Apr 17
Here’s a follow up to my recent post How to Win a Speech Contest – Even if you lose! I’ve done it again, but, alas, not in the same way. Last night I came in 2nd at the Area Contest for the International Speech Contest, but I still walked out a winner. Maybe you’re thinking: “okay, I can understand you sayng that last time because you, ultimately, won the contest. But not this time, surely?”
Well, I’m afraid that it is true. How did I win this time then?
Apr 12
In my on-going mini series Secret Comedy Writing Techniques I’m going to deal with Goldwynisms. To give you a quick context Film Studio owner Samuel Goldwyn of M.G.M was famous for his own version of malapropisms and various speech errors which ended up being called: “Goldwynisms”. The Wikipedia definition is as follows:
“a humorous statement or phrase resulting from the use of incongruous or contradictory words, situations, idioms, etc.” Some examples from Mr. Goldwyn are:
Apr 11
“Hi diddly dee, a mystery speaker’s life for me” – okay, that doesn’t quite scan but I don’t claim to be Lennon & McCartney. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to be a mystery speaker for the Women in Banking and Finance Speakers. Even though I’m not in Banking or Finance and I’m not a woman, it was nice to be one of the token two male speakers there.
We were in a nice-looking boardroom and therein lay my biggest problem of the evening
Apr 06
In this next installment in my on-going mini series Secret Comedy Writing Techniques I’m going to cover Malapropisms and provide Malapropism examples. A malapropism is the incorrect use of a word by substituting a similar-sounding word with different meaning, more often than not, with comic effect.
A malapropism is an example of an English writing technique, using long complicated words for comic effect. Essentially, the word that gets used means something different from the word the speaker or writer intended to use.
The word used sounds like the word that was apparently meant or intended. Malapropism examples; using a word like “obtuse” (wide or dull) instead of “acute” (narrow or sharp) is not a malapropism; using “obtuse” (stupid or slow-witted) when one means “abstruse” (esoteric or difficult to understand) would be.
Apr 04
It occurs to me that over the past couple of months I’ve been talking about Public Speaking and Mind Mapping without actually talking about the process that you go through in order to create a Mind Map.
Waaaaay back in the early 1990s, I taught myself Mind Mapping by reading the book by Tony Buzan entitled “Use Your Head” and also watching the video “Get Ahead”. Aah, VHS video those were the days. (If you still have the facility to play dead technology, like I do – just – check out the link).
Anyway, here’s a quick “cheat sheet” version of how to create a Mind Map (apologies to my Mind Map-enabled readers for teaching you how to suck eggs straight out the chicken).
