Supporting Your Main Points
When deciding which types of material to use to support your speech points, keep the cultural context in mind (Chapters 1 and 5). Cultural variables affect the type of research to which audience members respond. For example, if your audience consists of concerned parents of teenagers, they will likely be responsive to statistics and facts about teen driving distraction.
Each main point—as well as your speech as a whole—is fully fleshed out with the use of subpoints that provide support for the main points. Subpoints utilize your research to back up your main points in the same way that your main points back up your thesis statement and specific purpose; you can use a similar test to check their usefulness, asking yourself, “Does this bit of information back up my main point?” For example, three subpoints under our main point about driver mobile phone use as a growing traffic safety threat might be:
- In 2010, texting while driving increased 50 percent, and two out of ten drivers say they’ve sent text messages or e-mails while behind the wheel (CBS News, 2011).
- The risk of a crash is 23.2 percent greater when texting while driving versus driving when not distracted (Gardner, 2011).
- Each day in the United States, more than nine people are killed and more than 1,060 people are injured in crashes that are reported to involve a distracted driver (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2014).
THINK OF YOUR MAIN POINTS and subpoints as Russian matryoshka dolls—each sub-subpoint should nest inside a subpoint, which should nest inside your main point. Comstock/Jupiter Images
Like main points, subpoints may—and often should—be backed up with more information, referred to as sub-subpoints.
Well-chosen supporting points will naturally fall under your main point in a clear hierarchy of ideas, forming the basic outline of your speech. Each main point should be supported by a number of coordinating subpoints, each carrying equal weight, as well as sub-subpoints that carry less weight. The resulting structure reflects a pyramidlike hierarchy of ideas: a foundation of many sub-subpoints supports a structure of fewer but larger subpoints, which in turn supports a few main points, which together support the thesis statement and ultimately your specific purpose. This structural hierarchy of points, depicted in Figure 13.1, ensures that you’ve presented a coherent and sturdy argument in support of your thesis and specific purpose. Later in the chapter, we’ll show you how to use an outline to detail this hierarchy of points in a text format, but next we’ll consider helpful ways to arrange your points.
FIGURE 13.1 HIERARCHY OF POINTS
Note how many sub-subpoints support a smaller number of subpoints. Each subpoint supports the main point. And the main point supports your thesis.