I once worked with a guy who was a magician/”mentalist” and we had a business together doing hypnosis classes and large seminars for weight loss and smoking, among others. This was about the time that NLP had just started to be publicized. He spent a lot of time researching and learning voice/communication techniques and he incorporated NLP principles into his program. This was also around or after the time that “subliminal persuasion” techniques had been “exposed”.
He would watch the teevee evangelists (like those now on TBN), motivational speakers and politicians, and analyze their voice techniques. He called it “voice rolling” and he could do it extremely well. In front of a large group of people, he could get almost all of them sincerely believing in whatever it was he was talking about. All critical reasoning faculties were bypassed using those techniques. To them, he was just a “wonderful speaker” and motivationalist. They loved to listen to him.
It was really interesting to watch him turn on his “voice rolling” when he got up in front of a group. I’ve since watched numerous preachers and speakers and politicians and can instantly recognize their “voice rolling”. It really turns me off, as I know that anyone utilizing it is probably not doing it for anyone’s benefit other than their own, and they certainly aren’t doing it naturally. They have spent a lot of time learning the techniques - or they have speech writers and voice coaches who assist them in adopting it.
Watch any old film of Hitler’s speeches. You don’t even have to understand German to hear his use of this technique- the rhythms, pacing, cadences, repetitions, pauses. Jesse Jacka$$ immediately jumps to mind also. Zerobama sounds scarily like them when I listen to him making a pre-scripted speech. The technique won’t work in question/answer formats or in simple conversational exchanges, but any great orator learns and incorporates these techniques into their speech patterns when they are addressing groups of people.
... “but any great orator learns and incorporates these techniques into their speech patterns when they are addressing groups of people.”
I suspect many of the great orators of history have used these techniques naturally — without really realizing they were using them.
On another note, I once read an interesting article purporting that the Koran was written in such a way — very poetic — as to have a hypnotic effect upon the reader.
Thank you for your input on this interesting and, I believe, consequential subject.
STE=Q
As children, my brother and I used to listen to Radio Havana Cuba ... Castro’s ranting and raving had the same character. We thought at the time that if Hitler had been Spanish, that’s what he would have sounded like.
That is very interesting! What is “voice rolling”? Does it have to do with inflection up and down?