Respect for the power of words reveals how language can lift and unite or wound and hurt the diverse members of your audience. This respect develops into cultural sensitivity. If you read the historic writings on human communication, you will find little about cultural sensitivity. The ancient Greeks, for example, worried only about speaking to other male Athenians who were “free men” and citizens. Only in today’s world, with its emphasis on empowering a wide spectrum of cultures, lifestyles, and races and its pursuit of gender equity, has cultural sensitivity emerged. as an important standard for effective language usage.
There is a high probability that your classroom audience will include people from different cultures. As listeners, they may be sensitive to clumsy efforts by speakers to identify with folkways that aren’t their own. Campaigning for the presidential nomination in his native South in 1992, Bill Clinton was comfortable using such folksy expressions as “my opponents are squealing like a pig caught under a gate.” Speaking in Georgia in the same campaign, however, Senator Bob Kerrey from Nebraska was less adept. At Atlanta’s Spelman College, Kerrey declared that if Clinton got the nomination, Bush would open him up “like a soft peanut.” Kerrey’s listeners looked at each other with puzzled faces. Someone must have spoken with his speechwriters, because in later speeches in that peanut-producing area Kerrey changed the expression to “boiled peanut.” The lesson seems clear: Don’t try to be what you’re not, or you may look ridiculous.
A lack of cultural sensitivity almost always has negative consequences. At best, audience members may be mildly offended; at worst, they will be irate enough to reject both you and your message. Cultural sensitivity begins with being attuned to the diversity of your audience, appreciative of the differences between cultural groups, and careful about the words you choose when referring to those who may be different from you. Although you must make some generalizations about your audience, avoid getting caught up in stereotypes that suggest that one group is inferior to another in any way. Stay away from racial, ethnic, religious, or gender-based humor, and avoid any expressions that might be interpreted as racist or sexist.

In discussing clarity, we talked about the importance of amplification in speeches. Although it may seem contradictory, you must also be concise, even while you are amplifying your ideas. You must make your points quickly and efficiently. Follow the advice on speaking given by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to his son James: “Be sincere . . . be brief
be seated!”
Long-drawn-out speeches lose audience interest. They kill the impulse toward action in persuasive speeches. A concise speech helps listeners see more clearly and feel more powerfully.
To achieve conciseness, work for simple, direct expression. Thomas Jefferson once said, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” Use the active voice rather than the passive in your verbs: “We want action!” is more concise—and more direct, colorful, and clear—than “Action is wanted by us.”
You can also be concise by using comparisons that reduce complex issues to the essentials. Sojourner Truth, a nineteenth-century human rights activist, once had to counter the argument that society should not educate African Americans and women because of their alleged “inferiority.” She destroyed that then-powerful position with a simple parable: “If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have a little half-measure full?”
The goal of conciseness encourages the use of maxims, those wise but compact sayings that summarize the beliefs of a people. During the Chinese freedom demonstrations of 1989, a sign carried by students in Tiananmen Square, “Give Me Democracy or Give Me Death,” adapted Patrick Henry’s famous maximum, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Sadly, the Chinese authorities 1s took them at their word. In Colorado, demonstrators at a nuclear plant carried a sign reading “Hell No, We Won’t Glow!”—a variation on a chant often heard in anti—Vietnam war rallies of the 1960s, “Hell no, we won’t go!” And, to reinforce his point that we need to actively (and audibly) confront the problems of racism, sexism, and homophobia, Haven Cocker- ham, vice president of human resources for Detroit Edison, said: “Sometimes silence isn’t golden—just yellow.”40
As these examples suggest, maxims can have special power in attracting mass-media attention. When printed on signs, they satisfy the hunger of the press for visual messages. Their brevity makes them ideally suited to the rigid time constraints of television news. Of even greater importance, maxims evoke cultural memories and invite identification. When the Chinese students adapted Patrick Henry’s maxim and displayed the goddess of liberty, they were in effect both declaring that they shared American values and appealing for our assistance in their desperate struggle. When their cause was crushed, many Americans felt the injustice in a personal way, and the resulting tension between the Chinese government and our own lingers to this day.

