Samantha Tamale
Hayes
Eng. 1A
4/18/14
If we can learn one thing about changing the world from history it’s that every cause needs a skilled orator. From Mahatma Gandhi to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. words have proven to be one of the most powerful weapons against tyranny. A skilled orator has the capacity to emotionally move people and inspire them to take action against their oppressors. Sheryl Wudunn and Kevin Bales are two writers who hope to do just that. Wudunn and Bale both gave talks at different TED conferences but both talks addressed the issue of human rights. Wudunn addressed the injustice against women internationally and Bale put the spotlight on the millions of people currently enslaved across the world. Wudunn and Bale both gave great speeches, but how well organized their speeches were and emotional appeal is what sets the two speeches apart.
When giving a speech it’s important to organize your ideas in a way that is easy for you audience to follow. Wudunn does a great job with organization in her speech by introducing a solution and setting up how it would work for the audience in one paragraph before going into a story of success that embodies that claim in the next paragraph. For example, before telling Saima’s story, she first talks about economic opportunity and how it benefits women and their communities. The last sentence is a great example of an effective transition into Saima’s story, “With economic opportunity, it can be transformative”. Transitions are helpful in organizing a speech because it helps connects your ideas and helps the overall flow of the speech. Bales lacked this in his speech. His speech was very informative but not organized.
Bales speech offered us a lot of information on modern day slavery and a few solutions but fails to set it up in a way that is easy to follow. Instead of introducing each issue he jumps right into talking about each topic. He also fails to use transitions to make a smooth change from one topic to another, making it hard at times for me to follow him. He is very brief in talking about some of the solutions he talks about and fails to offer us an example of how it would be implemented in reality. The lack of organization in his speech makes it seem choppy and is less effective when compared to Wudunn’s well organized speech. While the topic of his talk stirs up strong emotions, Bale’s fails to really talk about the victims of slavery in a way that is effective emotionally.
What made Wudunn’s talk work so well is the emotional approach she used. Her use of anecdotes help us to not only really understand what the issue was but also the victims of these issues. For almost every issue she discusses in her talk she had an anecdote of a woman who successfully overcame the odds. This is helpful because by introducing the women by name and telling their stories to us makes it possible for an emotional connection to form. We feel like we know these women, which also makes it a little more personal. While Bale’s discussed a very emotional topic, he fails to offer us that same emotional connection. He doesn’t introduce most of the people he talks about, he doesn’t go into personal details about their background, it’s all very cut dry.Bale utilizes a more logical approach in appealing to the audience about modern slavery. While he does make great use of clips and a few anecdotes in his talk, his arguments rely heavily on statistics. The emotional approach is definitely present in his speech but he fails to really allow the audience to connect to the people in his stories. He introduces them, tells us a little bit of their story, and then quickly moves onto the next topic. Were only left with a superficial impression of who these people are and they seem to blend into the other various statistics offered by Bale. It’s important that when talking about issues regarding human rights and using anecdotes about it’s victims that we go a little more into depth about who these people are and why their stories matter. This is the difference between telling just a sad story and a story that will inspire change.
In conclusion, while Wudunn and Bales both talk about very horrifying truths the differences in organization and how well they were able to emotionally connect with their audience is what made one talk stand out over another. Being knowledgeable about an issue is great but in order to really bring about change one must know how to convey that knowledge in a way that is inspirational.
Word Count: 791
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