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8 Chapter Eight

Delivery: Style, Voice, & Nonverbals

Learning Objectives

  • Define verbal and nonverbal delivery
  • Utilize specific techniques to enhance the effectiveness of vocal and nonverbal delivery in public speaking
  • Explore techniques for evoking senses through language
  • Develop strategies for engaging body movements while speaking
  • Select attire that enhances credibility and aligns with the speech context
  • Practice and receive feedback on delivery skills to achieve continuous improvement

Introduction to Verbal Delivery

Humans are communicators. We rely on processes of communication to make sense of our world, and we rely on others’ communicating with us to create shared meaning. Through symbols, we use and adapt language with one another and our communities. The same is true for speeches, but the symbols you select and how you portray them (what we’ll call verbal delivery) are central to your audience and how they experience and comprehend what you say.

For example, consider your favorite podcast series. Despite being reliant solely on vocal delivery, the presenters’ voices paint an aesthetic picture as they walk us through stories. So, how do they do it? What keeps millions of people listening to podcasts and returning to their favorite verbal-only speakers? Is it how they say it? Is it the language they choose? Yes, these are important parts of effective vocal delivery.

Language and Aesthetics

It was 5 p.m. As she looked out the smudged window over the Kansas pasture, the wind quickly died down and the rolling clouds turned a slight gray green. Without warning, a siren blared through the quiet plains as she pulled her hands up to cover her ears. Gasping for breath, she turned toward the basement and flew down the stairs as the swirling clouds charged quickly toward the farmhouse.

What’s happening in this story? What are you picturing? A treacherous tornado? A devastating storm rumbling onto a small Kansas farm? If so, the language in the story was successful. As this example shows, the language you use can help audiences create a mental picture. Creating imagery for the minds of your audience is a powerful tool for speakers to use. The speaker wants the audience to sense danger and intensity around the approaching tornado. To create that audience experience, you must craft language that emphasizes these elements.

Aesthetics is not just an experience of beauty, it is the study and enactment of art that leads to sensation, or a felt sense. A simple Google search defines aesthetics as “artistically valid or beautiful”. We often think of a sunset as being aesthetically beautiful or providing us with an aesthetically pleasing experience. What makes something aesthetically pleasing? How can we study those things to re-create those sensations?

In public speaking, aesthetics combines rhetorical traditions (style and delivery) to captivate and evoke an experience for an audience. Aesthetics looks at the overall experience for the audience including verbal delivery, nonverbal delivery, presentation aids, and the use of space.

Public speaking is highly embodied, and experiencing information through a person and their body is highly sensational. Creating an aesthetic experience means setting the scene and stage for your audience to feel good or bad; to move your audience toward something by motivating them to act or think. The goal is to hold your audience’s attention and invite them to focus in.

Think about a wedding ceremony, for example. Weddings are often aesthetically pleasing – purposefully beautiful and artistic. If you are part of the wedding, you make decisions that will provide your audience with an aesthetic experience: flowers, lights, rehearsed movement, and speaking. All these components add to how the wedding is received. To guarantee a successful experience that meets your audience’s expectations, focus on the elements that you can control (where the chairs are, what stories are told in the ceremony, and how long the cocktail hour is).

As a speaker, you also make aesthetic choices around controllable components, like verbal delivery, to captivate and evoke a felt experience for and with your audience.

Student Shout-Out:

“Only use aesthetic or descriptive language if you’re ready to match it with your tone and delivery. If you’re going to paint a picture with words, make sure your voice reflects that. I don’t want to hear a dramatic description of your breakfast delivered like you’re reading a grocery list” (Kuehner, 2025).[1]

Vivid Language

Vivid language evokes the senses and arouses the sensations of smelling, tasting, seeing, hearing, and feeling. Think of the word “ripe.” What is “ripe?” Do ripe fruits feel a certain way? Smell a certain way? Taste a certain way? Ripe is a sensory word. Most words just appeal to one sense, like vision.

