Public Speaking Notes

PART I: Foundations of Public Speaking

Chapter 1: Welcome to Public Speaking

Learning Objectives:

• Identify what you will learn and the benefits outside the classroom.
• Describe public speaking as a communication process between speaker and listeners.
• Name the elements of a rhetorical situation and explain how a speech affects the situation.
• Define the public forum and describe how studying public speaking prepares you for it.
• Identify the principal ethical obligations of listeners and speakers.

Chapter Outline

• Why Study Public Speaking?
• Public Speaking and Communication
• The Rhetorical Situation
• The Public Forum
• Ethics: Respect for Audience, Topic and Occasion.

Why Study Public Speaking?

1.1 Identify the principal things you will learn in this course and how they will benefit you outside the classroom.

• Public speaking courses help develop and refine communication skills.
• Knowledge and experience gained in the course help individuals become successful workers and effective citizens.

Develop Specific Communication Skills

• Skills developed or improved:
  • Listen carefully and critically.
  • Decide what to speak about.
  • Select what to say.
  • Find material.
  • Think critically.
  • Organize a speech.
  • Use language skillfully.
  • Use voice and body effectively.
  • Overcome speech anxiety.
  • Use visual aids.
  • Adapt principles to speaking situations.
  • Understand and benefit from audience reactions.
• These skills have been studied and taught for about 2,500 years.

Focus on Critical Thinking and Strategic Planning

• Apply and refine critical thinking and strategic planning skills.

CRITICAL THINKING

• Critical thinking: the ability to form and defend judgments rather than blindly accepting or rejecting information.
• Critical thinkers can analyze various points of view and recognize the difference between fact and opinion.
• Facts: statements verifiable by someone else.
• Opinions: subjective statements based on experience or expertise, not capable of being verified by someone else.
• Critical thinking helps recognize unstated assumptions and form precise statements.
• Overall, critical thinking places ideas into a broader context.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

• Strategic planning: identifying goals and determining how best to achieve them.
• Effective speakers make choices strategically.

Apply What You Learn

• Public speaking combines theory and practice applicable to daily life.
• Skills learned:
  • Critically evaluate messages and appeals.
  • Increase sensitivity to people and situations.
  • Adapt to diverse audiences and complex occasions.
  • Increase self-confidence and willingness to engage in dialogue.
• These attributes enhance personal, professional, and civic life.
• Employers seek good communication skills.
• Studying public speaking makes individuals more competent and active citizens.

Public Speaking and Communication

1.2 Describe public speaking as a communication process in which the speaker and listeners jointly create meaning and understanding.

• Public speaking is a communication process where speakers and listeners interact to build connections for understanding and recognizing common interests.
• Early theories viewed public speaking as one-way messages from speaker to audience.
• The audience participates in creating shared meaning and understanding.
• The speaker's ideas and values are tested and refined through interaction.
• Listeners' knowledge and understanding are modified through interaction.
• Public speaking is a continuous communication process.

The Audience's View

• Each listener comes with prior knowledge, beliefs, and values.
• Listeners decode or interpret the speaker's message within their personal framework.
• Frameworks may vary greatly in a diverse audience.
• Some ideas will be more important, or salient, than others to a listener.
• Listeners assess the speaker's message against their existing knowledge or beliefs.
• Listeners convey judgments back to the speaker nonverbally.

The Speaker's View

• Knowing the audience is crucial in preparing and delivering a speech.
• The audience's nature affects how points are developed, explained, tone, and attitude.
• Speakers analyze the audience and try to match listeners' expectations.
• The speaker constantly modifies how key points are organized and phrased and acknowledges or responds to the audience's concerns based on their responses.

The Interplay

• Speakers should be sensitive to how their ideas match their audience and use feedback to improve the fit as they speak.
• Audience members may change their beliefs, interpret the message consistently with their beliefs, or reject the message.
• The audience is actively involved in interpreting and testing what the speaker says against their own values and beliefs and letting the speaker know their reactions.
• The speaker and listeners simultaneously participate in creating the message.

The Rhetorical Situation

1.3 Name the elements of a rhetorical situation and explain the steps by which a speech affects the situation.

• Public speaking occurs in a specific situation.
• A good speech responds effectively to the needs of the situation.
• The situation is the specific context in which a speech is given.
• Most speeches have a short life span.
• Rhetoric: the study of how messages affect people.
• Rhetoric is concerned with the role of messages in:
  • Shaping, reaffirming, and modifying values
  • Binding people together or moving them apart
  • Celebrating significant events
  • Creating a sense of identity
  • Conveying information and helping people learn
  • Nurturing, strengthening, or changing beliefs
  • Leading people to take action
• Rhetorical situation: a situation in which people's understanding can be changed through messages.

