Interview: David Boromisza-Habashi

“I have a lot of stories to tell because I've been down a lot of roads people haven't been.”

Jimmy Walker

David is an amazing conversation partner. We met face to face last Saturday after he came in Romania to be a speaker at a conference organised by SNSPA.

Some time ago my friend Corina - a communication teacher asked me if I want to be part from a research on Public Speaking. Of course I said: “YES!” It took me 6 months in order to gain courage and in 2011 or 2012 I finally accepted Răzvan’s invitation to become part of Public Speaking Support Group. One of my best decision! Because of him I found a passion that transformed my life. Due to his group many people face the fear of speaking in front of an audience, and lots of people fell in love with this skill. Corina and Răzvan are an item and an inspiration. Even if years have past, we still cross paths, and reminiscent the good old days! During the discussion for the research I asked Corina to arrange so I can interview David Boromisza-Habashi Associated Professor Communication at University of Colorado and head researcher on this Public Speaking study.

Like I said last Saturday was the day when we got the chance to meet face to face, after we exchanged some emails. Together with the colleagues from SNSPA we visited Art Safary and then we debated on so many interesting topics like digitalisation, social media, personal branding, differences Romania vs America, politics and of course, public speaking! He is an inspiration - from his view on students and his dedication to research. Our meeting gave me so much food for thought that it was hard to decide on only a few questions. The meeting was so full of interesting information that I even forget to take a photo of David and I. But he was so nice that he send me a beautiful picture of him and his amazing family:

Photo source: Personal archive of David Boromisza-Habashi

Without other extra information I publish the article tonight after finally I found the right words to write the introduction.

1. David, please tell my readers a little about yourself, about your school and your teaching career.

I have been working at the University of Colorado (CU) in Boulder, a town located at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, since 2008. My campus is the largest of four CU campuses scattered around the state of Colorado. I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, where I research and teach courses on the relationship between speech (including public speaking), culture, and globalization. I have been teaching at various universities for 20 years.

2. In America, public speaking is practice ever since the kid enters kindergarten up to the time they finish colleague, that should make them amazing public speakers. Is this true?

It’s true that lots of fantastic public speakers come from the US, but I don’t think all people who grow up in the US end up as great public speakers. You are absolutely right, kids start doing a version of public speaking in kindergarten, which they call “circle time” or “sharing.” During this activity, kids are expected to talk about their weekends, a recent event, or their favorite toy to their group mates. Later on, in elementary, middle, and high school they are expected to give regular presentations in the classroom or at science fairs about their schoolwork. Many of them begin taking public speaking courses in high school. At my university, public speaking is a required course in many departments. 

But frequent exposure to public speaking education doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is good at it. My students are just as scared to give public speeches as speakers anywhere in the world. But because in the US there is a strong belief in individual uniqueness and initiative, in everyone’s ability to change the world in small or large ways, and in everyone’s capacity for speaking in public, we can draw many of our students out of their comfort zones and help them succeed as public speakers.

3. Tell us about the Public Speaking class you held for students, what were the challenges that they faced? What challenges did you face as a Public Speaking Teacher?

Perhaps the biggest challenge I faced in my classroom is that many students think of public speaking as just another required course, which means that they are not at all enthusiastic about learning public speaking. Another significant challenge that we, teachers face, is that each of the 20 or so students in our classes have to give four speeches (informative, advocacy, significant, and ceremonial) during a 16-week course. This means that we barely have time to get through speeches and presenting the teaching material, and we have basically no time left to find ways to build excitement about public speaking.

Despite these challenges, Communication majors regularly tell us that Public Speaking was their favorite course throughout their four years at CU. They report that Public Speaking was the course in which they felt that they were learning something that was directly connected to their lives outside the university, or as they put it, “in real life.”


4. You are born in Hungary and moved to America when you were 21. Your first published book was Speaking Hatefully: Culture, Communication, and Political Action in Hungary. Can you tell us a little more about it and if that had an influence on your research on Public Speaking?

