Kevin Rudd’s Communication Techniques Analysis Assignment Help
The incumbent Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Kevin Rudd (Maiden 2009) was elected for the second term in office on 27 June 2013. In the run up to the election Labor Party representative, Mr. Rudd in a faceoff with his opposition Liberal party leader Mr. Tony Abbott, was declared winner by the audience poll in the first leader debate, 2013, according to the Nine Network “Worm”. In this critical analysis (Raiskums 2008) essay we shall analyze the main concepts of effective communication in the context of Mr. Rudd’s sample speech. The analysis would be the stepping stone to learning the techniques of effective communication and how it can be delivered in a real life platform.
The political speeches are perhaps the most difficult to deliver effectively as it involves the entire population of a nation, states, provinces etc. Therefore, by analyzing Mr. Rudd’s speech and learning his usage of standard communication techniques, we can bridge the gap between theory and its practical application. Moreover, there is substantial difference between the classroom environment and the real instances, signifying a learning experience for the students regarding the manner in which the highest quality of communication is delivered to the impacted audience.
The essay has delved into three main aspects of a communication: description of the context, and analyzing the verbal and nonverbal communication (Ekman 2003). We have explained the principles of communication in relation to these three aspects and then linked them to the sample speech to evaluate its effectiveness.
Identifying audience with their interest, understanding, values, and thinking is the first step for a public speaker to recognize the context of his speech. The audience centered approach in delivering speech improves its efficacy to a large extent. Mr. Kevin Rudd in the televised debate was trying to reach the entire spectrum of Australian audience where audience research is a virtual impossibility. Thus adapting audience in the context of Australian economy, emphasizing on boosting the country’s economic performance and the welfare measures were the moot points in his speech.
The audience expectation (Gauntlett 2007) forms the basic context in a speech situation on occasion, the topic and the speaker. Mr. Rudd’s speech was a pre-election debate for the prime ministerial candidature of Australia where the audience expectation was for the overall improvement of their wellbeing and the nation per se. In the context of the global meltdown, the biggest concern of the audience (in general) is how to maintain their previous standard of living and income. Difficult times demand innovative and new ways of doing things. Mr. Rudd addressed the importance of innovation a number of times in his speech, “new way to build industries for the future…”, “new way to invest our schools’ need for the future…”, “new way of politics….”et al. Almost all his future plans were addressed as “new” plans underpinning on the overall audience expectation for a new direction of their future government.
However, meeting audience expectation must be backed up by meeting audience knowledge. It is important here to neither overestimate nor underestimate the audience knowledge on a topic, especially when addressing a mass audience the way Mr. Kevin Rudd did. Since his speech was targeted to reach all demographic segments, it is important to put everyone on the same table. However, in a fully literate country like Australia referring the basic concepts of economics such as employment, economy etc (as used by Mr. Rudd) is not underestimating the audience knowledge that hooked them to his speech.
While the audience may have necessary knowledge on the topic, their interest and attitude might lie elsewhere. Gauging audience attitude (Albarrac´ın 2012) on a topic help a speaker strategize his speech content in relation to the speech objective. In trying times of today, most Australians are concerned of their financial security and social safety (Maslow 1954) rather than issues related to their self-esteem (like foreign policy, military spending etc) as echoed by Mr. Rudd. His speech was directed solely on the people’s financial and social wellbeing connecting with the current mood of the nation prudently.
His presentation was reasonably formal although explained in simple everyday language, the way it should be addressing a large audience.
An effective speaker should also address and focus the target demographic segments (Glad 2008) to sway the respective group’s perception towards him. The identities and needs of individuals are often clustered according to the changing structure of human population such as age, class, occupation, education, income etc. called demographic segments. Mr. Kevin Rudd in his speech tried to reach all major demographic groups in Australia. He spoke of providing jobs and extending incentives to small businesses, targeting working class and small entrepreneurs respectively. In his reassuring statement to the working class he highlighted the aspect of employment to his list of achievements, “we have added nearly one million jobs,” he said. He talked about school and university students. He also addressed the concerns of laborers and the management by proposing to bring them to the negotiating table. However, determining the perception of individuals is more complex than that meets the eye. Stereotyping a speech concerning only on the interests of a demographic group has its pitfalls. For instance, a working class household can be concerned of political issues beyond their social security and employment interests. In this context, Mr. Rudd indicated to change the political climate of Australia by shunning out negativity from the system. However, he didn’t raise the issues of Australia’s foreign policy, aboriginal problems and his country’s role in the major events of global geopolitics.
Connecting with the audiences’ interests and factors affecting their lives is an effective way of communicating the importance of the topic to them. Mr. Rudd apart from his economic perspective also spoke of health issues such as new hospitals facilities introduced, new cancer care centers that have come up and new disability scheme launched.
Mr. Kevin Rudd’s speech provides detailed outline of the key contextual aspects that deserves Distinction in terms of his audience location. He covered most of the principal issues concerning his target audience in the context of Australia, although he missed out on his country’s foreign policy, issues of immigration, aboriginal’s concerns and Australia’s role in the key geopolitical issues like Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and terrorism.
While his overview of key contextual aspects was satisfactory, the features of his verbal communication need to be analyzed in evaluating the quality of his speech. Verbal communication in politics is the “best place to learn about communication because it’s so public. Everybody is under the microscope and all politicians know that one little slip could be the end of their career,” said Richard Greene, a renowned communication coach based out of Malibu, California. Being a political speaker, Mr. Rudd’s communication should address the key factors determining the efficiency of his speech in relation to his communication objective viz. his sincerity, being passionate and personal, and being a visionary.
Verbal communication is an important determinant of effectiveness of a speech to the audience. On the basis of the above goals, Mr. Kevin Rudd’s speech is analyzed in terms of its effectiveness relating to his vocalic (Crow 2003) in generating relevant meaning to his audience.
The first aspect of the vocalic is the loudness of volume, which is the perceived measure of energy in a voice. The basic criterion of a public speaking is an audible voice to the audience which can be varied to convey nuances and emotion. The volume of Mr. Kevin Rudd’s voice was loud enough to be audible at all times, although it was a televised program with adequate technology to take care of volume appropriateness. His speech rate (Brown 1988) was fast indicating enthusiasm, excitement, informality and animation.
However, along with an audible volume the pitch modulation should fluctuate to reflect fine shades of meanings and nuance. When presenting a statement, the inflections tend to taper down towards the end of a sentence and are raised on questions and exclamations. However, Mr. Rudd’s voice modulations were few and far in between. The speech was largely delivered at a flat pitch. There were times when nuances needed emphasis such as his quote, “we added nearly one million jobs!” which was an exclamation as well as an important nuance needed to be asserted and highlighted to the audience with a raised inflection that he missed out. His down inflections were few and not vividly recognizable.
While, right volume and pitch can make a good speech, judicious use of cadence (Schubert 1999) can make it extraordinary and classy. Webster’s defines cadence as “rhythmic sequence or flow of sounds in language or the beat, time, or measure of rhythmical motion or activity or finally the falling infection of the voice.” President John F. Kennedy’s famous quote of “and so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” was a classic example of the familiar four beat cadence used as “and so, (pause) my fellow Americans: (longer pause) ask not what your country can do for you (pause) — ask what you can do for your country. (pause for emphasis). Mr. Rudd in his speech used some brilliant cadence too. One of his best in the speech was his reference, “we have kept the economy strong despite financial crisis (pause), together with businesses big and small, we have added nearly one million jobs, we have sought to support families facing cost of living pressures (pause), how we have invested in early childhood education, new library and primary school, new language and science centers and our high schools (pause),…..”
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