Day Nine: Speaking Persuasively

1. Day Nine: Speaking Persuasively by Yana Cornish Hamilton Business College

2. Agenda: • Short speeches • Review Homework: Quiz • Chapters 16 & 17: Persuasive Speech • Individual discussions about speeches

3. Homework for Next Class • Complete outline & bibliography for persuasive speech • Prepare Entertainment Survey

4. Persuasive Speaking

5. Goals of Persuasive Speaking • Encourage audience members to change their opinions • Ask for something from the audience- their agreement or change of behavior- instead of giving them information.

6. Persuasive strategies: • Establish credibility • Use logic • Support your view with evidence • Use emotion • State problem and your solution clearly • Resources: p. 375 & pp. 408-409 in the book

7. Adapting to Audience Attitudes • Three different types of audiences for persuasive speeches: -audiences that agree with you -audiences that disagree with you -neutral audiences • The speaker has to understand whythe audience disagrees in order to adapt their message. • Example: An audience of homeowners may agree that their property taxes are too high, whereas a group of college students may support more taxes for higher education.

8. Strategies for Agreeing Audiences: • Aim to strengthen existing attitudes and behaviors. • Present new information to remind audience members why they agree with you. • Strengthen resistance to opposing arguments. • Excite the audience’s emotions by using and examples and stories. • Provide a personal role model and course of action by telling them what you have done, and how they can do the same.

9. Strategies for Disagreeing Audiences: • Set reasonable goals and don’t expect radical changes in opinions and behavior. • Find common ground with a belief, value, or opinion that you and your audience share. Example: Even smokers and nonsmokers may agree that smoking should be prohibited on school grounds. • Accept and adapt to differences of opinion by acknowledging the legitimacy of their opinions. • Use fair and respected evidence • Build your personal credibility to help achieve your purpose.

10. Strategies for Neutral Audiences: • Persuade the uninformed by: -gaining their attention and interest -providing information • Persuade the unconcerned by: -gaining their attention and interest -giving them a reason to care -presenting relevant information and evidence • Persuade the adamantly undecided by: -acknowledging both sides of the argument -providing new information -emphasizing the strength of arguments on one side of the issue

11. Characteristics of credibility: • Trustworthiness – being believable and honest • Dynamism – being perceived as energetic • Charisma – characteristic of a talented, charming, and attractive speaker

12. How to establish credibility: • Appearance • Eye contact with the audience • Describe your credentials (briefly) • Establish common ground with the public • Support your argument with evidence • Be well organized in your speaking • Present well-delivered (prepared) speech

13. Use logic and evidence: • Inductive reasoning – use specific examples to reach general, probable conclusions • Reasoning by analogy using comparison to predict how something will turn out

14. Use logic and evidence: • Deductive reasoning – reasoning from a general statement to reach specific conclusion. • Casual reasoning – presentation of two or more events that are somehow connected, focusing on the fact that one event may have caused the other one(s).

15. Forms of Persuasive Proof • Logical- Are your arguments reasonable? Does your presentation make sense? • Emotional- Did you use the audience’s joy, fear, anger, etc. to strengthen your argument? • Personal- Can you establish and rely on your credibility? Does the audience see your character as charismatic and competent? • Narrative- Are there stories, sayings, and symbols that address the values and beliefs of the audience?

16. How to support your reasoning: • Facts • Inferences – conclusions based on available evidence, or partial information • Examples – to support facts • Opinions • Statistics

17. Direct or Indirect Persuasion • Use direct persuasion if audience members are highly interested and able to think critically. Research and logic are more effective with this approach. • Use indirect persuasion when the audience is less involved. Rely on interest factors such as stories, humor, and good examples.

18. Tips for Persuasive Speeches • Use persuasive evidence that is novel, believable, and dramatic: -Novel - new and interesting evidence to persuade those who disagree. -Believable - explain why your evidence is true and why your sources are worth believing. -Dramatic - make your evidence memorable with attention-getting comparisons and stories. • Create memorable slogans- many products and famous speeches are associated with their slogans, like when Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed, “I have a dream…”

19. Tips for Persuasive Speeches • Address audience needs and benefits- satisfy the audience’s needs of safety and belonging by using pronouns such as we, our, and us. • Enlist celebrities- especially good for the indirect route of persuasion, can help your own credibility.

20. Persuasive Organizational Patterns: Problem/Cause/Solution • Describes a serious problem and why it continues to exist, and offers a solution. • Works best when you are proposing a specific course of action.

21. Persuasive Organizational Patterns: Better Plan • Best when used for a difficult problem • This pattern lets you present a plan that will improve a situation and help solve a problem while acknowledging that a total solution may not be possible. • The plan should be good and workable, and better than the current plans • Example: increased deer hunting is a better plan for decreasing the deer population

22. Persuasive Organizational Patterns: Overcoming Objections • Select appropriate forms of proof and persuasive evidence to overcome objections. • Use when people disagree with your topic or when faced with a difficult solution. • Tell the audience what they should do and give them reasons why they should do it. • Example: can be used when trying to persuade listeners to donate blood.

23. Persuasive Organizational Patterns: Monroe’s Motivated Sequence • The Attention Step- capture the audience • The Need Step- Show the audience there is a problem related to the individual needs and interests that should be solved. • The Satisfaction Step- Propose a plan of action that will solve the problem and satisfy audience needs. • The Visualization Step- Describe what life will be like after the plan is implemented. • The Action Step- Ask audience members to act in a way that benefits the plan.

24. Persuasive Organizational Patterns: Persuasive Stories • Rely on narrative and emotional proof to show how people, events, and objects could be affected by the change you’re seeking. • Can be very effective for a neutral audience.

25. Avoid: • Causal fallacy – making false cause-and-effect connections between two things • Bandwagon fallacy – reasoning that is based on common beliefs and ‘majority’ opinions • Either-or fallacy – oversimplifying an issue as having only one of two outcomes/choices

26. Avoid: • Hasty generalizations – reaching conclusion without adequate evidence to support it • Attacking the person – rather than attacking idea itself • Red herring – use irrelevant facts of information to distract someone from the issue that needs to be discussed

27. Avoid: • Appeal to misplaced authority – use of credibility of someone to endorse an idea or product without the person having appropriate credentials or expertise to provide such endorsement • Non sequitur – idea or conclusion does not logically follow the previous idea or conclusion (does not follow).

28. How to use emotion to persuade: • Use concrete examples that help listeners visualize • Use emotion-stimulating words: • Motherland • Children • Freedom • Use nonverbal behavior to communicate your response

29. How to use emotion to persuade: • Use visual images • Use appropriate fear appeals • Appeal to emotions: • Hope • Pride • Courage • Reverence • Tap listeners’ beliefs in shared myths

30. Homework for next week • Complete outline & bibliography for persuasive speech • Prepare Entertainment Survey