Nothing can damage your ethos more quickly than a glaring misuse of language. Mistakes in grammar or word selection can be disastrous because most audiences attribute such errors to incompetence. They are likely to reason that anyone who misuses language can hardly offer good advice. When you select your words, be careful that they say exactly what you mean to say.
Occasionally beginning speakers, wishing to impress people with the size of their vocabularies, get caught up in the “thesaurus syndrome.” They will look up a simple word to find a synonym that sounds more impressive or sophisticated. What they may not realize is that tl’ie words shown as synonyrn.s often have slightly different meanings. For example, the words “disorganize” and “derange” are sometimes listed as synonyms. But if you refer to a disorganized person as “deranged,” you will see what we mean.
People often err by using words that sound similar to the word they want. Such confusions are called malapropisms, after Mrs. Malaprop, a character in an eighteenth-century play by Richard Sheridan. She would say, “He is the very pineapple of politeness,” when she meant pinnacle. Thus a major league baseball player trying to explain why he had forgotten a talk show interview, said: “I must have had ambrosia” (which probably caused his amnesia, which is what he apparently meant). Archie Bunker in All in the Family was prone to malapropisms, such as “Don’t let your imagination run rancid” when he meant rampant. William J. Crocker of Armidale College in New South Wales, Australia, collected the following malapropisms from student speeches in his classes:
A speaker can add interest to his talk with an antidote. [anecdote]
Disagreements can arise from an unintended conception. [Indeed they can!]
The speaker hopes to arouse apathy in his audience. [sympathy? empathy?]
Good language can be reinforced by good gestation. [gestures]
The speaker can use either an inductive or a seductive approach.36 [deductive]
Students, ballplayers, and fictional characters are not the only ones who make such blunders. A reporter once praised an attorney for his ability to dissemble a bicycle. As a colleague observed with heavy irony, no doubt the man could “dissemble”—after all, he was a lawyer. But “dissemble” means to conceal and deceive, often by talking around a point. What the unfortunate reporter was praising was the lawyer’s ability to “disassemble” the bicycle. Elected officials are also not above an occasional malapropism. One former United States senator declared that he would oppose to his last ounce of energy any effort to build a “nuclear waste suppository” [repository] in his state.38 And the Speaker of the Texas legislature once acknowledged an award by saying, “I am filled with humidity” (perhaps he meant moist hot air as well as humility).

The lesson is clear: To avoid being unintentionally humorous, use a current dictionary to check the meaning and pronunciation of any word you feel uncertain about.

Color refers to the emotional intensity or vividness of language. Colorful words are memorable because they stand out in our minds. Those who use them also are remembered.
During the 1996 presidential primaries, each of the contenders was searching for a way to capture the imagination of voters and to stand out from the pack. In such a contest, those who use language colorfully have an advantage. Patrick Buchanan moved from a long-shot candidate to a leading contender at least partially because of his skill with words. Early in the campaign, Steve Forbes gained a lot of attention through an advertising campaign in which he proposed a flat tax. Senator Phil Gramm, a candidate who later withdrew from the race, criticized Forbes on the grounds that his plan would favor the wealthy by eliminating taxes on dividend and interest income. About the flat tax Gramm said, “I reject the idea that income derived from labor should be taxed and that income derived from capital should not.”
A nice use of contrast, but look how Buchanan expressed the same idea:
“Under Forbes’ plan, lounge lizards in Palm Beach would pay a lower tax rate than steelworkers in Youngstown.” Later he added that Forbes’ plan had been drawn up by “the boys down at the yacht basin.” While Gramm’s words are a study in abstraction, Buchanan’s language is both colorful and concrete. The use of the animal metaphor, “lounge lizards,” is striking. So is the use of contrast, setting the “lounge lizards” and the “boys down at the yacht basin” against the steelworkers, Palm Beach against Youngstown. It’s sloth and privilege against character and virtue, and we know which side Buchanan is on. These colorful symbols reflected his commitment.
Colorful language paints striking pictures for listeners. Notice how Leslie Eason made Tiger Woods come alive in the speech of tribute she made in her Vanderbilt class:
Mothers with daughters of a certain age (mine included) describe him as the son-in-law they’d like to have. Six foot two, a hundred fifty-five pounds, smart—Stanford, remember. Clean-cut in his creased khakis. Curly hair, gorgeous teeth. Skin the color of what they used to call “suntan” in the Crayola box. And rich. Very rich.
He’s the very opposite of the gangsta boys in the hood. Boys who wear their pants hanging below their belt as though they were already in the penitentiary. Next to them he’s prep school and Pepsodent.
When you use colorful language, your audience will find you to be interesting as well. Your ethos will rise as your listeners assign you high marks for competence and attractiveness. For all these reasons, color is an important standard as you develop your capacity to use language.

