How I Became Articulate With My Speaking (5 Secrets)

Every articulate speaker understands five qualities about speech that allow them to be playful, precise, and persuasive with their words. The first is expanding their surface lexicon. Your lexicon refers to your personal vocabulary, the collection of words you recognize and employ in your speaking. Each of us has a surface lexicon and a deep lexicon. I'll use my proprietary whiteboard technology to illustrate this. Your surface lexicon, illustrated here, are the words you unconsciously default to and employ in your daily communication. Approximately 1,500 to 3,000 unique words. Your deep lexicon, on the other hand, is comprised of words that you recognize but rarely employ in your speech. The average native English-speaking adult has a deep lexicon of approximately 20,000 to 35,000 unique words. When we speak, when we answer a question or compose a sentence, our brain first consults our surface lexicon for familiar words. For example, if I asked you, what did you think of the steak? The default reply might be, the steak was good. It was awesome. Have you heard of the words flavorful, tender, or perfectly seasoned? Of course. But those words are not located in your surface lexicon and thus not the language that your brain defaults to as descriptors for a steak. What we realize is that the default way our brain wants us to say something is more than likely not the best way to say it because the words registered in our surface lexicon are simply not the right words. And that's what articulacy is. Being able to express your ideas in the right words at the right time. This invites the question, how do we access this deep lexicon that we all have? How do we give the words we already know more buoyancy so that they register in our surface lexicon and begin to manifest in conversation? Let me provide you with two solutions that accomplish this. The first is repetition. The more you use a word, the higher it ranks in your lexicon. A study from Yale found that it takes using a word 38 unique times for our brain to instinctively default to that word in our speech. In other words, 38 times in order for that word to register in our surface lexicon. What you must realize about articulate speakers is that they aren't constantly accessing their deep lexicon. Rather, they've expanded their surface lexicon to include words that are more profound and expressive. You'll observe this if you watch any speaker for hours on end. Any words you might consider to be powerful or profound will surface frequently in their speaking. They'll often use words that carry imagery or embody tangible ideas. For example, instead of saying, I have to pay attention to a lot of information, they might say, I have to pay attention to a mosaic of information. Or instead of saying, I'm at a lack of ideas, they'll say, I've reached idea poverty. Besides repetition, using a word multiple times in order for it to possibly enter or rank higher in your surface lexicon, the other action you can take is to give yourself more time to index your deep lexicon. What do I mean by this? Think of it like breathing. You can use shallow breaths and still provide your lungs and brain with oxygen. Or you can take your time, inhale deeply, and feel more satisfied and replenished. Breathe deeper with your words. Take more time before you speak to index your vocabulary for better words. Ask yourself this question. Is this the right word? If I took more time, a few more seconds, could I perhaps excavate a better word for my deep lexicon? You'll be amazed how much progress you make in your speaking just by asking yourself this introspective question. Is this the right word? Is there a better word for this idea? Don't assume the word your brain defaults to is the best word. Number two, learn how to command the pause. One of the epiphany moments I experienced in working to elevate my own speech was learning that I could make ordinary words sound extraordinary simply by using a well-placed pause. The recommendation to use pauses is often considered trivial because it's so simple. Yet being articulate requires that you understand this relationship between silence and the impact that it has in your speech. As a society, we've almost become allergic to pausing in our speaking. We think that pausing is considered a sign of mental slowness or unintelligence when most of the time it conveys the opposite. Pausing shows that you value the weight of your words and wish to be calculated and intentional with your language. It shows confidence in yourself and care for your listener. Watch this short clip from Steve Jobs and take notice of how pausing before speaking creates suspense in the listener's mind, but more importantly, allows Steve time to construct a confident and articulate answer. What's important to you in the development of a product? You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease, I've seen other people get it too. It's the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. As Steve demonstrates, silence before you speak allows you to formulate your thoughts more fully. Most of us in conversation or any form of communication have the proclivity to introduce words before we know how we're going to use them. Sometimes I'll start a sentence and I don't even know where it's going. We blurt out a hasty first pass at conveying an idea and then progressively revise our word choice by rephrasing our sentence or perhaps appending on more words, which furthers the lack of clarity of the idea we're attempting to convey. Pausing