LM-1361 Communication and Pronunciation Techniques II (Chapter 14, S1)

Chapter 14

What is persuasive speaking?

LM-1361 Communication and Pronunciation Techniques II

Persuasion

It is a deliberate attempt by the speaker to create, reinforce, or change the attitudes, beliefs, values, and/or behaviors of the listener.

Persuasion

For a communicative act to be persuasive, the speaker's intent or general purpose must be to persuade.

Attitudes

These are learned and persistent psychological responses, predispositions, or inclinations to act one way or feel a given way toward something.

Attitudes

For example, you may not like the color pink and, therefore, do not respond favorably to anything that is pink. There is nothing wrong with the color, you just do not care for it. Attitudes are often, but not always, the easiest to change.

Beliefs

These are anything people have learned to accept as plausible based on interpretation and judgment. You create a belief when you connect the object of your belief to an attribute.

Beliefs

These are anything people have learned to accept as plausible based on interpretation and judgment. You create a belief when you connect the object of your belief to an attribute.

Beliefs

For example, you may believe that red high-tops are cool today and not a month from now.

Values

(Also called core beliefs) are enduring principles related to worth or what a person sees as right or wrong, important or unimportant. Values are closely linked to the core of our personalities and self-identities. Values are hard to change, and they support our attitudes and beliefs.

Values

For example, you may value a conservative ideology, higher education, or the Christian faith.

Behaviors

These are unconcealed actions or reactions people have, often in response to some sort of stimuli. The ways people behave generally relate to their attitudes, beliefs, and values.

When an audience does not have the knowledge to hold a set attitude, belief, or value, or to understand why to behave a particular way, you persuade the audience to create or adopt the attitude, belief, value, or behavior you are advocating. If the audience already agrees with you, you reinforce that attitude, belief, value, or behavior. At other times, you help your audience change existing attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors.

Chapter 14

What Should a PersuasiveSpeech Do?

LM-1361 Communication and Pronunciation Techniques II

1. Narrow Listeners Options

Persuasive speaking is like offering guidance to your listeners when they have severaloptions to choose from and need your help to determine which is the best one.

1. Narrow Listeners Options

The job of the ethical persuasive speaker is to determine the best and safest option, support that decision logically, and offer information to the audience in a manner that allows them to make a wise decision. Persuasive speaking helps an audience limit their options and make a wise choice.

2. Seek a Response

In the persuasive speech, you have an audience response in mind. That audience response determines which of the three types of persuasive speeches you will give.

2. Seek a response

• When you want to create a new or change an existing attitude, belief, value, or behavior for your audience, you are creating a persuasive speech to convince.
• When you overcome apathy in your audience or reinforce an existing attitude, belief, value, or behavior, you are creating a persuasive speech to stimulate.
• When you ask your audience to take action, you are giving a speech to actuate.

3. Support a Proposition of Fact, Value, or Policy

When you create a persuasive speech, you have an overarching argument (the body of the speech) that supports the assertion youare making in your central idea.

3. Support a Proposition of Fact, Value, or Policy

The assertion you are making in your central idea is aproposition of fact, value, or policy. For example, if your central idea is: Foods marked organic are not necessarily healthier than conventional foods. The proposition you are supporting with this central idea is: Organic foods are not healthier than conventional foods.

And once you have identified your proposition, you can determine if it is a proposition of fact, value, or policy.

Proposition of fact:

Answers: What is accurate or not?

Proposition of fact:

For example: SUVs are safe. Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Genetically altered vegetables are not healthy.

Proposition of value:

Answers: What has worth or importance? What is good, wise, ethical, or beautiful?

Proposition of Value:

For example: Funding NASA programs is a good use of tax dollars. Downloading or sharing music without payment or permission from the copyright holder is unethical. It is irresponsible to text message while driving.

Proposition of Policy:

Answers: What procedures, plans, or courses of action need to be terminated and/or implemented? This type of proposition can ask the audience to immediately act (To persuade the audience to volunteer to clean the city) or to simply agree (To persuade my audience that the city should outlaw smoking in public buildings).

Proposition of Policy:

For example: All homeowners should be required to recycle. The City of Jonestown should not implement a tax on pet owners. The recreation center should be open 24 hours a day. The state needs stiffer laws related to child abuse crimes.

Knowing the type of proposition your central idea supports will help you select an organizational strategy for creating the body of the speech, which will be made up of smaller arguments. These arguments will ultimately sustain your central idea

4. Rely on Varied and Valid Support Materials

As the person crafting a persuasive message, you have a responsibility and a duty to prevent either accidental or intentional deception, and just saying so does not prove a point. You must use quality material such as testimony (mostly expert), statistics, comparisons, brief and detailed examples, and narration to support your points. Valid support materials are accurate, current, complete, trustworthy, suitable, and from ethical sources.

