Florian started by telling us about a specific phrase that he had just fallen in love with and still remembers 11 years after hearing it in a speech: “I still can taste the strawberry lipstick of the girl I never kissed.” It’s a sentence that sticks because it’s so vivid. Florian refers to this as a rhetorical orgasm.

How many times have we been bored to death by stuff that comes out of the mouths of people? And then we hear about that strawberry lipstick. That’s what Florian means by rhetorical orgasms. It makes your content memorable by being vibrant and unexpected.

Florian was explaining how rhetorical orgasms are things that make your content memorable by being something vivid and unexpected.

Florian invited everyone watching his session to write in the chat what is anti-climactic to them when they listen to a speech. Things that irritate endlessly every time you hear them.

Then he mentioned one of his pet peeves – when someone starts a speech with “Good morning.” You already get bored when you hear that. Or “Let me tell you a little story.”, or “I do not have time, so I will shorten my presentation.” All of these are anti-climactic.

So how can you do better? With rhetorical devices.

Florian introduced us to multiple rhetorical devices that can enable us to make our presentations and our content, in general, more memorable, more engaging, and effective. He talked about terms like epistrophe, oxymorons, procatalepsis, paralipsis, and exemplum. Epistrophe for example stands for repetition. Like when you have chapters in your speech and after each one you say “and you have seen nothing yet”. Your audience picks up on the repetition after each chapter, making it memorable.

And then, oxymorons. An oxymoron is a paradox. It can be a two-word paradox or a full-sentence like Oscar Wilde’s words “I can resist anything except temptation.” It is memorable because it is contradictory. The benefit of using epistrophe and oxymorons is that they make your speech memorable.

How many times have you heard words like respect or value? They are abstract nouns. When you say something like that, everyone has a different interpretation. When Florian mentions respect, every one of the almost 2K people in our conference had a different definition. Florian suggested replacing abstract with analogies.

As an example, he shared a story in which a data scientist explained his job in the following way: “Imagine that this entire room is full of ping pong balls, thousands of them. All of them are white, and there is just one red ball. I find that red ball.” With a simple analogy, his audience grasped data science right away, everyone understands.

Florian was shamelessly self-promoting the awesome t-shirts he has created, that you can find and order from his website.

Then Florian posed a question, why do people not give specific examples? You say “I have many friends,” or “I have traveled to many countries,” which is generic. And generic sucks. Be specific. Specific is what exemplum is. It is an anecdote or a story that makes a point because generic doesn’t make a point.

Analogies and exemplum make your content more understandable. Shortly said, avoid generic and be specific. Rhetorical orgasms, guaranteed.

Now, procatalepsis. Don’t worry, we also had issues pronouncing it. It refers to having a premonition, it is what you already know.

What exactly can you accomplish with this? For example, you may be aware of an opposing viewpoint in the audience and confront it directly. When you’re pitching for funding, make a list of all the possible arguments against you. What could the audience or the investors have against you? Write them down, and put them in your presentation. This is a surefire way to kill the opposition.

And then, paralipsis, another fancy word. Florian remarked that this is one of his favorites. Paralipsis is when you omit something. We all know that less is more, yet we still see presentation slides with five KPIs in them together.

Paralipsis is saying: “Today, we could talk about all five important KPIs. The first two are amazing successes, but I will not focus on them. What I want to focus on is the three other main KPIs of the last quarter.” You say something without actually saying it. This way, you do not overkill the audience with content.

Rhetorical devices like procatalepsis and paralipsis help you be more persuasive.

Florian was extremely expressive throughout his session, which the audience liked a lot!