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please read chapter: (8,9,10) and answer the question in the work sheet please answer clear question please answer in the same word dacumoints

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Reading Worksheet 2 Structure and Organization! D2L Structure Reading, Chapters 8, 9, & 10 1. Several of the readings for today deal with structure! Discuss two concepts about structure that were new or interesting to you. (Please feel free to quote the book or tell me which exact page your concept was on) 2. What did you learn or review which will help you organize the information in your first speech? 3. I think structure and organization are CRUCIAL to building a strong speech. That is why we start with them and also why I gave you an extra reading!!! I know there was some overlap, but anything specific from the D2L reading you found especially helpful? 4. How will these concepts help you with building a speech? 5. Tell me how you feel about outlines. Did the readings change your mind at all or influence your feelings?! 6. What concepts were very helpful from the introduction and conclusion chapter? 7. Was there anything in the readings you did not like, did not understand or had questions on? STAND UP, SPEAK OUT S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking Christopher Anderson, Leslie J. Harris, Marnie Lawler Mcdonough, Josh Miller, Stacey MirvissJossart, Emily Mueller, Megan Orcholski, Kristin Woodward University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries. Adapted from University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing edition, 2016. This edition adapted from a work originally produced in 2011 by a publisher who has requested that it not receive attribution. Milwaukee, WI Stand up, Speak out by https://press.rebus.community/ uwmpublicspeaking is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. CONTENTS Publisher Information ix PART I. P UBLIC S PEAKING : S PEAKERS AND A UDIENCES 1. Why Public Speaking Matters Today Why is Public Speaking Important? The Process of Public Speaking 2. Speaking Confidently What Is Communication Apprehension? All Anxiety Is Not the Same: Sources of Communication Apprehension Reducing Communication Apprehension Coping with the Unexpected 3. Engaging Your Audience Ethical Considerations The Literal and Target Audiences Audience Analysis Your Constructed Audience Conclusion 3 6 16 31 34 41 47 58 58 61 63 65 69 71 80 89 vi 4. Understanding the Ethics of Public Speaking The Ethics Pyramid Ethics in Public Speaking Free Speech 5. Listening Listening vs. Hearing Listening Styles Why Listening Is Difficult Stages of Listening Listening Critically 91 93 98 117 123 125 129 134 141 147 PART II. C RAFTING Y OUR S PEECH 6. Topic, Purpose, Thesis 161 General Purpose Selecting a Topic What If You Draw a Blank? Specific Purposes Crafting and Understanding Thesis Statements for Speeches Conclusion 7. Researching Your Speech 8. Building and Organizing Your Speech 162 181 187 195 203 Determining Your Main Ideas Using Common Organizing Patterns Keeping Your Speech Moving 9. The Importance Outlining 227 238 247 257 Why Outline? Types of Outlines Using Outlining for Success 212 215 225 259 267 285 vii 10. Effective Introductions and Powerful Conclusions 291 The Importance of an Introduction Putting Together a Strong Introduction Why Conclusions Matter Steps of a Conclusion 11. The Importance of Language and Style 292 297 303 306 319 Oral verses Written Language Using Language Effectively Six Elements of Language 12. Developing Strong Arguments 322 328 342 351 Principles of Argumentation The Parts of an Argument Types of Arguments Counter Arguments Logical Fallacies: Weaknesses in Reasoning Conclusion 13. Delivery: A Recipe for Great Speaking 352 356 359 369 374 380 383 How to Effectively Use Your Voice How to Effectively Use your Body Types of Preparation and Delivery Delivery and Audience Connection 14. Presentation Aids 385 394 403 409 415 What Are Presentation Aids? Functions of Presentation Aids Types of Presentation Aids Media to Use for Presentation Aids Tips for Preparing Presentation Aids 415 418 427 448 458 viii PART III. T YPES OF P UBLIC S PEECHES 15. Informative Speaking 469 Informative Speaking Goals Types of Informative Speeches 16. Persuasive Speaking 472 482 499 Why Persuasion? How to Persuade Types of Persuasive Claims 17. Ceremonial Speaking 501 510 514 523 Functions of Special Occasion Speeches Types of Special Occasion Speeches Keynote Speaking Delivering Your Special Occasion Speech 525 527 538 542 PUBLISHER INFORMATION Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking is adapted from a work produced and distributed under a Creative Commons license (CC BYNC-SA) in 2011 by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution. The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries edition builds on the University of Minnesota version with the following changes and additions to the content: • The original publication was edited for both content and clarity. • Some content was removed or added, but most chapters remain similar to the original version. Exceptions include: Chapter 3: Engaging your Audience and Chapter 12: Developing Strong Arguments. These chapters were written by Josh Miller. Chapter 7: Researching your Speech was written by Kristin Woodward. Chapter 12, Delivery: A Recipe for Great Speaking was written by Megan Orcholski. Chapter 16: Persuasive Speaking was modified from: Tucker, Barbara and Barton, Kristin, “Exploring Public Speaking” (2016). Communication Open Textbooks. Book 1. http://oer.galileo.usg.edu/communicationtextbooks/1 x This adapted edition is produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing through the eLearning Support Initiative. [Note from University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing Adaptation] This adaptation has reformatted the original text, and replaced some images and figures to make the resulting whole more shareable. This adaptation has not significantly altered or updated the original 2011 text. This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike license. PART I PUBLIC SPEAKING: SPEAKERS AND AUDIENCES CHAPTER 1 WHY PUBLIC SPEAKING MA MATTERS TTERS TODA TODAY Y LEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explore the types of public speaking. • Understand the benefits of public speaking. • Distinguish between the interactional models of communication and the transactional model of communication. • Understand the basic principles of public speaking. P ublic speaking is the process of designing and delivering a message to a public audience. Effective public speaking involves understanding your audience and speaking goals, choosing elements for the speech that will engage your audience with your topic, and delivering your message skillfully. Effective public speakers understand that they must plan, organize, and revise their material before speaking. This book will help you understand the basics of effective public speaking and guide you through the process of creating your own 4 presentations. We will begin by discussing the ways in which public speaking is relevant to you and can benefit you in your career, education, and personal life. Then, we will introduce some of the basic principles of public speaking. In a world where people are bombarded with messages through television, social media, and the Internet, one of the first questions you may ask is, “Do people still give speeches?” Well, type the words “public speaking” into Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com, and you will find more than two thousand books with the words “public speaking” in the title. Most of these and other books related to public speaking are not college textbooks. In fact, many books written about public speaking are intended for very specific audiences: A Handbook of Public Speaking for Scientists and Engineers (by Peter Kenny), Excuse Me! Let Me Speak!: A Young Person’s Guide to Public Speaking (by Michelle J. Dyett-Welcome), Professionally Speaking: Public Speaking for Health Professionals (by Frank De Piano and Arnold Melnick), and Speaking Effectively: A Guide for Air Force Speakers (by John A. Kline). Although these different books address specific issues related to nurses, engineers, or air force officers, the content is basically the same. If you search for “public speaking” in an online academic database, you’ll find numerous articles on public speaking in business magazines (e.g., BusinessWeek, Nonprofit World) and academic journals (e.g., Harvard Business Review, Journal of Business Communication). There is so much information available about public speaking because it continues to be relevant even with the growth of technological means of communication. As author and speaker Scott Berkun writes in his blog, “For all our tech, we’re still very fond of the most low tech thing there is: a monologue” (Berkun, S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 5 2009). People continue to spend millions of dollars every year to listen to professional speakers. For example, attendees of the 2010 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, which invites speakers from around the world to share their ideas in short, eighteen-minute presentations, paid six thousand dollars per person to listen to fifty speeches over a four-day period. Technology can also help public speakers reach audiences that were not possible to reach in the past. Millions of people heard about and then watched Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” online. In this captivating speech, Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who retired at age forty-six after developing inoperable tumors, delivered his last lecture to the students, faculty, and staff. This inspiring speech was turned into a DVD and a best-selling book that was eventually published in more than thirty-five languages (Carnegie Mellon University, 2011). We realize that you may not be invited to TED to give the speech of your life or create a speech so inspirational that it touches the lives of millions via YouTube; however, all of us will find ourselves in situations where we will be asked to give a speech, make a presentation, or just deliver a few words. In this chapter, we will first address why public speaking is important, and then we will discuss models that illustrate the process of public speaking itself. 6 WHY IS PUBLIC SPEAKING IMPORTANT? In this book we are beginning with assumption that public speaking matters. It matters to our world, personal lives, and professional lives. Public speaking is not simply about conveying information, but it can be a powerful tool for change. In what follows we will introduce some of the basic principles and benefits of public speaking. ROOTS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING The ancient Greeks were some of the earliest people to write about public speaking because they viewed speech as critical to a democracy. The Greeks began studying rhetoric in the 5th century BCE when adult male citizens had a duty to participate in government and the courts (Kennedy 1991, p. vii). Some Greek philosophers were deeply skeptical about rhetoric because they recognized its power to be used for both good and evil. However, other scholars, such as Aristotle, insisted that rhetoric is morally neutral. If people are S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 7 mindful of ethics, rhetoric can be a powerful tool of both social good and individual benefit. In his book, On Rhetoric, Aristotle argued that rhetoric can be divided into three general categories: judicial, deliberative, and epideictic. In judicial rhetoric audiences are asked to make a judgement about the past, and in deliberative rhetoric audiences are asked to make a judgement about the future. Epideictic rhetoric is not asking the audience to make a judgement about the past or future, but instead it can be ceremonial, often calling for praise or blame. We can continue to learn from the ancient Greeks. First, many of the theories of public speaking developed from the ancient Greeks continue to be applicable today. For example, we will often return to the concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos refers to the character of the speaker, pathos refers to generating emotional responses in the minds of the audience, and logos is about utilizing strong arguments and logic. Each of these there elements need to be utilized in delivering an effective speech, and in later chapters we will discuss each in more detail. Second, the Greeks considered speech to be part of what creates and maintains a public. Public speaking was not an abstract concept. Instead, it was a vital tool for daily life and necessary to sustain a democracy. THE PUBLIC A public is a community of people with shared concerns. Sometimes we think about a public in terms of nation or community (people of the United States of America or Milwaukee), but we can also think about publics as being organized around shared interests or identities (fans of Dr. Who, students, or people who support drug legalization). Furthermore, we always belong to multiple 8 publics at the same time.Through speech, we can create, shape, and influence publics. We will return to the concept of a public in the chapter about audience, but it is important to recognize that part of the reason public speaking is valuable is because of its relationship to a public. COMMON TYPES OF PUBLIC SPEAKING Every single day people across the United States and around the world stand up in front of some kind of audience and speak. In fact, there’s even a monthly publication that reproduces some of the top speeches from around the United States called Vital Speeches of the Day (http://www.vsotd.com). Although public speeches are of various types, they can generally be grouped into three categories: informative, persuasive, and ceremonial/entertaining. INFORMATIVE SPEAKING One of the most common types of public speaking is informative speaking. The primary purpose of informative presentations is to share one’s knowledge of a subject with an audience. Reasons for making an informative speech vary widely. For example, you might be asked to instruct a group of coworkers on how to use new computer software or to report to a group of managers how your latest project is coming along. A local community group might wish to hear about your volunteer activities in New Orleans during spring break or learn about the different approaches to reduce homelessness in your community. What all these examples have in common is the goal of imparting information to an audience. S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 9 Informative speaking is integrated into many different occupations. Physicians often lecture about their areas of expertise to medical students, other physicians, and patients. Teachers find themselves presenting to parents as well as to their students. Firefighters give demonstrations about how to effectively control a fire in the house. Informative speaking is a common part of numerous jobs and other everyday activities. As a result, learning how to speak effectively has become an essential skill in today’s world. PERSUASIVE SPEAKING A second common reason for speaking to an audience is to persuade others. In our everyday lives, we are often called on to convince, motivate, or otherwise persuade others to change their beliefs, take an action, or reconsider a decision. Advocating for music education in your local school district, convincing clients to purchase your company’s products, or inspiring high school students to attend college all involve influencing other people through public speaking. For some people, such as elected officials, giving persuasive speeches is a crucial part of attaining and continuing career success. Other people make careers out of speaking to groups of people who pay to listen to them. Motivational authors and speakers, such as Les Brown (http://www.lesbrown.com), make millions of dollars each year from people who want to be motivated to do better in their lives. Brian Tracy, another professional speaker and author, specializes in helping business leaders become more productive and effective in the workplace (http://www.briantracy.com). Whether public speaking is something you do every day or just a few times a year, persuading others is a 10 challenging task. If you develop the skill to persuade effectively, it can be personally and professionally rewarding. CEREMONIAL SPEAKING Ceremonial speaking involves an array of speaking occasions ranging from introductions to wedding toasts, to presenting and accepting awards, to delivering eulogies at funerals and memorial services in addition to after-dinner speeches and motivational speeches. Entertaining speaking has been important since the time of the ancient Greeks, when Aristotle identified epideictic speaking (speaking in a ceremonial context) as an important type of address. As with persuasive and informative speaking, there are professionals, from religious leaders to comedians, who make a living simply from delivering entertaining speeches. As anyone who has watched an awards show on television or has seen an incoherent best man deliver a wedding toast can attest, speaking to entertain is a task that requires preparation and practice to be effective. BENEFITS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING Once you’ve learned the basic skills associated with public speaking, you’ll find that being able to effectively speak in public has profound benefits, including • influencing the world around you, • developing leadership skills, • becoming a thought leader. S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 11 INFLUENCING THE WORLD AROUND YOU If you don’t like something about your local government, then speak out about your issue! One of the best ways to get our society to change is through the power of speech. Common citizens in the United States and around the world, like you, are influencing the world in real ways through the power of speech. Just type the words “citizens speak out” in a search engine and you’ll find numerous examples of how common citizens use the power of speech to make real changes in the world—for example, by speaking out against “fracking” for natural gas (a process in which chemicals are injected into rocks in an attempt to open them up for fast flow of natural gas or oil) or in favor of retaining a popular local sheriff. One of the amazing parts of being a citizen in a democracy is the right to stand up and speak out, which is a luxury many people in the world do not have. So if you don’t like something, be the force of change you’re looking for through the power of speech. DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP SKILLS Have you ever thought about climbing the corporate ladder and eventually finding yourself in a management or other leadership position? If so, then public speaking skills are very important. Hackman and Johnson assert that effective public speaking skills are a necessity for all leaders (Hackman & Johnson, 2004). If you want people to follow you, you have to communicate effectively and clearly what followers should do. According to Bender, “Powerful leadership comes from knowing what matters to you. Powerful presentations come from expressing this effectively. It’s important to develop both” (Bender, 1998). One of the most important skills for leaders to develop is their public speaking skills, which is why executives 12 spend millions of dollars every year going to public speaking workshops; hiring public speaking coaches; and buying public speaking books, CDs, and DVDs. BECOMING A THOUGHT LEADER Even if you are not in an official leadership position, effective public speaking can help you become a “thought leader.” Joel Kurtzman, editor of Strategy & Business, coined this term to call attention to individuals who contribute new ideas to the world of business. According to business consultant Ken Lizotte, “when your colleagues, prospects, and customers view you as one very smart guy or gal to know, then you’re a thought leader” (Lizotte, 2008). Typically, thought leaders engage in a range of behaviors, including enacting and conducting research on business practices. To achieve thought leader status, individuals must communicate their ideas to others through both writing and public speaking. Lizotte demonstrates how becoming a thought leader can be personally and financially rewarding at the same time: when others look to you as a thought leader, you will be more desired and make more money as a result. Business gurus often refer to “intellectual capital,” or the combination of your knowledge and ability to communicate that knowledge to others (Lizotte, 2008). Whether standing before a group of executives discussing the next great trend in business or delivering a webinar (a seminar over the web), thought leaders use public speaking every day to create the future that the rest of us live in. PUBLIC SPEAKING SKILLS Oral communication skills were the number one skill that S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 13 college graduates found useful in the business world, according to a study by sociologist Andrew Zekeri (Zekeri, 2004). That fact alone makes learning about public speaking worthwhile. However, there are many other benefits of communicating effectively for the hundreds of thousands of college students every year who take public speaking courses. Let’s take a look at some of the personal benefits you’ll get both from a course in public speaking and from giving public speeches. In addition to learning the process of creating and delivering an effective speech, students of public speaking leave the class with a number of other benefits as well. Some of these benefits include • developing critical thinking skills, • fine-tuning verbal and nonverbal skills, • overcoming fear of public speaking. DEVELOPING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS One of the very first benefits you will gain from your public speaking course is an increased ability to think critically. Problem solving is one of many critical thinking skills you will engage in during this course. For example, when preparing a persuasive speech, you’ll have to think through real problems affecting your campus, community, or the world and provide possible solutions to those problems. You’ll also have to think about the positive and negative consequences of your solutions and then communicate your ideas to others. At first, it may seem easy to come up with solutions for a campus problem such as a shortage of parking spaces: just build more spaces. But after thinking and researching further 14 you may find out that building costs, environmental impact from loss of green space, maintenance needs, or limited locations for additional spaces make this solution impractical. Being able to think through problems and analyze the potential costs and benefits of solutions is an essential part of critical thinking and of public speaking aimed at persuading others. These skills will help you not only in public speaking contexts but throughout your life as well. As we stated earlier, college graduates in Zekeri’s study rated oral communication skills as the most useful for success in the business world. The second most valuable skill they reported was problem-solving ability, so your public speaking course is doubly valuable! Another benefit to public speaking is that it will enhance your ability to conduct and analyze research. Public speakers must provide credible evidence within their speeches if they are going to persuade various audiences. So your public speaking course will further refine your ability to find and utilize a range of sources. FINE-TUNING VERBAL AND NONVERBAL SKILLS A second benefit of taking a public speaking course is that it will help you fine-tune your verbal and nonverbal communication skills. Whether you competed in public speaking in high school or this is your first time speaking in front of an audience, having the opportunity to actively practice communication skills and receive professional feedback will help you become a better overall communicator. Often, people don’t even realize that they twirl their hair or repeatedly mispronounce words while speaking in public settings until they receive feedback from a teacher during a public speaking course. People around the United States will often pay speech coaches over one hundred dollars per hour to help them enhance S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 15 their speaking skills. You have a built-in speech coach right in your classroom, so it is to your advantage to use the opportunity to improve your verbal and nonverbal communication skills. OVERCOMING FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING An additional benefit of taking a public speaking class is that it will help reduce your fear of public speaking. Whether they’ve spoken in public a lot or are just getting started, most people experience some anxiety when engaging in public speaking. Heidi Rose and Andrew Rancer evaluated students’ levels of public speaking anxiety during both the first and last weeks of their public speaking class and found that those levels decreased over the course of the semester (Rose & Rancer, 1993). One explanation is that people often have little exposure to public speaking. By taking a course in public speaking, students become better acquainted with the public speaking process, making them more confident and less apprehensive. In addition, you will learn specific strategies for overcoming the challenges of speech anxiety. KEY DEFINITIONS • Deliberative: a genre of speech that concerns the future, often asks the audience to determine what should be done • Epideictic: a genre of speech that often calls for praise or blame, it is often ceremonial • Ethos: appeals to the character of the speaker 16 • Judicial: a genre of speech that concerns the what happened in the past, often asks the audience to determine guilt or innocence • Logos: appeals to logic or argument • Pathos: emotional appeals • Public: a community with shared concerns or interests • Rhetoric: the study and practice of communication that can persuade audiences THE PROCESS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 17 Looking4poetry – megaphone head man – CC BY-NCND 2.0. In this section, we’re going to examine the process of public speaking by first introducing you to a basic model of public speaking and then discussing how public speaking functions as dialogue. These models will give you a basic understanding of the communication process and some challenges that you may face as a speaker. MODELS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING A basic model of human communication is one of the first topics that most communication teachers start with in any class. For our focus on public speaking, we will introduce three widely discussed models in communication: linear, interactional, and transactional. LINEAR MODEL Receiver -> Source -> Receiver” width=”497″ class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-36″ /> The linear model of public speaking comes from the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). The original model mirrored how radio and telephone technologies functioned and consisted of three primary parts: source, channel, and receiver. The source was the part of a telephone a person spoke into, the channel was the telephone itself, and the receiver was the part of the phone where one could hear the other person. Shannon and Weaver also recognized that often 18 there is static that interferes with listening to a telephone conversation, which they called noise. Although there are a number of problems with applying this model to human communication, it does have some useful parallels to public speaking. In public speaking, the source is the person who is giving the speech, the channel is the speaker’s use of verbal and nonverbal communication, and the receivers are the audience members listening to the speech. As with a telephone call, a wide range of distractions (noise) can inhibit an audience member from accurately attending to a speaker’s speech. Avoiding or adapting to these types of noise is an important challenge for public speakers. INTERACTIONAL MODEL Receiver. Receiver -> Source” width=”497″ class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-37″ /> The interactional model of communication developed by Wilbur Schramm builds upon the linear model (Schramm, 1954). Schramm added three major components to the Shannon and Weaver model. First, S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 19 Schramm identified two basic processes of communication: encoding and decoding. Encoding is what a source does when “creating a message, adapting it to the receiver, and transmitting it across some sourceselected channel” (Wrench, McCroskey & Richmond, 2008). When you are at home preparing your speech or standing in front of your classroom talking to your peers, you are participating in the encoding process. The second major process is the decoding process, or “sensing (for example, hearing or seeing) a source’s message, interpreting the source’s message, evaluating the source’s message, and responding to the source’s message” (Wrench, McCroskey & Richmond, 2008). Decoding is relevant in the public speaking context when, as an audience member, you listen to the words of the speech, pay attention to nonverbal behaviors of the speaker, and attend to any presentation aids that the speaker uses. You must then interpret what the speaker is saying. Although interpreting a speaker’s message may sound easy in theory, in practice many problems can arise. A speaker’s verbal message, nonverbal communication, and mediated presentation aids can all make a message either clearer or harder to understand. For example, unfamiliar vocabulary, speaking too fast or too softly, or small print on presentation aids may make it difficult for you to figure out what the speaker means. Conversely, by providing definitions of complex terms, using well-timed gestures, or displaying graphs of quantitative information, the speaker can help you interpret his or her meaning. Once you have interpreted what the speaker is communicating, you then evaluate the message. Was it good? Do you agree or disagree with the speaker? Is a 20 speaker’s argument logical? These are all questions that you may ask yourself when evaluating a speech. The last part of decoding is “responding to a source’s message,” when the receiver encodes a message to send to the source. When a receiver sends a message back to a source, we call this process feedback. Schramm talks about three types of feedback: direct, moderately direct, and indirect (Schramm, 1954). The first type, direct feedback, occurs when the receiver directly talks to the source. For example, if a speech ends with a questionand-answer period, listeners will openly agree or disagree with the speaker. The second type of feedback, moderately direct, focuses on nonverbal messages sent while a source is speaking, such as audience members smiling and nodding their heads in agreement or looking at their watches or surreptitiously sending text messages during the speech. The final type of feedback, indirect, often involves a greater time gap between the actual message and the receiver’s feedback. For example, suppose you run for student body president and give speeches to a variety of groups all over campus, only to lose on student election day. Your audiences (the different groups you spoke to) have offered you indirect feedback on your message through their votes. One of the challenges you’ll face as a public speaker is how to respond effectively to audience feedback, particularly the direct and moderately direct forms of feedback you receive during your presentation. S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 21 TRANSACTIONAL MODEL OF PUBLIC SPEAKING One of the biggest concerns that some people have with the interactional model of communication is that it tends to place people into the category of either source or receiver with no overlap. Even with Schramm’s model, encoding and decoding are perceived as distinct for sources and receivers. Furthermore, the interactional model cannot handle situations where multiple sources are interacting at the same time (Mortenson, 1972). To address these weaknesses, Dean Barnlund proposed a transactional model of communication (Barnlund, 2008). The basic premise of the transactional model is that individuals are sending and receiving messages at the same time. Whereas the interactional model has individuals engaging in the role of either source or 22 receiver and the meaning of a message is sent from the source to the receiver, the transactional model assumes that meaning is cocreated by both people interacting together. The idea that meanings are cocreated between people is based on a concept called the “field of experience.” According to West and Turner, a field of experience involves “how a person’s culture, experiences, and heredity influence his or her ability to communicate with another” (West & Turner, 2010). Our education, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, personality, beliefs, actions, attitudes, languages, social status, past experiences, and customs are all aspects of our field of experience, which we bring to every interaction. For meaning to occur, we must have some shared experiences with our audience; this makes it challenging to speak effectively to audiences with very different experiences from our own. Our goal as public speakers is to build upon shared fields of experience so that we can help audience members interpret our message. DIALOGIC THEORY OF PUBLIC SPEAKING Most people think of public speaking as engaging in a monologue where the speaker stands and delivers information and the audience passively listens. Based on the work of numerous philosophers, however, Ronald Arnett and Pat Arneson proposed that all communication, even public speaking, could be viewed as a dialogue (Arnett & Arneson, 1999). The dialogic theory is based on three overarching principles: 1. Dialogue is more natural than monologue. 2. Meanings are in people not words. S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 23 3. Contexts and social situations impact perceived meanings (Bakhtin, 2001a; Bakhtin, 2001b). Let’s look at each of these in turn. DIALOGUE VS. MONOLOGUE The first tenet of the dialogic perspective is that communication should be a dialogue and not a monologue. Lev Yakubinsky argued that even public speaking situations often turn into dialogues when audience members actively engage speakers by asking questions. He even claimed that nonverbal behavior (e.g., nodding one’s head in agreement or scowling) functions as feedback for speakers and contributes to a dialogue (Yakubinsky, 1997). Overall, if you approach your public speaking experience as a dialogue, you’ll be more actively engaged as a speaker and more attentive to how your audience is responding, which will, in turn, lead to more actively engaged audience members. MEANINGS ARE IN PEOPLE, NOT WORDS Part of the dialogic process in public speaking is realizing that you and your audience may differ in how you see your speech. Hellmut Geissner and Edith Slembeck (1986) discussed Geissner’s idea of responsibility, or the notion that the meanings of words must be mutually agreed upon by people interacting with each other (Geissner & Slembek, 1986). If you say the word “dog” and think of a soft, furry pet and your audience member thinks of the animal that attacked him as a child, the two of you perceive the word from very different vantage points. As speakers, we must do our best to craft messages that take our audience into account and use audience 24 feedback to determine whether the meaning we intend is the one that is received. To be successful at conveying our desired meaning, we must know quite a bit about our audience so we can make language choices that will be the most appropriate for the context. Although we cannot predict how all our audience members will interpret specific words, we do know that—for example—using teenage slang when speaking to the audience at a senior center would most likely hurt our ability to convey our meaning clearly. CONTEXTS AND SOCIAL SITUATIONS Russian scholar Mikhail Bahktin notes that human interactions take place according to cultural norms and rules (Bakhtin, 2001a; Bakhtin, 2001b). How we approach people, the words we choose, and how we deliver speeches are all dependent on different speaking contexts and social situations. On September 8, 2009, President Barack Obama addressed school children with a televised speech (http://www.whitehouse.gov/mediaresources/ PreparedSchoolRemarks). If you look at the speech he delivered to kids around the country and then at his speeches targeted toward adults, you’ll see lots of differences. These dissimilar speeches are necessary because the audiences (speaking to kids vs. speaking to adults) have different experiences and levels of knowledge. Ultimately, good public speaking is a matter of taking into account the cultural background of your audience and attempting to engage your audience in a dialogue from their own vantage point. Considering the context of a public speech involves thinking about four dimensions: physical, temporal, social-psychological, and cultural (DeVito, 2009). S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 25 Physical Dimension The physical dimension of communication involves the real or touchable environment where communication occurs. For example, you may find yourself speaking in a classroom, a corporate board room, or a large amphitheater. Each of these real environments will influence your ability to interact with your audience. Larger physical spaces may require you to use a microphone and speaker system to make yourself heard or to use projected presentation aids to convey visual material. How the room is physically decorated or designed can also impact your interaction with your audience. If the room is dimly lit or is decorated with interesting posters, audience members’ minds may start wandering. If the room is too hot, you’ll find people becoming sleepy. As speakers, we often have little or no control over our physical environment, but we always need to take it into account when planning and delivering our messages. Temporal Dimension According to Joseph DeVito, the temporal dimension “has to do not only with the time of day and moment in history but also with where a particular message fits into the sequence of communication events” (DeVito, 2009). The time of day can have a dramatic effect on how alert one’s audience is. Don’t believe us? Try giving a speech in front of a class around 12:30 p.m. when no one’s had lunch. It’s amazing how impatient audience members get once hunger sets in. In addition to the time of day, we often face temporal dimensions related to how our speech will be viewed in light of societal events. Imagine how a speech on the 26 importance of campus security would be interpreted on the day after a shooting occurred. Compare this with the interpretation of the same speech given at a time when the campus had not had any shootings for years, if ever. Another element of the temporal dimension is how a message fits with what happens immediately before it. For example, if another speaker has just given an intense speech on death and dying and you stand up to speak about something more trivial, people may downplay your message because it doesn’t fit with the serious tone established by the earlier speech. You never want to be the funny speaker who has to follow an emotional speech where people cried. Most of the time in a speech class, you will have no advance notice as to what the speaker before you will be talking about. Therefore, it is wise to plan on being sensitive to previous topics and be prepared to ease your way subtly into your message if the situation so dictates. Social-Psychological Dimension The social-psychological dimension of context refers to “status relationships among participants, roles and games that people play, norms of the society or group, and the friendliness, formality, or gravity of the situation” (DeVito, 2009). You have to know the types of people in your audience and how they react to a wide range of messages. Cultural Dimension The final context dimension Joseph DeVito mentions is the cultural dimension (DeVito, 2009). When we interact with others from different cultures, misunderstandings can result from differing cultural beliefs, norms, and S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 27 practices. As public speakers engaging in a dialogue with our audience members, we must attempt to understand the cultural makeup of our audience so that we can avoid these misunderstandings as much as possible. Each of these elements of context is a challenge for you as a speaker. Throughout the rest of the book, we’ll discuss how you can meet the challenges presented by the audience and context and become a more effective public speaker in the process. KEY DEFINITIONS • dialogic theory: a theory that public speaking involves an exchange of com munition and audiences are NOT passive receivers of communication • field of experience: the experiences, culture, and background that shape communication • interactional model: a model of communication where a message moves from speaker to receiver. This model accounts for the encoding and decoding of messages. • linear model: a model that is based on radio transmission where communication moves in a linear pattern from speaker to receiver • transactional model: a model of public speaking where people are sending and receiving messages at the same time REFERENCES Arnett, R. C., & Arneson, P. (1999). Dialogic civility in a cynical age: Community, hope, and interpersonal relationships. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. 28 Bakhtin, M. (2001a). The problem of speech genres. (V. W. McGee, Trans., 1986). In P. Bizzell & B. Herzberg (Eds.), The rhetorical tradition (pp. 1227–1245). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. (Original work published in 1953.). Bakhtin, M. (2001b). Marxism and the philosophy of language. (L. Matejka & I. R. Titunik, Trans., 1973). In P. Bizzell & B. Herzberg (Eds.), The rhetorical tradition (pp. 1210–1226). Boston, MA: Medford/St. Martin’s. (Original work published in 1953). Barnlund, D. C. (2008). A transactional model of communication. In C. D. Mortensen (Ed.), Communication theory (2nd ed., pp. 47–57). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Bender, P. U. (1998). Stand, deliver and lead. Ivey Business Journal, 62(3), 46–47. Berkun, S. (2009, March 4). Does public speaking matter in 2009? [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.scottberkun.com/blog. Carnegie Mellon University. (n.d.). Randy Pausch’s last lecture. Retrieved June 6, 2011, from http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture. DeVito, J. A. (2009). The interpersonal communication book (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Edmund, N. W. (2005). End the biggest educational and intellectual blunder in history: A $100,000 challenge to our top educational leaders. Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Scientific Method Publishing Co. Geissner, H., & Slembek, E. (1986). Miteinander sprechen und handeln [Speak and act: Living and working together]. Frankfurt, Germany: Scriptor. Hackman, M. Z., & Johnson, C. E. (2004). Leadership: A communication perspective (4th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland. S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 29 Lizotte, K. (2008). The expert’s edge: Become the go-to authority people turn to every time [Kindle 2 version]. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved from Amazon.com (locations 72–78). Mortenson, C. D. (1972). Communication: The study of human communication. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Rose, H. M., & Rancer, A. S. (1993). The impact of basic courses in oral interpretation and public speaking on communication apprehension. Communication Reports, 6, 54–60. Schramm, W. (1954). How communication works. In W. Schramm (Ed.), The process and effects of communication (pp. 3–26). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. West, R., & Turner, L. H. (2010). Introducing communication theory: Analysis and application (4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, p. 13. Wrench, J. S., McCroskey, J. C., & Richmond, V. P. (2008). Human communication in everyday life: Explanations and applications. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, p. 17. Yakubinsky, L. P. (1997). On dialogic speech. (M. Eskin, Trans.). PMLA, 112(2), 249–256. (Original work published in 1923). Zekeri, A. A. (2004). College curriculum competencies and skills former students found essential to their careers. College Student Journal, 38, 412–422. CHAPTER 2 SPEAKING CONFIDENTL CONFIDENTLY Y LEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain the nature and types of communication apprehension. • Identify different misconceptions about communication anxiety. • Identify effective techniques of coping with speech anxiety during speech preparation and delivery. • Describe some basic strategies for dealing with unexpected events during a public speech. 32 Ron Bulovs – Speech! – CC BY 2.0. One of your biggest concerns about public speaking might be how to deal with nervousness or unexpected events. If that’s the case, you’re not alone—fear of speaking in public consistently ranks at the top of lists of people’s common fears. Some people are not joking when they say they would rather die than stand up and speak in front of a live audience. The fear of public speaking ranks right up there with the fear of flying, death, and spiders (Wallechinsky, Wallace, & Wallace, 1977). Even S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 33 if you are one of the fortunate few who don’t typically get nervous when speaking in public, it’s important to recognize things that can go wrong and be mentally prepared for them. On occasion, everyone misplaces speaking notes, has technical difficulties with a presentation aid, or gets distracted by an audience member. Speaking confidently involves knowing how to deal with these and other unexpected events while speaking. In this chapter, we will help you gain knowledge about speaking confidently by exploring what communication apprehension is, examining the different types and causes of communication apprehension, suggesting strategies you can use to manage your fears of public speaking, and providing tactics you can use to deal with a variety of unexpected events you might encounter while speaking. 34 WHAT IS COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION? Speaker at Podium – CC BY 2.0. “Speech is a mirror of the soul,” commented Publilius Syrus, a popular writer in 42 BCE (Bartlett, 1919). Other people come to know who we are through our words. Many different social situations, ranging from job interviews to dating to public speaking, can make us feel uncomfortable as we anticipate that we will be evaluated and judged by others. How well we communicate is intimately connected to our self-image, and the process of revealing ourselves to the evaluation of others can be threatening whether we are meeting new acquaintances, S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 35 participating in group discussions, or speaking in front of an audience. DEFINITION OF COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION According to James McCroskey, communication apprehension is the broad term that refers to an individual’s “fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons” (McCroskey, 2001). At its heart, communication apprehension is a psychological response to evaluation. This psychological response, however, quickly becomes physical as our body responds to the threat the mind perceives. Our bodies cannot distinguish between psychological and physical threats, so we react as though we were facing a Mack truck barreling in our direction. The body’s circulatory and adrenal systems shift into overdrive, preparing us to function at maximum physical efficiency—the “flight or fight” response (Sapolsky, 2004). Yet instead of running away or fighting, all we need to do is stand and talk. When it comes to communication apprehension, our physical responses are often not well adapted to the nature of the threat we face, as the excess energy created by our body can make it harder for us to be effective public speakers. But because communication apprehension is rooted in our minds, if we understand more about the nature of the body’s responses to stress, we can better develop mechanisms for managing the body’s misguided attempts to help us cope with our fear of social judgment. KEY DEFINITION Communication Apprehension: The fear or anxiety people 36 experience at the thought of communicating with others or in the act of communicating with others. PHYSIOLOGICAL SYMPTOMS OF COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION Isaac Mao – Brain – CC BY 2.0. There are a number of physical sensations associated with communication apprehension. We might notice our heart pounding or our hands feeling clammy. We may break out in a sweat. We may have “stomach butterflies” or even feel nauseated. Our hands and legs might start to shake, or we may begin to pace nervously. Our voices may quiver, and we may have a “dry mouth” sensation that makes it difficult to articulate even simple words. Breathing becomes more rapid and, in extreme cases, we might feel dizzy or light-headed. Anxiety about communicating is profoundly disconcerting because we S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 37 feel powerless to control our bodies. Furthermore, we may become so anxious that we fear we will forget our name, much less remember the main points of the speech we are about to deliver. The physiological changes produced in the body at critical moments are designed to contribute to the efficient use of muscles and expand available energy. Circulation and breathing become more rapid so that additional oxygen can reach the muscles. Increased circulation causes us to sweat. Adrenaline rushes through our body, instructing the body to speed up its movements. If we stay immobile behind a lectern, this hormonal urge to speed up may produce shaking and trembling. Additionally, digestive processes are inhibited so we will not lapse into the relaxed, sleepy state that is typical after eating. Instead of feeling sleepy, we feel butterflies in the pit of our stomach. By understanding what is happening to our bodies in response to the stress of public speaking, we can better cope with these reactions and channel them in constructive directions. Any conscious emotional state such as anxiety or excitement consists of two components: a primary reaction of the central nervous system and an intellectual interpretation of these physiological responses. The physiological state we label as communication anxiety does not differ from ones we label rage or excitement. Even experienced, effective speakers and performers experience some communication apprehension. What differs is the mental label that we put on the experience. Effective speakers have learned to channel their body’s reactions, using the energy released by these physiological reactions to create animation and stage presence. 38 MYTHS ABOUT COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION A wealth of conventional wisdom surrounds the discomfort of speaking anxiety, as it surrounds almost any phenomenon that makes us uncomfortable. Most of this “folk” knowledge misleads us, directing our attention away from effective strategies for thinking about and coping with anxiety reactions. Before we look in more detail at the types of communication apprehension, let’s dispel some of the myths about it. 1. People who suffer from speaking anxiety are neurotic. As we have explained, speaking anxiety is a normal reaction. Good speakers can get nervous just as poor speakers do. Winston Churchill, for example, would get physically ill before major speeches in Parliament. Yet he rallied the British people in a time of crisis. Many people, even the most professional performers, experience anxiety about communicating. Such a widespread problem, Dr. Joyce Brothers contends, “cannot be attributed to deep-seated neuroses” (Brothers, 2008). 2. Telling a joke or two is always a good way to begin a speech. Humor is some of the toughest material to deliver effectively because it requires an exquisite sense of timing. Nothing is worse than waiting for a laugh that does not come. Moreover, one person’s joke is another person’s slander. It is extremely easy to offend when using humor. The same material can play very differently with different audiences. For these reasons, it is not a good idea to start with a joke, particularly if it is not well related to your topic. Humor is just too unpredictable and difficult for S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 39 many novice speakers. If you insist on using humor, make sure the “joke” is on you, not on someone else. Another tip is never to pause and wait for a laugh that may not come. If the audience catches the joke, fine. If not, you’re not left standing in awkward silence waiting for a reaction. 3. Imagine the audience is naked. This tip just plain doesn’t work because imagining the audience naked will do nothing to calm your nerves. As Malcolm Kushner noted, “There are some folks in the audience I wouldn’t want to see naked—especially if I’m trying not to be frightened” (Kushner, 1999). The audience is not some abstract image in your mind. It consists of real individuals who you can connect with through your material. To “imagine” the audience is to misdirect your focus from the real people in front of you to an “imagined” group. What we imagine is usually more threatening than the reality that we face. 4. Any mistake means that you have “blown it.” We all make mistakes. What matters is not whether we make a mistake but how well we recover. One of the authors of this book was giving a speech and wanted to thank a former student in the audience. Instead of saying “former student,” she said, “former friend.” After the audience stopped laughing, the speaker remarked, “Well, I guess she’ll be a former friend now!”—which got more laughter from the audience. A speech does not have to be perfect. You just have to make an effort to relate to the 40 audience naturally and be willing to accept your mistakes. 