preventing people from getting the wrong impression is to pay close enough attention to be able to start speaking as soon as possible, and certainly before the silence starts to get embarrassing.

Showing you were listening

Another extremely important reason for listening in conversation is that you have to be continually at the ready to say something that relates directly to what was said in the previous turn. Even a small lapse in concentration can cause you to say something that leads the previous speaker to conclude that you had not been paying attention, are not in the least bit interested in what they were saying, or that you are just plain rude. It often prompts accusations, arguments and conflict – so much so that it may well be at the heart of large numbers of domestic rows. If these could be traced back to their original source, many of them would

surely be found to have started just at that moment in a conversation when one speaker says something – or perhaps says nothing – that gives their spouse or partner the impression that he or she had not been listening.

The threat of having to say something

Conversational success and failure obviously depend on our continually maintaining a very high level of attentiveness to what others are saying. We have to keep listening closely enough not to interrupt, closely enough to come in on time and closely enough to be ready to say something that relates to the previous turn. In short, the ever-present threat that we might have to speak next amounts to an extremely powerful incentive for us to stay alert and wide-awake during a conversation. It also points to a fundamental reason why audiences will be in a very much lower state of attentiveness when listening to a speech or presentation.

(To be continued with 'Why audiences fall asleep')