Reflecting on Persuasion

1. Reflecting on Persuasion • What, if any, action have you taken or are you considering to take as a result of doing your own speech or listening to speeches in your lab? • Did you find yourself responding most to ethos, logos, or pathos appeals? Why? • The next time you have the chance to make a persuasive argument what is one thing you think you’ll do to help yourself be persuasive?

2. Final Exam Info • Time • Friday 9:50 – noon in the lecture hall • Early Exam Option. Thursday 2:30-4:30 in the lecture hall • Review materials are up on the website. • Enter through general course information link in WebCT • http://www.public.iastate.edu/~aslagell/sumr212/ • Time to review Thursdays in Labs as well. • 68 Multiple Choice Questions

3. What is the nature and function of speeches to inspire or to entertain? What should my next assignment look like?

4. Requirements: • TIME LIMIT: 4.5 minutes • GENERAL PURPOSE: To Entertain or To Inspire • SPECIFIC PURPOSE and CENTRAL IDEA • Were due yesterday by noon; WebCT submission open through 5 today • MANUSCRIPT: • 2 copies due tomorrow for workshop day • 2 copies of the final version the day you deliver the speech. • Manuscripts must include the specific purpose and central idea • Manuscripts must identify the stylistic devices you are using.

5. Requirements • DELIVERY: • Use a delivery manuscript or a speaking outline (see workbook for advice on manuscript delivery) • Continue to aim for a conversational style. • PATTERN OF ORGANIZATION: Usually topical or chronological patterns.

6. Sample Speech Ronald Reagan, “Challenger Speech” January 28,1986. (W p. 81) Jot down the values you hear praised 4. What was special about the people being honored? 5. How does their example encourage us?

7. Special Occasion Speeches The ancient Greeks called this epideictic oratory.

8. Special Occasion Speeches aim to inspire or to entertain through • BUILDING COMMUNITY • USING IDENTIFICATION • USING MAGNIFICATION

9. When we aim to inspire, we celebrate what we hold in common in our community. • We reaffirm the values • We recommit ourselves to live according to those values

10. Sample SP and CIs • SP: To inspire my audience through celebrating the example of Rosa Parks. • CI: Rosa Parks inspired us all to act more responsibly in the world as we imitate the spirit of courage and conviction embodied in her example.

11. Magnification • I remember my father telling me about this colored woman who had refused to give up her seat. And in my child's mind, I thought, "She must be really big." I thought she must be at least a hundred feet tall. I imagined her being stalwart and strong and carrying a shield to hold back the white folks. • Values Celebrated • Here was this petite, almost delicate lady who was the personification of grace and goodness. • I marvel at your will. I celebrate your strength to this day. And I am forever grateful, Sister Rosa, for your courage, your conviction. • you acted without concern for yourself and made life better for us all. We shall not be moved.

12. Identification • And in that moment when you resolved to stay in that seat, you reclaimed your humanity and you gave us all back a piece of our own. • Sharing Motivation; The Impact on Us • I marvel at your will. I celebrate your strength to this day. And I am forever grateful, Sister Rosa, for your courage, your conviction. • I owe you to succeed. I will not be moved.

13. A Speech about U.S. Veterans SP To commemorate America’s veterans with my audience. CI America’s veterans have demonstrated remarkable courage, sacrifice, and determination all around the world.

14. A speech about Telling the Truth • SP To inspire my audience about the virtues of truth-telling. • CI As a child I learned that while telling the truth can be hard at times it pays off in the long run by earning you respect and honest relationships. • A speech about a parent • SP: To inspire my audience to live life to the full like my mom. • CI: My mother taught me to find my own path in life through hard work, endurance and optimism.

15. Dan McCarney’s resignation speech • “To my players, past and present, thanks for putting such meaning behind the words Cyclone Football Family. You’ve been classy and humble and heroic in victories and you’ve been classy and unselfish and mature in the losses we’ve had. I’ve tried to teach you to reach higher, to impact your mind, your hearts and your lives, and you’ve done a lot more of that for me than I have for you. You will never know what an honor it’s been for me to be your head coach as we’ve tried to bring honor and prestige and respect to Cyclone football through the years.”

16. Sample Speech George W. Bush Sept. 14, 2001

17. Jot down the values you hear praised 6. Who are we as a people? 7. How should we act?

18. When we aim to entertain, we laugh together and so bond our community. • we can laugh at ourselves • we can entertain through observations about human nature

19. A speech about school memories • SP To entertain my audience by talking about our favorite elementary school memories. • CI Elementary school was a magical time filled with show and tell, marvelous lunches and recess.

20. A speech about my term abroad • SP: To entertain my audience with tales from my semester in Spain. • CI: My study abroad experience was full of amazing and bizarre events, but I learned more about myself and how to deal with differences than I ever expected to.

21. A speech about my family • SP: To entertain my audience with stories of my family’s summer reunions. • CI: The characters in my family sometimes do outlandish things, but I wouldn’t trade my time with them for anything.

22. To accomplish these goals we use strategies such as: • creative language • creative examples • mood-creating delivery

23. FOCUS OF ASSESSMENT: • creative use of language • creative ideas • sense of structure • good delivery • connection with/impact on audience • accomplishing the goal of the speech whether it be to inspire or to entertain • originality of thought and expression

24. MAJOR DANGERS OF THE ASSIGNMENT (aka how to earn a C or less): • sounding informative, e.g. doing a straight biography • inappropriate or ineffective humor • reading the speech to the audience • plagiarism

25. The Horror of it All by Julie Daggett (T p. 475) SP: To entertain my audience by detailing my love-hate relationship with horror movies.

