How to build a Commemorative Speech

This is information on how to build and structure a Commemorative Speech. Commemorative Speaking, or paying tribute to someone or something, is a very common form of public speaking. But few people actually know how you should build a speech like this. Reading this should provide clarity on how to organize this kind of speech and what you should put emphasis on when you are deciding what to talk about.

You have probably heard commemorative speeches before and just didn’t know what it was called. When the anniversary of an event comes around, you see them on the news. When a statue or memorial is unveiled for a person or group of people, commemorative speeches are often what accompanies it. I often tell people, this is the kind of speech you would expect to hear on Martin Luther King Day, about Martin Luther King, at a MLK memorial ceremony, right before the wreath is laid or the plaque is unveiled.

Now let’s discuss the topic options.

For a commemorative speech, I usually see these kinds of topics:
-A person (George Washington, or a favorite relative of yours)
-A group of people (The members of your high school sports team, the Apollo program astronauts)

• An organization (The Red Cross)
• An event or the anniversary of that event (9/11, the April 16 2007 Shootings at Virginia Tech)
  -A holiday (St. Patrick’s Day)
  -A location (the Gettysburg battlefield)

Commemorative speeches on people are by far the most common, representing perhaps 95% of all commemorative speeches. Speeches on a location are the least common and sometimes most difficult.

When it comes to speeches on people, this could be a historical figure, or it could be someone from your own life, a friend or family member.

Now let’s talk about the speaking occasion.

Audiences show up to remember and honor the topic. They want information, but just as importantly, they want to FEEL, they want to experience emotions associated with that individual. Emotions may include: pride, reverence, remembering emotions felt on the day of the topic (if an event), or recalling emotions associated with a positive story.

That is why the audience showed up, and as the speaker, your job is to deliver on that. If it sounds like you are giving a list of trivial information or a biography, you are doing it wrong. Your job in this case is to highlight why we’re remembering or celebrating this topic. You must at least try to bring out the emotional side of this speech assignment.

Most commemorative speeches are conducted at the anniversary of something, or at a memorial or dedication service. That is the setting, you need to keep that in mind as you craft your speech.

To build this speech, you need to look for the following kinds of information:

 Accomplishments?
 Inspiring? Or Inspire others?
 How affected you (or us)
 What motivated them to do these things? (good and bad times)
 Commemorate life- not death
 Remembrance
 Marking anniversary?
 Tip: Picking a close friend or relative doesn’t automatically make your job easier, you still need to fill the time and have something to talk about.

For ease of explanation I am going to start referring to this as though we’re talking about a person as the topic. You need to decide WHY we are commemorating this person. What did they do that makes them worth celebrating? Were they inspiring to people? Did they have some impact on society or a community or any group of people? What motivated them to do these things?

It’s also important to talk about the obstacles and challenges they faced. Nothing great was accomplished in a vacuum. There were challenges and obstacles that made it difficult, risks that were taken. Talk about those; it will build the audience’s sense of appreciation for the topic.

If you are talking about someone who has died, focus on the events of your life, not their death. The exception to this is if the events that led to their death play a large role in why we’re commemorating them.

The concept of remembrance simply means, if we experienced this first-hand, you can ask the audience to remember what it felt like, what we experienced, how we felt. This is common with events that get seared into people’s memories. For many, September 11, 2001 has that quality. Many people can remember where they were and what they were doing that day and often even how they felt.

We like to mark the passage of time. Every year in Hawaii for example, there is a ceremony marking the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. We also make our birthdays, wedding anniversaries and so on. If your topic is tied to a date, you can use that. You can say for example, “next month will be 4 years since that fateful day”.

While we’re on this train of thought, you should know that you can also alter a basic assumption that we’ve used all semester. I have told you to assume the audience knows nothing about the topic. If you want, you can raise the bar a bit higher and assume the audience is at least familiar with the topic in a basic sense. Do not assume we are experts. This is because in the ‘real world’, people don’t s how up to commemorative speeches on topics they’ve never heard of.

So, you might be wondering, how do I organize this speech? This should help…

 Focus on character traits/attributes/qualities as 2-3 main points
 Build supporting evidence for each based on:

1. Stories about that person
2. Their accomplishments
3. Others perspective or view of that person (quotes)
4. Examples that support the main points
5. Try to include information that will bring out an emotional response from the audience

With the commemorative speech, your main points might be: Bravery, Patriotism, Charitable, kind, funny, adventurous, heroic. These and many others are all character traits and you can apply them to your topic.

So, for example a commemorative speech on a Civil War Regiment might include this statement as a “preview” of the main points.

“The 1st Marine Regiment exhibited the highest levels of Bravery, Patriotism and Sacrifice.”

You then need to back up each of the character traits with your supporting materials. In this case, the speaker would then justify how this regiment, the 1st Marine Regiment were brave. If you invoke a character trait or attribute, you then need to explain to us why that label fits this topic.

Here are a few more tips to consider.

 Can tell jokes if respectful
 Don’t choose a topic that will emotionally compromise you
 What can we learn from this topic?
 One route to conveying emotion is to tell a story in such a way as to put the audience in the topic’s position, and help the audience realize the difficulties and adversity that had to be overcome

At this point you might be thinking, what should I do about a presentation aid? Most commemorative speeches have few if any presentation aids at all. Just like at a funeral, a powerpoint presentation with bullet points doesn’t fit the mood or occasion and so I strongly recommend against that course of action. What is acceptable is pictures related to the topic.

On the topic of delivery you have to prepare carefully. A commemorative speech is focused as much on the art of public speaking as it is the science. Meaning, it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it that counts. It needs to fit the mood and sound natural.

For example, don’t say introduce your topic by saying “Today I’m going to talk about”. Instead try “We’re here to celebrate…”

In the same train of thought, if you decide to preview or review your main points (this is optional), don’t say, “My main points are courage, patriotism, sacrifice.”

That sounds clunky, forced, and not authentic at all.

You might instead say, “These people exhibited courage, patriotism and sacrifice.”

As you craft this speech you need to look at every sentence as another opportunity to create or maintain or reinforce the mood or atmosphere that you are going for. As you start to craft this speech you need to go through it line by line and rewrite and reword things as necessary so that the wording (and how its delivered by you) will fit the mood and the occasion.

This is a good segway into the last thing I want to discuss, the “Do Nots”.

 Do not make this an informative speech (telltale signs being it sounds purely like a biography or history lesson)
 Do not ‘read’ your note cards word for word (it’s very important you be prepared to “just talk” about this one with conviction and passion)
 Do not just deliver information and not even attempt to strike an emotional cord in your audience
Hint: These will cost you a letter grade if not more

The biggest complication I see with student commemorative speeches is that they end up sounding like informative speeches. If you are structuring your main points like a chronological biography, you are doing it wrong. If you are walking us through every detail of this person’s life, you are doing it wrong. In most cases, we don’t need to know when and where the person was born, where they grew up, who they married, the names of their kids, where they went to college and so on. Focus only on the information that supports those character traits, those main points. Everything else is virtually irrelevant. This is not a biography of this topic’s life. So you need to look closely at the information you want to use and ask yourself, “Does this support or reinforce my main points? If the answer is no, don’t use it.

I hope you found this useful. Thanks for reading!