5. Use Highly StructuredOrganization

Your audience needs to follow every detail of the argument you are presenting, so your organization must be appropriate to the topic and precise down to the smallest detail. There are organizational strategies that are only appropriate for persuasive speaking, and some strategies will be better for certain topics.

5. Use Highly Structured Organization

Once you have the overarching strategy for the speech (such as a problem solution strategy), you need to think about how to arrange your arguments. If you want to have a successful persuasive speech, you must choose your organizational strategy carefully and arrange your support materials into effective arguments for the entire speech.

6. Use Different Types of Appeals

Appeals (also called proofs) are the means by which you prove or establish the argument you are making. Because human beings often rationalize before they act or change, you must use a variety of appeals to persuade them. Appeals can be categorized as either traditional or modern.

7.Highlight Emotive andStylistic Language

In persuasive speeches, using emotive and stylistic language helps your audience members follow your arguments, remember them, and be emotionally moved.

7.Highlight Emotive and Stylistic Language

Good persuasive speakers are extremely careful to follow the guidelines for language usage common to allspeeches. For example, think about how you might use language devices like therefore and as a result of to signal clearly the bridge between two steps in an argument or how you can use language ethically to stir the emotions of your audience.

8. Emphasize Powerful andDirect Delivery

If you want to persuade an audience to agree with you, your delivery must be powerful and direct. Your voice and body language should suggest a high level of confidence and trust.

8. Emphasize Powerful and Direct Delivery

You want an enthusiastic and varying vocal quality as well as good eye contact. Your posture should be lively and energetic.

9. Acknowledge the Audience'sFreedom to Decide

Good and ethical persuasion is a democracy.

9. Acknowledge the Audience's Freedom to Decide

When a speaker engages in a good and ethical persuasive act, she or he allows and recognizes that anyone involved in that act is a free and equal participant in the decision-making process. Your job as a persuasive speaker is to present the best arguments possible so that the audience can make the best decision possible.

Chapter 14

What are the traditional appeals used to persuade?

LM-1361 Communication and Pronunciation Techniques II

1.Appeal to Pathos

It deals with the listener's emotions. In other words, you can use your audience' s sympathy and imagination to affect their attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors.

Appeal to Pathos

Examples and narratives (stories) are often the most effective support materials for appealing emotionally. When you give speeches to persuade your audience to donate time or money to help a cause, you can humanize the cause for the audience members by using extended examples (mini stories) about the people they will help.

2.Appeal to Mythos

Mythos relates to a sense of one s history in the larger culture and the need to be a member of that culture.

Appeal to mythos

When you appeal to mythos in a speech, you often use narratives (stories) to create a strong sense of cultural identity, which, in turn, moves your audience to a change in belief, attitude, value, or behavior. For instance, you might use mythos in a speech about increasing taxes to fund local schools: Determination and knowledge are what built this great country, and we need to support our country by supporting our schools.

3. Appeal to Ethos

Ethos is the credibility inspired by the speaker's character (moral character).The key to using your credibility effectively is to realize that it resides in how your audience views you and not in how you view yourself.

Appeal to Ethos

Aristotle claimed that the speaker' s credibility evolved from competency and character. In modern times, a third trait, charisma, has been recognized.

• Competency is the audience's perception of how knowledgeable you are about your topic.

Mentioning your related experience/education, citing a variety of support materials from credible sources, and presenting a polished speech will help demonstrate your competency.

Appeal to Ethos

• Character is the audience' s perception of your intentions and of the concern you have for the audience. Do they see you as trustworthy, objective, honest, and similar to them?

Finding ways to connect with the audience, demonstrating that you have investigated alternatives and oppositions to your positions, and emphasizing your concern for the audience rather than just for yourself will build your character.

Appeal to Ethos

• Charisma is the audience' s perception of your personality. Do they see you as energetic, friendly, approachable, and vocally as well as physically pleasing

Be confident and assertive in a positive manner. Use language and gestures to demonstrate your dynamic personality and excitement about the topic.

Appeal to Ethos

Your ethos progresses through three levels:

• The initial level of ethos is the credibility your audience perceives in you before your speech starts.
• The derived level of ethos is the credibility your audience assigns you during your speech based on the content and effectiveness of the speech.
• The terminal level of ethos is your credibility with your audience after you have finished your speech. Your ability to handle questions after the speech, etc.

4. Appeal to Logos

When you appeal to logic, or logos, in a speech, you appeal to the listener's ability to reason through statistics, facts, and expert testimony to reach a conclusion.

