Excite Your Audience

Recently, I was critiquing a speech and the speaker used an exaggerated female voice during a story. The female character in the story was a bank teller. Whereas, the line did get a laugh from the crowd, I told the speaker to never do that again and here is why:

Many people see a bank teller’s job and a “women’s job” (which isn’t true by the way) and giving the teller a high pitched, weak sounding female voice could definitely be offensive to many people (both male and female) in the audience. If the women in the story had been the branch president of the bank, not only would the speaker have not used the silly voice, but that voice wouldn’t even have made sense. Why? Because a bank president is a strong, important person. Well guess what? Everyone is, or at least wants to feel like they are a strong important person, including bank tellers.

The only people that might be able to get away with something like this is are comedians, who often are trying to be offensive on purpose.

In general, the only time I recommend using an exaggerated accent for a character in a story is if you are showing that character is a positive light. Here is an example; you have a man from the deep south in your story, if you describe him as stupid or slow and then give him a voice like, “tat boiy was as anouted as a tick on a flee’s back.” Guess what? You just offended anyone from south of the Mason-Dixie line. However, if you describe the character as a warm, loving man with that southern charm and then you the accent, people will love the story.

So, when planning your speech away consider what it would be like to be a character like the ones in your story sitting in the audience.

Recently, I ran across some youTubes from veteran speaker Joe Malarkey. Definitely check out this video called “The Upside of Down,” I’m sure you will enjoy it. After you watch the video, leave your youTube page on the screen so you can rewatch it and see how my comments below explain why Joe is so funny. Here is the link to the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFJ6-AsabWw

Good talk huh? Joe is a very funny guy. The three specific sections I want to focus on are the jokes at video index 1:29, 4:39, and 6:25. Rewatch those sections (about 10 seconds each). Go ahead, I’ll wait. Dum … de dum dum … dum de dum. Oh good you’re back. Now we can analyze the comedy technique that is used here. It’s called “subliminal humor.” Let look at the first joke at video index 1:29, where Joe talks about working in Las Vegas. Here is the joke.

“I was a show girl … I’m just kidding … I was a stripper, but my point is …”

Standard humorous thinking state that you should always wait for the laugh after your punch-line, but this is where Joe breaks the rules. “I was a show girl,” is funny and then Joe waits for the laugh. “I’m just kidding,” is the set up for the bigger joke. “I was a stripper,” is the punch-line, but notice that Joe doesn’t wait for the laugh here. Instead he quickly adds, “but my point is …” which has nothing to do with the speech, it just adds to the humor of the punch-line. It makes it appear as if Joe really didn’t mean to say that and it just leaked out as a Freudian slip. This makes the joke extra funny and is a very advanced technique.

Now, go back and watch those three sections again and notice that Joe ends each joke with “but my point is …” Knowing how this works will give you an entirely new appreciation for Joe’s abilities and possibly give you a new tool in your speaker arsenal.