Chapter 84. RealComm4e_chapter_outline

What to Expect

• The Goals of Persuasive Speaking
• Developing a Persuasive Topic and Thesis
• Understanding Your Audience
• Strategies for Persuasive Speaking
• Organizing Patterns in Persuasive Speaking
• Avoiding Logical Fallacies

Chapter Outline

1. Many individuals confuse persuasion with coercion.
   1. Coercion is the act of using manipulation, threats, intimidation, or violence to gain compliance.
   2. Persuasion is the process of influencing (often changing or reinforcing) others’ attitudes, beliefs, and behavior on a given topic.

   Ask Yourself:

   • Why might people persuasion with coercion?
2. Persuasive speaking is speech intended to influence the attitudes, beliefs, and behavior of an audience.
   1. Attitudes are our general evaluations of people, ideas, objects, or events.
   2. Beliefs are the ways in which people perceive reality.
   3. Behavior is the manner in which people act or function.
   4. Speaking to persuade involves some informative speaking.
   5. Influencing your audience does not necessarily mean radically changing their attitudes, beliefs, or behavior; it can also mean reinforcing these.

   Ask Yourself:

   • When might it be important to influence attitudes, beliefs, and behavior?
   • What is an example of a persuasive speech with a goal of reinforcing audience beliefs?
3. Persuasive speech topics must be somewhat controversial, and the thesis statement should be stated in the form of a proposition reflecting your viewpoint or opinion.
   1. A proposition of fact is a claim of what is or what is not (for example, “No Child Left Behind laws decreased student retention rates”).
   2. Propositions of value are claims about something’s worth (for example, “Torturing prisoners of war is immoral”).
   3. Propositions of policy are concerned with what should happen and what goal, policy, or course of action should be pursued (for example, “Gay marriage should be permitted in the United States”).

   Ask Yourself:

   • Have you ever argued for a proposition of any kind? Was it a proposition of fact, value, or policy?
   • How might the structure of your speech change based on the different types of propositions?
4. To persuade your audience effectively, it is crucial to know your audience before developing your speech.
   1. Try to understand your audience’s disposition.
      1. Social judgment theory posits that your ability to successfully persuade your audience depends on the audience’s current attitudes or disposition toward your topic.
         1. The range of positions on a topic that are acceptable or unacceptable to the audience is based on their anchor position, their position on the topic at the outset of the speech.
         2. The audience will also have different latitudes, or ranges of acceptable and unacceptable viewpoints, about the topic.
      2. Anchor positions and latitudes result in three different speech audiences.
         1. The receptive audience already leans toward your viewpoints and probably has a large latitude of acceptance about your topic.
         2. The neutral audience neither supports nor opposes your viewpoints and message and likely has a large latitude of noncommitment, or a range of positions that the audience members are not sure about.
         3. The hostile audience opposes your message (and perhaps you personally). This audience is likely to have a large latitude of rejection and is the hardest type of audience to persuade.
      3. Another approach to understanding your audience’s disposition is to apply the stages of change model, which helps predict audience members’ motivational readiness toward modifying behavior.
         1. In the first stage, precontemplation, individuals are not ready to change their behavior, or possibly not even aware that the behavior is problematic.
         2. In the second stage, contemplation, individuals begin to recognize the consequences of their behavior.
         3. In the third stage, preparation, individuals move to planning and preparing for the changes they have been contemplating.
         4. By the fourth stage, action, individuals have made changes and enacted new behaviors, which require a great deal of willpower.
         5. In the fifth and final stage, maintenance, the behavior change is fully integrated into individuals’ lives and they work to prevent a relapse.
   2. Understanding your listeners’ motivations, priorities, and behaviors means understanding their needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can help with this.
      1. Physiological/survival needs are basic needs for living (food, shelter, clothing, and so on).
      2. Safety needs are needs for security, orderliness, protective rules, and avoidance of risk.
      3. Belongingness/social needs center around interactions with others, such as the desire to be accepted and liked and the need for love, affection, and affiliation.
      4. Esteem/ego-status needs involve validation—being accepted by some group and being recognized for achievement, mastery, competence, and so on.
      5. Self-actualizing needs are the highest level of needs and focus on personal development and self-fulfillment.
   3. You can understand what is relevant to your audience by using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM).
      1. When listeners are motivated and personally involved in the content of the message, they engage in central processing—thinking critically about the speaker’s message, questioning it, and seriously considering acting on it.
      2. When listeners lack motivation to listen critically or unable to do so, they engage in peripheral processing—giving little thought to the message or even dismissing it.
      3. Several points can assist you when putting the principles of the ELM model into practice.
         1. Make certain that your message is relevant.
         2. Be sure to present your message at an appropriate level of understanding.
         3. Establish credibility with the audience.
         4. Establish a common bond with your listeners.