When using vivid language, you are trying to bring sensations to life to create a vivid experience for your audience. Vivid language can take time to craft. As you work through your speech, determine where you would like the audience to experience a particular sensation, and focus on integrating vivid language. Consider how to verbally create a scenario where the audience feels like they are a part of the scene. Remember that pathos is a persuasive appeal at your disposal, and using vivid language can assist in creating an emotional experience for the audience.

Consider your answers to the following questions:

  • How would you describe the current state of your bedroom or dorm room? What words could you use that would create an emotional response from someone listening to your description?
  • How would you describe your favorite meal to someone in a way that they would experience a sensory impression?

Rhetorical Techniques

Rhetorical techniques are traditional techniques used to engage audiences and make ideas more attention-getting and memorable. Although associated with persuasive speech, these techniques are also effective with other types of speeches. Using figurative language tools like alliteration, parallelism, and rhetorical tropes can help a speech come across with more impact.

Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in a sentence or passage. In his “I Have a Dream Speech,” Dr. Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Do you notice how the consonant of “C” resounds throughout?

Parallelism is the repetition of sentence structures. It can be useful for stating your main ideas.

“Give me liberty or I’d rather die.”

“Give me liberty or give me death.”

Which one of these sounds better? The second one uses parallelism and is quoted directly from JFK’s inaugural address, as is the following: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” The repetition of the three-word phrases in this sentence (including the word “any” in each) is an example of parallelism. By using these techniques, your audience will recognize patterns of language and pay close attention to your speech to see what else you will say and how you will say it.

Tropes are a turning of text where the meaning is changed or altered to provide new insight (Brummett, 2019). Tropes are useful because they help the audience see an idea in a new light. This can be particularly helpful if you’re struggling to create a vivid experience. Below we will dive into two specific types of tropes – metaphors and similes.

Metaphors are direct comparisons. A metaphor can help by comparing your argument to an idea that the audience is familiar with. If you’re trying to evoke a particular feeling, make sure the compared idea can arouse that feeling.

Examples

Two examples of this are as follows:

Love is a battlefield.

Upon hearing the charges, the accused clammed up and refused to speak without a lawyer.

Similes are related to metaphors, and use “like” or “as” when crafting a comparison. An example is… “The truck runs like a beast.”

Whatever trope you use, the goal is to craft an interesting comparison or turn the text in a unique way that leads to greater comprehension for the audience.

Research Spotlight: Researchers found that audience
members had greater aesthetic appreciation when a metaphor was used compared to conventional, familiar rhetoric (Wimmer et al., 2016).

Storytelling

Stories, in the form of anecdotes and narrative illustrations, are powerful tools for a public speaker. For better or worse, audiences are more likely to remember anecdotes and narratives long after a speech’s statistics are forgotten. Humans love stories and will often walk away from a speech remembering a powerful story or example. It is important to note that there is no “one size fits all” way of storytelling.

As an art form, storytelling may include:

  • Attention to sequence, or the order of the story.
  • Embedding drama (or using pathos).
  • The use of imagery (or figurative language).

If you have personal experience with an argument or advocacy that you select, it may be helpful to provide a short story for the audience that provides insight into what you know. Anecdotes are a form of evidence; we feel more connected with an idea if the story is related to a personal experience. For example, if you selected police brutality as a speech advocacy, embedding a story about police violence may support your thesis statement and allow your audience to visualize what that might be like. It may draw them in to consider a new perspective.

Similarly, consider the placement of your story. The following areas are places where you could add a brief story in your speech:

  • In the beginning as part of the attention getter.
  • In the middle as evidence to support a main point.
  • In the end as a way to wrap up the speech and leave the audience with something meaningful to consider.

Stories, rhetorical techniques, and vivid language are important mechanisms to evoke language and create an aesthetic experience for your audience.