The denotative meaning of a word is its dictionary definition or generally agreed-upon objective usage. For example, the denotative definition of alcohol is “a colorless, volatile, flammable liquid, obtained by the fermentation of sugars or starches, which is widely used as a solvent, drug base, explosive, or intoxicating beverage.”
Connotative meaning invests a subject with emotional coloration. Thus, the “intoxicating beverage” is no longer just a chemical substance but either “the poison scourge” or “the oil of conversation.” Connotative language intensifies feelings, whereas denotative language encourages detachment.
Many of the techniques of language that help listeners see subjects can also arouse feelings. Simile and metaphor may kindle emotion by the relationships and associations they suggest. Representation can arouse by the focus it gives to a subject. For example, Leslie Eason impressed her Vanderbilt class members with her ability to frame metaphors that stirred deep feeling as well as reflection. She began her speech on the disease of racism by reciting lines of a poem she had written: “What if I go to Heaven, and then to me they tell, White Angels enter here, Black Angels go to hell.” In another speech, she used a traditional metaphor to describe the plight of ambitious women: “Glass ceilings still exist.” Women, she said, can rise just so far in the workplace before they bump into invisible barriers. But soon she gave the metaphor a novel twist. Other women, she said, never even get a chance to rise. They are stuck in low-pay, low-ability jobs, the victims of “sticky floors.”
Such techniques are well suited to stimulate emotions. They produce what Longinus called the image, the natural language of the passions. Writing some two thousand years ago, this Roman rhetorician noted that images intensify feelings when “you think you see what you describe, and you place it before the eyes of your hearers.”3 During World War II, when London was bombed every night, the British people needed reassurance that they would prevail. Sir Winston Churchill built images of hope in his radio speeches. One example is the following, developed around a metaphor of fire:
What he [Hitler] has clone is to kindle a fire in British hearts . . . which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe.’
Another useful technique to arouse feeling is onomatopoeia, the tendency of the sounds of certain words, such as buzz and hiss, to imitate the objects of their meaning. Suppose you were trying to describe the scene of refugees fleeing from war and starvation. How could you bring that scene into focus for listeners who are far away? One way would be to describe an old man and his granddaughter as they trudge down a road to nowhere. The word “trudge” is an example of onomatopoeia. Its very sound suggests the weary, discouraged walk of the survivors. Onomatopoeia can bring us into a scene by allowing us to hear its noises, smell its odors, taste its flavors, or touch its surfaces. As it overcomes distance, it also arouses feeling.
Hyperbole, or purposeful exaggeration, can also arouse feeling. Speakers
often use hyperbole to encourage action or force listeners to confront problems. Note the use of hyperbole in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final speech:
Men for years now have been talking about war and peace, but now no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence in this world, it’s nonviolence or nonexistence… . And in the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done and done in a hurry to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed.