Chapter 14 Persuasive Speaking in a Democratic Society

Persuasive Speaking in a Democratic Society

The Anatomy of Public Controversy

• Define public controversy and discuss what is means to deliberate in good faith

  • Persuasion is rooted in public controversy, or disagreements over matters of political or social significance

  • As citizens in a democracy, we have an obligation to deliberate “in good faith,” respecting our fellow citizens and backing up our opinions with good reasons and evidence

Questions of Fact, Value, and Policy

• Distinguish among the three different types of persuasive issues: fact, value, and policy

  • Public controversies typically revolve around questions of fact, value, or policy

  • Questions of fact involve controversies over existence, scope, or causality

  • Questions of value revolve around how ideas and actions should be evaluated or judged

  • Questions policy involve choices among future courses of action

Ethical Proof in Persuasive Speaking

• Define ethos and discuss what contributes to strong credibility

  • Ethical proof, or ethos, refers, to the audience’s perceptions of the credibility of the speaker and his or her sources

    • The constituents of ethos are trustworthiness, competence, open-mindedness, and dynamism

    • Your ethos will be influenced by the context or situation in which you speak

    • You can enhance your ethos by showing your audience that you share their concerns, citing reputable sources, relating personal experience, striving to be clear, considering different points of view, and delivering your speech effectively

Appealing to Audience Emotions

• Discuss the techniques and ethics of appealing to an audience’s emotions

  • Emotional appeals can be powerful motivators

    • You can engage the emotions of your audience by using affective language, identifying shared values, using vivid detail, using visualization, or comparing the unfamiliar to the familiar

    • Emotional appeals should never be used to deceive or manipulate or to replace well-reasoned arguments

Key Terms

Affective language - Strong, provocative language that stirs up an audience’s emotions

Burden of proof - The standards or expectations that define a “reasonable argument” in a particular situation, or the proof necessary to warrant serious consideration and further debate over an advocate’s claims

Deliberating “in good faith” - Debating and discussing controversial issues in a spirit of mutual respect, with a commitment to telling the truth, backing up arguments with sound reasoning and evidence, and remaining open to changing one’s mind

Ethos - The ancient Greek term for ethical proof, to the audience’s perception of the speaker’s credibility, intelligence, and motives

Public controversies - Controversies that affect the whole community or nation and that we debate and decide in our role as citizens in a democracy

Question of fact - A debatable question about existence, scope, or causality

Question of policy - A debatable question about what policy or program we should adopt to what course of action we should take

Question of value - A debatable question about whether an idea or action is good or bad, right or wrong, just or unjust, moral or immoral

Visualization - Using language that creates “word pictures” and helps your audience “see” what you are talking about