I really
enjoyed hearing Adichie’s talk and she told some very interesting stories but the
one thing that was amiss in my opinion was the lack of emotion. Apart from her words and eye contact, she did
not stimulate as much emotion as she could have would she have used her space
better. For one, she stood with her
hands on the podium the entire time. I
don’t feel that she was physically engaging with the audience. I also felt that her presentation was flat,
lacking dimension. Her facial
expressions were mute and nonexistent and she told her story in a monotone voice
with little inflection. Her voice lacked
emotion. Whalen explains that “the words
you say are less than 10% of the message” and attitude amounts to 90% (Whalen, 2007, p. 15). Adichie, being a writer, is eloquent in her
speaking and provides a language that creates vivid images in my mind when
listening to her. But I am deriving all
of my meaning solely from the content of her presentation and nothing through
her as the speaker or the physical space she is occupying. Whalen tells us that communication is
something that takes place in the mind of the listeners and the “meaning” that
they contrive from your presentation is a culmination of not just your words,
but your passion, heart and ideas (2007).
This meaning is what impacts the listener and motivates them to buy into what
you are saying. Whalen further explains
that “meaning starts in your mind and flows to your body, and then—through
symbols of gesture, tone, and expression – to your audience” (2007, p.
20). Adichie’s body language is not
supporting the content of her story.
In
addition to the lack of movement, not just physically, but emotionally, she
lacks enthusiasm in her delivery. There
are no spikes of excitement, whether negative or positive that make me move
forward in my seat. Although I cannot
deny that I was moved on a different level through her eloquent narrative and
impacting examples, there was a sense of complacency and rigidness about her
presence. Part of me believes that as a
writer, she is used to delivering her stories to a different type of audience,
the absent audience. As a writer, it is
solely through the content of her writing that she can motivate, spark emotion
and move her audience since the only sensory activity in this medium is the
imagination.
In the
structure of her story, I feel Adichie did encompass some of Denning’s main
elements of the springboard story (Denning,
2011). Her change idea clearly was
to raise awareness of the dangers of creating a single story about a place or a
people and how this limits our world view.
Her examples support her idea and she establishes credibility by
presenting herself as the protagonist in a real time and place. And although at first you believe you might
not identify with the protagonist, she easily brings the audience into a
comforting peer-like relationship. She
fully embodies her change idea by showing us how the single story limits our
perspective of the world and she successfully carries this idea throughout her
narrative. She effectively spells out
the alternatives by showing us how much color and depth we are missing from our
lives from viewing the world through a single story. She then shows us how we can change the single
story to multiple stories that richly color our world and make it such a
wonderful and dynamic place to live and learn.
Although
her presence and delivery did not have the power to move me, I was emotionally
moved by her eloquent language and ability to create vivid images through her
descriptive verbal talent. In essence,
she made up in language what she lacked in physical presence.
References
No comments:
Post a Comment