Identifying Your General Purpose

When preparing a speech, you should first determine your general purpose—your reason for giving the presentation. Speeches typically have one of three purposes:

  1. To inform your audience. Informative speeches educate your audience about a topic, describe an object, demonstrate how something works, or explain a concept.
  2. To persuade your audience. Persuasive speeches reinforce or change listeners’ attitudes and beliefs and may motivate them to take certain actions.
  3. To recognize or celebrate a special occasion. Special-occasion speeches entertain, celebrate, commemorate, or inspire. These include introducing someone at an event, accepting or giving an award, commemorating an event or a person, or giving a toast.

For the speeches you’ll be giving in your communication class, your instructor will probably assign the general purpose. For example, he or she may require you to give an informative or a persuasive speech (or both). When you give speeches in other settings, you will determine your general purpose. For instance, suppose you work as a drug rehabilitation counselor. If you were going to talk to parents of high school students, you could plan an informative speech to explain the warning signs of teen drug use, since that topic would be of interest to the parents. But if you were speaking directly to the teens, you might adapt your plan to give a persuasive speech about why they should resist pressure to use illegal drugs.

However, your general purpose is not always so straightforward. Consider that Bilbo Baggins planned a speech to celebrate his birthday and express admiration to his friends (special-occasion purpose), but he also had an informative purpose: to tell his friends that he would be leaving. Sometimes, like Bilbo, you may blend purposes.