In addition to what you say, verbal delivery also includes how you say it, including: vocal projection, verbal enunciation and punctuation, vocal pace and rate, and strategic use of pauses.

Student Shout-Out:

“In my opinion, these are more advanced writing techniques, and just like before, the intrigue and detail need to show up in your delivery, too. And heads up—if you’re using them just to make your speech seem longer or more formal (like having AI write it), it’ll probably be pretty obvious based on how you deliver it” (Kuehner, 2025).

Projection

You may have experienced a situation where an audience notified a speaker that they couldn’t be heard. “Louder!” Here, the audience is letting the speaker know to increase their volume, the softness or loudness of their voice. In this example, the speaker needed to project their vocals to fit the space by increasing their volume. However, in a more formal setting, the audience may not give such candid feedback, so it is your job to prepare to project your voice appropriately.

Projection is a strategy to vocally fill the space. The space dictates which vocal elements need to be adapted, because every person in the room should be able to hear you comfortably. If you speak too softly (too little volume or not projecting), your audience will struggle to hear and may give up trying to listen or understand. If you speak with too much volume, your audience may feel uncomfortable, like you are yelling at them. Your volume should fit the size of the audience and the room.

Student Shout-Out:

“For anyone dealing with speaking anxiety, using your voice to really own the space can feel super intimidating. But trust me—what’s even worse is getting stopped mid-speech because your professor can’t hear you. That’s why practicing in the actual delivery space can make a big difference. Try recording yourself from the back of the room to check your volume and make sure you’re not too quiet, even from the front” (Kuehner, 2025).

Vocal Enunciation and Punctuation

Vocal enunciation refers to the expression of words and language, and correctly pronouncing words.

Have you ever spoken to a friend who replied, “You’re mumbling!” If so, they’re signaling to you that they can’t understand your message. You may have pronounced the words correctly but had indistinct enunciation of the words, leading to reduced comprehension.

One technique to increase enunciation occurs during speech rehearsal, and it is known as the “dash” strategy: e-nun-ci-ate e-very syll-a-ble in your pre-sen-ta-tion.

The dashes signify distinct vocal enunciation to create emphasis and expression. However, don’t go overboard! The dash strategy is an exaggerated exercise and should not lead to a choppy vocal delivery. Instead, use the dash strategy to find areas where difficult and longer words need more punctuated emphasis and, through rehearsal, integrate those areas of emphasis into your speech.

Student Shout-Out:

“If you’re using a thesaurus or AI to throw in unfamiliar words just to ‘sound smart’ (which I’ve seen happen a lot), but you can’t pronounce them, that’s an easy way to lose points” (Kuehner, 2025).

Exercise

Select a couple of sentences from a speech that you can use for this activity. Speak your sentences aloud while practicing the “dash” strategy. Break down each syllable of your selected speech, marking each syllable with a dash. Now adjust your delivery to naturally incorporate clear enunciation without sounding choppy.

Verbal punctuation is the process of imagining the words as they are written to insert purposeful, punctuated pauses to conclude key thoughts. Your speech is not a run-on sentence. Verbal punctuation allows decisiveness and avoids audiences wondering, “is this still the same sentence?”

Verbal punctuation is a strategy to minimize common vocalized fillers, including “like, so, and, um.” Rather than using a filler word to fill a vocal void in the speech, punctuate the end of the sentence through a decisive pause (like a period in writing!).

Although we all use vocalized fillers, especially in informal conversation, too many filler words can distract the people listening to you. The more you rehearse purposeful verbal punctuation and decisive endings to your well-crafted thoughts and arguments, the fewer filler words you will use.

It is helpful to ask for feedback from friends, coworkers, or teachers. “What are my filler words?” One student, for example, was unaware how often they used “kind of” until a friend pointed out the overuse of this filler. Once you are aware of your favorite filler words, work carefully and consciously to catch yourself when you say them. “Consciously” is key, because you need to bring an awareness of your fillers to the forefront of your brain.

