Kim Kardashian's Speech on Prison Reform—Yay or Nay?

The socialite, businesswoman, and fashion mogul Kim Kardashian had just passed the baby bar recently—the first-year law student's examination after three attempts.

While taking part in an apprenticeship program that required 18 hours of legal work, she started to speak about criminal justice reform.

Her action to venture into the legal world has raised many people's eyebrows due to her background in the entertainment industry.

But let's not disrespect and disregard someone's good cause based on who she is and where she comes from, and learn something from her speech on the launching of a ride share partnership that will give former inmates gift cards to use towards transportation to job interviews and jobs.

Before scrolling down further to see the analysis result of her performance, let's first form a general and rough opinion about her 5-min speech.

Despite having the public's eyes on her as a reality show celebrity, she seems nervous speaking by fidgeting most of the time, with a tight and shaky voice and tensed body posture.

Nevertheless, we think she still looks passionate about what she has been doing, isn't she?

Verbal Metrics

Generally, Kim Kardashian did the best on her speaking rate as it is neither too slow nor too fast.

Throughout her speech, not only she spoke each word clearly, but she also sounded coherent as she put her thoughts into words.

This is why she scored a distinction for her 'Articulation & Clarity.' She could have sounded less flat by being more dynamic for her pitch and intonations, but 68% is quite a decent mark.

What she needed to put in more effort—though, was the number of fillers she used.

She would have appeared to be more confident if she had reduced the number of fillers, especially 'so' and 'um' she used very frequently.

While some fillers are acceptable as you think and speak, but the more fillers you use, the more unprepared and unconfident you would sound.

Visual (Nonverbal) Metrics

Not only she sounded intelligible, but she also conveyed her feelings extensively that led to 68%. We all expressed our emotions differently—some through their facial expressions, some via words spoken, and some have both.

But on a formal occasion, it is more appropriate to express yourself through the use of words, like how she did. For example, she used phrases like 'I'm honored,' 'I don't know how,' 'My heart just completely opened up,' and 'See it come to fruition was magic' to tell a story with emotions.

Let's ignore the scores for 'Presence' and 'Eye Contact' because this video is not a perfect sample for analysis. Some of you might wonder why her score for 'Hand Gestures' is only at 41%, while her hands had been helping add emphasis as she talked. The A.I. gave us some clues.

There have been a lot of time points where Kim Kardashian had hand gestures that were too stiff. You could have expressive hand gestures, but if your shoulders and hands didn't seem relaxed, you would still look nervous and insecure, as reflected by the score and timepoint generated by the A.I.

via GIPHY

At the beginning of her speech, you could see she clamped her hands considerably tight. She also put her weight on the podium through her hands, making her look more petite.

This is why we should avoid putting our hands on anything with a barrier formed in front by using our hands when speaking, as this signals we are looking for protection.

Also, shrinking your shoulders would not help because doing that would not only make you appear anxious but it would also affect your psychology. Our body can always control our minds.

Emotion Analysis

This is the interesting part for us to know if the perceived emotion by the audience is appropriate and aligned with the message content.

There are two ways to use this information generated in refining our speech. We can either look at the dominant feelings out of the six universal emotions (happiness, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, and surprise) or look at the emotional flow of your speech and story.

Generally, it has to be above 60 to be significantly felt by the audience. When it goes above 70, the emotion is intense.

Although the dominant emotion for her speech is happiness compared to the others, it is not significant because the graph is below 60 all the time. But this is acceptable as it was not an event to display many emotions.

Perception Metrics

After watching her speech, how do you think about her and the message she tried to convey? Interestingly, the A.I. feels that she did so-so in her speech as none of the Perception scores is above 70.

However, the highest four perceptions scores that she earned out of twelve perception goals suggest that she achieved her goal.

There is a high chance for her speech to be perceived positively by the audience, and they were likely to think that it was inspirational, enthusiastic, and full of justice remarks.

She also seemed genuine to the cause that she was fighting for, although she didn't look confident as her score for 'Confidence' is only 59%. But we would think her speech is a success, albeit there are many improvements that can be made to look more professional and convincing.

This is what an A.I. analysis can do to diagnose your communication's weaknesses, so you can identify weaknesses to improve to achieve your communication goal.

You get quantified data to have a concrete idea of how you perform for verbal, nonverbal, and perception metrics–what makes up successful speaking on any occasion.

Generally, you are an effective and skillful speaker if you can get an Overall Score of 75% and above—a score accomplished by the speakers of the best speeches we heard, like Barack Obama and Sheryl Sandberg.

Our bar is high, but as the 26th U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt, said,

Nothing in the world is worth having unless it means effort, pain, and difficulty.

If you attain it, you stand out.

And Rehearso, is for someone who strives for the best. We develop this software for anyone to develop and refine their communication skills to achieve our dreams, together.

Is the A.I. analysis result aligned to your perceptions as you watch her speak? Let us know in the comment below!