5. Avoid speaking anxiety by writing your speech out word for word and memorizing it. Memorizing your speech word for word will likely make your apprehension worse rather than better. Instead of remembering three to five main points and subpoints, you will try to commit to memory more than a thousand bits of data. If you forget a point, the only way to get back on track is to start from the beginning. You are inviting your mind to go blank by overloading it with details. In addition, audiences do not like to listen to “canned,” or memorized, material. Your delivery is likely to suffer if you memorize. Audiences appreciate speakers who talk naturally to them rather than recite a written script. 6. Audiences are out to get you. With only a few exceptions, which we will talk about, the natural state of audiences is empathy, not antipathy. Most face-to-face audiences are interested in your material, not in your image. Watching someone who is anxious tends to make audience members anxious themselves. Particularly in public speaking classes, audiences want to see you succeed. They know that they will soon be in your shoes and they identify with you, most likely hoping you’ll succeed and give them ideas for how to make their own speeches better. If you establish direct eye contact with real individuals in your audience, you will see them respond to what you are saying, and this response lets you know that you are succeeding. S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 41 7. You will look to the audience as nervous as you feel. Empirical research has shown that audiences do not perceive the level of nervousness that speakers report feeling (Clevenger, 1959). Most listeners judge speakers as less anxious than the speakers rate themselves. In other words, the audience is not likely to perceive accurately the level of anxiety you might be experiencing. Some of the most effective speakers will return to their seats after their speech and exclaim they were so nervous. Listeners will respond, “You didn’t look nervous.” Audiences do not necessarily perceive our fears. Consequently, don’t apologize for your nerves. There is a good chance the audience will not notice if you do not point it out to them. 8. A little nervousness helps you give a better speech. This “myth” is true! Professional speakers, actors, and other performers consistently rely on the heightened arousal of nervousness to channel extra energy into their performance. People would much rather listen to a speaker who is alert and enthusiastic than one who is relaxed to the point of boredom. Many professional speakers say that the day they stop feeling nervous is the day they should stop speaking in public. The goal is to control those nerves and channel them into your presentation. ALL ANXIETY IS NOT THE SAME: SOURCES OF COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION We have said that experiencing some form of anxiety is a normal part of the communication process. Most people are anxious about being evaluated by an audience. 42 Interestingly, many people assume that their nervousness is an experience unique to them. They assume that other people do not feel anxious when confronting the threat of public speaking (McCroskey, 2001). Although anxiety is a widely shared response to the stress of public speaking, not all anxiety is the same. Many researchers have investigated the differences between apprehension grounded in personality characteristics and anxiety prompted by a particular situation at a particular time (Witt, et. al., 2006). McCroskey argues there are four types of communication apprehension: anxiety related to trait, context, audience, and situation (McCroskey, 2001). If you understand these different types of apprehension, you can gain insight into the varied communication factors that contribute to speaking anxiety. TRAIT ANXIETY Some people are just more disposed to communication apprehension than others. As Witt, Brown, Roberts, Weisel, Sawyer, and Behnke explain, “Trait anxiety measures how people generally feel across situations and time periods” (Witt, et. al., 2006). This means that some people feel more uncomfortable than the average person regardless of the context, audience, or situation. It doesn’t matter whether you are raising your hand in a group discussion, talking with people you meet at a party, or giving speeches in a class, you’re likely to be uncomfortable in all these settings if you experience trait anxiety. While trait anxiety is not the same as shyness, those with high trait anxiety are more likely to avoid exposure to public speaking situations, so their nervousness might be compounded by lack of experience or skill (Witt, et. al., 2006). People who experience trait anxiety may never like public speaking, but through S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 43 preparation and practice, they can learn to give effective public speeches when they need to do so. CONTEXT ANXIETY MTEA – Michelle Alexander at Podium – CC BY-NC 2.0. Context anxiety refers to anxiety prompted by specific communication contexts. Some of the major context factors that can heighten this form of anxiety are formality, uncertainty, and novelty. FORMALITY Some individuals can be perfectly composed when talking at a meeting or in a small group; yet when faced with a more formal public speaking setting, they become intimidated and nervous. As the formality of the 44 communication context increases, the stakes are raised, sometimes prompting more apprehension. Certain communication contexts, such as a press conference or a courtroom, can make even the most confident individuals nervous. One reason is that these communication contexts presuppose an adversarial relationship between the speaker and some audience members. UNCERTAINTY In addition, it is hard to predict and control the flow of information in such contexts, so the level of uncertainty is high. The feelings of context anxiety might be similar to those you experience on the first day of class with a new instructor: you don’t know what to expect, so you are more nervous than you might be later in the semester when you know the instructor and the class routine better. NOVELTY Additionally, most of us are not experienced in hightension communication settings. The novelty of the communication context we encounter is another factor contributing to apprehension. Anxiety becomes more of an issue in communication environments that are new to us, even for those who are normally comfortable with speaking in public. Most people can learn through practice to cope with their anxiety prompted by formal, uncertain, and novel communication contexts. Fortunately, most public speaking classroom contexts are not adversarial. The opportunities you have to practice giving speeches reduces the novelty and uncertainty of the public speaking context, enabling most students to learn how S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 45 to cope with anxiety prompted by the communication context. AUDIENCE ANXIETY For some individuals, it is not the communication context that prompts anxiety; it is the people in the audience they face. Audience anxiety describes communication apprehension prompted by specific audience characteristics. These characteristics include similarity, subordinate status, audience size, and familiarity. You might have no difficulty talking to an audience of your peers in student government meetings, but an audience composed of parents and students on a campus visit might make you nervous because of the presence of parents in the audience. The degree of perceived similarity between you and your audience can influence your level of speech anxiety. We all prefer to talk to an audience that we believe shares our values more than to one that does not. The more dissimilar we are compared to our audience members, the more likely we are to be nervous. Studies have shown that subordinate status can also contribute to speaking anxiety (Witt, et. al., 2006). Talking in front of your boss or teacher may be intimidating, especially if you are being evaluated. The size of the audience can also play a role: the larger the audience, the more threatening it may seem. Finally, familiarity can be a factor. Some of us prefer talking to strangers rather than to people we know well. Others feel more nervous in front of an audience of friends and family because there is more pressure to perform well. 46 SITUATIONAL ANXIETY Situational anxiety, McCroskey explains, is the communication apprehension created by “the unique combination of influences generated by audience, time and context” (McCroskey, 2001). Each communication event involves several dimensions: physical, temporal, social-psychological, and cultural. These dimensions combine to create a unique communication situation that is different from any previous communication event. The situation created by a given audience, in a given time, and in a given context can coalesce into situational anxiety. For example, I once had to give a presentation at a general faculty meeting on general education assessment. To my surprise, I found myself particularly nervous about this speech. The audience was familiar to me but was relatively large compared to most classroom settings. I knew the audience well enough to know that my topic was controversial for some faculty members who resented the mandate for assessment coming from top administration. The meeting occurred late on a Friday afternoon, and my presentation was scheduled more than an hour into the two-hour meeting. All these factors combined to produce situational anxiety for me. While I successfully applied the principles that we will discuss in “Reducing Communication Apprehension” for managing stage fright, this speaking situation stands out in my mind as one of the most nerve-wracking speaking challenges I have ever faced. S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 47 REDUCING COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION Freddie Pena – Nervous? – CC BY-NC 2.0. Experiencing some nervousness about public speaking is normal. The energy created by this physiological response can be functional if you harness it as a resource for more effective public speaking. In this section, we suggest a number of steps that you can take to channel your stage fright into excitement and animation. We will begin with specific speech-related considerations and then briefly examine some of the more general anxiety management options available. SPEECH-RELATED CONSIDERATIONS Communication apprehension does not necessarily remain constant throughout all the stages of speech preparation and delivery. One group of researchers studied the ebb and flow of anxiety levels at four stages 48 in the delivery of a speech. They compared indicators of physiological stress at different milestones in the process: • anticipation (the minute prior to starting the speech), • confrontation (the first minute of the speech), • adaptation (the last minute of the speech), and • release (the minute immediately following the end of the speech) (Witt, et. al., 2006). These researchers