   Ask Yourself:

   • How might you ensure that you are appealing to the audience with your specific persuasive topic?
   • How can you adjust your speech topic based on the audience’s level of receptiveness?
5. Employing specific strategies can help you persuade your audience competently.
   1. Use Aristotle’s forms of rhetorical proof, which are major persuasive speaking strategies.
      1. Ethos refers to the effect of the speaker or the speaker’s credibility.
         1. Competence is the speaker’s knowledge and experience with the subject.
         2. Character or trustworthiness is the degree to which the speaker seems to be unbiased and fair.
         3. Goodwill is the degree to which an audience perceives the speaker caring for them and having their best interests at heart.
      2. Logos refers to appeals directed to the audience’s reasoning, which is the line of thought used to make judgments based on facts and inferences from the world around us.
         1. Inductive reasoning draws general conclusions based on specific evidence.
         2. Deductive reasoning proceeds from the general to the specific.
            1. A syllogism is a three-line deductive argument that draws a specific conclusion from two general premises (one major, one minor).
      3. Pathos involves appealing to the listeners’ emotions.
         1. Pathos is typically most effective when used alongside logos and ethos, which offer ways of dealing with and addressing the emotions.
   2. Avoid logical fallacies, which are invalid or deceptive forms of reasoning.
      1. The bandwagon fallacy is accepting that a statement is true because it is popular.
      2. Reduction to the absurd involves pushing an argument beyond its logical limits to the level of absurdity.
      3. The red herring fallacy is relying on irrelevant information to divert the direction of the argument.
      4. The ad hominem fallacy is an attack on a person’s character rather than the person’s argument.
      5. A hasty generalization is a reasoning flaw in which a speaker makes a broad generalization based on isolated examples or insufficient evidence.
      6. The fallacy of begging the question involves advancing an argument that can’t be verified because it is not accompanied by valid evidence.
      7. The either-or fallacy (sometimes called the false dilemma fallacy) consists of presenting only two alternatives and thus failing to acknowledge other possibilities.
      8. The appeal to tradition fallacy uses tradition as proof, claiming “that’s the way it has always been.”
      9. The slippery slope fallacy involves a speaker arguing that one event will cause another without showing any proof of causality.
      10. The naturalistic fallacy is an appeal to (or an inherent bias for) nature, claiming that what is natural is right or good and that anything unnatural is wrong or bad.

   Ask Yourself:

   • In what situation might the pathos strategy be the best choice for a persuasive speech?
   • Have you ever used fallacious reasoning when arguing a point? Why it is not useful?
6. There are four organizational strategies that work particularly well in persuasive speaking.
   1. The problem-solution pattern establishes and proves the existence of a problem and then presents a solution.
      1. A variation on this strategy is to use a problem-cause-solution format, making the second point the cause of the problem.
   2. The refutational organizational pattern presents main points that are opposed to your position and then follows them with main points that support your position.
   3. The comparative advantage pattern reveals why your viewpoint is superior to alternative viewpoints on a particular issue.
   4. Monroe’s motivated sequence pattern offers a variation on the problem-solution pattern and includes a five-step process.
      1. Attention: Gain the audience’s interest.
      2. Need: Identify an unmet need that is apparent to the audience.
      3. Satisfaction: Propose a solution that will satisfy the need.
      4. Visualization: Illustrate how the solution might play out.
      5. Action: Clarify what you want your audience members to do.

   Ask Yourself:

   • Which organizational pattern is most appropriate given your persuasive speech topic?