This book is based on ethnographic research I conducted in my home country of Hungary in 2004 and 2007. In those days, public debates were raging about how “hate speech” (gyűlöletbeszéd) should be defined, and whether it should be categorized as a crime. I was fascinated by not just these debates but how the meaning of the term ballooned to include basically any speech by someone’s political opponent. “Hate speech” taught me a lot about Hungary, its people, and life in a democracy. (I should add that, unfortunately, Hungary today looks a lot less like a democracy than it did around the middle of the 2000s.)

This research taught me about the incredible power and complexity of public speech in political life. Once they enter the political arena, public speakers have to navigate a minefield of contested political vocabularies and carefully adapt their language to that of their audiences. This is an art form that politicians themselves very often underappreciate. If you select the wrong words, or the wrong style, you lose your audience in a matter of seconds. 

5. Maybe the most well known saying in the world is based on a Seinfeld joke from the '80s that we fear public speaking more than death. You research this now in 2019 - are we afraid more of talking to an audience that death?

I can confirm that public speaking is not scarier than death – at least in the US! Two US scholars (Dwyer & Davidson, 2012) did a survey of 815 college students taking public speaking courses to find out of the Seinfeld myth was true. They found that when students were asked to pick their fears from a list of 14 common fears most of them did include public speaking on their lists. But when they asked students what their top fear was most of them picked death.  

I suspect that researchers would arrive at similar results in other parts of the world as well…

Photo source: Personal archive of David Boromisza-Habashi

6. We met due to your Public Speaking research that included Romania as well, could you please talk a little about it? What is the purpose, what do you hope to discover, how many countries you included, the colleges that are included in your study?

Yes, I have been working with colleagues at SNSPA in the Department of Communication and Public Relations  to find out how public speaking, as a type of expression with Anglo-American cultural roots, made its way to Romania in the process of globalization. I am also working with a colleague at Yunnan University in China with whom we are trying to answer the same question. What we are hoping to discover is whether globalized public speaking was adopted “as is,” or was the adaptation process shaped by local, cultural styles of expression, beliefs or values. In China, we found that although Chinese instructors and students seemed to adopt an English-language public speaking curriculum from the US the way they talk about their experiences learning public speaking was quite different from the way US students talk about theirs. For example, while US students talk about experiencing “growth” in the public speaking classroom, Chinese students talk about “toughening up.” Our research in Romania is not yet complete.

7. Could you please share one or two stories from your research? I am sure they are all amazing :)

In my field research I like to pursue things that puzzle me, things that I don’t understand easily and immediately. One thing that puzzles me during my current visit to Romania is that I keep hearing from public speaking trainers like you, Ana, and others that the teaching of public speaking is almost entirely restricted to the corporate and the NGO world. That’s strange… Are local politicians and activists not interested in becoming better public speakers? Why is that? Public speaking is based in the art of rhetoric, and rhetoric was invented in ancient Greece to allow citizens to participate in the political life of city-states… These questions don’t leave me alone, and I would love to find some compelling answers.

Also, I am blown away by what I’m hearing about how my Romanian friends talk about the ability of public speaking to transform individuals. As you put it so beautifully the other day: “When you overcome your fear of public speaking and find that you actually enjoy doing it, you feel like nothing else can stand in your way. If you have conquered one fear in your life, you can conquer them all.”

8. Do you think that there is a connection between a good communicator and a leader? Could you elaborate?

Yes, I believe that there is. One trait leaders possess is an ability to get people on their side using words. (Rhetoricians call this “identification.”) When you listen to a leader, you feel like you want to support them and their cause even when they are not asking you to do so. You find yourself wanting to support them. Identification is easy to achieve when you are talking to people who already agree with you and support you. But leaders who are also good communicators can reach audiences who disagree with them or dislike them. Doing that takes expertise.

9. In Romania, we have a community of public speakers, with organizations that offer places for people to practice and learn oratorical, communication and leadership skills. Do you have a message for them?

My message is simple: keep doing what you are doing! As a communication scholar, I believe that you have a key role in keeping humanity’s belief in communication alive. We are living at a time when it’s easy to become cynical about communication’s ability to unite people, to bring about social change, and to move the world toward greater social justice. It is so easy to take communication for granted, and to forget how powerful the spoken word is. Your work doesn’t allow us to forget that!

It is the first interview I took for my blog, and I am happy that the chance was to be with a Communication Teacher and passionate about Public Speaking.