Assessment:
Analyze and evaluate the speech styles and registers used by the speaker
in this video [Link] .
Dananjaya Hettiarachchi was crowned the World Champion of Public Speaking
by Toastmasters International. Dananjaya's opening style was an attention grabber and
theatrical. He took time to take the flower out of his left pocket (in theatre, this is called
'moments') and used it as an analogy in his speech. He even addressed the audience as
“flower” because of the positiveness of it.
The speaker, Dananjaya, used a variety of speech patterns but just one speech register,
which is the formal one. The language he chose was intended to be understood by everyone in
the audience because he is speaking in front of a large group of people. He used a formal
speech style to start his speech and a casual one to finish it. In the middle of his speech we can
hear that he uses the intimate style when he got arrested and was confronted by his mother that
she wanted him to be a better man. He meanwhile, uses consultative style of speech every time
he talked to his father, but delivered it to the crowd using casual style.
Dananjaya, according to his speech, heard the statement “I see something in you, but I
don’t know what it is” three times. The first one was from his father’s friend where he learned
more things about various fields from him. He then started to dream big which brought him back
to high school and finish college. The second one was from the stranger he met in the club
where his father brought him, where he discovered from there that he can speak, and that he
loves to speak, which led him to become a teacher. The last one was from his wife, when he
asked her why she married him and his wife answered, “I see something in you.” He doesn’t
realize at first, but those persons brought changes in his life. They were the ones who led him to
where he is now.
At the end of his speech, he made us realize how important people in our lives,
especially those who mold and motivate us to become where and what we are now. There is
something in us that we cannot see, that’s why God is using the people around us to tell us
what it is. Let’s always be thankful and be an inspiration also for others.