found that anxiety typically peaked at the anticipatory stage. In other words, we are likely to be most anxious right before we get up to speak. As we progress through our speech, our level of anxiety is likely to decline. Planning your speech to incorporate techniques for managing your nervousness at different times will help you decrease the overall level of stress you experience. We also offer a number of suggestions for managing your reactions while you are delivering your speech. THINK POSITIVELY As we mentioned earlier, communication apprehension begins in the mind as a psychological response. This underscores the importance of a speaker’s psychological attitude toward speaking. To prepare yourself mentally for a successful speaking experience, we recommend using a technique called cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring is simply changing how you label the physiological responses you will experience. Rather than thinking of public speaking as a dreaded obligation, make a conscious decision to consider it an exciting opportunity. The first audience member that you have S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 49 to convince is yourself, by deliberately replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. If you say something to yourself often enough, you will gradually come to believe it. We also suggest practicing what communication scholars Metcalfe, Beebe, and Beebe call positive self-talk rather than negative self-talk (Metcalfe, 1994; Beebe, 2000). If you find yourself thinking, “I’m going to forget everything when I get to the front of the room,” turn that negative message around to a positive one. Tell yourself, “I have notes to remind me what comes next, and the audience won’t know if I don’t cover everything in the order I planned.” The idea is to dispute your negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones, even if you think you are “conning” yourself. By monitoring how you talk about yourself, you can unlearn old patterns and change the ways you think about things that produce anxiety. REDUCING ANXIETY THROUGH PREPARATION As we have said earlier in this chapter, uncertainty makes for greater anxiety. Nothing is more frightening than facing the unknown. Although no one can see into the future and predict everything that will happen during a speech, every speaker can and should prepare so that the “unknowns” of the speech event are kept to a minimum. You can do this by gaining as much knowledge as possible about whom you will be addressing, what you will say, how you will say it, and where the speech will take place. ANALYZE YOUR AUDIENCE The audience that we imagine in our minds is almost always more threatening than the reality of the people 50 sitting in front of us. The more information you have about the characteristics of your audience, the more you will be able to craft an effective message. Since your stage fright is likely to be at its highest in the beginning of your speech, it is helpful to open the speech with a technique to prompt an audience response. You might try posing a question, asking for a show of hands, or sharing a story that you know is relevant to your listeners’ experience. When you see the audience responding to you by nodding, smiling, or answering questions, you will have directed the focus of attention from yourself to the audience. Such responses indicate success; they are positively reinforcing, and thus reduce your nervousness. CLEARLY ORGANIZE YOUR IDEAS Being prepared as a speaker means knowing the main points of your message so well that you can remember them even when you are feeling highly anxious, and the best way to learn those points is to create an outline for your speech. With a clear outline to follow, you will find it much easier to move from one point to the next without stumbling or getting lost. A note of caution is in order: you do not want to react to the stress of speaking by writing and memorizing a manuscript. Your audience will usually be able to tell that you wrote your speech out verbatim, and they will tune out very quickly. You are setting yourself up for disaster if you try to memorize a written text because the pressure of having to remember all those particulars will be tremendous. Moreover, if you have a momentary memory lapse during a memorized speech, you may have a lot of trouble continuing without starting over at the beginning. What you do want to prepare is a simple outline that S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 51 reminds you of the progression of ideas in your speech. What is important is the order of your points, not the specifics of each sentence. It is perfectly fine if your speech varies in terms of specific language or examples each time you practice it. It may be a good idea to reinforce this organization through visual aids. When it comes to managing anxiety, visual aids have the added benefit of taking attention off the speaker. ADAPT YOUR LANGUAGE TO THE ORAL MODE Another reason not to write out your speech as a manuscript is that to speak effectively you want your language to be adapted to the oral, not the written, mode. You will find your speaking anxiety more manageable if you speak in the oral mode because it will help you to feel like you are having a conversation with friends rather than delivering a formal proclamation. Appropriate oral style is more concrete and vivid than written style. Effective speaking relies on verbs rather than nouns, and the language is less complex. Long sentences may work well for novelists such as William Faulkner or James Joyce, where readers can go back and reread passages two, three, or even seven or eight times. Your listeners, though, cannot “rewind” you in order to catch ideas they miss the first time through. Don’t be afraid to use personal pronouns freely, frequently saying “I” and “me”—or better yet, “us” and “we.” Personal pronouns are much more effective in speaking than language constructions, such as the following “this author,” because they help you to build a connection with your audience. Another oral technique is to build audience questions into your speech. Rhetorical questions, questions that do not require a verbal answer, 52 invite the audience to participate with your material by thinking about the implications of the question and how it might be answered. If you are graphic and concrete in your language selection, your audience is more likely to listen attentively. You will be able to see the audience listening, and this feedback will help to reduce your anxiety. PRACTICE IN CONDITIONS SIMILAR TO THOSE YOU WILL FACE WHEN SPEAKING It is not enough to practice your speech silently in your head. To reduce anxiety and increase the likelihood of a successful performance, you need to practice out loud in a situation similar to the one you will face when actually performing your speech. Practice delivering your speech out loud while standing on your feet. If you make a mistake, do not stop to correct it but continue all the way through your speech; that is what you will have to do when you are in front of the audience. If possible, practice in the actual room where you will be giving your speech. Not only will you have a better sense of what it will feel like to actually speak, but you may also have the chance to practice using presentation aids and potentially avoid distractions and glitches like incompatible computers, blown projector bulbs, or sunlight glaring in your eyes. Two very useful tools for anxiety-reducing practice are a clock and a mirror. Use the clock to time your speech, being aware that most novice speakers speak too fast, not too slowly. By ensuring that you are within the time guidelines, you will eliminate the embarrassment of having to cut your remarks short because you’ve run out of time or of not having enough to say to fulfill the assignment. Use the mirror to gauge how well you are S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 53 maintaining eye contact with your audience; it will allow you to check that you are looking up from your notes. It will also help you build the habit of using appropriate facial expressions to convey the emotions in your speech. While you might feel a little absurd practicing your speech out loud in front of a mirror, the practice that you do before your speech can make you much less anxious when it comes time to face the audience. WATCH WHAT YOU EAT A final tip about preparation is to watch what you eat immediately before speaking. The butterflies in your stomach are likely to be more noticeable if you skip normal meals. While you should eat normally, you should avoid caffeinated drinks because they can make your shaking hands worse. Carbohydrates operate as natural sedatives, so you may want to eat carbohydrates to help slow down your metabolism and to avoid fried or very spicy foods that may upset your stomach. Especially if you are speaking in the morning, be sure to have breakfast. If you haven’t had anything to eat or drink since dinner the night before, dizziness and lightheadedness are very real possibilities. REDUCING NERVOUSNESS DURING DELIVERY ANTICIPATE THE REACTIONS OF YOUR BODY There are a number of steps you can take to counteract the negative physiological effects of stress on the body. Deep breathing will help to counteract the effects of excess adrenaline. You can place symbols in your notes, like “slow down” or ☺, that remind you to pause and breathe during points in your speech. It is also a good 54 idea to pause a moment before you get started to set an appropriate pace from the onset. Look at your audience and smile. It is a reflex for some of your audience members to smile back. Those smiles will reassure you that your audience members are friendly. Physical movement helps to channel some of the excess energy that your body produces in response to anxiety. If at all possible, move around the front of the room rather than remaining imprisoned behind the lectern or gripping it for dear life (avoid pacing nervously from side to side, however). Move closer to the audience and then stop for a moment. If you are afraid that moving away from the lectern will reveal your shaking hands, use note cards rather than a sheet of paper for your outline. Note cards do not quiver like paper, and they provide you with something to do with your hands. Vocal warm-ups are also important before speaking. Just as athletes warm up before practice or competition and musicians warm up before playing, speakers need to get their voices ready to speak. Talking with others before your speech or quietly humming to yourself can get your voice ready for your presentation. You can even sing or practice a bit of your speech out loud while you’re in the shower (just don’t wake the neighbors), where the warm, moist air is beneficial for your vocal mechanism. Gently yawning a few times is also an excellent way to stretch the key muscle groups involved in speaking. Immediately before you speak, you