SPICE YOUR SPEECH WITH HUMOR!

Tee is a math teacher in a high school down town. He’s really had it tough keeping the interests of students whenever he’s told to  speak generally to the students. I’ve observed him closely and discovered that he isn’t using humor effectively. Making  use of humor can help lighten a tensed atmosphere and make you carry your listeners or audience along; but your usage of humor could be detrimental if you are not aware of the humor taste of your audience or listeners. A humor used when speaking to a child or teenager may annoy an adult when used for him or her. So knowing the humor taste of your listener or audience is a great key to using effective humor.  Also, be creative in crafting humorous words. This helps to keep away boredom. Some humorous words or utterances get listeners bored and irritated because of lack of creativity. Verbal humor can be great when you make use of figures of sound like:

 

• Onomatopoeia: The use of a word or group of words which suggests the sound it represents. Examples: slam, tick, roar, crash, clang, patter.

 

• Rhyme:  It means words with similar or the same sound. Based on the number of syllables, rhyme may be masculine, feminine or triple. Masculine rhyme occurs when one syllable of a word rhymes with another e.g. bend, send. Feminine occurs with two-syllable words e.g. lawful ,awful. Finally, triple occurs in three-syllable words e.g. quivering, shivering.

 

• Assonance: It is the repetition of vowel sounds e.g. rest, nest; wonder, ponder.

 

• Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of closely connected words e.g. Friday friends.

 

• Consonance: the recurrence of similar-sounding consonants e.g. flutter, stutter, mutter.

 

• Repetition: usually done for emphasis e.g. "We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall fight never to surrender!"—— Winston  Churchill