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SPEECH ETHICS

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“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. These kinds of ethical quandaries are not limited to what you say: they also can arise when you mislead people by painting a false picture of something.

Consider Alex, a recent college graduate who works in the marketing division of a software company. He makes a good salary for a new graduate, but his hours are long, and his job is challenging. His boss travels a great deal for business and stays in touch with Alex and others in his division by using Skype. Because of conflicting calendars, the boss schedules a meeting via Skype with Alex early on a weekday morning. He asks Alex to give him and a colleague a short oral report on his progress in marketing to a potential client. Because he knew that his boss would be out of town, Alex had planned to work from home that morning and then attend an afternoon Major League Baseball game.

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When Alex sets up his laptop to begin his Skype session, he is wearing a suit jacket and tie (which are the clothes he usually wears to work). Beneath the laptop and the table, however, he is still in his boxers and slippers. After Alex gives his report, his boss compliments him both on his presentation and on the fact he is in the office and at work so early. Alex, who is at home, does not correct his boss’s misperception and instead responds with a smile and a shrug: “Work, work, work!” Here, Alex has not overtly deceived his boss in his presentation, but he has misled and misdirected him, by both his appearance and his nonanswer. Alex rationalizes this, believing that if he gets his work done, it shouldn’t matter if he is in the office. He neglects to consider, however, how his boss would feel if he learned he had been deceived.

The scenario with your romantic partner’s sweater and the story about Alex 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—come into play during every stage of the process. For example, as you research and write your speech, you 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, tone of voice, and the ways that those aspects of your presentation will affect your listeners. In this chapter, we examine the responsibilities of both speakers and their audiences.