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Making a speech sound profound
We can well imagine a political candidate saying, "The party I stand for will bring sound business methods into the government of this country."
Later in his speech he will say, "The country is tired of experiments. It requires a policy of sound government and that is what it will get from this party." Later on he may say again, "The country demands the same principles in its government as it does in its industry. Only my party can deliver that."
Here are three particular ways of expressing one simple idea. The cumulative effect of them, however, may well be to suggest to his audience a far greater degree of wisdom and higher number of policy statements than in fact exists; to suggest that he has said many things when in fact he has said only one.
Even advertising campaigns change. Advertisers have only one interest: to put across the idea that the goods they are advertising ought to be bought. To achieve this effect they will use the greatest degree of variety in the creative output of their advertising campaigns. When one campaign advert has been run for a certain period of time and the results start to dwindle, it will be replaced by another.
Variety, then, is a very important aid to suggestion. But because variety is always used in the presentation of advertising, we must not be fooled into thinking that we are learning something new. We are not. Variety is merely a device whereby constant repetition is made more palatable and, as we have seen, constant repetition is the basis of suggestion. So we need to be on our guard against being deceived by varieties and subtleties of expressions.
Whenever we are listening to political speeches we should try to distinguish between the ideas they contain and the words used to express them. If we concentrate on the simple meaning of the words themselves and disregard their form, we shall find in many cases that the same thing is being said time after time.
Instead of being impressed by the wealth of words, we should be depressed by the poverty of ideas. Similarly, whenever we are listening to the arguments of our friends we should look out for the re-appearance of the same idea in a different set of verbal clothes.
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