Truth and Public Speaking

[Brutha]

Add one time Steve wrote about a humorous toastmaster speech that he gave about polyphasic sleep. It contained a invented passage about how Steve wrote Timers in a sixpack (or maybe another number).
Stictly speaking, things like that aren't true.

Can we still say those things in public speaking while staying in accord PDFSP?

[Savage]

Definitely. Exaggeration is a common humor technique. The way I delivered that speech, no one would have assumed I was speaking the full truth. You expect to hear crazy, funny stories during a Toastmasters contest. The audience isn't being deceived. They're being entertained.

[Brutha]

I know that toastmasters is a setting where people know that speaker make up stuff to boost their speech.

But what the criteria that allows one to say something that isn't true?
Audience expectation?
Whether it's believable?

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Brutha

I know that toastmasters is a setting where people know that speaker make up stuff to boost their speech.

But what the criteria that allows one to say something that isn't true?
Audience expectation?
Whether it's believable?

Outside of the realm of humor speaking, I don't think lying has a place in public speaking. Otherwise you're misleading the audience and doing them a disservice.

[simonr]

(In fact I rant about it here in my presentations blog.)

For me, the line is crossed when the audience isn't "in on the joke" and doesn't know that they're not hearing the absolute truth. Okay, so there's bound to be one numpty in the audience who doesn't 'get it' but in general terms it's pretty easy to pitch the amount you can stretch the truth so that the audience knows you're doing it.

Sometimes therefore it's better to tell a whopper which everyone knows is a joke than it is to just exagerate slightly.

Simon

[Savage]

Another aspect is the context.

If you're billed as a humor or entertainment speaker, the audience will expect exaggeration. When I went to see George Carlin on the Strip (shortly before he died), I wasn't going there to expect a scientific lecture.

Also, if you're competing in a humor contest, again the audience isn't going to expect a fact-filled speech.

But if you're giving an inspiring, motivational, informative, or persuasive speech, and you tell a story within that context, the audience will expect that they're hearing the truth unless you give them clear indications otherwise.

[DanielBrenton]

If I may chime in here ...

I did a Toastmasters humorous contest speech a few years ago called "A Near Life Experience," where I cooked up a syndrome that effects 22.7% of us and we don't even recognize it, and how I came to terms with it. It won a division level humorous contest, but I had a woman come up to me afterwards and ask me if I really had these wild, over-the-top experiences. Inwardly I thought "You idiot -- how could you possibly think that?!" though, no, I didn't say it.

Recently I've been writing a humor column for Alien Worlds Magazine out of England, a magazine that caters to the subjects of SETI, astrobiology, and (*eh hem*) UFOs. I'm writing stuff that is poking fun at the UFO memes of the time. My sense of humor is kind of dry, but I'm writing in incredibly broad terms, and I've gotten emails from folks who obviously have taken my material seriously and wanted more information on what I've cooked up.

So, inadvertently, I discovered it would be very easy to lie to that particular audience because there appears to be some percentage of that audience that is "thick" when it comes to humor, and "tunnel-visioned" on seeing only what it wants to. (I could name a couple of people who it is painfully obvious are exploiting that audience, but I would need to do my homework first before I started throwing accusations around.) "Gullibility" might be the word there, though the problem actually seems a little more complex.

In my opinion, the same is true of the "New Age" audience, unfortunately. Personally, I compare finding a truthful psychic to finding a good mechanic, and I'm utterly grateful when I run across those in whom I feel complete confidence -- such as Erin, who has done readings for both my wife and myself.

I recall the text of a speech Kurt Vonnegut presented, basically calling fiction writers liars and even suggesting the devil worked through them (being Vonnegut, of course, he was twisting our tail a bit). I would like to make the distinction between "fiction" and "lying," in that participating in a fiction -- a story -- is an mutual understanding between the author and the audience, whereas, whereas lying is a deliberate attempt to deceive.

I did not lie to that woman who thought my humorous speech was a truthful recanting of actual events. She just didn't "get" it.