Charlie BeckettLSE

Public communication workshop for PhD students

11.10.2011

Why Communicate

• Moral and political obligation?

• You are studying communication

What is ‘good’ writing or communication?

It is communication that is understood by your audience

George OrwellPolitics and the English Language

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

• Never use a long word where a short one will do.• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.• Never use the passive where you can use the active.• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon

word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything

outright barbarous.

Abstract Exercise I

• Why Should Anyone Pay Any Attention To What You Have To Say?How Do You Keep Their Attention?What Do You Want To Say?

Abstract Exercise I

• Turn your academic abstract into:• one paragraph

one sentenceone worda picture/photoa gesture

Can you sum up your research?

• Tabloid newspaper headline

• First para of Economist Feature

• First reply to radio interview

• 140 character micro-blog