One thing that distinguishes great presenters is their choice of language. What do we need to know about language to help us do even better presentations?
Imagine you were running a university study involving the pictures above.
You want to know which picture is easier to recognize. You put people into two groups: one sees the picture of the left; the other the one on the right. Which group will be faster? No surprise that it’s the one on the left. The image is much clearer and sharper, the colours more vivid – of course it’s easier to recognize!
But would you be surprised to learn that – under certain circumstances – the one on the right is easier to recognize?
The key to this is what happened before participants saw the picture. One group were shown the sentence, “The skier saw the elk clearly through his clean goggles.” Then these people were shown either the picture on the left or on the right. No surprises here, those who saw the left-hand picture were again faster to recognize it. But in the next group, something interesting happened. They were actually quicker to recognize the elk in the picture on the right.
The reason? Before they saw the picture, they were given a different sentence, “The skier saw the elk with difficulty through his dirty goggles.”
This shows us something fundamental about how we understand language. Rather than understanding words via some set of abstract rules, we actually do it by creating a simulation. The reason the second group recognized the unclear picture faster was because that image was closer to the picture their minds had already created. If you want your audience to understand your message easily, you have to help them build a simulation.
Which brings me to the all-too-typical business, scientific or technical presentation. I exaggerate – but only slightly – when I say that sentences like the one below are common:
The increase in the incidence of transverse fractures in the proximal phalanges among those with United Kingdom heritage is due in large part to a developing tendency to strike vertical planes in an aggressive and inadvisable manner.
How’s your simulation going? A born presenter would probably say something like:
Colin hit the wall and broke a bone in his hand. More and more people in the UK are doing this.
Now, of course, you could argue that these two sentences are not saying the same thing. The second is just one example of the problem – a specific case rather than the generalized phenomena. Exactly.
If you want your audience to be able to process your message fluently and easily (and you do!), you have to choose language that is concrete. It’s much easier to do this when you talk about a real person doing real things in the real world. This can then be the springboard to talking about the problem in more general terms, but we have to begin with the concrete.
Why is the second sentence concrete? Because it’s built around two action verbs: hit and broke. This also tends to mean that I’ll have a concrete subject (Colin) and concrete objects (wall and a bone in his hand). It’s easy enough to see the action in your mind’s eye.
Where is the verb in the first sentence? Not so easy to find, is it? In fact the verb is is. And it comes after 18 words. Those 18 words are the subject of the verb is. What this means for the listener is that you have to hold in memory those 18 words and the relationships between them, adding each new word to the ever-growing list, while thinking, “Come on! Please! Just give me the verb!” And then, eventually, when the verb does come, it turns out to be is – Aaargghhh!
If you think you may be falling into this trap, Professor Richard A. Lanham of UCLA has good advice. He says first look for ‘be’ forms of the verb: is, was, has been etc. If possible remove these and use action verbs. Where is this action to be found? In the noun phrases. How do you find your noun phrases? Look for prepositions. In the example above, we have seven prepositions:
The increase in the incidence of transverse fractures in the proximal phalanges among those with United Kingdom heritage is due in large part to a developing tendency to strike vertical planes in an aggressive and inadvisable manner.
Every thing after the preposition is a noun phrase. The problem with nouns is they lack action; they’re lifeless and inert. Any dynamism in the sentence, any chance to make a simulation is locked up in these noun phrases. Lanham says that if you have three or more prepositions in a sentence, you most likely have a problem.
Unlock your nouns, free your verbs, and let your audience make their simulations.