Factors Determining Success

• Four basic factors:
  • Audience
  • Occasion
  • Speaker
  • Speech
• Each factor affects understanding, and understanding affects how we view each factor.
• Rhetorical situations impose constraints and create opportunities.

The Audience

• A speech is presented for a specific audience, and success depends on listeners' reactions.
• Audience analysis is important.
• The audience affects:
  • Choice of what to emphasize
  • Level of knowledge to assume
  • Speech organization
  • Specific purpose
• Speakers aim to achieve identification with the audience by finding common ground.
• Speakers may deliberately avoid identification to demonstrate integrity.
• Knowledge of the audience is critical in assessing the rhetorical situation.
• Audience members may be prepared to incorporate what the speaker says or be skeptical or hostile.
• The degree of interference they offer to the speaker's purpose is an important factor.
• Audiences provide important feedback.
• Audience feedback indicates whether the rhetorical situation has been accurately assessed and appropriately responded to.
• Valuable feedback can be obtained by reviewing a video of the speech.

The Occasion

• Occasion: the place and event where the speech is given.
• Speech occasions can be:
  • Ceremonial (epideictic): presenting/accepting an award, introducing someone, delivering a eulogy, or commemorating an event.
  • Deliberative: making an oral report, delivering a sales presentation, advocating a policy, or refuting an argument.
  • Forensic: rendering judgments about events in the past (courts of law).
• Ceremonial speaking focuses on the present.
• Deliberative speaking focuses on the future.
• Many occasions combine ceremonial and deliberative elements.
• Listeners have expectations about appropriate behavior, limiting what a speaker can do.
• Simultaneous events further define the occasion.
• Occasion presents the speaker with an exigence—a problem that can be solved through an appropriate message.
• Satisfactorily addressing the exigence is the goal of the speech.

The Speaker

• The same speech delivered by different speakers can produce different reactions and effects.
• Interest in the subject affects audience reaction.
• Ethos affects whether listeners pay attention and regard the speaker as believable.
• Previous public speaking experience and responding to audience feedback affects comfort level.
• Speakers have a purpose in mind.
• Three most general purposes of speeches:
  • To inform: Providing listeners with new information or ideas.
  • To persuade: Influencing listeners' attitudes and behavior.
  • To entertain: Stimulating a sense of community by celebrating common bonds.
• General purposes often coexist in a single speech.
• For each general purpose, the speaker has one or more specific purposes.
• The specific purpose is the standard for deciding whether the speaker achieved the goal and responded adequately to the rhetorical situation.
• Good speeches achieve the speaker's purpose, but the speech should not mislead or manipulate the audience.

The Speech

• The message itself works to shape the situation.
• An effectively organized speech improves the audience's understanding.

Constraints and Opportunities

• A speech responds to and modifies the situation.
• Speakers face opportunities and constraints.
• The goal is to devise a strategy—a plan of action—that responds to the constraints and takes advantage of the opportunities.
• Rhetorical situations consist of a mix of constraints and opportunities.
• Speakers have the opportunity to modify listeners' beliefs and values.

Speech Elements:

• Invention: generation of materials for the speech.
• Arrangement: structuring of ideas and materials.
• Style: distinctive character.
• Delivery: presentation of the speech.
• Memory: mental recall of key ideas.

The Public Forum

1.4 Define the public forum and describe how studying public speaking will prepare you to participate effectively in it.

• "Public" in "public speaking" means:
  • Speaking that is open and accessible by others.
  • Speaking that affects people beyond the immediate audience.
• Giving a speech means entering into the public forum.
• Forum: a physical place where citizens gathered to discuss issues.
• Today, the public forum is an imagined "space" where people exchange ideas about matters that affect themselves and others.

Characteristics of the Public Forum:

• A problem affects people collectively and individually.
• Cooperative action is needed to address the problem.
• The decision requires subjective judgment.
• A decision is required.
• The public forum exists when people seek information to understand the background of important issues.
• The public forum is present whether the purpose is to inform, persuade, or entertain.

