The appearance of the bag in Susan Cain’s hands shows a bit of life, as it keeps the reader interested, as they wonder what may be inside.

Susan Cain is presenting an element of her life here in the TED talk. She is telling us about an experience wherein she went to camp. She is holding a suitcase. She is not swinging the suitcase or doing anything distracting with it. She is simply holding it.

This might seem anti social to you but for me. The left hand is up and comes to Cain’s chest as she indicates herself in the talk.

E- 0:57 she keeps eye contact with her audience and moves her head to look at all of them.

she makes eye contact with the audience and looks around at them

Cain places the suitcase on the stage without any reference to it. Now it is simply sitting on the stage as a suggestive visual aide.

“Our counselor gathered us all together.” Cain’s hands make a sort of collecting to the middle movement. A gesture.

G- 1:05 she used both of her open hands and moved them together to symbolize her camp counselor gathering everyone together.

she used both of her hands and waved them to show a gathering motion while telling a story

Notice how Cain’s hands go into fists like “poms” to indicate a sort of “spirit” move.

Cain does the cheer for the audience so they understand it. She compares camp to a keg party, so a r-o-w-d-i-e cheer helps emphasize the craziness of it.

“It went like this.” Single finger pointed in the air to suggest how it went. A demonstrative gesture.

Cain shows this cheer from her camp early on in the speech and seems very joyous. She continues this level of energy and passion throughout the speech.

Doing a cheer from camp brings life to the speech because it’s a chant and nobody in the audience would expect her to do that.

Cain demonstrates a cheer that her camp counselor showed her in order to properly convey it to her audience.

Here, Cain is “singing” a cheer that a camp counselor taught her on spelling the word rowdy. She is moving her arms and dancing. As she starts “singing” the speed of her talk speeds up

Notice how Cain is body and voice committed to the presentation of the camp cheer. This is a purposeful choice to suggest the loud cheer along with how odd it may be for Cain to do it along with the others.

Cain has a brief pause after the cheer to let the audience have a moment with the cheer and how it might fit with the message.

Cain makes eye contact with the crowd while she jokes about the cheer and questions why they had to spell the word incorrectly.

Cain lets that bit of humor sink in. Sometimes, the audience needs for us to give that last comment or though what we call a “beat.”

Cain clasps her hands over her chest as a way of indicating that she has done her “heart’s” best to be a part of the group. This clasping is a supplication gesture (almost like a prayer). Notice how it is tucked into her body with each repetition.

Cain gives the audience a background story about how she was listed an outcast for reading and not being “outgoing.”

Up to this point the speaker has had lots of hand gestures, but I feel that if I was in the audience I wouldn’t notice them as much, but since I’m looking for gestures it’s easy to spot. The gestures aren’t distracting, but they put emphasis on her words and also incorporate life into the speech.

Here Cain utilizes hand motions in order to convey a sequencing of letters “R-O-W-D-I-E”

Note how Cain spells out the word by “chopping” her hands from left to right as if to spell the word in the air.

The prop moves from the floor to the stool as an indication of something happening here. She makes no reference to the action. The action does the work here.

Here Cain presents a pause in order to alter a shift within her speech to her audience.

Cain shares how people would express to her that being an introvert was not the right way to go and she should try to change and be an extrovert but she never agreed with them.

The gesture of rolling her eyes to emphasize her distaste for someone referring to introverts as “weird”, and that being an introvert is not the way to go.

“I always sensed deep down. . .” Watch as Cain pushes down with her hands over and down to her stomach. . .at the “gut level.”

As Cain explains how she feels she shows a change in speed while talking, emphasizing how she had spent most of her nights out at bars, when instead she wished she had been having dinner or hanging out with her friends.

Watch how the hand “chopping” occurs here again with colleagues loss, community’s loss, globes loss.

Really important here is how Cain has been using the TED stage to walk back and forth across the space. There is a room to cover.

When she stands still, she sweeps the crowd with her eyes. She is not making direct eye contact, but a noticing is here.

L- 3:40 she uses her speech about being an introvert to relate to the audience.

She uses being an introvert to connect to everyone who is watching

Cain presents poise here when she makes the decision to repeat her statement “a third to a half” in regards to the amount of introverts around the world.

At this point, when referencing different people, Cain moves her hands in different directions to make note of different types of people, especially moving her hands from side to side to gesture to “the person next to you”.

From this point and beyond we can tell that Cain is well rehearsed in her work and speech. She appears confident and smooth in what she is saying and when using gestures, uses them in a way that does not take away from the speech.

Note that Cain is moving into NARRATIO at this point. She wants to assure that the audience knows what introversion is. Classic oratory happening here and this is why so many professors point to this TED talk. She has given statistics to suggest how important this topic is. She has suggested that the community is losing something for not understanding this.

We can make a claim for poise here because Cain seems to know something about how to set up the longer talk or speech. She is taking this time purposefully to pause the room to use the rhetorical mode of comparison and contrast to suggest what introversion is and what it is not.

To simulate what her typical classroom was like which was in rows, she faced her palms together and moved them right and up and down to simulate the desks.

Her having her hands in a claw and bringing them in represents a congregation of students.

Cain shows life in her speech, she heavily emphasizes the importance of how modern day classrooms have been designed for extroverts. Through her gestures, voice, and body language we see that Cain is adamant about this topic and it holds importance in her life.

At this time Cain pauses for just a few seconds to emphasize the point she had just made. This strategy is mentioned in Chapter 13 of Erik Palmer’s “Well Spoken” which is the chapter about speed in a speech. Her pausing at this time causes the audience to think about what she has said and reflect upon it.

