Strive to be an ethical public speaker.

All of us face difficult choices throughout our lives. For example, imagine that your romantic partner recently modeled a new, expensive sweater, saying, “I just love this fabric. What do you think? Do I look good in this?” You find the sweater downright hideous, but you know (from experience) that if you answer honestly you will hurt your loved one’s feelings and perhaps even start a fight. Yet you also feel uncomfortable telling a lie. So you hesitate, wondering what exactly to say.

Some of these difficult decisions may have much more significant consequences. Consider Joe, a college student on a scholarship with solid grades and a reputation for integrity. Joe is preparing a speech that he’ll need to deliver in his public speaking class at the end of the week. His topic concerns recent advances in stem cell research that allow new cell lines to be created from human skin. Although he cares about his topic, this speech is also important because he needs to maintain a B+ average to keep his scholarship. He’s already found some excellent supporting materials for his topic, which he has documented diligently. But he still needs to do more work, and he plans to wrap up his research the night before his speech. That evening, his car breaks down on the way to the library. By the time he gets the car towed, he has run out of time to finish his speech. Panicked, he jumps on the Internet and soon finds the text for a great speech related to his topic. He really likes the language in the speech and doesn’t think he could get the information across as well in his own words, so he considers cutting and pasting a few paragraphs from the speech into his own outline. He knows this would amount to plagiarism, but he tells himself, “It would just be this once; I don’t have time to put the text into my own words, and if I don’t do it, my scholarship could be on the line.” The scenario with your romantic partner’s sweater and the story about Joe demonstrate the difficulty posed by ethical dilemmas—situations in which the right decision isn’t immediately clear.

In public speaking, ethics—rules and values that a group defines to guide conduct and distinguish between right and wrong—can come into play during every stage of the process. For example, as you research and write your speech, you must make decisions about what information you’ll include and how that information will influence your audience. As you deliver your speech, you have to make choices about language and tone of voice, and how those aspects of your presentation will affect your listeners. In this chapter, we examine the responsibilities of both speakers and their audiences.