Publish at April 16 2025 Updated April 16 2025
When we speak in public, we sometimes want to defend ourselves. Defending ourselves is a strategy that relies on a number of techniques: what are these techniques, and how can we use them to succeed in public speaking?
In 465 BC, on the island of Syracuse in Sicily, two tyrants, Gelon and Hieron, seized land by force and expelled the population. To resolve the dispute, the expropriated and the tyrants were summoned before a court to express themselves and defend their causes. This was the birth of rhetoric. The art of oratory was born out of a need to defend oneself.
Speech, as an intrinsic human activity, has always been a tool of expression and, by extension, of defense. Each individual, through his or her vocabulary, values and principles, uses it to defend or express him- or herself. We're not here to talk about these attitudes, which depend on the upbringing and environment of each individual, but to focus on public speaking, which involves challenges that go beyond the everyday.
To better understand our approach, let's take a look at pleading, the favorite exercise of lawyers. It's a defense activity par excellence, which enables us to demonstrate the inconsistency of an accusation or to mitigate the charges against an accused person. However, we are sometimes called upon to speak in public in contexts where we are obliged to defend ourselves and not simply to communicate. To this end, a series of verbal and non-verbal techniques may be useful.
Public speaking to defend oneself relies primarily on argumentation and persuasion. All you need to do is mobilize the right strategies, especially concessions.
If you're accused of something you don't agree with, you can use a concession, depending on the subject. By way of illustration, if, as part of a right of reply to a clumsy communication made on social networks and relayed with well-founded or erroneous interpretations, you are invited on a television set to talk about it or clarify your thoughts further, it would be better to first proceed by concession. In other words, first accept what you've done, then qualify it.
Words or expressions such as: I admit, such and such a person isn't totally wrong, it's true that, I must first admit that ... etc. are used. The added value of the concession is to attract the sympathy of people who, at first glance, don't think like you, or to demonstrate a kind of humility in order to maximize pathos. There's a saying that "a fault acknowledged is half forgiven".
Another defense strategy is "contrario". Unlike the concession, you are totally opposed to the speech preceding yours. It's a total rejection of what you've been accused of or attributed. If we go back to our example of the awkward post, it's a matter of totally denying the interpretation given. Or even denying that it was you who made it. To do this, you need to be certain that the proof will not be brought to you. It's a radical position that may or may not be useful to you, but it all depends on the context.
Very often in soccer parlance, journalists and fans tend to say that good defense is attack. In other words, to win a soccer match, you have to score goals, because defending without scoring is not the same as winning. The same defense strategy applies to public speaking.
It is based on a figure of speech known as prolepsis. It's a kind of anticipation of your interlocutor's arguments. It "consists in refuting in advance a possible objection".(Larousse Dictionary). This strategy is most effective in spontaneous language. "From an argumentative point of view, prolepsis has the effect of depriving the interlocutor of an objection" (Vincent and Heisler, 1999).
The argumentative procedures or strategies elicited generally come into play in what is known as refutation. In fact, you only defend yourself when there's a before and you only come afterwards. In the context of public speaking, this is called rebuttal.
It's a "logical process aimed at proving the falsity of a piece of information or an argument." It is also the art of controversy or "eristic dialectic", to use the terms of Aristotle and Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's "The Art of Being All Right" opens with an assertion that's worth repeating:
"One can objectively be right, and yet in the eyes of onlookers, and sometimes for oneself, be wrong. Indeed, if an adversary refutes a piece of evidence, and thereby gives the impression of refuting an assertion, other evidence may nevertheless exist. The roles have thus been reversed: the adversary is right even though he is objectively wrong. Thus, the objective truth of a sentence and its validity for the debater and listener are two different things (it's on the latter that the dialectic rests)."
From this quotation, we can see that it's not enough to be right; you have to prove it. Defending oneself therefore calls for the use of appropriate methods to either prove the truth of the facts or demonstrate one's point of view, however erroneous.
Speech is a combat sport, as Bertrand Perrier points out, and you have to defend yourself through argumentative strategies such as concession, a contrario, prolepse and so on.
References
Schopenhauer, Arthur, (1831), The Art of Always Being Right, free version.
https://www.schopenhauer.fr/oeuvres/fichier/l-art-d-avoir-toujours-raison.pdf
Périer, Bertrand, 2017, La parole est un sport de combat, JC Lattès.
https://www.leslibraires.ca/livres/la-parole-est-un-sport-de-bertrand-perier-9782253188186.html?a=1302
Vincent, Diane & Heisler, Troy (1999), "L'anticipation d'objections : prolepse, concession et réfutation dans la langue spontanée", Revue québécoise de linguistique, 27(1), 15-31. https://doi.org/10.7202/603164ar
https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/rql/1999-v27-n1-rql2948/603164ar/
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