THE PERSUASIVE SPEECH

A persuasive speech has three purposes:

• to convince people to take action that you want them to take
• to change radically their attitudes and beliefs
• to strengthen or weaken their current attitudes or beliefs

Before you can persuade listeners, you must analyze your audience.

Analyzing Your Audience

You need to ask yourself certain questions:

• What is your specific purpose in speaking?
• How does your audience feel towards your purpose?
• What emotional or psychological appeals will move them?
• Are they willing to accept new ideas?
• Why should they listen to you?
• Do you know anyone who has had previous experience with this audience?

There are two types of audiences that you need to consider:

• Supportive – friendly, they like you and what you have to say
• Uncommitted – completely neutral, waiting to be convinced, unbiased
- Indifferent - apathetic, openly bored, could be a captive audience
- Captive - is often being forced to attend, may not believe what you say is
relevant to them
- Opposed - hostile to you or what you are persuading, feel no warmth towards
the speaker, feel no sympathy towards speaker's feelings or cause



How Listeners Process Persuasive Messages


• They actively assess the speaker’s credibility, delivery, supporting materials, language, reasoning and emotional appeals.
• They may respond positively at one point, negatively at another.
• At times, they may argue (inside their own minds) with the speaker.
• This is what we call the mental give-and-take.
• It may be highly vigorous when listeners are involved with the topic and believe it has a direct bearing on their lives.


Methods of Persuasion

There are five principal methods of changing people’s attitudes or actuating people to do what you want:

• Persuading through evidence
• Persuading through reasoning
• Persuading through emotional appeal


Persuading through Evidence

• Evidence consists of facts, expert opinions and supporting materials – examples, statistics, testimony.
• It is used prove or disprove something.
• You need to justify your claims by using evidence.
• Evidence is particularly important in classroom speeches because few students are recognized as experts on their speech topics.
• Evidence is also crucial whenever your target audience opposes your points of view

Persuading through Reasoning

• Reasoning is the process of drawing a conclusion on the basis of evidence.
• You must use reasoning carefully because reasoning are often faulty and misunderstood.
• Reasoning is an important component of critical thinking.
• As a public speaker, you have two major concerns with respect to reasoning:
 Make sure your own reasoning is sound and foolproof
 Try to get listeners to agree with your reasoning.

Four Basic Methods of Reasoning

 Reasoning from Specific Instances
-You progress from a number of particular facts to a general conclusion
 Reasoning from Principle
- Reasoning that moves from a general principle to a specific conclusion.
 Causal Reasoning
- Reasoning that seeks to establish the relationship between causes and effects
 Analogical Reasoning
- Reasoning in which a speaker compares two similar cases and infers that both are true.

Persuading by Appealing to Emotions

Emotional Appeals

• Also referred to as pathos by Aristotle
• Intended to make listeners feel happy, sad, angry, guilty, afraid, proud, sympathetic, etc.
• These are often appropriate reactions when the question is one of value and policy.
• Below is a list of some of the emotions evoked most often by public speakers:
 Fear – of serious illness, natural disasters, sexual assault, economic hardship, etc.
 Compassion – for the physically disabled, battered women, neglected animals, starving children in Africa
 Pride – in one’s country, in one’s family, in one’s ethnic heritage
 Anger – at the actions of terrorists, at landlords who exploit student tenants, at vandals and thieves
 Guilt – about not helping people less fortunate, about not considering the rights of others

Generating Emotional Appeal

 Use emotional language
 Develop vivid examples
 Speak with sincerity and conviction
o It is the strongest source of emotional power.
o You have to feel the emotion yourself.