Funny Speeches

For most people, delivering funny speeches are by far one of the hardest speeches to give. People are diverse and may find different things humorous, but there are a few factors which make a speech funny no matter who the audience is.

“Edutainment”: Funny speeches are a blend of education and entertainment. This is what makes them different to stand-up comedy, the latter being largely for entertainment purposes. Funny speeches are speeches in which an audience has been invited to learn about something from a speaker and the speaker conveys the information in a generally humorous way. This is usually achieved by adding funny anecdotes and analogies which bring across the message but also maintains a light-hearted mood and inspires a few laughs.

Petite Dosage: The most important thing to remember is that funny speeches are not stand-up comedy. What this means is that the main idea behind the speech is not to make the audience laugh, but to teach them in a somewhat humorous way. To achieve this, funny speeches usually contain very minuscule doses of humor blended into the content of the speech. As a speaker it is important to bear this in mind when preparing the speech, as it will remind you not to spend too much time trying to find jokes and funny stories, but to rather focus on the information and add the humor as the content takes shape.

Natural humor: For funny speeches to serve their purpose, the humor has to be quite natural or, at the very least, natural seeming. This is because the audience has not been invited to listen to a speaker’s attempt at being funny; they have been invited to learn from him. Thus it should appear as though the humor occurs without too much effort from the speaker.

Analogies: Funny speeches are commonly humorous due to funny analogies which are added to reinforce understanding of certain terms and concepts. To be effective, these analogies should not be lengthy stories which diverge from the topic in question, but should instead be concise and relative to the topic in such a way that it emphasizes a specific notion, and should be relatively humorous.

Achieving humor: It isn’t difficult to achieve humor in a speech, and it is often quite a necessity to try and include humor if a speech involves topics and concepts which are rather mundane or hard to process quickly. This is when it is important to know how to attain humor in a speech. Certain humorous mechanisms break the bounds of personal taste in humor - different people finding different things funny. These include metaphors and similes, irony and things to which the majority of people can relate to, such as marriage. Metaphors and similes are powerful mechanisms in humor if used correctly, as they can be used to create humorous imagery in the minds of the audience. Irony tends to be funny regardless of the audience, and when people can relate to a situation the humor often comes naturally without too much effort.

More Speeches by Purpose Articles
Learn more about Speech & Communication
Watch Speech Videos