Epideictic Speech Assignment
Rhetoric and Public Address
Dr. Mifsud
Thoughts on service: keep it in your actions, your words, and your minds, and dedicate to
others whatever amount you can
Use dictionaries, the philosophers index
Keep posting topics (doing basic research), replies
Do work in public speaking texts on the Cannon of Disposition!!!
Use
Each student will design and present a 6-8 minute epideictic address. An epideictic
address functions to create an aesthetic consciousness of a subject by illuminating the
radiance of the subject, inviting the audience to take the subject to heart, and
memorializing the subject so that the consciousness created can be sustained in the future.
The topic of the address is open, but should adhere to the genre of epideictic address in
the affirmative, in other words the topic must be something the speaker is able to
acknowledge the virtue of (rather than disparage). Students might want to consider
selecting a topic that could be continued in the deliberative speech. The epideictic speech
must be written and delivered from a script, accompanied by an outline. The script must
include citation and bibliography according to MLA or Chicago Manual of Style.
In addition to the general objective of designing and performing an epideictic message,
objectives of this assignment include the following:
1. Skill development in the use of beautiful language.
2. Skill development in the invention of meaningful messages, sound reasoning, and
incorporation of outside source materials.
3. Skill development in ordering a flow of ideas from the particular to the general
(and vice versa).
4. Skill development in performing meaningful messages with the full force of one’s
personality.
Class Notes: 2/10/15
1. Bring the virtue of being out from the shadows and cob webbs of our conscioueness
but it before an audience to bear witness, put it out there so we take it to heart, create
a meditative, and everlasting idea of the subject
a. Can start from universal or particular
b. Movment from the abstract to the particular or back and forth
i. At every level of the particular, you will encounter differences of
opinion.
c. Overarching goal: what part of this topic is univerisally agreed upon?
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
i. Where can I go to find a universal place of rest where we’ll all come to
agree
d. Epideictic, forces us to create that place where everyone can agree
i. As an art, epdeictic will be able to unite two people who stand on the
opposite side of the spectrum of an issue
ii. Diffuse an audience from arguing with you
e. Don’t default to too much of a personal narrative (you could start with the
particular –your experience, but need to expand to how it makes everyone
happy)
f. Hope is the universal virtue
Staying on any “one particular” could draw too much controversy, so make sure to
switch back to the universial or another particular
Push on this epidiecitc topics until they crack, see where conflict arises
All of the words in the range of the topic, you can’t put all the weight of the power of
the speech on “one particular”
a. A strategy of amplification, need like 10 particulars so that it shows the
audience that it is actually a universal. Creation of broad semantic range
Start making a list of related terms: list of semantic range
Climatic (virtue) to anti-climatic (particular) or anti-climatic (particular) to climatic
(virtue)
a. Try to end on climatic
Class Notes: 2/12/15
1. Disposition
a. General:
i. Within the many genres of rhetorics
ii. Many ways to structure disposition:
1. Intro, statement of fact (should establish speaker’s ethos and
pathos with audience), division, proof, refutation, conclusion
(english terms)
2. Exordium, narration, partition, confrimation, refuation, peroartion
(latin terms)
3. Intro (Thesis, Establish Ethos & Pathos-can’t take forever with
this, defining terms, previewing points), body w/ proof,
conclusions, transitions (with directives, and internal summary).
The transitions (directives, internal summaries and previews)
weave together the smaller ideas that collectively compose a
speech
4. Within intro: Tell them what you’re going to tell them, why you’re
going to tell them what you’er going to tell them, then tell them the
parts that compose what you’re going to tell them.
a. Plato=inartistic=immoral
b. Aristotle= inartistic= awkward way that people
announce their training or level of research they’ve
done in preparation for the speech.
5. How to establish ethos in intro?:
a. No technical way of doing it
b. Goal is to have the audience feel friendly toward you.
Think about who you are, how you want to present
yourself, so that you have an inviation to be trust bound
with you. No list of things or technical way to do it,
think about the demographics and psychographics and
their burdens-how do you connect to this. Consdier
them in your intro, how to lift them up out of their
burdens. This is why we trust certain speakers, and why
we don’t trust others. Recognize, and identify
themselves with what you’re saying
b. Body of speech:
i. 2-4 main points, more than that audience can’t process this
ii. in epideictic, can’t hit audience over the head with it, done with movments
between the universal and particular and back and forth
c. one way to come up with a main point of universial is to look at the
etymolgoy and mythic origins of your subject
i. when you move it back in time, you’re proving its exsistence in history,
thus universiallly
d. Epideictic speech: (don’t hit audience with structure, you want “graceful
flow”
i. Want to “be like a dancer” so no one “sees your steps” but everyone falls
in love with your “dance”.
Class Notes: 2/19/15
1. Organization of Epideictic:
a. Intros
b. Body
i. First Point: Particular, description of snow’s beauty Refraction of
light, unique, the individual, never repeated. The beauty of a “blanket
of snow”. The beauty of depth
ii. Second Point: Universal. Description of snow as a metaphor for
virtues of human life (2-4 “sub-points”
iii. “Tacking” back and forth between the particular and the universal:
strive for effect of “making everything shared”. People should see
themselves in the majority of particulars, and if not then move to the
universal, if universal is too abstract, tack back to particular
iv. specific words or terms that you can identify with your sub-points
c. Conclusions:
i. Last artistic construction of ethos, pathos, restatement of thesis,
summary of points, decisive ending bold terms should try and
reinforce ethos and pathos.
ii. Have to artistically create a decisive ending. One way of doing that is
to end with the same thing that you started with.
iii. Opposite of the introduction, however composed of the mirror image
components of an intro decisive ending, clear thesis statement,
preview of points, all points establish ethos and pathos
iv. Example of an ending:
1. Beauty, uniqueness and death
2. From seeing the beauty, uniqueness, and death of snow, we can
see the same of the human spirit, and their relation to others
3. Snows sparkle shows forth human capacity for beauty. No
filler words, language should create vision for audience.
“Snows sparkle shows forth human spiritedness” instead of
snow’s sparkle is human spiritedness. Powerful articulation of
speech, meditative, memorialized understanding, mantra
v. Transitions:
1. Weaves together intro, body, conclusion, as well as the parts of
body of the main speech
2. Directives, and internal summaries and previews
2. Style in Epideictic Speech:
a. Correctness:
i. Grammar (AVOID USING IS-too closely associated with “rational
thought” instead of aesthetic feeling that you want to create for your
audience) Active verbs, instead of is verbs
b. Clarity:
i. defining terms, especially unfamiliar terms. Make sure these
definitions aren’t too dry, be careful to define terms in a way that
amplifies the virtue of these terms.
c. Amplification:
d. Propriety:
i. To genre-occasion, epidiectic high style
e. Ornateness:
i. Explore a range of rhetorical tropes and figures
ii. Hyperbole is a sense that something is “beyond the mark”, but so is
epideictic. Hyperbole is something that is integral to epideictic.
Repititon too, assonince
iii. To be verbs are binary and restrictive, it creates “the mark”
iv. “free your audience” to help them imagine and share a universal
identity.
3. Delivery of Epideictic Speeches:
a. None of us should speak behind podium
b. All of us have speeches largely memorized
c. Use the front of the room as the stage, engage with movement, use gestures,
don’t ignore other side of the room.
d. 2-3 page length Write for your ear, not the eye or how you read it
e. mark scripts up. Pausing. Emphasis, softness, loudness, eye contact