Effectiveness and efficiency in international public speaking: when global English meets globalised cultures

The persistent human attempt to succeed in communication and optimise the efforts in doing so find its origin in the ancient rhetoric and it sees its most recent forms in disciplines which apparently are not related to linguistics, such as organisational business communication, or economics. However, these disciplines share a common feature: they share strong interest for global communication. The goal of any information-processing device is to find a solution; efficiency consists in finding it at the minimal cost. Effectiveness is the degree to which the discourse has an impact on the situation and so forwards one’s chances of reaching one’s goals. Public speaking in an international context is a benchmark for testing both the effectiveness and the efficiency of speech communication in English, among native and non-native sujects. This short contribution underlines the relevance of fundamental components of public speaking, such as speech construction (opening, body, closing of the speech; working outline, formal outline, key-word outline), delivery (body language; visual aids), argumentation (informative vs persuasive speaking; patterns of reasoning; developing evidence and proofs). The results of our analysis will bring to further observations on the role of global English in international public speaking.