Real Reference: A Study Tool

• Coercion involves manipulation, threats, intimidation, or violence (p. 466).
• Persuasive speaking uses the process of persuasion to influence attitudes, beliefs, and behavior (p. 466).

• Choose a topic that is controversial and aim to create change in the audience (p. 467).
• Thesis statements are often given as a proposition, a statement of your viewpoint on an issue (p. 467).
• A proposition of fact is a claim of what is or what is not and addresses how people perceive reality (p. 467).
• A proposition of value makes claims about something’s worth (p. 469).
• A proposition of policy concerns what should happen and makes claims about what goal, policy, or course of action should be pursued (pp. 469–470).

• Social judgment theory holds that your ability to persuade depends on audience members’ attitudes toward your topic (pp. 470–471).
• A receptive audience agrees with you (p. 471).
• A neutral audience neither supports nor opposes you. A hostile audience opposes your message (p. 471).
• Latitude of acceptance and rejection (or noncommitment) refers to the range of positions on a topic that are acceptable or unacceptable to your audience, influenced by their original or anchor position (p. 471).
• The stages of change model helps predict your audience members’ motivational readiness and progress toward modifying behavior. The five stages are precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance (p. 472).
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needsholds that our most basic needs must be met before we can worry about needs farther up the hierarchy (pp. 473–474).
• The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) highlights the importance of relevance to persuasion and holds that listeners will process persuasive messages by one of two routes: central processing (deep, motivated thinking) or peripheral processing (unmotivated, less critical thought) (pp. 474–476).

• The speaker’s moral character, or ethos, influences the audience’s reaction to the message (pp. 477–478).
• Logos refers to appeals to the audience’s reasoning, judgments based on facts and inferences (p. 479).
• Inductive reasoning involves drawing general conclusions from specific evidence; deductive reasoning applies general arguments to specific cases (p. 479).
• A syllogism is a three-line deductive argument, drawing a conclusion from two general premises (p. 479).
• Pathos appeals to the listeners’ emotions (p. 481).

• The bandwagon fallacy: a statement is considered true because it is popular (p. 482).
• Reduction to the absurd: an argument is pushed beyond its logical limits (p. 482).
• The red herring fallacy: irrelevant information is used to divert the direction of the argument (p. 482).
• The ad hominem fallacy: a personal attack; the focus is on a person rather than on the issue (pp. 482–483).
• A hasty generalization is a reasoning flaw in which a speaker makes a broad generalization based on isolated examples (p. 483).
• Begging the question: advancing an argument that cannot be proved because there is no valid evidence (p. 483).
• Either–or fallacy: only two alternatives are presented, omitting other alternatives (p. 483).
• Appeal to tradition: “that’s the way it has always been” is the only reason given (p. 483).
• The slippery slope fallacy: one event is presented as the result of another, without showing proof (p. 484).
• The naturalistic fallacy: anything natural is right or good; anything human-made is wrong or bad (p. 485).

• The problem–solution pattern proves the existence of a problem and then presents a solution (pp. 485–486).
• The refutational organizational pattern presents the main points of the opposition to an argument and then refutes them (pp. 486–487).
• The comparative advantage pattern tells why your viewpoint is superior to other viewpoints on the issue (p. 487).
• Monroe’s motivated sequence pattern is a five-step process (pp. 487–489).