THIS ONE'S SPECIAL

SOME VERY SPECIAL GUIDELINES

Since there are so many types of special occasion speeches, it's super important that a speaker be fully aware of two things as she prepares:

• Occasion

• Audience

The importance of occasion becomes fairly obvious when you consider the fact that both eulogies and wedding toasts are considered special occasion speeches. We're guessing most people approach those in pretty different ways.

The audience is also important to consider. Say you're the best man at your friend's wedding, and you're planning your toast. You'd really love to tell the story of when you and the groom first became friends, but it includes telling a pretty off-color joke. No, not just off-color—dirty. Like, really dirty. Filthy, even.

You do a bit of asking around and find out that there are going to be a lot of kids at the reception. Oh, and the bride's mother used to clean out her kids' mouths with soap whenever she caught them cursing…and still gives people the evil eye when they use the phrase "that sucks."

So you decide maybe it's not the right audience for that particular story and come up with something a bit more kid-and-mother-in-law-friendly.

Magnify and Identify

Two more general principles of special occasion speaking—no matter the occasion—is that the speaker should aim to both magnify and identify.

• Magnify means the speaker does his best to amplify emotion and to enlarge the worth of the person or event he's talking about.

• Identify means the speaker enhances the perception that everyone in the audience shares something in common. (Source)

Let's say you're the CEO of a toy company and you're kicking off a nationwide toymakers conference by giving the keynote address. First, you start with some magnification: you tell about how your company donated a whole bunch of toys to children in need the previous year and emphasize the tears of gratitude and squeals of joy you heard from the children as they picked which toys they wanted to bring home.

Next, you do some identification by telling the audience that every single one of them brings that kind of gratitude and joy to the children of the world every single day.

After that kind of bonding experience, who wouldn't be pumped to spend the rest of the weekend attending professional seminars and awkward cocktail hours?

A LEFT-HANDED COMMENCEMENT

You've read and watched several special occasion speeches already in this course: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, JFK's Inaugural address, and the more-recent-but-not-quite-as-famous "You're Not Special" commencement speech.

Now you're going to read the text of another commencement speech—one that takes a very different approach than the "You're Not Special" guy.

In 1983, the science fiction novelist Ursula Le Guin gave a commencement speech at Mills College. Read the entire text of the speech for another take on what you can do with a commencement address—and what kind of bonding you can go for.

And lest you forget that persuasive rhetoric has its place in special occasion speeches, too, read our analysis about the strategies of ethos, pathos, and logos Le Guin uses in her speech.

Clearly, Le Guin had her specific audience very much in mind when she delivered this speech. She knew she was speaking to not just an audience of women, but an audience of women who had specifically chosen to attend a college for women. Le Guin's feminist speech might not have been as appropriate—and maybe not as well received—if she had given to a group of graduates who were mostly men.

Le Guin probably didn't have to do a lot of digging to find out to whom she'd be speaking at this commencement. When she was invited to speak to a group of graduates at a women's college, we're guessing she had all the info she needed.

But it's not always so easy to identify who your specific audience is going to be. That's why doing a little work ahead of time to find out can be so helpful. And that just happens to be the subject of our next lesson.