By Olga Smith

The second blog in the series Elocution Lessons with Boris Johnson is about vivid language. As in the first blog, I will briefly explain the definition of vivid language, then illustrate with quotes from Boris's speeches. The aim of this blog is to help you enrich your English and prepare outstanding public speeches.

Vivid words appeal to the senses, helping the audience to see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Vivid words stir the audience's imagination. They are descriptive so that the audience can visualise what is said. Boris can masterfully create vivid phrases to capture the audience’s attention. He knows how to masterfully use strong and descriptive words to excite the public. Here are a couple of examples of how Boris describes Winston Churchill:

"Churchill applied his relentless intellectual vigour to the analysis…"
"He was a Victorian progressive with a streak of bohemian lavishness"
”People saw his hundred horsepower mind”

The terms coined by Boris to describe the benefits of diversity in Britain certainly caught my imagination :

"syncretic genius of our country"
"intellectual cross-fertilisation"

It makes me laugh when I hear Boris’s use of powerful metaphors and sarcasm when describing Corbin's economic plan and Labour members:

"a display of economic masochism",
"economic drag anchor"
"fishy characters",
"loonies of the left"

Of course, Boris’s ability to make people laugh deserves a blog which I will definitely write at a later stage.

Boris Johnson knows how he can deliver a strong message and be heard with the use of specific, powerful and colourful adjectives and adverbs that add strength, meaning, and urgency.:

"profoundly optimistic"
"insidiously programmed"
"a deep human instinct"
"astounding achievement"
"deeply and dangerously wrong"
"vital task"
"overriding anxiety"
”colossal character”

You can practice the vivid language with our apps Fluent English Speech and 4Ps, Power, Pitch, Pace, Pause and Get Rid of your Accent. More on www.batcsglobal.com

Accent reduction blog