A loud voice and speaking persuasively

From Mortimer J. Adler, How to Speak How to Listen, page 8.

On the surface, it would appear that speaking and listening perfectly parallel writing and reading. Both pairs involve uses of language whereby one mind reaches out to another and that other responds. If one can do this well by means of the written word, why should there be any more difficulty in doing it well by means of the spoken word? If one can respond well to the written word, why cannot one respond as well to the spoken word?

The fluidity and fluency of oral discourse is the reason why that is not so. One is always able to go back over what one has read, read it again, and make a better job of it. One can improve one's reading endlessly, by reading something over and over again. I have done this in my own reading of the great books.

In writing, one is always able to revise and improve what one has written. No writer need pass on a piece of writing to someone else until he or she is satisfied that it is written as well as possible. That, too, has been part of my own experience in writing books or anything else.

In the case of both reading and writing, the essential element in the requisite skill consists in knowing how to improve one's reading or writing. That essential element plays no part in the skill to be attained in speaking and listening, because speaking and listening are transient and fleeting like performing arts, as writing and reading are not. The latter are more like painting and sculpture, the products of which have permanence.

Consider such performing arts as acting, ballet dancing, playing a musical instrument, or conducting an orchestra. In all of these, a given performance, once it is given, cannot be improved. The artist may be able to improve on it in a later performance, but during the time he or she is on stage, that one performance, that one performance should be as good as it can be made. When the curtain goes down it is finished - unamendable.

The situation is exactly the same in speaking and listening. One cannot go back over what one is saying orally and improve it, as one can go back over what one has written and improve it. Unlike writing, ongoing speech is generally unamendable. Any effort to take back what one has said while one is speaking often turns out to be more confusing than letting the deficiencies stand.

A prepared speech is, of course, amendable before being delivered, as a piece of writing is. An impromptu or improvised speech is not.

One may be able to do a better job of speaking at come later time, but on a particular occasion, whatever excellence one is able to achieve must be achieved right then and there. Similarly, there is no way of improving one's listening on a given occasion. It has to be as good as it can be right there and then.

A writer can at least hope that readers will take as much time as may be necessary to understand the written message, but the speaker cannot cherish any such hope. He or she must contrive what is to be said in such a way that it is as understandable as possible the first time around. The time span of speaking and listening and coincide. Both begin and end together. Not so the time spans of writing and reading.

All true. I have just started John R. Hale's Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy. Here is his description of the Assembly of Athens, the public meeting called to decide how to distribute the windfall of new silver flooding from public mines as a result of a new vein. Themistocles had a proposal to make to his fellow citizens that would turn the course of history; that rather than rewarding themselves with a public disbursement of the silver, that Athens should instead build a fleet. There were no policy papers or reports or studies. You presented ideas to the assembly of your fellow citizens and you either persuaded them or you did not.

In response to the herald's cry, Themistocles came forward and mounted the speaker's platform or bema. He was a robust man of forty, with a wide challenging gaze and a neck like a bull. His hair was cropped short in the style of a workingman, not a noble. Along with an infallible memory for names and faces, he possessed one other prerequisite for a political career in Athens: a loud voice.

No one read from notes while addressing the Assembly: speeches were either memorized or extemporized. Themistocles had to keep in mind a number of rules while speaking. He must not wander from his point or address more than one topic. He was not permitted to slander a fellow citizen, step off the bema while speaking, or assault the president. Most important, he could not speak twice on the same proposal unless ordered by the Assembly to do so. Before stepping down from the platform Themistocles would have to provide every detail of his plan, explain all its benefits, and rebut in advance every argument against it. It was most unwise to incur the Assembly's impatience, usually expressed with hooting, booing and other verbal abuse. But so long as a speaker broke no rules, he could not be interrupted.

While I have always admired the traditional excellence of top US universities in general, I have long noted that the graduates of top European universities have seemed to me to have a better command of both listening and speaking. As I once read someone describe it, you can hear them speaking in paragraphs. There is a structure and goal to their speaking which lends itself to clear argument and persuasion. Obviously there are exceptions. That said, I have known graduates of Oxford and Cambridge in many walks of life and while they come in different stripes of politics, economic achievement, etc. they seem to almost all be exceptionally articulate in a fashion that I do not associate with the graduates of any US university. I have attributed that to the tutor system at both those universities but perhaps there is another explanation. Whatever the explanation, the capacity to respectfully listen and then to speak persuasively (as distinct from mellifluously) is a tremendous asset and one I believe to be terrifically undervalued.