Determine Your Speech’s Rhetorical Purpose
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Every speech must have a rhetorical purpose—a primary goal for the speech. For example, do you want to help listeners broaden their understanding of your topic? Persuade your audience to support a cause? Mark a special occasion? Inspire audience members and move them emotionally? Speeches typically have one of the following objectives:
- Informing: increasing your audience’s understanding or awareness of your subject.
- Persuading: trying to influence your audience’s beliefs or actions with respect to your subject.
- Marking a special occasion: speaking at events, such as graduations, memorial services, weddings, awards ceremonies, and holiday commemorations.
The rhetorical purpose you choose focuses the content of your speech. This is because each idea you develop must support the purpose you’ve selected. For classroom speeches, your instructor may specify a rhetorical purpose. If he or she does not, determine the purpose yourself. How? Decide whether you want your audience members to understand, believe, feel, or do something in particular about your topic after they listen to your speech. For instance, one student who was an avid fan of libertarian Ron Paul chose to ask classmates to sign a petition in support of Mr. Paul coming to speak on campus. He attempted to persuade his classmates that the chance to hear a former presidential candidate in person would be a unique and interesting experience for those of any political persuasion.