Definition:
One of the five traditional parts or canons of rhetoric, concerned with control of voice and gestures.
Etymology:
From the Latin, "free"Examples and Observations:
- "[Aristotle] compares rhetorical delivery to theatrical performance and emphasizes the effect of delivery on different audiences; the effectiveness and appropriateness of delivery make a speech successful or not."
(Kathleen E. Welch, "Delivery," in Enclopedia of Rhetoric, 2001) - "[John] McCain moves awkwardly through complex phrases, sometimes surprising himself with the end of a sentence. He regularly leaves his audience without any cues to applaud. Despite years in public life, he makes bumpy transitions from personal anecdotes to broad policy pronouncements. . . .
"'McCain needs all the help he can get,' said Martin Medhurst, a communications professor at Baylor University and the editor of Rhetoric and Public Affairs, a quarterly journal. . . .
"Such a weak delivery affects viewers’--and voters’--perceptions of the speaker’s sincerity, knowledge and credibility, Medhurst said. 'Some politicians just don’t understand that they must devote a certain amount of time to their communications, or it’s going to hurt them.'"
(Holly Yeager, "McCain Speeches Don't Deliver," The Washington Independent, April 3, 2008) - "Before you can persuade a man into any opinion, he must first be convinced that you believe it yourself. This he can never be, unless the tones of voice in which you speak come from the heart, accompanied by corresponding looks, and gestures, which naturally result from a man who speaks in earnest."
(Thomas Sheridan, British Education, 1756) - "The behavioral biologists and psychologists call [delivery] 'nonverbal communication' and have added immeasurably to our knowledge of this kind of human expressivity."
(Richard Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, 2nd ed., 1991)
Pronunciation: di-LIV-i-ree