Strategies for Speaking to Diverse Audiences

• Recognizing Diversity.

The Health of the Public Forum

• Skilled public speaking leads to more effective participation in the public forum.
• Skills strengthen the ties that unite participants.
• Discussion of public issues is best advanced when the public forum is active and vibrant.
• Maintaining a healthy public forum takes work.
• When citizens disengage from issues of public concern, a free society should sound the alarm.

Public Speaking and the Public Forum

• If the public forum weakens, critical public decisions will be made unilaterally.
• Two alternatives are autocratic rule and anarchy.
• The public forum extends beyond traditional politics.
• Colleges and universities are stressing "civic engagement."
• Studying public speaking equips individuals to understand issues and evaluate claims.

Ethics: Respect for Audience, Topic, and Occasion

1.5 Identify the principal ethical obligations of listeners and speakers.

• Speech has tremendous power, and those who wield it bear great responsibility.
• Speakers and listeners should seek high standards of ethical conduct.

Listener Obligations

• Listeners owe care and attention to speakers.
• Listeners should recognize the effort put into speech preparation.
• Listeners should assume the speaker is sincere.
• Do not engage in distracting activities.
• Listeners should think critically about the speech and assess it carefully.

Speaker Obligations

• Speakers should demonstrate high ethical standards in four areas:
  • Respect for listeners
  • Respect for the topic
  • Responsibility for statements
  • Concern for the consequences of the speech

Respect for Your Listeners

• Successful communication evokes common bonds between speaker and listeners.
• Listeners should feel the speaker cares about them and that they are actively involved.
• A high-quality speech is sensitive to listeners' perspectives.
• Principles demonstrating a speaker's respect:
  • Meet listeners where they are.
  • Don't insult listeners' intelligence or judgment.
  • Make sure the message merits the audience's time.
  • Respect listeners' ability to assess the message.
  • Respect the cultural diversity of the audience.
• Ethnocentrism: Imagining that one's own views are typical of everyone else's.
• Respecting cultural diversity requires being aware of one's own assumptions and resisting the temptation to assume everyone shares them.

Respect for Your Topic

• Speakers should study the topic thoroughly and present it clearly and fairly.

Responsibility for Your Statements

• Speakers must take responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of their statements.
• Speakers need to distinguish between fact and opinion.
• Statements should be made in context and represented correctly.
• Plagiarism: presenting another person's words or ideas as your own.
• To avoid plagiarism:
  • Never present someone else's unique ideas or words without acknowledging it.
  • Specify who developed the ideas or said the words that you present.
  • Paraphrase statements in your own words rather than quoting them directly, unless the exact wording of a statement is crucial to your speech.
  • Draw on several sources rather than on a single source.
• Presenting another student's speech as one's own or using the same speech in different classes is plagiarism.

Concern for the Consequences of Your Speech

• Speakers should consider how their speech may affect listeners.
• Speech is the glue that holds a community together.
• Ethical public speakers accept their responsibility to sustain the community.

Chapter 2: Your First Speech

Learning Objectives

• Explain the relationship between understanding theory and gaining practical experience and identify the principal goals of your first speech.
• Explain the functions of the introduction, body, and conclusion and arrangement strategies for materials in the body.
• Explain and use outlines to help prepare and present a speech.
• Use strategies to effectively practice and present your first speech.
• Use strategies to manage nervousness to your advantage and overcome anxiety.

Chapter Outline

• Goals and Strategies for Your First Speech
• Organizing Your Speech
• Outlining Your Speech
• Practicing and Presenting Your Speech
• Strategies for Overcoming Speech Anxiety

Goals and Strategies for Your First Speech

2.1 Explain the relationship between understanding theory and gaining practical experience and identify the principal goals of your first speech.

• Public speaking involves theory and practice.
• Theory and practice interact.
• Goals for any speech:
  • Message clarity
  • Establish positive ethos

A Clear Message

• Speech should have a clear purpose and thesis.
• Purpose: the goal of the speech; the response sought from listeners.
• Thesis: the main idea of the speech, usually stated in one or two sentences.

Positive Ethos

• Ethos: the character attributed to a speaker by listeners based on what the speaker says and does.
• Listeners make judgments about whether they should believe you and what kind of person they think you are.

Assessing Ethos

• Audience judgments about character can be quite detailed.
• Judgments about character are made quickly.
• Assessments of ethos are durable.