Student Shout-Out:

“Know your filler words!” (Kuehner, 2025).

Pace and Rate

During a speech, the speed you say words at is the rate. A slower rate may suggest to the audience that you do not know your speech. It may also be boring if the audience is processing information faster than it’s being presented.

Contrarily, speaking too fast may overwhelm an audience’s ability to keep up with and digest what you are saying. It helps to imagine that your speech is a jog that you and your friends (the audience) are taking together. You (the speaker) set the pace based on how quickly you speak. If you start sprinting, it can be too difficult for your audience to keep up and they may give up halfway through.

If speaking fast applies to you, be sure to practice slowing down. Write delivery cues in your notes to maintain a more comfortable rate. Delivery cues are notes in the margins to remind yourself to “slow down”, “pause”, or “breathe”.

Maintain a steady and purposeful rate at the beginning of your speech, because your audience will be getting used to your voice. We may have called a business where the person answering the phone hastily mumbles, and we aren’t sure if we called the right number. Since the introduction to a speech is designed to grab the audience’s attention and spark interest, you will want to focus on clear vocal rate right at the start.

You may also consider varying the rate depending on the type of information being communicated. Slowing your rate for a difficult piece of supporting material may be helpful, opposed to talking slow for the entire time. Similarly, quickening your rate in certain segments can communicate urgency. Watching yourself give a speech via recording is a great way to gauge your natural rate and pace.

Student Shout-Out:

“Fast speaking is one of the most common delivery issues I’ve seen. It’s totally natural and almost everyone does it. Listen to recordings, time yourself, and practice. You can control it even if it means giving yourself reminders to take a breath and slow down. I’ve done that myself. In extreme cases, you could even use a BPM or metronome app to help keep your pace steady in practice” (Kuehner, 2025).

Vocal Pauses

A common misconception for public speaking students is that pausing during your speech is bad, but pausing can increase the comprehension of your argument. This is especially true if you are making an important point, if you want a statement to have a powerful impact, or if you are providing new or technical information. In these cases, the audience may need additional time to absorb what you are saying. Pauses should be controlled to maintain audience attention and create additional emphasis areas.

Of course, pausing too much in frequency and length can be troublesome. Someone who pauses too often may appear unprepared. Someone who pauses for too long (more than a few seconds) runs the risk of the audience feeling uncomfortable or becoming distracted and letting their attention wander.

Remember that speeches are often ephemeral: meaning the audience only experiences the speech once in real time (unlike reading where they can go back if they miss something). To see if you may need to pause to help your message be better understood, watch for nonverbal cues that audiences may give you as feedback. Audiences are generally reactive and will use facial expressions and body language to communicate if they are listening, and if they are confused, angry, or supportive.

Introduction to Nonverbal Delivery

Have you ever played charades? You have likely “acted out” a person, place, or a thing, using only your body and no words. The game demonstrates the heightened or exaggerated use of nonverbal behaviors. Through acting out concepts, objects, or ideas, this game highlights how powerful nonverbal communication can be for delivering messages to an audience.

When speaking, your job is to create a captivating experience for your audience that leads them to new information. Nonverbals are an important component of that experience by accentuating your content and contributing to aesthetics of your speech.

The nonverbal part of your speech is a presentation of yourself and your message. Nonverbals are a key part of living and communicating in and through your body. Using eye contact, vocal variety, posture, gestures, and facial expressions, you enhance your message and invite your audience to pay focused attention to you. Your credibility, sincerity, and knowledge become apparent through nonverbal behaviors.

In this section, we explore various nonverbal components that influence your message to create an aesthetic experience for your audience. Rather than a checklist of skillsets, we invite you to read these as a series of related behaviors and practices.

