Well, the Archbishop of Canturbury has really hit the news for a bit of public speaking this week! For example, the Telegraph talks about it here; a BBC article can be found here. If nothing else, it’s a sure-fire indication that people haven’t lost their interest in public speaking and so on.
There’s an interesting sub-story here, too - the actual presentation involved was a lecture given to a room full of lawyers. That’s fine: from what I know of the speech it was appropriate for such an audience and such a context. Sadly, it got taken out of context - partially by Rowan Williams himself when he did a radio interview before-hand, in which he appears to have forgotten that the audience for that sort of thing would be different to his original audience.
Consequently his style was no longer appropriate: people mis-understood what he was saying, jumped to conclusions and reacted to what they heard, not what he was saying.
Salutary lessons all round, eh?
A bit of a problem though - the UK media spent some time slagging the Archbishop off, then, when they realised they’d mis-reported what was included in the actual speech, slagged him off once more for not realising they were going to mis-report him! Some times you can’t win….
… but whether or not the media covered themselves in glory, the responsibility for being understood lies with the speaker……
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