Chapter 13: Nature of Formal Presentations

I. Aristotle identified three basic categories of speeches

A. Deliberative: involved speeches about future actions that might be taken.
B. Forensic: included arguments about what had happened much like what you
would find in a courtroom
C. Epideictic: included speeches that celebrate or commemorate events or people.
II. Aristotle also identified five cannons of rhetoric, or the five elements of creating and
presenting a speech:
A. Invention: identifying the topic on which you will speak.
B. Arrangement: determining the order in which you will address points related to
the topic.
C. Style: the words and phrases you use to make the topic interesting.
D. Delivery: the physical and vocal dimensions of speaking.
E. Memory: remembering the entire speech (much more important during
classical days than it is today).
III. Topic selection: You should consider several questions when evaluating potential
topics for your presentation.
A. What is the General purpose of my speech?
i. There are three primary types of general purposes, or overall reason for
speaking: To inform, to persuade, to commemorate.
a. In an informative speech, you are trying to teach your audience
something.
b. In a persuasive speech, you are trying to change or reinforce
your audience’s attitudes, actions, or beliefs in some way.
c. In a commemorative speech, you are usually celebrating or
honoring something.
B. What topics are appropriate for the occasion?
i. When thinking about potential topics, take time to consider what types
of topics might be appropriate or even expected for the occasion.
ii. Audiences typically expect certain topics to be addressed on particular
occasions.
iii. For example, you would expect a commencement speech to have a
theme of hopes and dreams and for a toast at a wedding to include
anecdotes about the bride and groom.
C. Is the topic appropriate for this particular audience?
i. You should consider your audience’s interests, needs, and level of
expertise when choosing your topic, and consider how those mesh with
the occasion.
ii. Instead, you should consider what topics will be of interest to, connect
with, and build upon an audience’s existing knowledge in some way.
D. Is the topic appropriate for me?
i. You will spend a significant amount of time thinking about, researching,
practicing, and delivering your speech, so you should make sure that the
 topic is one that you care enough about to invest what will be a lot of
time and work.
ii. Some questions to ask yourself include: Is this topic something that you
care about?, Is it a subject in which you are an expert, or about which you
would like to know more?, Is the topic choice one that reflects the person
you want to be seen as?
E. Is this topic narrow enough?
i. You will need to narrow your topic to make sure that you can adequately
explain your subject matter in the amount of time you have available
ii. Brainstorming can be a helpful way to narrow your topic. This works by
creating a list of all of the possible topics you can think of, beginning by
writing down every possible idea that comes to mind, regardless of how
good you think the idea is, and then afterward organizing or evaluating
the ideas to help you make a decision about which to choose.
iii. Another strategy used to narrow your focus is a concept map. This is a
visual representation of all of the potential areas you could cover in your
speech that includes circles around topics and lines that connect related
ideas; also known as a mind map.
IV. Audience analysis and adaptation: Process of examining information about the
listeners. Analysis helps you adapt your message so that the listeners will respond
accordingly.
V. There are seven different ways you can analyze an audience:
A. Demographics are categories of definable characteristics of groups of people,
such: age, gender, culture, ethnicity, race, religion, political affiliation,
socioeconomic status, education level, and sexual orientation.
i. As a speaker, knowing something about your audience’s demographic
makeup might give you some general ideas about your audience’s likely
experiences, expectations, beliefs, values, behaviors, and habits.
B. Artifacts: objects that indicate something about the values, beliefs, practices,
history, and norms of a group of people.
i. If you are giving a speech in class, you might examine what your
classmates wear, what they talk about, and what kinds of objects they
carry with them, and then consider what those things communicate
about your classmates’ interests and values.
C. Informants: An informant is a contact person within the organization or group
from whom you can obtain information about your audience.
i. Informants can be used when you do not know much about your
audience.
D. Interviews: In the event that you do not have a contact person, you might want
to consider asking the person arranging the speech to put you in touch with a
few potential members of the audience so that you can interview them.
i. This information can be enormously helpful in tailoring your message to
the particular audience you will address.
 E. Surveys: can help you gather demographic data as well as information about
people’s attitudes regarding specific issues.
i. If you have enough time before your presentation, and have the ability to
reach each audience member, you can send your audience a survey.
ii. There are a few different types of questions that are well suited for a
survey:
a. Likert scale questions that give statements and then ask
respondents to circle a number that measures their level of
agreement with it,
b. semantic differential scale questions that ask participants to
choose their position on a continuum between two polar
opposites, or
c. open-ended questions that allow audience members to give
more elaborate written responses to a question.
