Sp Cm 212 Fundamentals of Public Speaking
Preparation Outline
Lecture 2F
The Paired Perspective Speech, and especially CARRP
Introduction:
"In the beginning"
"Once upon a time"
"Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away"
You all know the phrase, "famous last words." In fact, however, first words can be famous too.
Indeed, they should be even more famous, since as the Chinese proverb goes, "beginnings are
always difficult."
That's why this is perhaps the most important lecture day of the semester. We're going to
discuss how to begin your speeches—a task that is at once most difficult and most rewarding. It
is difficult because you have to go from nothing to something—from zero to sixty—in only a
few minutes. It is rewarding because if you manage to do so, you've helped both yourself and
your audience. You've helped yourself since research shows that "communication
apprehension"—fear of public speaking—peaks within the first few minutes of a talk. Even if
you're petrified of standing up there, if you can get through your beginning, you'll be fine. And
it's vital for your audience, too, since the beginning of the speech is what earns—or fails to
earn—their attention, and gets them oriented for what's to come.
Today we're going to skim through the process of constructing your upcoming Paired
Perspectives speech, going through the five steps we learned last time:
Invention
Organization
Style—mostly skip
Memory
Delivery
In particular, we'll focus a bit on the central problem of invention—figuring out what you really
want to say—and overall speech organization.
First, however, let me mention a special opportunity for service learning: recording books for
the blind, a volunteer activity that will replace the final Special Occasion speech in this class.
[See WebCT for details.]
Transition: Let's return now to your immediate task: the Paired Perspectives Speech
I. A primary task in your Paired Perspectives speech—as in all speeches—is figuring out
("inventing") what you really want to say.
A. In your Introductory Speech, your topic was you.
1. Lab instructors report that speakers came up with a variety of thoughtful and
creative ways of introducing themselves. For example:
a. A running shoe that represents both strength and flexibility (Val)
b. A Tootsie Pop (Brandie)
c. Pictures of Chinese architecture—for one international student, they represented his drive to
give something back to his society and create something that can benefit many people. (Stuart)
d. How running for class president became one student's "own best moment." (Katie)
e. How PLAY-DOH represents the way one student has changed over the years (Eric)
2. As I said last time, there was no real way to go wrong in this assignment.
"Take your best shot: wherever you hit will be a bullseye."
B. Most, speeches, by contrast, require more care, creativity, thoughtfulness & planning
in invention.
1. It's necessary to have a target in order to hit it. As Yogi Berra said, "You've
got to be careful if you don’t know where you're going, because you might not get
there.
2. You express the "target" you're aiming at in your Specific Purpose Statement.
i. The SPS is in the form "to XXXX my audience XXXXXX."
ii. The textbook reviews some commonsense ideas about what a good
SPS should be—for example, that it should meet the assignment and be
specific, but not trivial or technical.
3. You express what you want your audience to take away as your Central Idea.
i. Ideally, if I asked a member of your audience two months from now
what your speech was about, they'd give me a sentence that looked a lot
like your Central Idea.
ii. Everything in your speech should support your Central Idea—there
should be nothing extra.
iii. The Central Idea should capture everything in the speech—it shouldn't
leave anything out.
4. Why do we make you write out & hand in SPs & CIs? To ensure that you
have them!
EXERCISE
II. Organizationally, your Paired Perspectives speech—like all speeches—needs a beginning, a
middle, and an end.
A. This principle was recognized very early. Plato in his dialogue the Phaedrus drew an
analogy between a living, organic speech and a living organism. Each has a head, a
body, and a tail.
B. As I mentioned at the start, the speech introduction is the most important part.
1. The basic tasks of an introduction are the same in almost all communication.
a. Consider an analogy: What you have to do if you're making a "cold
call" or a "cold contact" for an important internship or other professional
opportunity. You'd need:
i. To establish contact
ii. To convey what you want to talk about.
iii. To explain why the other person should care.
iv. To explain who you are.
v. To prepare for the rest of the conversation.
b. In fact, philosopher George Kennedy has reviewed the literature on
animal communication, and found that animals perform the same basic
tasks.
