The Persuasive Speech

1. The Persuasive Speech Make them believe!!

2. What is persuasion? • The process of creating, reinforcing or changing of people’s beliefs or actions

3. The Art of Persuasion is • A psychological process • A result of informing • Strategic process

4. Rhetoric • Rhetoric is the art and study of persuasive speech and techniques. • Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, wrote the book on rhetoric, and thousands of years later, we still follow it today.

5. Mental Dialogue • Persuasion occurs or does not occur as a result of a mental dialogue that takes place consciously and sub-consciously between the speaker and the auditors

6. Target Audience • The portion of the whole audience that the speaker has to persuade

7. Persuasive v. Informative Informative Persuasive Inherently partisan Purposefully subjective May TRY to SOUND objective Slanted towards one side or perspective • Non-partisan • Strives to be objective • Gives equal time to all sides of issue

8. Persuasive Speeches can focus on… Questions of Fact Questions of Value Deals with the worth, rightness or morality of an action or idea Speaker defines his/her own terms Establishes standards for terms EX: Was it wrong, or does it matter if Clinton had sex with Lewinsky. • Deals with whether someone or something is factually true or false • Uses facts and figures to prove a point • EX: Did Bill Clinton have sex with Monica Lewinsky?

9. Or questions of policy Questions of policy • Questions whether a specific course of action should or should not be taken

10. In his book Rhetoric, Aristotle defined three major types of appeals, or proofs that speakers can use to persuade their audiences.

11. Logos • Logos is the logical appeal or proof. • Logos uses facts and figures to logically prove a point and persuade. • Logos is especially valuable for questions of fact. • In Greek, logos literally means “word.” • Just because an argument is logical doesn’t necessarily mean it is true.

12. Flawed Logic… • Remember syllogism from math class? • If A=B and B=C then A= C…. • This might always work with numbers, but not always with facts and information

13. Try This… • A= Bill and Bob are men. • B= Bill is tall and Bob is short. • C= Tall men die younger than short men. • Can you deduce that Bill will die younger than Bob? • No!!! But speaker’s will try tricks like this

14. Pathos • Pathos is the emotional appeal. • A Latin term for pathos is “ad hominem” argument. • An emotional appeals plays upon the listener’s emotions and sense of morality. • Pathos is an effective way to argue a question of value. • “Pathos” means to feel.

15. How to build pathos? • Use graphic imagery and image evoking words. • Appealing to a person’s pity, anger, love or prejudices. • Visual Aids can be very effective in creating pathos… especially photographs • Quotations and personal anecdotes from victims can also create pathos

16. Ethos • Ethos refers to the ethical appeal or proof. • You build your ethical appeal by appearing credible and knowledgeable. • There are 3 levels of credibility

17. 3 levels of credibility… • Initial Credibility • Derived Credibility • Terminal Credibilty

18. 4 Ways to Boost Credibility • Explain your competence • Establish common ground w/audience • Deliver your speech fluently, expressively and with conviction • Use excellent and compelling evidence

19. What is evidence? • Supporting materials • Examples • Statistics • Testimony • Information used to prove or disprove a position

20. Anticipating Argument • In every point consider what an argument against the point would be • Then, using a proof, either logos, pathos or ethos… dismantle and disprove that argument

21. Tips for using evidence • Be specific… no glittering generalities and vague statements • Use novel and unique evidence… you can rarely bore an audience into submission • Contextualize the evidence… keep relating it back to you position!!