before speaking or between points allows you to achieve a better intimacy with your words. You have more time to think through your ideas and your listener is able to thoroughly absorb your words because they are more deliberate. Your words are more precise. Number three, pruning your filler words. I would imagine most of us already know we shouldn't over rely on words such as um, ah, and like or expressions like, you know, I feel like, basically, essentially. The full list is available down below this video. If you want to diagnose your disfluencies, as filler words are often known as, it's worth noting that filler words are in fact a natural part of language. As ironic as it may be, filler words help our speech flow and sound less formal and blunt. The thorny problem though is when we overwork them in our speech. Filler words appear because we often speak faster than we can think. Our mouth gets ahead of our mind and we need to catch up and hence we rely on the filler word. Also because we're uncomfortable with silence and we'll do anything to maintain command of the air even if it means treating our listener to an empty sound. I've been able to cure myself of most filler words by adopting two practices that I want to share with you. The first is processing the endings of your words. When I've focused on hearing the endings of the words that are coming out of my mouth, one, reduces the speed of my speech. But two, channels my focus onto the words themselves allowing me to audit my word selection more carefully. Secondly, practice keeping your mouth closed until you are ready to speak your first word. For many of us, the default behavior is to introduce our voice with a filler. For example, Joseph, what did you think of this project? Is that familiar? If so, keep your mouth closed until you have defined in your mind your opening words. This has helped me immensely. Number four, take inventory of your language inputs. What do I mean by this? I mean, recognize that the way you speak right now is the result of the collective influence of the language that you've been exposed to. Just as we are often the product of our environments, our speech reflects the quality of language that we've interacted with and that we've allowed into our information processor, our language processor. If you read and listen to cheap and shoddy sentences filled with slang, vulgarity, and vague vocabulary, you unconsciously adopt those language patterns. And the higher and higher those expressions and words register in your surface lexicon until they begin to automatically manifest in our speech. This is why it's advantageous to read and expose yourself to sources of rich language. There are a few great articulators who aren't ridiculously well-read for this very reason. Reading great works exposes you to great words and expands your intellectual horizon, which enriches your thinking and reflects in your speech. Of course, I'm not just talking about reading books. My recommendation is to take inventory of all the sources of language you expose yourself to on a daily basis. The people you surround yourself with, the music you listen to, the content you consume. You don't have to make any drastic changes. I'm not recommending you overhaul your life just because you watched a YouTube video. But if you do notice that most sources where you watch or listen to words don't feature articulate or expressive language, I might suggest engaging more with sources of articulate speech that give you better access to the tapestry of language that you seek to embody in your speech. Number five, tune your vocal instrument. As much as we like to define articulacy as choosing the right words, we often grossly undervalue the significance that our voice holds in sounding articulate. What you'll notice in articulate speakers is that there is a music and a melodic quality to articulating their words. Words aren't just words. They're receptacles that are filled with emotional substance. And that substance is provided by our pitch, our volume, the speed of our speaking and variation. The same word spoken in a monotone can sound staggeringly different than if they were delivered with finesse and maturity. Listen to this clip from Sir David Attenborough, a man considered to have one of the most beloved voices of all time. I want you to pay attention to the variation in his voice, his pausing, and above all, the complete enunciation of each word. As you spend the next two weeks debating, negotiating, persuading, and compromising, as you surely must, it's easy to forget that ultimately, the emergency climate comes down to a single number. Of course, while not every one of us can acquire a rich voice or adopt an elegant British accent, we can learn to be more melodic with our voices. Learn to think of your sentences almost like music. Each word is a note that harmonizes with the others to produce a beautiful melody that can enhance the enjoyment of listening to you. Perhaps the quickest way to help develop your vocal instrument is to read poetry out loud. Poetry is incredibly effective at subtly teaching how vital variation in your tone is because you have to read poems a certain way, often with playful emphasis on specific words, in order to achieve the rhyme set up in the poem. I'll leave a list of the best poems below this video. That will help with this. Please practice these five techniques discussed in this video and you will become more athletic and artistic with your language. Thanks for watching and I wish you every success in speaking more articulately.