Eye Contact

Eye contact creates an intimate and interpersonal experience for individual audience members. Part of creating a meaningful experience is by making eye contact with your audience. The general rule of thumb is that 80% of your total speech time should be spent making eye contact with your audience (Lucas, 2015). When you’re able to connect by using eye contact, you create a more trusting and transparent experience between you and your audience.

Work to maintain approximately three seconds of eye contact with audience members throughout the room. You are, after all, speaking to them, so use your eyes to make contact. This may also reduce some anxiety because you can envision yourself speaking directly to one person at a time, rather than a room full of strangers.

Imagine bringing in two qualified applicants for a job opening. At the interview, each applicant sits directly across from you and three other assisting colleagues. While answering questions one of the applicants never breaks eye contact with you. It’s likely that as the interview progresses, you begin to feel uncomfortable, even threatened, and begin shifting your own eyes around the room awkwardly. When the applicant leaves, you finally relax but realize that you can’t remember anything the applicant said. The second applicant enters, looks down at their notes, and never makes direct eye contact with you or anyone else. As you focus on their answers, they seem so uncomfortable that you can’t concentrate on the exchange. Both approaches are common mistakes when integrating eye contact into a speech.

We have likely all seen speakers who read their presentation from notes and never look up. It is also common for a speaker to focus in on one audience member (like the teacher!) and never break their gaze. It’s important to note that you want to establish genuine eye contact with your audience, and not “fake” eye contact. There have been a lot of techniques generated for “faking” eye contact, and none of them look natural.

Bad Examples

These techniques should be avoided:

  • Three points on the back wall – You may have heard that instead of making eye contact, you can just pick three points on the back wall and look at each point. This looks like you are staring off into space, and your audience will spend most of your speech trying to figure out what you are looking at. This technique may work better for a larger audience, but in a more intimate space (the classroom), the audience is close enough to be suspicious. They can tell you aren’t looking at them.
  • The swimming method – Happens when someone reads their speech and looks up quickly/briefly, like a swimmer who pops their head out of the water for a breath before going back under. Eye contact is more than just physically moving your head; it is about looking at your audience and establishing a connection.

Before you stand up to give your next speech, remember that you have done the work, and you are prepared. You have something to say, and people want to listen.

Student Shout-Out:

“I like scanning and moving your eyes around the room so you’re not focused on any one face. In my opinion, it’s pretty obvious when you’re just staring at the wall” (Kuehner, 2025).

Gestures and Hands

The key to knowing what to do with your hands is to know your own embodied movement and to trust/adjust your natural style as needed. Remember to stand with your body and palms open.

Are you someone who uses gestures when speaking? If so, great! Use your natural gestures to create purposeful emphasis for your audience. If you were standing around talking to your friends and wanted to list three reasons why you should all take a road trip this weekend, you might hold up your fingers as you counted off the reasons. Try to pay attention to what you do with your hands in regular conversations and incorporate that into your delivery. Be conscious though, of not gesturing too often. Gestures are meant to highlight information for the audience, but too many gestures can be distracting.

Are you someone who generally rests your arms at your sides? That’s OK, too! Work to keep a natural look but challenge yourself to integrate a few additional gestures throughout the speech.

Everyone who gives a speech in public gets nervous. Even professionals feel that way, but they have learned how to combat nerves through experience and practice. When we get scared or nervous, our bodies emit adrenaline into our systems so we can deal with the perceived threat. In your public speaking class, and in many other public speaking situations, you are asked to speak for a specific duration of time, so that burst of adrenaline is going to try to manifest itself somehow. One of the main ways that your adrenaline shows itself is through your hands. Three common reactions to this adrenaline rush are:

  • Jazz hands! Nervous speakers can unknowingly incorporate “jazz hands”—shaking your hands at your sides with fingers opened wide— at various points in their speech. This, and behaviors like it, can easily become distracting.
  • Stiff as a board. People who don’t know what to do with their hands sometimes hold their arms stiffly at their sides, behind their backs, or in their pockets. All these options can look unnatural and distracting.
  • Hold on for dear life! Some speakers might grip their notes or a podium tightly with their hands. This might also result in tapping on a podium, table, or another object nearby, which is (you guessed it) …… distracting.

