A CASE STUDY: JACOB

Let’s see whether Jacob used audience-centered persuasive strategies.

Jacob selected a policy thesis for his persuasive speech: college athletes in revenue-producing sports should be paid a salary. However, he forgot that persuasive speeches use strategic discourse and need to include arguments that best persuade a particular audience. Instead of thinking about his audience, he wrote down ideas that he himself believed. And because he waited until the last minute to prepare his speech, he didn’t have any time left to think about how his speech might be made more audience-centered.

Jacob prepared a speech that connected with his own beliefs and values rather than those of the audience. He didn’t provide any evidence that classmates who did not follow or participate in sports would benefit from his plan. Most of his examples focused on other colleges, so he did not even relate his speech to classmates who did follow his college’s sports teams. In addition, he did not consider the audience’s possible objections to his proposal. For example, some students might be concerned about how his plan would affect women’s sports, and others might be worried that their student fees might be increased to pay athletes. Jacob didn’t think about addressing these concerns with a two-sided argument.

There also were problems with the logic of Jacob’s speech. He had proposed an annual salary of $35,000 plus free tuition. But he did not investigate whether the revenue earned by these teams could cover the players’ salaries and tuition costs. Jacob had no idea how his plan would affect the college’s finances, which already had been hit by three years of budget cuts.

Finally, Jacob did not follow the ethical obligations of a persuasive speaker. He did not research his topic carefully so that he could be sure that the facts he presented were accurate. Because he was unaware that his college recently agreed to provide a stipend of almost $3,000 per year to student athletes, he didn’t investigate how this stipend affected athletes’ standard of living and the college’s financial situation. He also made minimal effort to attribute the ideas he borrowed from research sources to those sources in his presentation.

Look for the and throughout the chapter for adaptive quizzing and online video activities.