F. Polling the audience: you can informally poll your audience by asking a
question, or even several questions, during your speech. This can be an
especially effective strategy that will help you capture your audience’s
attention during the beginning of your speech while also learning something
about them that you can then use later in your presentation.
G. Direct observation: During your speech, you will also be able to see your
audience’s nonverbal feedback, which will provide cues about how they react to
specific aspects of your message (For example, audience members may nod their
heads or make eye contact or, use their cell phones or fall asleep).
VI. Conducting research: Incorporating and citing research throughout your speech
enhances your ability to connect with an audience because it increases your
credibility as a speaker and substantiates the claims you make.
A. Sources of information
i. Peer-reviewed academic journal articles: original research studies
typically published in academic journals that you can find in your
university or college library.
a. These articles undergo a rigorous review process, so can provide
some of the most reliable, up-to-date information, but will also
usually be written with a high level of specific detail given that
they are intended primarily for other experts and researchers.
ii. Books:
a. Can be extended research reports that investigate a topic in
depth; a textbook that provides history, background information,
and overviews; stories about individuals who went through a
particular experience or contain completely fictional account.
b. Typically, nonfiction research-based books or textbooks will be
the most useful sources of evidence when you are preparing a
speech, but you might find a good narrative or example in fiction
books that will add some color to your presentation.
 iii. Magazines and newspapers: intended for more general audiences than
academic journals and rely heavily on subscribers and advertisers to
maintain profits.
iv. Web and media sources: Websites and media sources such as television
shows, radio programs, documentaries, and movies can be good sources
of quality information, but can also be highly unreliable.
a. Generally, websites ending in .gov and .edu are more reliable than
websites ending in .com, .org, or .net.
v. Interviews with an expert or a peer
a. An expert might be a professor who does research or teaches
about the subject, or someone who has professional experience
related to your topic.
b. Peers provide a different type of information than an expert can,
but the stories shared by peers can help your audience better
understand how your topic impacts others’ everyday
experiences.
B. Types of supporting evidence
i. Numbers/Statistics: Numbers report raw quantitative data, whereas
statistics summarize and organize sets of data to make them easier to
understand and visualize.
a. Statistics might include ratios, percentages, fractions, averages,
standard deviations, or other calculations that make it easier to
understand the overall impact of the data.
b. Numbers and statistics can be especially valuable for showing
the extent of a problem or the likelihood that your audience will
be impacted by an issue.
ii. Examples are instances that we use to help define or clarify concepts,
draw attention to a particular feature of an experience, or elicit
memories and emotions in our audience; can be brief, extended, real, or
hypothetical.
iii. Testimony: involves using the words of other people to support your
point.
a. Expert testimony is information that you obtain from someone
who conducts extensive research on the topic, has significant
experience with the topic, or holds a position that lends
credibility to his or her ideas on a subject.
b. Peer testimony is information that comes from someone who is
in the same peer group as the audience, and who is not
necessarily an expert on the topic.
iv. Definitions: it can be helpful to include definitions in your speech if you
are using terms that your audience is unfamiliar with. You can choose to
provide the denotative or connotative meaning of the word or phrase.
C. Evaluating information
 i. How recent is the source? Typically, more recent sources will have more
up-to-date, useful information.
ii. Is the source in a position to know the information? If the person or
organization that provided the information to the source is an expert on
the specific subject, then they are probably a reliable source.
iii. Is the source biased? If your source will gain financially, or in some other
way, from convincing you to adopt a particular perspective or to
purchase a particular product, you should take that bias into account
when determining whether to use the information
iv. Is the information consistent with other sources? If you have a half dozen
sources that meet the previous criteria for being credible sources, and
one of the sources contradicts the other five sources, it is probable that
the five consistent sources are accurate, not the single source that
contradicts them.
VII. Dialogic public speaking
A. Identify with your audience: Demonstrate early in the speech that you tried to
understand the topic from their perspective
B. Respect differences: Even among a particular demographic group there are
differences in attitudes and values, so do not make the presumption that they all
know or believe something just because they are members of a certain group
C. Keep an open mind: Even though you may believe you know what you want to
say, the evidence may take you elsewhere. Search unbiased sources first, then
look to those that might be supportive of and those that may disagree with your
position.
D. Strive for understanding: Help your audience understand things the way you do,
rather than force them to be convinced by quantity.
E. Talk with, not at your audience: An effective speech retains a conversational
quality that invites follow-up comments and questions when it is done.