Audience Attention; or, Margaret Thatcher and the Power of Ad Hominen Humor

Margaret Thatcher, also known as the Iron Lady, is remembered as one of Britain's greatest prime ministers. She led Great Britain in the early 1980s, passionately opposed communism, and led a revival of conservatism after the famously liberal 60s and 70s. She could have done none of this, however, had she not been a master of manipulating audience attention.

Gaining and maintaining audience attention is perhaps one of the greatest challenges in speaking and is certainly one of the most important goals for any speaker. An audience that does not listen may well miss the speaker's message and as such will not be convinced by it.

As such we can say that one of the marks of a great speaker is the ability to keep audience attention. By this metric, we can easily say that Thatcher was an excellent speaker. For an example, look at Thatcher speaking in opposition to the Labor Party's push for greater unity with Europe here.

This is, of course, a rather dry topic, and therefore keeping her audience's attention (both in Parliament and those watching the speech on the news) is no easy task. Thatcher therefore simultaneously attacked her opponents and drew the attention of her audience with a witty comment (which is in the final 30 seconds of the clip).

By using this joke to gain audience attention, she made sure that they heard her message (specifically, that further integration with the EEC would be detrimental to Britain) and, moreover, that they would continue to listen to the remainder of her speech. While it appears at first to be only a short moment in a long and influential speech, it is in fact a masterstroke that allowed Thatcher to advance her ideas effectively in spite of their apparent boringness to the average British citizen

Comments

  1. Matthew MouckOctober 5, 2017 at 6:56 AM

    I like your example because it illustrates how humor can be an essential aspect to a speech. I think some people might be wary of integrating humor into a speech because they think that it would be informal, but it so so useful for breaking the tension and then shifting to the main focus of the speech! There are so many different approaches to giving a speech that we shouldn't shut ourselves off to the possibilities. Also, Margaret Thatcher as an example is amazing. She really was a deft elocutionist to say the least.

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  2. UnknownOctober 5, 2017 at 6:59 AM

    I agree with you that gaining and maintaining the audience's attention is very important for the speaker. Without the audience paying attention to what the speaker has to say, they have no point in giving the talk in the first place. What are all of the different ways that a listener can gain and maintain the audience's attention? Are there specific scenarios that require the speaker to be extra engaging with their audience so that they don't lose interest?
    I liked the conciseness of your post: it was clear and to the point.

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  3. Charles RyanOctober 5, 2017 at 7:15 AM

    You are right that maintaining the audience's attention is key to delivering a good speech because without it nobody will be experiencing your performance. The question though is why are some speeches more effective in keeping the audience's attention than others. Understanding the foundation for a speech is easy but it gets more abstract as you try to understand how speakers do it better than others.

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