Stop Sounding Weak in English - Speak Persuasively Instead

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[00:00:00.000] - Oliver (Host)

Speaking English is one thing, but sounding persuasive in English, using this language in a business or social setting in a way that helps you get what you need? That may still feel impossible for you as an intermediate student of English, since it's not your first language. And you're right, studies do show people are usually more persuasive in their native tongue, unsurprisingly. Which means English learners often feel at a disadvantage in an increasingly global world where English has become the lingua franca. But here's the good news. You don't need to have a perfect level of English to sweet talk someone. Even at an intermediate level, you can use a few simple tricks, which we'll see shortly, to make your English sound stronger, clearer, and more convincing. This episode is made for you, intermediate learners of English who want to sound persuasive without needing to be perfect.

[00:01:09.640] - Oliver (Host)

Welcome back to English and Beyond. I'm Oliver, an English, Latin, and Spanish teacher from the UK. And today we're going to explore how to be persuasive in English. We've got many tough words in today's episode, so if you need some help working out what they mean, please head to www.morethanalanguage.com, where you'll find a transcript and vocabulary flashcards for free. No cost. Now, persuasion is not some magic skill. It's simply the art of making people listen and take your ideas seriously. Every language has ways of doing it, but English has a few particular strengths that make it especially powerful. In this episode, I'll show you what makes speech persuasive in any language, why English in particular can actually help you be convincing, how two famous speakers, Barack Obama and Winston Churchill, used simple tricks that you can borrow, and finally, a demonstration of how the same weak argument can be transformed into something more powerful. Soon, you'll be well on your way to getting whatever you want in English, whether that be a promotion or something in your personal life. Let's begin with a simple truth. Persuasion often looks similar across languages. If you want to convince someone, you need three things. First, structure. Your argument must have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Second, emotion. You must make people feel, not just think. And third, rhythm, because people remember sound almost as much as meaning. Take a famous Latin phrase, Julius Caesar is said to have declared "veni, vidi, vici," - I came, I saw, I conquered.

[00:03:08.380] - Oliver (Host)

Just three short verbs, one after another, to emphasise his swift and decisive victory. That use of three elements is called a tricolon, meaning a group of three. Or we could take the French motto, liberté, égalité, fraternité. Apologies, of course, as always for my accent. Liberty, equality, fraternity. Again, three. In Spanish, you might hear ni un paso atrás ni un segundo perdido. Not one step back, not one second lost. The structure repeats in the two clauses. That's parallelism. So yes, persuasion is everywhere. But English has some special advantages that can make it easier for you to persuade in this foreign language. One advantage is that English is full short, punchy words. Think of words like fight, work, win, lose, hope, trust. They're quick, they're sharp, they're easy to repeat. Another advantage is that English has layers of vocabulary. Because the language borrowed from Anglo-Saxon, French, and Latin, we often have several words for the same idea. For example, to give up, a simple everyday word with Germanic roots, surrender, a bit more formal from French, and then capitulate, very technical, very formal, directly from Latin. By choosing between these levels of formality, you can climb in intensity and make your point feel stronger.

[00:04:46.000] - Oliver (Host)

This can also be especially useful if you're from a Romance language background and you want to sound clever in English without much effort, since the most formal English words will often be similar to your standard vocabulary. English also has a natural beat. It's what we call a stress-timed language. Some syllabus stand out, and that gives English sentences a rhythm. That rhythm makes repetition more memorable in certain cases. Think of the famous translation from Caesar's earlier quotation, We came, we saw, we conquered. It hits three beats like a drum with a special emphasis on the final longer word. And finally, English is really rich in alliteration. That's when words start with the same sound. Because English has such a mixed vocabulary, it's easier to find strong, meaningful words that fit together: pride, power, privilege, or doubt, delay, division. The sound alone makes them persuasive, where in Romance languages, alliteration can sound overdone or contrived. Now, when we want to see how these techniques can be put into action, we can learn a lot by studying how famous political speakers use English. Now, of course, you don't have to agree with someone's politics or even like them as a person to realise the fact that they got to the top level of government in each case makes their speechcraft worth studying.

