卡耐基演讲·三、培养良好的演讲态度

我举个例子，来说明一般人的谈话态度。我在瑞士阿尔卑斯山的避暑胜地穆伦停留，住在一家伦敦公司经营的旅馆里。一般来说，这家旅馆每周都会从英国邀请两位演讲家向宾客发表演讲，其中一位是著名的英国小说家，她讲“小说的前途”。这个题目不是她自己选的，更糟糕的是，她觉得没有话可说，她并不是真的关心这个题目，因此就顾不得是不是讲得精彩了。小说家匆忙准备了一些提要，站在听众跟前，无视他们的存在，正眼也不瞧他们一下——她有时抬头望着前方，有时低头看着自己的笔记，有时又望着地板。她空洞地按照笔记逐条地念着，眼中雾一般的迷茫，声音飘忽，一个个词都飘到了无尽的太虚中。Let me give you an illustration that is typical of the fashion in which thousands of persons talk. I happened on one occasion to be stopping in Murren, a summer resort in the Swiss Alps. I was living at a hotel operated by a London company; and they usually sent out from England a couple of lecturers each week to talk to the guests. One of them was a wellknown English novelist. Her topic was "The Future of the Novel". She admitted that she had not selected the subject herself; and the long and short of it was that she had nothing she cared to say about it to mate it worthwhile expressing. She had hurriedly made some rambling notes; and she stood before the audience, ignoring her hearers, not even looking at them, staring sometimes over their heads, sometimes at her notes, sometimes at the floor. She unreeled words into the primeval void with a far-away look in her eyes and a far-away ring in her voice.

这算什么表达？是“独白”吧——没有任何一点沟通。而好的演讲，其首要条件就是沟通。一定要让听众感觉到，有一股信息从演讲者的脑海和心中直接传达到他们的脑海和心中。这位小说家的演讲，也许适合在荒凉的戈壁大沙漠里举行。事实上，这种演讲听起来就像讲给大沙漠听的，而不是对人们发表的演讲。That isn't delivering a talk at all. It is a soliloquy. It has no sense of communication. And that is the first essential of good talking: a sense of communication. The audience must feel that there is a message being delivered straight from the mind and heart of the speaker to their minds and their hearts. The kind of talk I have just described might as well have been spoken out in the sandy, waterless wastes of the Gobi desert. In fact, it sounded as if it were being delivered in some such spot rather than to a group of living human beings.

关于演讲的技巧，已经有很多人写过很多荒谬拙劣的评论，倒让它笼罩在各种规则、仪式与人为的神秘中了。陈旧的“演讲术”一向被人们讨厌，也常常把演讲弄得极为荒谬。一些想学会演讲技巧的生意人到图书馆或书店找资料时，往往找到一些叫什么“演讲术”的“巨著”，但一点用都没有。有些学生尽管已经有了长足的进步，可仍然被迫去练习及背诵韦伯斯特和英格索的“演讲术”——多么落伍！这违背了我们现在时代的精神，就跟把英格索夫人和韦伯斯特夫人所戴的帽子戴在今天女孩子的头上一样。An enormous amount of nonsense and twaddle has been written about delivery. It has been shrouded in rules and rites and made mysterious. Old - fashioned "elocution" has often made it ridiculous. The businessman, going to the library or book shop, has found volumes on "oratory" that were utterly useless. In spite of progress in other directions, in almost every state in the Union today, schoolboys are still being forced to recite the ornate "oratory of ' orators' "a thing that is as useless as a squirrel-headed tire pump, as out-of-date as a quill pen.

自从内战结束以来，出现了崭新的演讲理论。为了赶上时代精神，新式的演讲就像电报一样直截了当。曾经流行的华丽文风，不再被现代的听众接受。An entirely new school of speaking has sprung up since the twenties. In keeping with the spirit of the times, it is as modern and as practical as the automobile, direct as a telegram, businesslike as a telling advertisement. The verbal fireworks that were once the vogue would no longer be tolerated by an audience today.

如今，不管是十五人的商业聚会，或上千人齐聚一堂，听众都希望演讲者像私底下聊天时那样直截了当地说出主旨，态度也要像和听众中的某一个人私下交谈那样亲切。态度可以相同，但力量可不能相同，否则大部分听众可就听不见你的声音了。向40个人讲话，必须花比向一个人谈话时更多的力气，就如同建筑物屋上的雕像必须很大，人们从地上看的时候，才会觉得雕像似乎和真人大小一样。A modern audience, regardless of whether it is fifteen people at a business conference or a thousand people under a tent, wants the speaker to talk just as directly as he would in a chat, and in the same general manner he would employ in speaking to one of them in conversation, in the same manner, but with greater force or energy. In order to appear natural, he has to use much more energy in talking to forty people than he does in talking to one, just as a statue on top of a building has to be of heroic size in order to make it appear of lifelike proportions to an observer on the ground.

有一次，马克·吐温在内华达州的矿场发表演讲。演讲后，一名年老的探矿员走上前来问：“这就是你平常说话的语调吗？”At the close of one of Mark Twain's lectures in a Nevada mining camp, an old prospector approached him and inquired: "Be them your natural tones of eloquence?"