It is important to remember that just because you aren’t sure what your hands are doing does not mean they aren’t doing something. If you are not sure if you fidget, display jazz hands, grip the podium, or put your hands in your pockets, ask a classmate to watch as you rehearse your upcoming speech. It is possible that when they let you know what your hands were doing, your response will be, “Did I really do that? I don’t even remember!”

Watch Dananjaya Hettiarachchi, a Toastmasters International world champion of public speaking, reveal his best tips about body language. Then choose one of his tips to improve your own gestures: “4 essential body language tips from a world champion public speaker” (Business Insider, 2016).

Feet and Posture

The default position for your feet is shoulder-width apart, with your knees slightly bent. You need to treat public speaking as a physical activity. Public speaking is often viewed as merely the transmission of information or a message, rather than as a full body experience. Being in-tune with your body will allow you to speak comfortably. You’ll also want to focus on your posture. As an audience member, you may have witnessed speakers with slumped shoulders or those who lean into the podium with their entire body. If you focus on maintaining posture in everyday life, it will eventually become habitual and be second nature when you are speaking.

Research Spotlight: The “Power Pose.” Some research
(Cuddy, 2012)
indicates that standing in a power pose with your feet wide and hands on the hips (picture a superhero) may trick your mind into experiencing higher levels of
confidence. Focusing on good posture and solid grounding will also assist you in maintaining eye
contact and projecting your voice throughout the speaking space. Watch Cuddy’s (2012) entire TED Talk and learn more.

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Just like your hands, nervous energy may try to work its way out through your feet. Common difficulties include:

  • The side-to-side. You may feel awkward standing without a podium and try to shift your weight back and forth. This could soon lead to noticeable and in-sync side steps and/or swaying your full body side-to-side.
  • The twisty leg. Another variation is when a speaker begins twisting their feet around each other or around their lower leg.
  • Stiff-as-a-board. Some speakers put their feet together, lock their knees, and never move from that position. Locked knees can restrict oxygen to your brain, so there are many reasons to avoid this.

These options all look unnatural and will be distracting to your audience.

Exercise

Find a space where you can stand comfortably. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and slightly bend your knees. Strike a power pose and hold it for two minutes, focusing on feeling confident and grounded. After a minute, relax your arms by your sides but maintain the stance with your feet and posture. Then look in a mirror and practice your speech, maintaining your posture and confident stance throughout. After completing the speech, reflect on how the power pose and proper posture made you feel. Did you feel more confident and in control? How did this affect your voice and presence?

Movement

When you and your body move, you communicate. For example, you may have a friend who frantically gestures and paces the room when telling exciting stories (their movement is part of how they communicate their story). They likely do this unconsciously, which is often how most of our informal movement occurs.

Many of us have certain elements of movement that we integrate into our daily interactions. It’s important to know your go-to movements and to ask: how can I utilize these movements to enhance the audience’s experience?

Survey a Friend: Not sure what nonverbals you commonly use when communicating? Ask a friend! Your friends are observant, and they can likely tell you if you over-gesture, look down, stay poised, etc. Use this to determine areas of focus for your speeches.

Movement depends on two main points: 1) What’s the space? 2) What’s the message?

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Towson University Student speaking at podium for Commencement

Using a lectern provides nonverbal opportunities as well as constraints. If you need to use a microphone to be heard, then you need to stay behind the microphone to guarantee sound. While partially constraining, this allows a stable location to place your notes, and allows you to focus on other verbal and nonverbal techniques.

