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: Commemorating events, such as graduations, memorial services, weddings, awards ceremonies, and holidays
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 concerned about a regional drought wanted audience members to practice water conservation techniques in the residence halls.
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