这正是听众们所希望的“你平常说话的语调”稍微提高一点。That is what the audience wants: "Your natural tones of eloquence" enlarged a bit.

唯一能够学会这种自然技巧的方法是练习。练习时如果发现自己说起话来扭扭捏捏，就停下来，对自己说：“呀！哪里不对？清醒一下！要有人性，要自然一点。”哪怕说得再刻薄一点都可以。假想听众找出一个人——也许是坐在最后面的人，也许是最不专心的人——和他聊聊闲话，想像他问你一个问题，而你正在回答，而且只有你能回答。如果他是站起来问你，而你又回答他的话，这个过程就能立即让你的讲演更加自然、直截，更像平常的谈话。The only way to acquire the knack of this enlarged naturalness is by practice. And, as you practice, if you find yourself talking in a stilted manner, pause and say sharply to yourself mentally: "Here! What is wrong? Wake up! Be human." Then mentally pick out a person in the audience, someone in the back or the least attentive person you can find, and talk to this person. Forget there is anyone else present at all. Converse with this person. Imagine that he has asked you a question and that you are answering it, and that you are the only one who can answer it. If he were to stand up and talk to you, and you were to talk back to him, that process would immediately and inevitably make your speaking more conversational, more natural, more direct. So, imagine that is precisely what is taking place.

你也许进展得很顺利，最后你也实际地提出问题并向听众解答了这个问题。比如在你的谈话当中，你说：“你们各位是不是有这样的疑问：你这样说，有没有什么证据？当然，我掌握了充分的证据，我现在说明如下……”然后，你接下来回答你提出来的这个象出来中的问题。这样就显得十分自然，可以打破一个人唱独角戏的单调局面，你的演讲会显得直截、愉快，更像和朋友闲话家常。You may go so far as actually to ask questions and answer them. For example, in the midst of your talk, you may say, "and you ask what proof have I for this assertion? I have adequate proof and here it is... "Then proceed to answer the question. That sort of thing can be done very naturally. It will break up the monotony of one's delivery; it will make it direct and pleasant and conversational.

向社区委员会发表谈话的态度，应该和跟老朋友约翰、亨利、史密斯聊天一样。社区委员会是什么样的聚会呢？还不就是一大群的约翰、亨利、史密斯聚在一起吗？能和其中一个聊天，难道和他们全体聊天有什么不同吗？Speak to the Chamber of Commerce just as you would to John Henry Smith. What is a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, after all, but a collection of John Henry Smiths? Won't the same methods that are successful with those men individually be successful with them collectively?

在这之前，我们曾叙述过一位小说家的讲演方式。在她之后，也在那个大舞厅，我们有幸聆听了奥立佛·罗基爵士的讲演。他用曾经贡献出半个世纪的时间思考、研究、试验与探查的成果，作为他的题目——《原子与世界》。这些几乎已经成了他灵魂、思想与生命的一部分，有一些他觉得非说不可的东西，他根本不担心什么，早忘了是在演讲。奥立佛·罗基爵士只关心要告诉听众有关原子的事情，满腔热诚，一心要我们看到他所看到的、感受到的，他的演讲明确、流畅而且感情丰富。Earlier in this chapter was described the delivery of a certain novelist. In the same ballroom in which she had spoken, we had the pleasure, a few nights later, of hearing Sir Oliver Lodge. His subject was "Atoms and Worlds". He had devoted to this subject more than half a century of thought and study and experiment and investigation. He had something that was essentially a part of his heart and mind and life, something that he wanted very much to say. He forgot that he was trying to make a "speech". That was the least of his worries. He was concerned only with telling the audience about atoms, telling us accurately, lucidly, and feelingly. He was earnestly trying to get us to see what he saw and to feel what he felt.

结果他作了一场超凡脱俗的讲演，魅力四射，深深吸引了听众，给他们留下了深刻的印象。他真是全情投入地讲着，然而，我相信他自己没有这样想，听过他演讲的人也没有把他当做是“公众演讲家”。And what was the result? He delivered a remarkable talk. It had both charm and power. It made a deep impression. He was a speaker of unusual ability. Yet I am sure he didn't regard himself in that light. I am sure that few people who heard him over thought of him as a "public speaker" at all.

如果你公开演讲后，听众都怀疑你受过当众演讲的训练，那你可不是在给你的老师争面子，尤其不是给我训练班的老师争面子。我们要求你用自然、轻松的态度讲话，让听众做梦也想不到你竟受过“正式”的训练。一扇好窗户，它本身不会引人注目，它只默默地放入光线。好的演讲家正是这样，他自然而无遮掩，听众没有留意他的神态，只感知他论述的题材。If you speak in public so that people hearing you will suspect that you have had training in public speaking, you will not be a credit to your instructor, especially an instructor in one of my courses. He desires you to speak with such intensified naturalness that your audience will never dream that you have been "formally" trained. A good window does not call attention to itself. It merely lets in the light. A good speaker is like that. He is so disarmingly natural that his hearers never notice his manner of speaking: they are conscious only of his matter.