Outside Analysis Paper

For my outside communication event analysis I attended a comedy skit by Buzz Sutherland. This is probably one of the hardest forms of public speaking, especially to do well. Not only does the presenter have to speak in front of a large audience but has to be fluent enough and quick enough to gain the audience's attention. Finally after all that then you need to be funny. Buzz was a good comedian because he knew how to use effective communication; he knew how to get his message across. He used a lot of nonverbal symbols or "sounds, actions, or gestures," (Sherwyn Morreale, Brian Spitzberg, & J. Barge,2007) such as funny faces or weird sounds to send his message through the channel to the receiver, the audience. Another aspect that made him a good comedian was that he was a little bit persuasive; whenever the audience wasn't following one of his skits he had some way to turn the audience on to his way of thinking and thus then understanding the joke. These are just some of the verbal communication techniques I observed.

The biggest thing I noticed though was how confident Buzz was on stage; he almost never had any vocalized pauses and was very fluent in his mannerisms. It appeared as if he had no communication apprehension at all. Buzz also transitioned well from joke to joke and never had any lag time in between, thus making him an effective comedian. His rate of pitch was appropriate throughout his entire performance, which would be difficult for anyone over the audience laughing to hard at some points, which did happen. However, he always seemed to keep a good relationship with the audience. I believe he obtained this by adding in stories of his family and choosing to disclose more information about himself than most of us would. The audience's perception of him was then warmer and more understanding. The good affiliation that he obtained with the audience allowed him to achieve his function of making the audience members laugh.

Using the communication competence grid, Buzz would have probably been in between maximum and optimal communication. While he was effective almost all the time in his delivery, his appropriateness would sometimes fluctuate. There were a few moments of silence where the audience's knowledge did not allow them to comprehend the source material for the joke, thus it going right over their heads. Buzz fit the stereotypical comedian by being very loud and