Here, Susan mentions how introverts are more knowledgeable, making the audience laugh, bringing life

She throws her hands up to say “That’s how it is” when referring to a fact reinforced by statistical research.

Cain is seen walking around the stage throughout the speech rather than standing in one place.

Uses her hands to show she is counting off the different leaders.

Up through this point, and especially in this range, Cain makes sure to keep eye contact with her audience, keeping them engaged in her thoughts, ideas, and speaking. In this specific segment, Cain discusses well-known, important people and looks around the audience, as if she is looking for someone to know who they are and raise a hand.

Here Cain makes mention to introverts being ‘soft spoken, quiet, and even shy’ which gives ode to her own personality and voice that is presented within her speech.

S- 7:18 When Susan gets excited about making a point that she thinks is interesting she speeds up alot and it can sometimes be hard to understand her.

When she gets passionate about what she is talking about, she speeds up the flow of her words to help express it.

“My beloved husband. . .” Notice the hands clasping again. It seems to be a move of the spirit for Cain.

This is especially important. . .notice the emphatic movement of Cain’s hands here. She is not chopping here but setting and arranging. She is making a point.

Cain pauses here with a “Now. . .this does not suggest or mean that we. . .”

Moves her hands off to the side to show how these religious figures went off alone.

As Cain emphasizes certain key words and phrases we see see the importance of the specific topic she is discussing. Here, she wishes for the audience to keep with them the idea that we mimic the people around us.

She pauses after saying there’s no correlation to having a good idea and being a talker. She makes her point with some humor.

“You might be following. . .you might not. . .” Watch how Cain moves from the left to right to indicate “you might be” and “you might not.”

“Much Better for everybody to go off by themselves, generate their own ideas freed from the distortions of group dynamics, and then come together as a team to talk them through in a well managed environment and take it from there.”

“Much better for everybody to go off by themselves, generate their own ideas, freed from the distortions of group dynamics, and then come together as a team to talk them through in a well managed environment and take it from there"

Susan was talking about people coming together as a team, while doing that she was moving her arms in a circular motion, motioning coming together

Cain sets up the next part of her talk with a question. . ."If all of this is true (which she must assume the audience is with her). . .then why. . .

This is one example from the speech in which Cain is pacing across the stage. She does this periodically throughout her speech and this creates purposeful movements that add value to her speech. In moving from one side to the other she is able to address all people in the audience but does not stop speaking as she walks as that would be distracting from the message and audience interpretation.

Cain moves into the cultural history of how Western Societies value the “man of action” vs. the man “of contemplation.”

She makes this big hand gesture to reference the title with the word greatest in it. The gesture gives the book life.

“That’s our cultural history. This is what we have inherited.”

Here Susan was talking about love and trust, while talking about that she but her left hand over her heart then her right hand over left hand, symbolizing love as her heart

“the more freedom that we give introverts to be themselves, the more likely that they are to come up with their own unique solutions to these problems.”

With about six minutes left in the talk, Cain makes a move toward the suitcase that she has brought. It has been sitting there for over ten minutes as a prop. Not getting in the way. Not a distraction.

Here Cain finally makes mentioning as to what the suit case entails. This aspect of waiting until the end of a speech to utilize a prop is a major aspect of poise and gestures

Now I don’t really think this fall under any of the categories of PVLEGS but I just thought it was very important to mention the use of visual aid. For starters, it is a great callback to her exordium and keeps the audience engaged. It also traps this sense of wonder and mystery for the audience.

She has this suitcase full of books which is a gesture, but it also shows how her personality is still the same. It connects bag to her summer camp story as well. She’s still the girl who loves books even as an adult.

Her voice becomes soft as she begins to speak about her grandfather’s favorite authors

Speaking about her grandfather, her speed slows down and she pauses quite a few times.

As she continues to speak about her grandfather she slows down and allows for pauses between her phrases.

Cain has been walking across the stage the whole time, but not for no reason. It lets her access all parts of the audience so she can connect with them better.

At this time, Cain shares her own personal example of her grandfather who was a Rabbi but still struggled with eye contact even though he was speaking to the same group of people every week for over 60 years. While she is sharing this though, she maintains eye contact with her audience and that makes the speech more engaging. She has continually used eye contact throughout the speech to engage the audience.

The speaker has been walking back and forth across the stage throughout the speech, to acknowledge all of her audience.

She adds life in the speech when she says something sarcastic or funny. It makes a 20 minute talk seem not as formal when there’s something to laugh about.

Cain talks about how she has prepared for this talk. She is a living demonstration of her subject.

Throughout Cain’s presentation she is focused and gives thought on how she delivers each word. She allows room for laughter or serious moments to settle in without making the time awkward.

I’m going to leave you with. . .this is her PERORATIO. She is wrapping up her talk. She has made her speaker moves and now she is preparing to move out.

Although she uses eye contact during the entire talk, I think it’s easy to see here. This is her main point, so she’s really looking at them so they hear her. You can also see her looking at the audience when they clap for her and she thanks them.

Throughout the whole video the speaker has had a nice tone to present the dead at hand, but towards the end making the closing statement, the speaker starts to talk softer, as if she really wants you to take in what she is saying.

Here her voice changes to a softer tone, when she tells us “I wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly”

She has maintained a constant tone and voice level throughout the speech yet here she whispers her conclusion of “to speak softly”. This displays how in a similar way that being louder could emphasize a point however, in this case, it was a much better decision to whisper as she it telling the audience to speak softly. In a way, she is demonstrating what she wants them to do although it is not something that they are unaware of and also holds a great metaphorical meaning rather than a literal one.