Sp Cm 212 Fundamentals of Public Speaking
Preparation Outline
Lecture 8M
The Persuasive Speech; Basic responsibilities
Welcome to Unit 3, Persuasive Speaking! As you'll recall, our overall goal is to get you
started so that ten years from now, you will be giving great speeches and presentations. Our
immediate task is smaller—but still the most challenging of the semester: to put you in a
position to give a good persuasive speech in about four weeks.
We've already covered a lot of ground this semester. In Unit 1, you learned some basic
concepts that apply to all public speaking: focusing in on your Specific Purpose and Central
Idea, the process of creating your speech from Invention to Delivery, how to introduce and
conclude your speech and link it up in between. In Unit 2, you focused on developing your ideas
soundly, organizing them clearly, and presenting them in a way that will engage your audience.
It's been a while since we met here in lecture, so let's briefly remind ourselves what
lecture is for. After becoming familiar with material on your own, lecture is meant to help you
apply the key concepts and to give you opportunities to analyze actual speeches.
So let's start this Unit with a persuasive speech! And then go on the rest of this session to
discuss the persuasive speaker's basic responsibilities, and how you can select a great topic.
I. [Speech; analysis; lessons learned]
II. The primary duty of the persuasive speaker is to answer all the audience's reasonable doubts
& objections.
A. Every speaker has the three basic duties we discussed in the Informative unit.
1. The first duty is to say something worth hearing.
2. The second duty is to organize it clearly so it can be understood.
3. The third duty is to engage the audience so it will be understood.
C. The persuasive speaker is responsible for meeting all the audience's reasonable doubts
and objections.
1. The persuasive speaker, in contrast to the informative speaker, has to go
beyond simple understanding to achieve persuasion.
2. Persuasion requires a dialogue with the audience.
a. Persuasion does not work by pouring knowledge into the head of a
cheerful, cooperative, empty-headed audience. Your audience has their
own experiences, beliefs, habits and commitments—they are going to
resist your attempt to persuade.
b. Persuasion does not work by beating on the audience. They are your
equals, and like you free to act and believe as they will. You can't force
them to agree with you.
c. Persuasion does work by helping the audience think. When you stand
up before them and make claims, their heads are going to be full of
questions and objections. It's up to you to enter into a dialogue with them,
overcoming their resistance by answering their questions and objections.
d. This is true even when the audience isn't speaking back. In that case,
the speaker has a the difficult task of entering into a "mental dialogue"
with the audience, anticipating what they're thinking and answering it.
e. As your textbook explains:
"You must think of your persuasive speech as a kind of mental dialogue
with your audience. Most important, you must anticipate possible
objections the audience will raise to your point of view and then answer
those objections in your speech. You cannot convert skeptical listeners
unless you deal directly with the reasons for their skepticism."
D. The primary resources you will need to succeed as a persuasive speaker are methods
of INVENTING persuasive materials.
1. You will need an appropriate topic which you care about, passionately.
2. You will need to predict the doubts and objections your audience will raise.
3. You will need a set of resources for creating replies to these doubts and
objections.
[So let's move to the first thing you'll need: a great topic.]
III. You will need an appropriate topic which you care about, passionately.
A. I heard many speeches on great topics in the Informative round [examples from each
lecture session]. Select your persuasive topic with the same passion and commitment!
B. For the Persuasive speech, we are asking you to address a Question of Policy
1. The basic format of a Policy Question is "We should do X."
2. The "We" part means that you're asking your audience to take responsibility.
a. "We" means each one of us individually, or all of us assembled as "We,
the People of" ISU, or Ames, or Iowa, or the United States, or even the
United Nations.
b. People become much more skeptical when they themselves have to
bear the costs of what you want them to do. For example, it is a lot easier
to persuade Iowans that people in China should not own cars than it is to
persuade Iowans that people in Iowa should not own cars.
3. The "Do X" part means that you're asking your audience to act.
a. You are asking your audience to change the world—just like the great
leaders of the past have changed the world.
b. But not only great leaders change the world: we all do.
1. For example, to solve the problems of global warming is going
to take some new ideas and new technologies and new policies.
But it is also going to take persuasion, to get people united behind
these ideas and technologies and policies.
2. It's like the slogan of the MIT Energy club (now borrowed by
Presidential candidate Barrack Obama): "WE are the people we
have been waiting for).
[Exercise]
D. There are several inappropriate topics for your persuasive speech.
1. Persuasive speeches focusing on changing beliefs (Questions of Fact or Value)
are inappropriate. They don't challenge you to meet skepticism in the same way
as a speech on a Question of Policy. For example, these are inappropriate topics:
a. to persuade my audience that global climate change is a result of
human activity.
b. to persuade my audience that exercise will increase their life
expectancy.
c. to persuade my audience that Intelligent Design is the best theory of the
origins of life.
d. to persuade my audience that ISU is superior to UI.
2. Persuasive speeches focusing on issues where there is no serious disagreement
are inappropriate. Again, they don't challenge you to meet skepticism. For
example, this is an inappropriate topic:
a. To persuade my audience that ISU should stop raising tuition.
So today we've gone over the basic responsibility of the persuasive speaker—to meet
doubts & objections—and some advice about how to choose a great topic.
Over the next few lectures, we'll be going through the questions you can expect to meet,
and the answers you can try to give in response. Meanwhile, keep these immediate tasks in
mind:
Wednesday: Quiz 5
Next Monday: Your Persuasive Topic is due online; plus Quiz 6
"About Test 2" is now online.
See you Wednesday!