Appeal to Logos

You engage in reasoning -the rational thinking humans do to reach conclusions or to justify beliefs or acts. You build arguments to in uence your audience s beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors.

Chapter 14

What are the modern appeals used to persuade?

LM-1361 Communication and Pronunciation Techniques II

1. Appeal to Need

This modern method of persuasion recognizes that your audience members have needs they see as important and necessary to fulfill.

Appeal to Need

Appealing to your audience s needs makes for an effective persuasive speech. With this type of appeal, you collect and arrange support materials to demonstrate that what you are suggesting in your speech fulfills a need of the audience members. This appeal relies on you knowing the audience's needs and paying attention to the hierarchy.

2. Appeal to Harmony

People are driven to reduce a dissonant feeling, and as a speaker, you can use that drive to motivate your audience to agree with you. .

Appeal to harmony

For example, if you were giving a speech to an audience you know believes in the greenhouse effect, you might convince them to reduce their carbon footprint by creating a dissonant feeling in them. One way to do that would be to show them how big their carbon footprint is and how it directly relates to environmental destruction.

3. Appeal to Gain

When you appeal to gain, you are recognizing that most people weigh or evaluate their actions based on what the actions might cost them.

Appeal to Gain

The Expectancy-Outcome Values Theory, suggests that people will evaluate the cost, benefit, or value related to making a change in an attitude, value, belief, or behavior to decide if it is worthwhile or not. People will try to determine what they will gain or lose by changing.

Appeal to Gain

People in a situation like this will ask questions such as: Is this a good or bad idea? Will my family, friends, or colleagues approve or disapprove? If they disapprove, what are the ramifications? Are those ramifications worth it? Will my family, friends, or colleagues think better of me if I do this?

4. Appeal to Commitment

This appeal recognizes how audience members might react to your message depending upon their relationship with the topic.

Appeal to commitment

People process persuasive messages based on their commitment or involvement.

Chapter 14

What are the parts of an argument?

LM-1361 Communication and Pronunciation Techniques II

Argument

An argument is a reason or a series of reasons you give to support an assertion One way to understand an argument is to think of it as a bridge that you need to build so that you can convince an audience to cross to the other side of a vast river.

argument

Arguments have three parts: a claim, evidence, and warrants.

• The claim or conclusion of your argument is like the roadbed of the bridge.

• The evidence is the material making up the piers, which holds the roadbed in place;

• and the fact that the piers are made of concrete and metal is the warrant that makes the audience believe it is safe to cross.

The claim

The claim of an argument is the assertion you are making and will be a claim of fact, value, or policy. Each claim should be a single, concisesentence.

Claim

For example: CLAIM OF FACT: People who wear seat belts tend to take better care of their health. CLAIM OF VALUE: Owning a gun is wrong. CLAIM OF POLICY: All public buildings should be smoke-free.

The evidence

Ask, What proof do I have to support this claim? In this step, the support materials you have gathered become evidence, or the information that proves your claim.

evidence

Evidence comes in the form of examples, facts, definitions, testimony, and statistics.

The warrants

These are assumptions that act as links between the evidence and the claim. This step is where you help your audience draw a conclusion about your claim and the evidence provided.

warrants

There are three types of warrants: authoritative, motivational, and substantive. 1. Authoritative warrants link the evidence to the claim by assuming that the claim is accurate based on the credibility of the source of the support materials. For example, look at this outline of an argument: EVIDENCE: Doctors at the Mayo Clinic say calcium is necessary for men. (2) WARRANT: The Mayo Clinic doctors are viewed as an extremely reliable source. (3) CLAIM: Men need calcium. (1)

warrants

2. Motivational warrants link the evidence to the claim based on the speaker's and audience's needs and values. For example: EVIDENCE: Men need calcium to prevent brittle-bone issues late in life. (2) WARRANT: Mens happiness and quality of life in later years is dependent on healthy bones. (3) CLAIM: Men need calcium. (1)

warrants

3. Substantive warrants link the evidence to the claim based on the reliability of the support materials. In other words, are there enough examples and/or data to be convincing? Are the support materials representative? EVIDENCE: Several studies have found that many men are getting insuffcient levels o calcium and suggest that this deficiency is beginning to negatively infuence their bodies and lives later in life. (2) WARRANT: Enough evidence exists to support the fact that some men are not getting enough calcium and that this can have serious effects. (3) CLAIM: Men need calcium. (1)

Basic format of an argument

#1

Make a statement.

#2

Offer support materials related to the statement as evidence.

#3

Draw your conclusion.

The end