 In this video, I want to encourage you in the same way that your mother did all those years to watch your language. Language is an important aspect of public speaking. It's one of the best tools that we have in our tool belt as speakers is the language that we use and these choices with language are so critical, so I want to spend a little time talking about language as it relates to public speaking. So first of all, when we talk about language, we're talking about a symbolic system of written or spoken words used to communicate messages. That's all language is. It's a symbolic system. We need to remember that. It's really made up, but those symbols are interpreted differently by different people. So we need to remember that while language is symbolic, it's very simple. It's just a man-made way of or human-wade way of communicating with one another. But those symbols have power and they're important and those are important choices. Let's take a look at some of the characteristics of language. First of all, I just mentioned words are powerful. Language is powerful and words have power. We need to recognize that power and the good that it can do and the harm that it can do all at the same time. So we need to keep in mind that we have a powerful weapon at our disposal and that's just the language and the words that we choose. Language also is an important part of creating our social reality. Language is how we shape our world and how we define things and how we indicate our feelings about something. So for example, if we think about the protests that took place on January 6, are these people protestors and patriots? We're at the Capitol on January 6th in 2021 where they protestors and patriots. We use that language. What does that indicate? What does that signify? Or alternatively, were they insurrectionists and criminals? Again, I'm not taking a stand on this, I'm just pointing out that the language that we use to describe things is important. It creates that social reality and determines how people see it, how we think about it and how what our shared experience is with that. Language is also powerful. Think about it when kids are young, for example. What do these kids hear? What are they hearing about themselves? Are they getting encouragement? Are they hearing you're smart, you're capable, you have value? Or are they hearing, well, you're dumb. You don't bring anything to the table, you're worthless. That creates their reality. That language, the language that we use with these kids and that we use with other people in general, creates in part our social reality and our shared understanding of the world. Language is incredibly powerful. It creates that social reality. The last part here is what American philosopher Eric Hoffer once said. We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion, but to evoke it in us. That brings us to the last point here, that language is used to evoke emotions. We use language to tap into people's emotions, to express our own emotions, of course, but also to bring that emotion out of another, to connect with them emotionally, to convey a particular emotion or try and pull out a particular emotion from a person. Language is used then to evoke emotions. Emotive language comes all across the spectrum here. It's used in a variety of ways, but we can think about the impact and connotation of words in a positive way, such as words like courage, freedom, hero, these are all positive things. When we use these words, we get a positive connotation and they tend to bring a positive meaning to the person hearing them. When we use those words, we're using them to elicit a positive emotion. When we use other words that may evoke a negative emotion, words like oppression, fool, or hate, those tap into a more negative emotion and provide that kind of a mode of language. There's other language that just is pretty neutral. It just is what it is. It's descriptive. It's not bringing a positive or negative emotion to it. Words like something or computer or telephone, for most of us, those are just neutral things. They're just words. A lot of language, though, has a mixed meaning with emotion, a mode of language has a mixed impact. The words bring a variety of reactions, things like socialism and marijuana and vegetables. A lot of people like vegetables. I hate vegetables. That has a negative emotion for me, but for a lot of people, they're very positive. They have big debates on marijuana. Is it positive? Is it negative? Using language like that is very emotive and pulls different emotions out of people in a mixed way. We need to remember that language is emotive. It's used to evoke emotions. As speakers, of course, we want to use language effectively. We want to use language to the great effect in achieving our goal. Whatever our message is, whatever we're hoping to achieve without audience, we ought to use language in such a way that it helps us to do so. In order to do so, as a speaker, first of all, we really kind of need to use simple language. We need to help the audience get from point A to point B as effectively and efficiently as possible. We have to recall that as speakers, the audience doesn't necessarily have ... They don't have a transcript of our speech in front of them. It's not a paper. They're not reading it. We need to use language that the audience can access immediately, can have a great understanding of immediately, and not have to really work at. We want to use simple language as simple as possible in most cases. To get that audience, again, straight from point A to point B without all the curves and tangly areas there. We also want to personalize our language. We want to humanize things and have it connect with the audience in a personal way, in a real world type of way. We can talk about cancer statistics with an audience, and they would understand that. They would maybe have some meaning to them. How much more effective is it when we talk about a cancer patient, when we talk about a person who's experiencing cancer? We can personalize that language. We can humanize it by talking about individuals, by talking about real world things and connections, and using language in that type of way, as opposed to in a colder kind of way, just in strictly logical or statistical types of terms. We can personalize that language. We want to avoid jargon and slang usually. For the most part, we want to avoid jargon and slang. Now, sometimes these things can be used to help us identify or connect with an audience, but for the most part jargon and slang become very confusing for an audience, and we want to use simple language. Now, by jargon, we're talking about things that are specific to a specific field. That jargon is used in that field or in that organization, in that specific area, and so it's specific to that particular culture or that particular field. So thinking about the military, for example, they don't have bathrooms in the military. They have, depending on which branch you're in, you go to the latrine or the head or the powder room, but not the bathroom, but that's jargon that is specific to the military. Same way with the bed. They don't have beds. They have bunks or racks usually. So that jargon, though, in the military, it's a