This is a critical and fascinating aspect of speech.
For actors it is about living the character they are portraying.
For everyday speech - speaking - it is letting the picture, "what is in your minds eye", live.
And if you do that, movement of your body will reflect that picture in your minds eye - your arms, legs, facial movements, whole body.
These movements - gestures - precede speaking.. In doing so they influence speaking. The feelings and will you have towards the picture, your minds eye, comes through and radiates outward into our speaking.
Take the short passage I read aloud in the last post entitled Clarity and Picture. I spoke it twice. The first time I pictured what the writer was seeking to convey through the words he chose to write. The second time I did not do this. I simply read and spoke the words, without forming a picture of what the writer intended.
Listen to both recordings and in the first sense my seeking a picture of beauty in relation to the word beautiful. When speaking this word I remember my body moving forward, striving, to envisage a picture, example, feeling of beauty. In the second recording the word beautiful just 'died' - not imparting to the listener any sense of beauty at all.
So basically this is "living into" what we are saying, able to mean what we are speaking because we have thought and felt a phenomenon, a feeling, a wish, a dream, a vision before we speak words to describe it.
In the next Posts, through practical examples, I will explore the full nature and force of the Gesture and how doing this makes our speech truly live.
In the meantime please share any practical examples you have.
And if you do that, movement of your body will reflect that picture in your minds eye - your arms, legs, facial movements, whole body.
These movements - gestures - precede speaking.. In doing so they influence speaking. The feelings and will you have towards the picture, your minds eye, comes through and radiates outward into our speaking.
Take the short passage I read aloud in the last post entitled Clarity and Picture. I spoke it twice. The first time I pictured what the writer was seeking to convey through the words he chose to write. The second time I did not do this. I simply read and spoke the words, without forming a picture of what the writer intended.
Listen to both recordings and in the first sense my seeking a picture of beauty in relation to the word beautiful. When speaking this word I remember my body moving forward, striving, to envisage a picture, example, feeling of beauty. In the second recording the word beautiful just 'died' - not imparting to the listener any sense of beauty at all.
So basically this is "living into" what we are saying, able to mean what we are speaking because we have thought and felt a phenomenon, a feeling, a wish, a dream, a vision before we speak words to describe it.
In the next Posts, through practical examples, I will explore the full nature and force of the Gesture and how doing this makes our speech truly live.
In the meantime please share any practical examples you have.
