You must always keep a finger on the mental
or emotional pulse of those whom you address. But your problem varies
slightly with the form of discourse you adopt. In explanation, analysis,
and argument the chief barriers you encounter are likely to be those of
the mind; you must make due allowance for the intellectual limitations of
your auditors, though many who have capacity enough may for some cause or
other be unreceptive to ideas. In description you must reckon with the
imaginative faculty, with the possibility that your hearers cannot
visualize what you tell them--and you must make your words brief. In
narration you must vivify emotional torpor; but lest in your efforts to
inveigle boredom you yourself should induce it, you must have a wary eye
for signals of distress.
EXERCISE - Adapting
1. Explain to (a) a rich man, (b) a poor man the blessings of poverty.
2. Discuss before (a) farmers, (b) merchants the idea that farmers
(merchants) make a great deal of money.
3. Explain to (a) the initiate, (b) the uninitiate some piece of
mechanism, or some phase of a human activity or interest, which you know
at first hand and regarding which technical (or at least not generally
understood) terms are employed.
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