2. In this instance, we like to think about introductions a little more complexly
than the Lucas textbook. We use the acronym "CARRP" to capture the five basic
tasks of any speech introduction:
i. earn Attention
ii. Reveal topic
iii. establish Credibility
iv. Relate topic to audience
v. Preview what's to come
3. The ATTENTION step is particular important. The textbook gives a good list
of attention-getting devices. If you want to look a little farther, you'd find that in
ancient Greece there were whole books consisting of nothing but speech
introductions.
4. Notice that the CREDIBILITY step is something we've seen before. It asks
you to express what "hat" you're wearing when you speak with the audience.
C. In the body of your Paired Perspectives speech, you'll need to keep your audience
oriented using CONNECTIVES.
1. When you're writing, you use paragraphs to signal to your audience that you're
moving from one point to another.
2. But there's no white space in a speech. The purpose of all connectives is to
keep your audience oriented & on track, using words instead.
3. Connectives come in different varieties: transitions, signposts and internal
summaries/previews. Plus they can be mixed together.
4. In your Paired Perspective speech, you'll need at least one strong
connective—between the first and second speaker!
DEMONSTRATE
D. Finally, at the end of your Paired Perspectives speech, you'll need finish up with a
strong conclusion.
1. The lab instructors have been begging (or bugging) me to help you have better
conclusions. They consider students conclusions probably the weakest aspect of
their speaking.
2. I personally think that the conclusions are the weakest part of my lectures, too:
so I sympathize.
3. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to give general advice about how to conclude.
i. Beginnings are all alike: they start from nothing. By the end of your
speech, you've taken your audience through a unique journey, and only
you know where you've ended up.
ii. Thus the Greeks who had books of speech intros had none of speech
concusions.
iii. Further, as soon as you start to conclude, some in your audience just
stop paying attention. They start packing up their books and moving
towards the door, like in this lecture.
3. Still, there are a couple of clear "DON'Ts":
i. Don't just stop. "Guess that's it." "I think I'm done." "That's it."—These
are not adequate conclusions. Nor is the ending of a speaker I saw at the
MU last semester, who got through about the third of his five points,
realized that he was way out of time, and just stopped and said,
"Questions?"
ii. Don't trickle off, just talking and talking.
4. "DOs" include:
i. Let the audience know that the end is near.
ii. Bring home your Central Idea.
iii. Leave the audience thinking, wondering, anticipating.
SAMPLE PP ANALZED
Transition: Ordinarily, after Organization comes Style—but we'll continue to gloss over this
subject. Instead, let's proceed to Memory:
III. Your Paired Perspectives speech should use Extemporaneous delivery—well prepared, but
not written and memorized.
A. Let me respond to one of the problem areas revealed by the quiz last Friday:
1. Preparation outlines are meant to help you prepare to speak. They encourage
you to think through your speech logically and completely. They also
communicate to your lab instructor what you wanted to do in your speech. This is
a preparation outline.
2. Presentation (or speaking) outlines are meant to help you actually speak. They
contain just the bare minimum of notes, plus additional idea for how to deliver the
speech.
B. The single, handy notecard is your memory device for this PP speech.
IV. Finally, you have to Deliver your Paired Perspective speech.
A. Last time, we went over how to stand—weight equally divided between your two feet,
knees slightly bent, straight yet relaxed, with your head up.
B. Your head is up so you can look around, and you're looking around so that you can
make eye contact.
1. Eye contact is vital to keep everyone in the audience involved and in
conversation with you.
2. Eye contact can be challenging, however; those of you who study animal
behavior may know, that meeting another's gaze is a threat display in many
species.
3. Every one of you should try to look at every single member of your audience
at least once in your speech.
4. But good eye contact takes two. It's the listeners' responsibility in this class at
least to support speakers by providing an attentive and even active hearing.
a. Slouching, doing sudoku puzzles, or sleeping are not good listening.
b. Good listening requires sitting up, meeting the speaker's eye, and
giving her a little nod and smile when she makes eye contact with you.
DEMONSTRATION
FINAL EXERCISE
So we've gone over what your Paired Perspectives speech requires, focusing in particular on
having a Central Idea and on Organization of introduction, body and conclusion.