*#### Establishing Positive Ethos

• Establish positive Ethos by doing the following:
  • Approach the front of the room confidently, not hesitantly
  • Plant your feet firmly on the floor so that you do not wander aimlessly.
  • Make eye contact with audience members.
  • Show appropriate emotion in your facial response so that listeners realize you are sincere about what you have to say.
  • Speak slowly enough, and distinctly enough, that you can be easily understood.
  • Pause for a brief moment after completing the speech, then walk confidently back to your seat.
• Three resources of a speaker:
  • Ethos: speaker's character.
  • Logos: substance and structure of ideas.
  • Pathos: evoking appropriate emotion.

Organizing Your Speech

2.2 Explain the functions of the introduction, body, and conclusion and arrangement strategies for materials in the body.

• Every speech has three parts:
  • Introduction:
  • Body
  • Conclusion.

The Introduction:

• Functions:
  • Get the audience's attention
  • State the thesis
  • Preview how the ideas will be developed

The Body:

• The largest part of the speech; develops the thesis statement and offers proof to support claims.

• Experience
• Narratives (stories)
• Data
• Opinions

Organization of Evidence:

• Organization can be a matter of preference or be suggested by the material.
• Natural Organizational Patterns:
  • Time Order
  • Spatial Order
  • Cause-Effect.
  • Problem-Solution
  • Topical Structure
• Different cultures emphasize different supporting materials.
• Speakers are usually advised to use a variety of supporting materials.

The Conclusion:

• Functions:
  • Draw together ideas in the speech
  • Give a strong note of finality

Outlining Your Speech

2.3 Explain and use outlines to help prepare and present a speech.

• Extemporaneous Speech: Have a clear sense of main ideas and organization but have not planned the specific wording in advance.
• Two helpful outline types:
  • Preparation Outline
  • Presentation Outline

Preparation Outline:

• More complete; used for speech development.
• Helps to identify main ideas and organize them logically.
• Lists supporting materials.

Presentation Outline:

• A brief outline of key words to jog the speaker's memory and remind him/her what comes next.
• Familiarity with the material allow the presentation outline to to trigger to the same ideas as the preparation one.
• Can be written on Index cards, which are the easiest to handle.

Practicing and Presenting Your Speech

2.4 Use strategies to effectively practice and present your first speech.

• Practicing is a way to become familiar with the ideas by talking them through.
• Content of speech will be known well enough that thoughts will express naturally.

Practice Activities:

• Develop and talk through the preparation outline (record and listen to check clarity).
• Reduce the preparation outline to a presentation outline.
• Develop exact wording for introduction and conclusion.
• Simulate the conditions under which you will speak.

Presenting the Speech

• Concerns about delivery:
  • Where to stand
  • What to do with hands
  • Where to focus eyes
• Essential things to know:
  • Walk confidently to the front without beginning to speak.
  • Take a few seconds to comfortably look before starting.
  • Speak a bit more slowly.
  • Maintain eye contact.
  • Hands hang naturally when not emphasizing points.
  • Keep the body relaxed, not rigid and tense.
  • Speak loudly enough without shouting and vary pitch so you don't speak monotone.
  • Think of what you are doing as a communication to others not as a performance.
• Two goals are to be clear in the message and to establish positive ethos.

Strategies for Speaking to Diverse Audiences

• Respecting Diversity.

*###. Communication Apprehension

• Fears/worries about communicating with others.
  Focus on Making Messages in an organized and clear way.

Strategies for Overcoming Speech Anxiety

2.5 Use strategies to manage nervousness to your advantage and overcome anxiety.

• Even experienced speakers may be apprehensive.
• Most Americans fear public speaking more than anything.
• Communication apprehension: fears and worries about communicating with others.
• Anxiety about public speaking is a widespread example.
• People experience communication apprehension very differently, depending on such factors as their style of thinking and their general level of self-esteem and confidence.
• Being nervous is normal.
• The same chemical changes that cause extreme anxiety in some people bring others to a higher state of readiness and confidence.

Six Steps to Turn Speech Anxiety Into an Advantage:

• Steps:
  • Acknowledge your fears, but recognize that you can overcome them.
  • Think about what you are going to say and the effect you want to have on your audience.
  • Act confident, even if you feel apprehensive.
  • Visualize what it is like to be a successful speaker.
  • Work carefully on the introduction to start on a strong note.
  • End the speech on a strong note and pause before returning to your seat.