lot of jargon, and so they use it effectively to great effect for their purposes. We want to avoid, though, unless we're talking to a specific group that's going to understand that jargon, then we ought to avoid jargon for the most part. We also want to avoid slang, which is just informal language. We think a lot of times we think of slang with teenagers and things, and slang changes over the years, but as a speaker, we want to formalize our language a bit and avoid things like jargon and informal language like slang. We also want to be careful with idioms. These are our expressions or things in a language that really don't make a lot of sense. They make sense to people who speak that language because we understand the meaning behind it, but for people who don't necessarily speak that language, then idioms are oftentimes difficult to grasp and difficult to understand. So idioms are things like, you're pulling my leg. You're pulling my leg. Now, somebody taking that literally would think, I'm not pulling your leg, but we see a couple of different idioms here, but things like kick the bucket are things that don't really make a lot of sense unless you have a firm understanding of what that means already. We want to be careful with idioms because they're not universally understood. We want to use concrete and precise language. Language that's concrete is very specific and not abstract. So if we think about things on a spectrum or a ladder of abstraction, to say produce is an abstract word. It could mean even if we narrowed it down to vegetables and fruits, it could be any kind of vegetable or fruit, it could be a produce. But we can get more and more specific and identifying what it is we're talking about, and that gets us more concrete. Instead of produce, if I said the braver and apple I had for breakfast, that's a specific apple, a very specific apple, not just any kind of produce. So we want to use as speakers concrete and precise language so that the audience is on the same page as us and has a very specific understanding of what it is we're sharing. In addition to this, we want to use correct grammar. It's very important for in terms of an audience taking you seriously and having confidence in you as a speaker that you use correct grammar. Don't know how else to express that, but just to understand the rules of grammar and follow them when you're speaking. You also want to be aware of connotation. Kind of already talked about this in terms of people have different meanings. Language is symbolic. So when we use the words inquisitive, curious, and nosy, they all kind of mean the same thing, but they carry different connotations. When you call somebody nosy, that's really kind of a negative thing. That's not something you want somebody to call you as opposed to curious or inquisitive. Those have a more positive connotation than nosy. So be aware that your language has connotation and that people may interpret it differently and we need to be aware of our language choices in that way. We want to avoid what we call powerless language. And this includes things like hedges and tag questions and qualifiers. Hedges meaning, you know, I think maybe we're not expressing something with great confidence. Tag questions are things like, don't you think? Or am I right? You know, those types of things that indicate again, you're not totally confident in your own answer. And then qualifiers such as, you know, well, I think maybe could be, you know, those are kind of hedges. But in my opinion, those types of things, if we're expressing an opinion, that's okay. But we need to avoid powerless language when we're trying to sound confident or trying to express our expertise and our understanding, our knowledge in that area. Powerless language does not convey that to the audience. So we want to avoid those types of language usage. We want to avoid cliches. You know, the cliches are just, they're cliches for a reason. They've been used and used and used. They're not creative. It doesn't demonstrate to the audience a good level of preparation or a good level of expertise and a good level of knowledge in that area. So just avoid cliches if at all possible. Finally, we want to just touch on a couple items related to language and ethics. Being ethical as a speaker is incredibly important. Again, language has great power. So we need to wield it responsibly and we need to use it ethically. So with that in mind, a couple of things to keep in mind. We want to use gender-neutral language, setting your politics aside on how you feel about these types of things. It's important as a speaker that we use gender-neutral language to appeal to the more universal audience and the broader audience. So we want to avoid the generic he. We don't want to say things like, you know, when we refer to doctors, we don't want to say, you know, doctors and he in this and, you know, referring to doctors as all men or something, implying that they're all men. Obviously they're women doctors and women surgeons and women everything. So we don't avoid just using the generic he. If we can, we want to avoid man-linked terms. So we want to avoid things like mankind and things that use man, imply that men are kind of the center of the universe. Now it can be a little bit awkward, I think to use terms. I mean, you can use humankind, but that's a little awkward. Then you just use a different term. Just find a way to phrase it differently, but avoid those man-linked terms that we're using gender-neutral language. We want to use culturally sensitive language. We want to understand, understand coming back to audience analysis. Who's our audience? What's this culture? We want to use language that's culturally sensitive and we're universally accepted in a cultural sense. We want to avoid profanity. Like even if you're somebody who curses on a regular basis as a speaker, leave that out. Like we're appealing to a more universal audience and it just doesn't fly with many people, a lot of people. And it also just tends to, quite frankly, make you not sound as capable, as knowledgeable when you rely on profanity. So leave profanity out of it. Avoid exaggeration whenever possible. You want to be straightforward with these people. You're developing credibility. You're developing trustworthiness you're attempting to. And we need to consider ethos here. We want to avoid exaggeration and just leave that out and use our language responsibly in that way as well. Hopefully you have a better understanding of the importance of language as a speaker. Again, it's really one of the most important tools in our tool belt. I did something that's totally within our control as well. That's the other thing we have in our language, just a multitude of choices and a variety of ways that we can express ideas and get our message across. So choosing the language that's most appropriate is incredibly important for that effort. If you have questions about language or any other aspect of public speaking, please feel free to send me an email. I'd be happy to communicate with you that way. And in the meantime, I hope you will really give thought and consideration to your language and the impact that it has and the role that it plays in your success as a public speaker.