'CONNECT' 38 - Tips on Public Speaking - using metaphors

There are three things to aim at: first, to get into your subject, then get your subject into yourself, and lastly, to get your subject into the heart of your audience'

Alexander Gregg

Using metaphors in public speaking

A good speech should have a high impact on the audience and leave a powerful impression in the emotional state of the audience. One way to do is to use metaphor and simile.

A metaphor identifies something as being the same as some unrelated thing by highlighting the similarities between the two. It is like saying 'A' is 'B' even though A and B are two different things. In this comparison we do not say 'A' is like 'B', but we say 'A' is 'B'.

One popular example is 'All the world's a stage' from Shakespeare's As You Like It. Read these lines:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;

We know that the world is not a stage and the people are not players. But the reason why we use this metaphor is to emphasise what is the similarity between our life and the various roles we take in our life.

One way to connect and understand a metaphor is to explain it with the use of the word 'because'. For example, 'all the world is a stage because we are expected to play our role whether we like it or not!

NC Sridharan

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