26. How does the speech fit the assignment? • Uses humor to make a point. • Overexposure to horror films can skew your grasp of reality. • Great integration of specific examples to develop the point with entertaining materials. • Nice chronological structure.

27. Creative Use of Language • Creative adjectives: “scaredy-cat tendencies” “hard-core chicken” • “Halloween ended any possibility of parking on a deserted road after a date. The Friday the 13th series put a stop to any thought of camping overnight in the wilderness, while Night of the Living Dead put a dent in my car.” And “said the only thing she could say” “said the only thing I could say” -- humor through parallel structure • “It’s been two years now…” repetition

28. Special Occasion Speeches Using language to enhance the impact of your ideas

29. Denotation vs. Connotation • Denotation is the dictionary definition. • Connotation is the cultural meaning-- what the terms suggests or implies. • "House" vs. "Home"

30. Imagery and Rhythm Creative use of imagery and rhythm can help your ideas be remembered and can help create the mood appropriate for the occasion.

31. One feature of vivid language is imagery. concrete words simile metaphor

32. Concrete words • We create imagery with concrete words. • You could say: “They were great people and we will always remember them.” • But what Reagan said was better: “We will never forget them or the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.’”

35. Simile • We create imagery with simile. • An explicit comparison--using “like” or “as” • "It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one.It's like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark and thinking that there's one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down through the air and there's a sickly moment of dark surprise."-- delivered by Jude Law in the movie A Series of Unfortunate Events

36. Similes can be funny too The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling bowl wouldn't. The man was as tall as a six-foot three inch tree. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

37. Metaphor • We create imagery with metaphor. • An implicit comparison • You could say: “Now is the time to put an end to segregation and to abolish racial injustice.” • But what Martin Luther King, Jr.. did say was better: “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”

38. Mixed Metaphors can be funny • By casting her line into the discussion she really got the ball rolling. • Like a ‘ship lost out on the ocean,’ John felt emptiness and bitterness. • From Mitch Ben of BBC’s The Now Show • I kicked two birds with one bucketBit more bullets than I could chewI burnt my bridges at both endsThat’s a pretty dumb thing to doAnd now I’ve got a snowball’s chance in a handcartI hope you’ll let me explainI’m ‘standing on the precipiceOf a runaway train’

39. A second feature of vivid language is rhythm. Alliteration Antithesis Repetition parallelism

40. Alliteration • We create rhythm with alliteration. • Repetition of the initial sound in close or adjoining words. • “Step forward, Tin Man. You dare to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk...And you, Scarecrow, have the effrontery to ask for a brain! You billowing bale of bovine fodder!” • John McCain: “To keep our nation prosperous, strong and growing we have to rethink, reform and reinvent: the way we educate our children; train our workers; deliver health care services....”

41. Antithesis • We create rhythm with antithesis. • Juxtaposing contrasting ideas using a balanced structure. • You could say: “We should always be willing to negotiate with confidence.” • But what Kennedy did say was better: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” • Barack Obama uses antithetical power by hooking up a series of opposites • “The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and biases that make up the black experience in America.

42. Repetition • We create rhythm with repetition. • Repeating the same word or set of words at the beginning or end of successive clauses, sentences, or paragraphs. • In the Bush speech: • “They are the names of…” (four times) • “There are prayers that…” (three times) • In the My Grandfather Speech • “He didn’t just speak of…” • “will remember the man who had enough love in his heart to…” • “never stopped him from…”

43. Parallelism • We create rhythm with parallelism. • A repetition of structure. • In the Bush speech • “Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave.” • “The Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn. • In the My Grandfather speech • “lived and worked and loved and died” • “all his strength and all his courage”

44. Parallelism (Barack Obama, recent Commencement Speech) • As people around the world began to hear the tale of the lowly colonists who overthrew an empire for the sake of an idea, they started to come…to try and build their own American Dream. This collective dream moved forward imperfectly—it was scarred by our treatment of native peoples, betrayed by slavery, clouded by the subjugation of women, shaken by war and depression. And yet, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, people kept dreaming, and building, and working, and marching, and petitioning their government, until they made America a land where the question of our place in history is not answered for us. It’s answered by us.

45. John McCain: “This is, indeed, a change election. No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically. But, the choice is between the right change and the wrong change; between going forward and going backward.”

46. Aunt Lucille by Misty Miller (W pp. 87) SP: To entertain my audience with tales of my Great Aunt and her peculiarities

47. Special attention to Language • “There is no doubt about it”—repetition to start the first 3 paragraphs of the body and then to refer back to in the conclusion. • “Great Aunt Lucille Hanton, her hair was a reddish orange flame from a torched building.” Metaphor • “no place could be ‘grande’ enough for what was to happen”—foreshadowing • Concrete re-creation of the scene • Originality

48. “The Massachusetts 54th” To inspire my audience with the story of the bravery, patriotism and sacrifice of the Massachusetts 54th.

49. How does the speech fit the assignment? • Clear attention getter (using vivid language ane reference to Morgan Freeman’s role in the movie Glory) • Strong focus on values: bravery, patriotism, sacrifice • Development of ideas with powerful language to show overcoming obstacles • “Wearing shoes no better than wrapped cloth…” • No desertions despite obstacles • Elevated language use • Repetition/Parallelism: “To join an army that didn’t believe in you. To fight with an army who didn’t like you. To die for an army that didn’t respect you.”

50. “My Crazy Aunt Sue” To inspire my audience by showing how my aunt lives life fully in the face of a painful disability.