The words we choose say something about who we are, and our faith tradition has long taken that seriously. Scripture reminds us that our speech can build up or tear down, heal or wound.

Liz Colton, a longtime member of the Trinity family, brings that conviction to a wider stage in a recent opinion piece for the Asheville Citizen Times. Liz is an author, diplomat, educator, and Emmy Award-winning journalist. She teaches diplomacy, speechwriting, and public speaking, and she serves on the board of Blue Ridge Public Radio. In “Speeches Show the Speaker,” she draws on her years of interviewing world leaders to reflect on how public speech shapes a nation’s character. She also makes the case that we, as listeners, have a say in what kind of speech we reward.

We’re glad to share her thoughts with you. Whatever your perspective, we invite you to read with an open mind and consider how our own words, in public and in private, can reflect the best of who we are.

Read her full article below or at Asheville Citizen Times.

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Speeches show the speaker, leaders’ chosen words representing the nation

Opinion by Elizabeth “Liz” Colton, Asheville Citizen Times; MSN News/Opinion, November 8, 2026

Speeches show the speaker. Regardless of whether the public speaker is speaking as oneself or as actor playing the role, speechmaking styles define the speaker.

A national leader’s public speaking represents the people of that nation. The audience can choose to continue listening or turn off negative, foul-mouthed speakers.

The U.S. has just come through a dramatic election cycle with political leaders of all kinds from different parties gaining public attention to their speeches and repetitions of their words in all media. Unfortunately, many examples of public speaking were not just degraded by the chief leader but by other politicians whose speeches descended to gutter-level full of crass language not traditionally tolerated.

The voting audience has the power to make choices. Across nationwide elections this week, voters displayed demands for repudiation of the incumbent administration’s actions, including ugly and bullying speaking nationally and internationally.

These U.S. citizens’ votes for change have been interpreted to imply calls for return to decency. That includes decent, polite language in public speaking, political speeches.

From beginnings of human speech, distinguished, persuasive public speaking became a valued trait of leadership. A leader through his/her way of speaking gained followers first in the neighborhood, then launching early diplomacy to establish alliances farther afield through spoken addresses to an audience often enhanced by a translator.

Persuasive, ideally eloquent public speaking was recognized as an important skill for political leaders and diplomats. Speeches historically and still today have always been a major tool of diplomacy, ideally for promoting the nation’s best interests in the world. Yet a despotic leader can also wield speech as a weapon for negative, destructive goals.

In grade school we learned about the ancient Greek leader, Demosthenes, putting rocks in his mouth to learn to speak clearly to overcome a speech defect and practicing on the seashore to be heard over sounds of waves. His contemporary Aristotle’s renowned and still studied work on the art of public speaking has had many translations for the title - Rhetoric, The Art of Persuasion, Oratory, Art of the Orator. Today I include it as recommended reading in speechwriting courses.

With 21st-century mass communications, leaders’ speeches instantly and globally reveal character, represent their followers, engrave national images. In my teaching today, I often return for examples of speakers and speeches to my work as an international journalist interviewing news-making leaders, including not only some powerfully positive, even noble speakers but also a wide range of despots.

The dictators I met and dealt with were other people’s, other countries’ authoritarian rulers. I always thought how grateful I was they were not my own country’s leaders. Now today the US has experienced its own leader who has mocked, basically desecrated every rule of positive, accepted rhetoric and diplomacy.

Likewise, many other contemporary political and cultural leaders seem to believe or their advisers recommend rhetorical abuse as the best way to influence and gain followers. Not everyone agrees. History will not praise this desecration of public speech.

In contrast, 163 years ago this month, in the middle of the U.S. Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his now immortal words honoring all the dead in the Battle of Gettysburg: “It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us…that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The leader of the United States of America is elected to lead all the American people and to represent the whole nation on the world stage. The president, regardless of changing times and customs, is still expected by the national and global audience to speak in appropriately inclusive and diplomatic language to represent all citizens. Voters last week chose many candidates refusing to speak rudely of others and reaching out to all citizens.

Public speaking style is not only the choice of the speaker, but the audience can choose to applaud or not. Today we are at such a decision time in U.S. national history. Following these elections, Americans must continue demanding leaders to speak persuasively in public, powerfully yet politely, as exemplars of truly positive leadership.

Elizabeth “Liz” Colton, Ph.D., an author, diplomat, educator, and Emmy Award winning journalist, currently teaches diplomacy and communications, including speechwriting and public speaking, for UNITAR and international universities’ global courses. She serves on the board of Blue Ridge Public Radio in Western North Carolina.