If you are speaking in a way similar to a TedTalk, you are not constrained by a stable microphone, and you have a stage for bodily movement. The open stage means that the entire space becomes part of the aesthetic experience for the audience. In addition to the space, your message and content assist in deciding how or why you might move around the space. It’s necessary to ask, “how does movement support, enhance or detract from the message?” and “how might movement support, enhance, or detract from the aesthetic experience for the audience?” Remember that most public speeches are transient, where the audience is attempting to comprehend your message in one shot or run through. Thinking through where your movement can assist in translating your information is important.

Once you have knowledge of the speaking space and speech content, you can start using movement to add dimension to the aesthetic experience for your audience.

One benefit of movement is that it allows you to engage with different sections of the audience. If you are not constrained to one spot, you can use movement to engage with the audience by adjusting your spatial dynamic. You can literally move your body to different sides of the stage and closer to various members of the audience. This allows for each side of a room to be pulled into the content because you close the physical distance and create clear pathways for eye contact.

Take note of how the speaker uses the space to engage his audience in this Ted Talk

The 4 a.m. mystery (Rives, 2007).

Without movement, sections of a larger audience may feel lost or forgotten. Consider your role as a student. Have you experienced a professor who stays still and does not move to different parts of the room? It can be difficult to listen or take notes if a speaker is dominating one area of the space and ignoring others.

As a speaker, you can often move forward and backward, which allows you to move closer to the audience or back away depending on what experience you’re trying to create. In addition to audience engagement, movement often signals a transition between ideas, or an attempt to visually stress an important piece of information. If you’re walking your audience through information chronologically, movement can mark progression where your body becomes the visual marker of time passing.

You may also want to signal a transition between main ideas, and movement can assist with that, too. Moving physically as your main points transition from one to another can emphasize connections between your ideas while letting the audience know that you are going to progress in the argument. If integrating movement during a transition feels choppy or awkward, then the organization of your main points may need re-working.

Using purposeful movement can enhance your aesthetics. While movement can enhance, it can also distract and constrain. Keep these common pitfalls in mind:

  • The pace-master. Likely due to nervousness, a speaker paces back and forth without any clear reason. Unfortunately, if the audience is asking, “what are they doing?”, they’re likely not focusing on the speaker’s content. While it’s OK to “walk and talk”, avoid doing so constantly. As a speaker, maintain a solid footing when you aren’t moving.
  • Obstructing the view: It’s likely that at some point, you’ll use objects or other presentation enhancements (like a PowerPoint or video) during your speech. Make sure you aren’t moving directly in front of the audience’s line of sight. Even if you aren’t referencing something, it can be awkward to walk in front of a projection light.

Practice moving from one side of a room to the other as you explain a topic you’re passionate about, using gestures to emphasize key points and engage your listeners. Have a friend or classmate record your movements so you can watch them later and review the aesthetics of your movements.

Facial Expressions

Using facial expressions can effectively enhance pathos, because it generates and transfers feelings from a speaker to the audience. Facial expressions also greatly impact an audience’s perception of the speaker. However, it is important to note that not all audience members may interpret your expressions the same.

Facial expressions communicate to others in ways that are congruent or incongruent with your message and are generally categorized as one of the following: happy, sad, angry, fearful, surprised and disgusted. Your facial expressions matter, and your audience will be looking at your face to guide them through your speech, so they’re an integral part of communicating meaning and demonstrating to your audience the feeling and intention of your message.

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If your facial expressions seem contradictory to the tone of the message, an audience may feel distrust toward you as a speaker. Children might, for example, say, “I’m fine” or “It doesn’t hurt” after falling and scraping their knee, but their face often communicates a level of discomfort. In this case, their facial expression is incongruent with their verbal message. If you’re frowning while presenting information that the audience perceives to be positive, they may feel uneasy or unsure how to process that information. So, congruency can increase your ethos (credibility) and make you a more believable and trustworthy speaker in the eyes of your audience.