[00:06:18.120] - Oliver (Host)

Take Barack Obama. In one of his most famous speeches, introducing himself to the country in 2004, he said, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America." Here, he uses antithesis. That's when you place opposites side by side, liberal versus conservative. Then he collapses them into unity, the United States. The sentence has balance. The repetition of the word America reinforces that, and the rhythm of the whole sentence makes it stick. Immediately afterwards, he expanded the idea. "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America, and Asian America. There's the United States of America." This is a textbook example of repetition. More precisely, it's called anaphora, meaning he starts each part with the same phrase, There is not. The repetition builds rhythm. We expect him to list three groups: Black, White, Latino, and then he adds a fourth, Asian. That little surprise breaks the rhythm and makes the line even more inclusive, making his point that America is a country made of many different cultures, but that it is nonetheless a single country. And he ends this point with that strong statement repeated from the previous one, There's the United States of America.

[00:07:51.720] - Oliver (Host)

Now, let's move on to Winston Churchill. His style and his circumstances were very different, but his speech was just as effective. Think of this line from 1940, during the Battle of France campaign of World War II. He said, "We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender." That's pure anaphora. That's great repetition. The same beginning repeated again and again. We shall fight. Each repetition builds rhythm and determination. The speech doesn't just the British people will resist. It makes you feel the resistance. Another very subtle effect. The final word of each clause was Anglo-Saxon in its root until that final word, surrender, which he promised the country it would never do. Surrender, in contrast to the other words, is French. I don't know if this was a conscious choice of his, but it's an interesting thing to note. Or another famous example: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Here, Churchill uses contrast, the many versus the few, and compresses it into a single, memorable line.

[00:09:13.860] - Oliver (Host)

It's short, It's clear and it sticks. So Obama shows us the power of rhythm and inclusivity. Churchill shows us the power of repetition and contrast. Different styles, but the same lesson. Persuasive English doesn't need complicated vocabulary. It needs rhythm, clarity, and emotional force. Now, let's make this practical. Imagine you're the CEO, the boss of a company, and another company is trying to take your company over, to buy out the shareholders. You don't agree with the terms of the deal. You don't think the offer is very good, and you need to persuade your shareholders not to sell. Here, we can hear a weak version. "I don't think we should sell this company because, well, we did build it ourselves after all, and you know, we worked pretty hard on it. Really, lots of people have supported us along the way, so it wouldn't be fair to them either. I mean, selling might seem like progress, but honestly, It just feels more like someone is trying to take something from us." The ideas are actually fine. We built the company, we worked hard, people believed in us. But the way it's said is weak. It's rambling. It's full of little filler words.

[00:10:30.520] - Oliver (Host)

It sounds unsure. Now, let's take the same ideas and make them persuasive. And I warn you, this is going to sound very over the top since we want to make the point very clearly. "We will not sell this company, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. We built it with vision. We built it with courage. We built it with integrity. And make no mistake, to give it up now would be to betray not only ourselves, but every single person who believed in us. This takeover is not opportunity, it is theft. It is not progress, it is plunder, and we will fight it with everything we have." Do you hear the difference? That version uses repetition with variation. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. It uses a tricolon, three points in a row, vision, courage, integrity. It uses antithesis, opposites, not opportunity, theft, not progress, plunder, Plunder. Plunder, incidentally, is a similar word to theft, reinforcing this point. The ideas are exactly the same in both paragraphs, but the form of the second makes the ideas more powerful. So, can you be persuasive in English if it is not your first language? Absolutely. It's true, speaking persuasively may feel easier in your native tongue.

[00:11:55.700] - Oliver (Host)

But English does give you some tools that are hard to beat. Short words that hit like drum beats, a layered vocabulary that lets you climb in intensity, natural rhythm that makes repetition stick, and alliteration that makes words memorable. And here's the best part. You don't have to use all of these. You don't need to sound like Obama. You don't need to sound like Churchill. Just add one technique. Repeat a key phrase, use a sharp contrast, or put your points in threes, and you'll already sound more confident, more convincing, and more persuasive in English. Thank you for listening. And remember, it's not about speaking perfect English. It's about using English in a way that makes people listen to you. See you next week, and thank you very much.