Ethical Speaking: Taking Responsibility for Your Speech
Chapter Outline
Public speaking always includes a speaker who has a reason for speaking, an audience that gives the speaker attention, and a message that is meant to accomplish a specific purpose.
Public speaking has shaped the world.
Learning how to speak publicly can play a powerful role in your personal and professional life, giving you an edge over less skilled communicators and putting you in a leadership role.
Preparation helps ease the natural anxiety surrounding public speaking.
Through patience and practice, you can counter anxiety about public speaking, if not conquer it altogether.
Ask Yourself:
When might you be asked to speak in a public context?
Clarifying the purpose of a speech is important; speaking assignments usually fit within one of three general purposes.
Informative speeches aim to increase the audience’s understanding or knowledge of a topic (e.g., presidential State of the Union address).
Persuasive speeches are intended to influence the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of the audience (e.g., Mothers Against Drunk Driving seminar presentations).
Special-occasion speeches are given at a variety of special events (weddings, funerals, and other gatherings), and many of us will have to deliver them at some point in time.
Ask Yourself:
Can you think of a topic that might be used to inform, to persuade, or for a special occasion?
How might you alter the contents of the speech based on the purpose of the speech?
Understanding the audience is crucial for developing an effective and appropriate speech.
Audience analysis is a highly systematic process of getting to know your listeners relative to the topic and the speech occasion.
Listeners’ expectations are determined by several factors.
The speaking situation
Information their culture provides about public speaking
Their knowledge about the speaker
Situational factors, such as time of day and setting
Demographics refers to the quantifiable social categories of your audience (gender, religion, political affiliation, and so on).
Understanding such statistics can help speakers identify topics that will be interesting and relevant for specific audiences.
Some audience characteristics will be more salient (significant) in some speaking situations than in others.
It is important to avoid stereotyping when doing demographic analysis.
Psychographics refers to your audience’s psychological qualities, such as attitudes, values, lifestyles, behaviors, and interests.
Anticipate what your audience’s response would be to a particular speech topic by observing them, getting to know them, conducting surveys and interviews, and using the Web.
Consider audience motivation.
Seek common ground and then capitalize on that homogeny, or sameness.
Determine your audience’s prior exposure to a message.
Consider your audience’s disposition, or preexisting attitudes toward a message.
There are several steps to take in order to anticipate your audience’s reaction.
Observe people.
Get to know people.
Survey and interview your audience.
Use the Web.
Ask Yourself:
Have you ever seen a presentation that seemed not to consider the audience? What did the speaker need to work on and improve?
How might you misinterpret your audience’s background or demographics? Why is this a problem?
Several considerations can help you choose and develop your topic.
Select a topic that matters to you personally and inspires you.
Brainstorming helps you amass information, think creatively, and consider problems and solutions related to your topic. Clustering, creating a web of thoughts and ideas about your topic on paper, helps you hone your topic.
Narrow your potential speech topic.
Select a topic that interests you and about which you can speak knowledgeably.
Be sure the topic meets the criteria specified in the assignment.
Make certain that your audience will find the topic worthwhile.
The specific purpose statement of your speech expresses both the topic and the general speech purpose in action form and in terms of the specific objectives you hope to achieve with your presentation.
Develop a thesis statement that conveys the central idea about the topic. The thesis statement must clearly summarize what you want the audience to get out of your speech, but is more specific than your specific purpose statement.
Ask Yourself:
Have you used brainstorming or clustering for ideas before? How effective were these tools, in your experience?
How might following these steps ensure a more effective presentation?
You can support and enliven your speech, strengthening your message and credibility, with supporting materials gathered through research.
There are several types of supporting material to use in a speech.
Testimony lends your speech validity.
Expert testimony is the opinion or judgment of an expert in the field.
Lay testimony is the opinion of a nonexpert who has personal experience with a topic.
Bolstering testimonies with scholarship and statistics will make your speech more effective.
Scientific research findings carry a lot of weight with audiences.
Statistics—information provided in numerical form—can provide powerful support for a speech.
Anecdotes are brief, personal stories that make a point or a punch line
Quotations—repeating the exact words of another person—are most effective when they are brief, to the point, and clearly related to the topic.
Comparisons and contrasts show the similarities and differences between two or more things.
Take appropriate steps to locate the supporting material you need.
Talk to people to obtain testimony, narratives, real-world examples, and anecdotes. You can also conduct surveys, which involve soliciting answers to a question or series of questions related to your topic from a broad range of individuals.
Search published literature via databases, directories, and library gateways.
Make the Internet work for you by searching wisely and effectively via search engines and research search engines.
Supporting material should be critically evaluated to determine if it should be used.
Each source should be evaluated for credibility—its quality, authority, and reliability.
Up-to-date sources provide the most recent information available and will keep your speech timely and relevant.
Accurate sources are true, correct, and exact.
Compelling sources offer supporting material that is strong, interesting, believable, and vivid. This kind of information helps your audience understand, process, and retain your message.
Ask Yourself:
Have you ever considered the steps involved in creating an effective and appropriate presentation?
How will you conduct your presentation preparations more effectively from now on?
Ethics should guide every phase of planning and researching your speech to ensure an effective and appropriate presentation.
Plagiarism is the crime of presenting someone else’s words, ideas, or intellectual property as your own, intentionally or unintentionally. Thus, it is extremely important to keep track of where your source material comes from and to document it properly.
While doing research, keep an accurate and clear record of all research, indicate whether the material is copied verbatim (word for word) or paraphrased (put into your own words), and keep a running bibliography (a list of consulted resources).
Besides giving credit to others’ work, ethical speaking requires that we take responsibility for what we say.
Core to the idea of ethics is dignity—feeling worthy, honored, or respected as a person—and integrity, the ability to avoid compromise for the sake of personal gain.
Basic rules for ethical speaking require that we adhere to four principles.
Trustworthiness refers to being honest with your audience about the goal of your message and providing accurate information.
Respect your audience by focusing on issues rather than personalities, allowing the audience the power of choice, and avoiding excluding the audience.
Responsible public speakers must consider the topic and purpose of the speech, evidence and reasoning of the arguments, accuracy of the message, and honest use of emotional appeals.
Ethical public speakers must be fair by presenting alternative and opposing views to the audience.
Ask Yourself:
What are some ways that you can unintentionally engage in plagiarism? How can this be avoided?
Why is it important that you demonstrate credibility in presenting your information?