Week 6 Post 2

Public Speaking can be frustrating because so much of how people view it is fully subjective.What can be even more frustrating is when a speaker can't control all of the variables involved with how people are viewing their speeches. Things like gender, image, and temperature may seem deeply inconsequential at first when it comes to public speaking but all of them can have huge impacts on the success of speeches. Obviously, things like racism, homophobia, and xenophobia all have bigger impacts on how willing an audience is to listen to a speech but those primarily become problems when speaking to an unsympathetic audience. Gender, Image, and Temperature can hurt or help a speaker even when speaking to a sympathetic audience. The audience is permitting the speaker to talk at them because they trust the person's expertise. These three factors can reduce that trust because shrillness, sloppiness, and discomfort make listeners become distracted from the words of the speech itself.
These factors themselves are out of the control of the speaker. How the speaker deals with them is something the speaker can control. The ability to work around these factors and give good speeches in spite of them is a skill that makes public speakers better. Because that ability can be practiced and cultivated, it is more of a skill than a talent, just like most of public speaking.