Gaining the Verbal Advantage

You’re at a party. You spot a gorgeous woman or man at the other end of the room. With every ounce of courage you can muster, you coolly saunter over and flash your radiant smile. Your heart beats wildly, your head pounding like an African drum. You confidently stick out your hand and introduce yourself. The person reciprocates with a handshake and an introduction, saying “Hi, I’m ___.” The moment you hear “Hi, I’m ___,” you don’t care who they are. You don’t want to know. Your ears are deafened by a high-pitched, sickening tone that shocks you right back into reality, with your pulse rate returning to normal.
The way a person sounds says it all. Research in psycho-social perception shows that people judge you more by the way you speak than by the way you look. In fact, people who sound good are judged to be more intelligent, sexually exciting, and successful, and less likely to commit a crime than their poor-sounding counterparts.
Those who have poor speaking voices are perceived as weak, defenseless, less intelligent, and more victim-like than those who don’t have this voice.
Research in criminal justice indicates that if one walks like a victim, one is more likely to be victimized. The same holds true for talking. If one sounds like a victim, one is more likely to be victimized in one’s personal and social life. To verbally defend yourself and have the maximum effect on your verbally abusive opponent, you have to speak in confident and audible tones.
To speak in confident powerful tones to convey your points effectively, you must use your speaking mechanism properly. This mechanism consists of breathing, voice-producing, and speech and pronunciation mechanisms. This chapter will show you how to use these mechanisms to converse with others effectively. You will then learn how to incorporate your new-found speaking skills into confident conversation. Finally, you will learn how to start, maintain, and end a conversation with grace and aplomb.