Given the amount of information we encounter daily (including information about global injustices), it’s often insufficient to simply state a problem and how to solve it. Audience members need to invest in you as the speaker, and using facial expressions to communicate emotions can demonstrate your commitment and overall feelings around an issue.

Student Shout-Out:

“All of this is to say; the goal is to get you into an extemporaneous mindset. Building a close connection with your class through study groups, group chats, or whatever works is super helpful. You’ll basically be talking to friends, which makes it way easier to gesture and move naturally” (Kuehner, 2025).

Attire

Your appearance can influence how the audience perceives your credibility as a speaker, which is key to influencing listeners. What you wear (like other aesthetic components), can enhance or detract from the audience’s experience. You want your attire to be compatible with the message you’re delivering. Context is relevant here too, as the purpose of your speech and knowledge of your audience will help you decide on appropriate attire for the occasion.

We recommend considering two questions when selecting your attire:

First, “what attire matches the occasion?” Is this a casual occasion? Does it warrant a more professional or business-casual approach? If you’re speaking at an organization’s rally, for example, you may decide to wear attire with the organization’s logo on it. Other occasions, like a classroom or city council meeting, may require a higher level of professional attire.

Second, “have I selected any attire that could be distracting while I am speaking?” Certain kinds of jewelry, for example, might make additional noise or move around your arm, and audiences can focus too much on the jewelry. In addition to noisemakers, some attire may have distracting prints such as letters, wording, or pictures.

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Towson University students in business attire provided by
SuiTUp Professional Attire Closet

Aesthetics and Credibility

Think about your audience when you are a speaker. These aesthetic choices will influence your audience and assist them in determining if you are credible and if they want to listen to your message. Aesthetic choices are also important when you are in the audience. It is imperative to be critical and reflect on how you are filtering a speaker’s information through their aesthetics.

For example, you may decide to wear business casual clothing to increase the likelihood that your audience views you as credible. As an audience member, be careful assuming someone is not credible due to their attire. Business attire can be a privilege that not everyone can afford.

Eye contact can also be investigated. We’ve alluded that eye contact increases trust amongst your audience. However, the connection between eye contact and higher levels of credibility is specific to a U.S. American cultural context. Culture defines how we interpret and understand certain aesthetic choices, including eye contact. Remember that culture is always a core component of communication. As an audience member, be careful of presumptively judging a speaker based on your own cultural expectations, identities, or positions.

Student Shout-Out:

“As much as I’d love to say you should wear sweats on speech day, your brain might get confused. Put on your gladiator suit (shoutout to my Scandal fans)” (Kuehner, 2025).

Conclusion

We have explored the crucial role that nonverbal delivery plays in effective public speaking. Nonverbal cues greatly enhance your message and engage your audience. If mishandled, nonverbal cues can distract and undermine your speech. By understanding and refining these elements, you can significantly improve your public speaking skills.

Next up: Visual Aids!

 

References

Business Insider. (2016, September 10). 4 essential body language tips from a world champion public speaker. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK3jSXYBNak

Brummett, B. (2019). Techniques of Close Reading, 2nd ed. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Cuddy, A. (2012). Your body language may shape who you are. TedTalk. https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are?language=en

Lucas, S. A. (2015). The art of public speaking (12th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Rives (2007, March). The 4 a.m. mystery. TED Talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/rives_the_4_a_m_mystery?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Wimmer, L., Christmann, U., & Ihmels, E. (2016). Non-conventional figurative language as aesthetics of everyday communication. Metaphor and the Social World, 6(2), 243-275. doi:10.1177/1350507602333002


  1. Olivia Kuehner collaborated with faculty and contributed to this textbook by providing annotations related to her experience as a student and as a Public Communication Center (PCC) student mentor. She authored all the ‘Student Shout-Out’ highlights in this textbook.

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Use Your Voice: Public Speaking as Advocacy Copyright © 2024 by Melanie R. Morris; Jennifer E. Potter, Ph.D.; and Dr. Kanika Jackson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.