Persuasive Speech

Persuasive Speech • Minimum Time Requirement • 2nd Year Students: Seven (7) Minutes • 1st Year Students: Five (5) Minutes • Typed Outline Required • Pick a topic that you have a strong opinion about, write a proposition about your topic, gather information • Need to provide three specific sources for information

Speeches to Persuade Unit 3 What is Persuasive Speaking? Analyzing Your Audience Appealing to Your Audience

Introduction • Would you like to ask your parents about having friends over for a party this weekend? • Would you like a later curfew? • Would you like to convince your teacher it would be a good idea to work in groups for your next project? • Would you like to make more money per hour at your job? • YES: Need to know how to speak persuasively!

Introduction • If you show us how to put a car engine together, that’s a demonstration speech. • If you explain to us how the car engine works, that’s an informative speech. • If you then convince us to buy the car, that’s a persuasive speech!

What is Persuasive Speaking? • Asking audience to “buy” something you are selling. • Product, belief, attitude, or idea. • Informative speech supplies important information to increase understanding. • Persuasive goes one step further and asks audience to do something based on the information presented.

Persuasive Speaking demands that you effectively… • 1. induce your audience to believe as you do. • 2. influence your audience in order to cause some sort of directed action to take place.

Persuasive Speaking • First, awaken a belief on the part of your listeners that what you are proposing is a good idea. • Next, show them that you have a well thought out plan of action available. • Finally, be able to convince your audience that your plan of action is realistic and the right thing to do.

Analyzing Your Audience • Four categories of audiences (usually mixed) • Supportive • Uncommitted • Indifferent • Opposed

Analyzing Your Audience • Remember, your main purpose is to gain the most number of supporters possible. • Use all of your tools • Effective Introduction & Conclusion • Convincing Arguments • Congeniality • Sharp Appearance • Sense of Humor

Supportive Audience • Friendly • Like you and what you have to say • Easiest audience to address b/c ready to support and promote your ideas • Main objective is to reinforce what they already accept

Supportive Audience • Examples: • Political Candidate asking his staff for its continued efforts after a big win. • School team asking the student body at a pep rally for continued support.

Uncommitted Audience • Neutral (not for or against you) • Audience simply needs information to make up their minds • Main attitude of members, “OK, let’s hear what you have to say. Convince me!”

Uncommitted Audience • Examples • When interviewing for a job, employer usually impartial—not taking sides, simply wants best person for the job • Scholarship committee, or college rep, usually unbiased (objective). They want the best applicants to be rewarded or accepted. • Jury in court of law—must be uncommitted until all information is presented.

Indifferent Audience • Speaker’s job gets a little tougher • Audience members are apathetic toward you, can appear openly bored. • May be a captive audience: forced to be in attendance • Often don’t believe what you are saying is relevant to their personal situations

Indifferent Audiences • It’s your job to: • Jar the members into paying attention to what you have to say, by offering a different approach • Show them how your message is applicable to their lives. • Information is important, but info alone is not enough!

Indifferent Audiences • Example • Teacher working with a group of students with poor academic performance • Their interest: get out of school, get a job, make some money, buy a car • New approach • Bring in community business owners to discuss what it takes to get hired • Car salesman break down itemized analysis of how much money needed per week for car, gas, repairs, insurance

Opposed Audience • Hostile to you, to what you are promoting, or to both • Feel no warmth for you and in no way sympathetic to your feelings or cause. • Your objective: Simply a fair hearing • Determine why hostile: You? Your cause? A specific statement you made previously?

Opposed Audiences • Often wise to show you are willing to compromise, or make some concessions of your own. • Let listeners know you see merit in some of their arguments and that you aren’t perfect.

Opposed Audiences • Student leader addressing student body at rival school • I’m not surprised at your reaction. May I share with you that I am currently scared to death! Even though we might be adversaries on the basketball court, could we be friends at this assembly and meet each other halfway? Could we forget our differences and work together today? I respect so many things about your school. Today, I trust that we can share with each other about how our respective schools operate. I also trust that one of you will catch me if I faint. • Audience laughed; Courteous for remainder of speech. Speaker endeared herself to audience through her personality and sense of fair play.

Opposed Audiences • Another method: Use Disclaimer, telling listeners what you are not saying or lets them know that you don’t consider yourself the expert. • Addressing school officials about needing a skateboard area, you could say: • Now I’m not saying that every time students have a concern the school should bow down and passively agree. I’m also not saying that I am the person who has all of the answers. However, I would appreciate it if you would listen…

Opposed Audiences • Best chance of getting a fair hearing from your audience • Convince them that you know how they feel and you believe that their position has worth • Avoid needless confrontation • Create a situation where there aren’t winners and losers.

Appealing to Your Audience • Appeal? • An urgent request • What is attractive or interesting about someone or something. • Persuasive power of a speaker depend on his reasoning, the emotions he is able to stir in the listeners, and his character. • Logical, Emotional & Personal Appeal

Logical Appeal • You appeal to the intellect of your aucience by offering a clearly defined speech that contains solid reasoning and valid evidence. • Greek word logos • Satisfies the analytical side of your audience, “I want this to make sense to you!” “Do you see how all this logically fits together?”

Logical Appeal • Promote by being ORGANIZED & offering PROOF • ORGANIZED • Read excerpt from pg. 364 • Well organized & easy to understand • Told specifically what speaker’s thesis was and what her three major areas of analysis would be.

Logical Appeal • Offering PROOF • Specific evidence; that which establishes the truth of something. • Read example on pg. 365 • “Oh yeah, what do you know” vs. • Over the past 25 years, nearly 100,000 grants have been awarded by the NEA. Of those 100,000 grants, fewer than 20 have been considered controversial.

Emotional Appeal • Logic by itself is not enough! • The following topics cause many people to react instinctively in an emotional manner: • The homeless, cruelty to animals, nuclear power, abused children, elderly, sex education in schools, gun control, victims of crime… • Emotional appeal often has a stronger impact on an audience than logic or reason

Emotional Appeal • People like to think they make decisions based on reason, however, most people rely on their feelings at least as much as on their reasoning. • Car that gets 35 mpg is the smart choice • Sportier model with sunroof may win out • Logical aims for the brain; Emotional aims for the heart

Emotional Appeal • Greek pathos, appeals to people’s feelings of love, anger, disgust, fear, compassion, patriotism, etc. • Read example on pg. 366 • Attention of entire country—Patriotic • Read example on pg. 367 • Intertwined evidence with emotional appeal • Example on pg. 368 • Need for a stoplight at intersection. Logical plus Emotional

Personal Appeal • Greek “ethos” • Listeners will buy what you are selling because they trust in you and your credibility—your believability. • Two essential elements of personal appeal: • Honesty • Competency

Personal Appeal: HONESTY • Personal integrity: a strong sense of right and wrong • Reputation, how you are known by others, causes audience to believe you and proves you are a person of your word • Appeal of honesty • You will be an example of what you say • You are a person of sincerity- mean what you say and speak from your heart

Personal Appeal: COMPETENCY • Means capability • You can get the job done, have a solid work ethic, and value being prepared. • Speak with composure- a calm, controlled manner • Examples are difficult to provide • Much comes from an internal energy • Jefferson example on pg. 370

Persuasive Speech