HEALTH PLUS:The phenomenon that is the after-dinner speech
“But modern man by some malignant fate, when he has eaten simply must orate” –Herbert
WINTER TIME is the time of the after-dinner speech. The after-dinner speech is an interesting phenomenon.
It is one of the most high-risk activities a speaker can undertake. This form of public speaking has been described as the number one phobia on earth and not without good reason.
For the person who agrees to undertake an after-dinner speech, when the event is several months ahead, invariably regrets it when the event is but days away.
It is then that the reality of the after-dinner speech sets in: recognition that the after-dinner speech, if badly delivered, has the potential to ruin a lively, convivial and social evening for everyone present.
A good after-dinner speech is a joy. A bad after-dinner speech is a disaster. And after-dinner speeches can easily go wrong.
Now that the recession has settled, there are fewer events, less frequent dinners and social occasions when people get together.
This makes it all the more important that they are enjoyable and successful which raises the question as to why anyone imports a stranger from another profession to provide an after-dinner speech at such events? And why does anyone agree to be so inveigled?
Received wisdom with regard to after-dinner speeches, from the time of Aristotle who extolled the virtues of oratory, if not the actual after-dinner speech, affirms the complexity of the undertaking.
After-dinner speech-making requires that the speaker be simultaneously witty, informative, relevant, topical, inspirational, enlightening and reflective for an audience who might rather another glass of wine than an after-dinner speech.
And a speaker’s reputation can be ruined by one poor oration with no opportunity for redemption, because being an after-dinner speaker to a specific group of people is a singular invitation that either goes right or wrong.
Perhaps the impossibility of after-dinner speaking is the reason why “glossophobia” or the fear of public speaking is ranked primary among our fears. Ahead of our fears of spiders, snakes and scorpions, greater than our fear of heights, more intense than our fear of enclosed or open spaces, is the fear of public speaking.
Consider the physiological symptoms that the thought, not to mention the delivery, of the after-dinner speech can induce: increased heart rate, dry mouth, trembling, sweating, nausea, abdominal distress, fear of panic, or losing control of one’s script, one’s thoughts, one’s words, one’s ideas or composure.
After-dinner speeches at weddings can part a couple before the nuptials have begun, the best man can deliver the worst kind of oration and fathers of the bride have been known to succumb to excessive alcohol to cope with the after-dinner speech they must make on the day.
In the past, after-dinner speaking was surrounded by tradition and a degree of pomp and ceremony that is encountered much less frequently in the casualness of life today. Resources were available to after-dinner speakers, such as classic treatise Pass the Port which provided famous after-dinner speech templates.
Reading these suggests that the after-dinner speech began life in a gentlemen’s club when they passed the port through a haze of Cuban cigar-generated smoke during which rhetoric of the most flamboyant and politically incorrect kind was engaged in for social cohesion, semantic elitism and discussion of the miseries of gout. But that was some time ago. That day is done.
And if that era is over it has, perhaps, been replaced by the modern motivational speakers who will help listeners to focus, relate, concentrate, meditate, communicate and get in touch with their inner child: all transformative aspirations that seem dissonant with having a pleasant dinner with colleagues and friends.
Perhaps the psychological reason that the tradition of the after-dinner speech still lingers, despite its pitfalls, despite the fact that we are in the middle of a recession and regardless of the fact that the future is not what it used to be, is because it affirms something that cannot be taken away.
Fine oratory the after-dinner speech may not be, but it provides us with the company of each other, the capacity of words to unite us, a topic to enlighten us, bore us or inspire us and a sense of continuity in life, even when everything is changing all round us.
- mmurray@irishtimes.com
- Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist and director of the UCD student counselling services