This article was originally written in Turkish and has been translated into English with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). The translation may contain errors; the original Turkish version is the authoritative text.
Speech is movement. Just as the success of a novelist or a storyteller lies in the way they set our imagination in motion, taking us to other worlds and letting us live in them, a good speaker paints pictures in our minds with the words they use, with their tone of voice, their emphasis and their intonation. Or what they say creates images on the screen of our imagination like a strip of film. The richness of these images is proportional to the speaker’s ability and knowledge in using the materials of speech I have just listed.
Whatever work we do, to achieve success and climb the ladder of our profession more easily, we need to be good speakers. And to be a good speaker, a person must have a solid body of knowledge in their own field and at least as much social and cultural grounding.
There are three important ways of building culture. The first is reading, but understanding well while reading; the second is listening, but understanding well while listening; and the third is watching and observing, but doing this well.
One of the most important parts of your life is speaking, because speech is the most important means of communication we establish with individuals and communities. You can communicate by speaking without seeing the other person, or without them being able to see you. The most typical example of this is the telephone.
You may have a very broad grounding and wealth of knowledge in your work or in general culture. But if you cannot carry out the act of speaking well and correctly, it means you cannot make good use of that knowledge and experience.
Another person who does the same work as you, but who does not have as much knowledge and skill in it, may appear more successful than you if they speak better, because they will be able to express their smaller store of knowledge better. That is an injustice you do to yourself. If you look at people who are successful in their profession, you will see that most of them are good speakers. Remember that not only in working life but also in social life and in love, the people who are admired, who are surrounded by a wide circle and whose friendship others enjoy are those who express themselves well. For the quality of one’s speech is a reflection of one’s personality.
So why shouldn’t we be like that too? In my next articles I will discuss what we need to do to become quality speakers, or to improve the quality of our speaking.