Subpoints Need Not Match the Pattern of Main Points

Once you select an organizational arrangement, you can proceed to flesh out the main points with subordinate ideas, or subpoints. The pattern of organization you select for your subpoints need not always follow the pattern you select for your main points. Do keep your main points in one pattern, but feel free to use other patterns for subpoints when it makes sense to do so. For instance, for a speech about the recent history of tattooing in the United States, you might choose a chronological pattern to organize the main points but switch to a cause-effect arrangement for some of your subpoints about why tattooing is on the rise today. (See the Checklist in Chapter 12 for descriptions of patterns.) Organization, whether of main points or subpoints, should be driven by what’s most effective for the particular rhetorical situation.

EVALUATING ORGANIZATIONAL PATTERNS

  1. _____ 1. Does the arrangement move the speech along in a logical and convincing fashion?
  2. _____ 2. Do my ideas flow naturally from one point to another, leading to a satisfying conclusion?
  3. _____ 3. Does the organizational pattern lend my speech momentum?
  4. _____ 4. Does the organizational plan convey the information listeners expect or need in a way that they will be able to grasp?

A CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Organizational Patterns and Diverse Audiences

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Studies confirm that the way you organize your ideas affects your audience’s understanding of them.1 Another factor that may affect how we organize relationships among ideas is culture.2 Are certain organizational formats better suited to certain cultures? Consider the chronological arrangement format. It assumes a largely North American and Western European orientation to time, because these cultures generally view time as a linear (or chronological) progression in which one event follows another along a continuum, with events strictly segmented. In contrast, some Asian, African, and Latin American cultures view time more fluidly, with events occurring simultaneously or cyclically.3 When a speaker uses a chronological arrangement of the typical linear fashion, audience members from cultures with different time orientations may have difficulty making the connections among the main points. For these audiences, an alternative arrangement, such as the narrative, may be a more appropriate form in which to express speech ideas.

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