Chapter 8- Supporting your speech

Supporting your speech

"I use not only all the brains I have, but all I can borrow."- Woodrow Wilson

Selecting Material

Considerations

• Magnitude
• Proximity
• Concreteness
• Variety
• Humor
• Suitability

Opinions

Definition

• A statement expressing an individual's attitudes, beliefs or values

Expert Testimony

• controversial or not, authority helps
• good for predictions
• careful not to alter the intention of their words

Lay Testimony

• a witness, victim or relative (firsthand)
• not as authoritative or unbiased but often more memorable

Literary Quotations

• often an authority and familiar to the audience
• accessible

Statistics

Definition

• Numerical data that summarizes facts or samples

Using Statistics

• Putting multiple together can increase ability to persuade
• "hard evidence"
• Need to be reputable, authoritative and unbiased
• Helps to compare or rephrase into numbers and percentages
• Use visuals to represent

Analogies

Definition

• A comparison that uses relationships to increase understanding; typically done in pairs
• connects unfamiliar ideas to things your audience already knows

Literal Analogy

• Compares things that are actually similar (two sports, two cities, two events)
• Draw on listeners' culture as a frame of reference

Definitions

Figurative Analogy

Definitions by Classification

• Simile or metaphor
• Compares things that seem to have little in common
• Share a vital feature
• Not "hard" evidence, but inherently interesting

• placing a term in the general class, group, or family to which it belongs, then differentiating it from all other members of the class
• typical dictionary definition

Operational Definitions

• Explaining how something words or what it does
• Usually original
• Known word used in a unique way

Descriptions & Explanations

Definitions

• tells you what something is like using details
• a statement that makes clear how something is done or why it exists

Descriptions

• audience mentally sees, hears, touches, tastes what you describe
• vivid, accurate, and specific
• can be used with any kind of illustration

Explanations

Illustrations

• How
• Why
• Provides an analysis that often leads to a better solution

Definition

• a story or anecdote that provides an example of an idea, issue or problem the speaker is discussing
• almost always ensures audience interest

Brief Illustrations

• No longer than a sentence or two
• Often done in multiples to drive home a point

Extended Illustrations

• Resembles a story
• Vividly descriptive
• Has plot- opening, complications, climax and resolution
• More time, but more emotionally compelling

Hypothetical Illustrations

• Can be brief or extended
• Events that haven't but could occur
• Can put your audience "in their shoes"
• Vocab signals a hypothetical illustration