Dramatics

You know how in overly-dramatic movies with court scenes in them, there is always a guy who makes overly-dramatic speeches in the manner of an overly-dramatic actor who clearly did no prep work at all to represent reality?

You know what I'm talking about. And you know that nobody really talks like that, because when people actually speak like bad dramatic actors, listeners tend to laugh, saying “wow, is he imitating Jack Nicholson in that movie where he says that line that comes off as really cheesy?”

My point: we watch actors make dramatic speeches because we can suspend reality just long enough to be entertained; we don't watch speakers make dramatic speeches, because it just sounds dumb.

But wait! Enter my general region of the world. I am convinced that here, any and all debate technique was garnered from movies. Bad ones. If I turn on the evening news, there is bound to be an arrogant-sounding man who watched one too many B movies, speaking in a crescendoing voice and shaking his fist in action.

Furthermore, the words used are of pure literary variety. English is a studied language here, but taught only in school and rarely perfected from practice in the home. Go into an office, even in the smallest of small towns, and you will hear someone speaking as if he's trying out for Broadway. An excerpt from my solid waste management workshop the other day (note, all capitalized words should be read with EMPHASIS, VOLUME, AND POWER!):

“WE must unite and BEHOLD the power of many persons STANDING as one! We SHALL NOT let die our RIGHT as citizens to ORGANIZE ourselves and FIGHT for what we believe!”

After all of that, the crux of his speech was that we need signs on our garbage cans so people know where to throw biodegradable and nonbiodegradable trash.