can relax the muscles of your neck and shoulders, rolling your head gently from side to side. Allow your arms to hang down your sides and stretch out your shoulders. Isometric exercises that involve momentarily tensing and then relaxing specific muscle groups are an effective way to keep your muscles from becoming stiff. S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 55 FOCUS ON THE AUDIENCE, NOT ON YOURSELF During your speech, make a point of establishing direct eye contact with your audience members. By looking at individuals, you establish a series of one-to-one contacts similar to interpersonal communication. An audience becomes much less threatening when you think of them not as an anonymous mass but as a collection of individuals. A colleague once shared his worst speaking experience when he reached the front of the room and forgot everything he was supposed to say. When I asked what he saw when he was in the front of the room, he looked at me like I was crazy. He responded, “I didn’t see anything. All I remember is a mental image of me up there in the front of the room blowing it.” Speaking anxiety becomes more intense if you focus on yourself rather than concentrating on your audience and your material. MAINTAIN YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR No matter how well we plan, unexpected things happen. That fact is what makes the public speaking situation so interesting. When the unexpected happens to you, do not let it rattle you. At the end of a class period late in the afternoon of a long day, a student raised her hand and asked me if I knew that I was wearing two different colored shoes, one black and one blue. I looked down and saw that she was right; my shoes did not match. I laughed at myself, complimented the student on her observational abilities and moved on with the important thing, the material I had to deliver. STRESS MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES Even when we employ positive thinking and are well 56 prepared, some of us still feel a great deal of anxiety about public speaking. When that is the case, it can be more helpful to use stress management than to try to make the anxiety go away. One general technique for managing stress is positive visualization. Visualization is the process of seeing something in your mind’s eye; essentially it is a form of self-hypnosis. Frequently used in sports training, positive visualization involves using the imagination to create images of relaxation or ultimate success. Essentially, you imagine in great detail the goal for which you are striving, say, a rousing round of applause after you give your speech. You mentally picture yourself standing at the front of the room, delivering your introduction, moving through the body of your speech, highlighting your presentation aids, and sharing a memorable conclusion. If you imagine a positive outcome, your body will respond to it as through it were real. Such mind-body techniques create the psychological grounds for us to achieve the goals we have imagined. As we discussed earlier, communication apprehension has a psychological basis, so mind-body techniques such as visualization can be important to reducing anxiety. It’s important to keep in mind, though, that visualization does not mean you can skip practicing your speech out loud. Just as an athlete still needs to work out and practice the sport, you need to practice your speech in order to achieve the positive results you visualize. Systematic desensitization is a behavioral modification technique that helps individuals overcome anxiety disorders. People with phobias, or irrational fears, tend to avoid the object of their fear. For example, people with a phobia of elevators avoid riding in elevators—and this only adds to their fear because they never “learn” that S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 57 riding in elevators is usually perfectly safe. Systematic desensitization changes this avoidance pattern by gradually exposing the individual to the object of fear until it can be tolerated. First, the individual is trained in specific muscle relaxation techniques. Next, the individual learns to respond with conscious relaxation even when confronted with the situation that previously caused them fear. James McCroskey used this technique to treat students who suffered from severe, trait-based communication apprehension (McCroskey, 1972). He found that “the technique was eighty to ninety percent effective” for the people who received the training (McCroskey, 2001). If you’re highly anxious about public speaking, you might begin a program of systematic desensitization by watching someone else give a speech. Once you are able to do this without discomfort, you would then move to talking about giving a speech yourself, practicing, and, eventually, delivering your speech. The success of techniques such as these clearly indicates that increased exposure to public speaking reduces overall anxiety. Consequently, you should seek out opportunities to speak in public rather than avoid them. As the famous political orator William Jennings Bryan once noted, “The ability to speak effectively is an acquirement rather than a gift” (Carnegie, 1955). 58 COPING WITH THE UNEXPECTED Des Morris – I H8 PC – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Even the most prepared, confident public speaker may encounter unexpected challenges during the speech. This section discusses some common unexpected events and addresses some general strategies for combating the unexpected when you encounter it in your own speaking. SPEECH CONTENT ISSUES Nearly every experienced speaker has gotten to the middle of a presentation and realized that a key notecard is missing or that he or she skipped important information from the beginning of the speech. When encountering these difficulties, a good strategy is to pause for a moment to think through what you want to do next. Is it important to include the missing information, or can it be omitted without hurting the audience’s ability to understand the rest of your speech? If it needs to be S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 59 included, do you want to add the information now, or will it fit better later in the speech? It is often difficult to remain silent when you encounter this situation, but pausing for a few seconds will help you to figure out what to do and may be less distracting to the audience than sputtering through a few “ums” and “uhs.” TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES Technology has become a very useful aid in public speaking, allowing us to use audio or video clips, presentation software, or direct links to websites. However, one of the best known truisms about technology is that it does break down. Web servers go offline, files will not download in a timely manner, and media are incompatible with the computer in the presentation room. It is important to always have a backup plan, developed in advance, in case of technical difficulties with your presentation materials. As you develop your speech and visual aids, think through what you will do if you cannot show a particular graph or if your presentation slides are hopelessly garbled. Although your beautifully prepared chart may be superior to the oral description you can provide, your ability to provide a succinct oral description when technology fails can give your audience the information they need. EXTERNAL DISTRACTIONS Although many public speaking instructors directly address audience etiquette during speeches, you’re still likely to encounter an audience member who walks in late, a ringing cell phone, or even a car alarm going off outside your classroom. If you are distracted by external events like these, it is often useful, and sometimes 60 necessary (as in the case of the loud car alarm), to pause and wait so that you can regain the audience’s attention and be heard. Whatever the unexpected event, your most important job as a speaker is to maintain your composure. It is important not to get upset or angry because of these types of glitches—and, once again, the key to this is being fully prepared. If you keep your cool and quickly implement a “plan B” for moving forward with your speech, your audience is likely to be impressed and may listen even more attentively to the rest of your presentation. REFERENCES Bartlett, J. (comp.). (1919). Familiar quotations (10th ed.). Rev. and enl. by Nathan Haskell Dole. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company. Retrieved from Bartleby.com website: http://www.bartleby.com/100. Beebe, S.A., & Beebe, S. J. (2000). Public speaking: An audience centered approach. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Carnegie, D. (1955). Public speaking and influencing men in business. New York, NY: American Book Stratford Press, Inc. Clevenger, T. J. (1959). A synthesis of experimental research in stage fright. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 45, 135–159. See also Savitsky, K., & Gilovich, T. (2003). The illusion of transparency and the alleviation of speech anxiety. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 601–625. Kushner, M. (1999). Public speaking for dummies. New York, NY: IDG Books Worldwide, p. 242. McCroskey, J. C. (2001). An introduction to rhetorical communication. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, p. 40. McCroskey, J. C. (1972). The implementation of a large-scale program of systematic desensitization for S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 61 communication apprehension. The Speech Teacher, 21, 255–264. Metcalfe, S. (1994). Building a speech. New York, NY: The Harcourt Press. Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why zebras don’t get ulcers (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Henry Holt. Wallechinsky, D., Wallace, I., & Wallace, A. (1977). The people’s almanac presents the book of lists. New York, NY: Morrow. Witt, P. L., Brown, K. C., Roberts, J. B., Weisel, J., Sawyer, C., & Behnke, R. (2006, March). Somatic anxiety patterns before, during and after giving a public speech. Southern Communication Journal, 71, 87–100. See also Boyd, J. H., Rae, D. S., Thompson, J. W., Burns, B. J., Bourdon, K., Locke, B. Z., & Regier, D. A. (1990). Phobia: Prevalence and risk factors. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 25(6), 314–323. CHAPTER 3 ENGA ENGAGING GING YOUR AUDIENCE JOSH MILLER, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MILWAUKEE LEARNING OBJECTIVES • Understand the benefits of establishing a bilateral relationship with your audience. • Identify the differences between the literal, target, and constructed audiences. • Explore strategies effectively communicate to different audiences. O n June 13, 2012, the Michigan House of Representatives held a debate over a proposed bill that would limit access to abortion throughout the state. During that debate, Representative Lisa Brown rose to speak against the piece of legislation. She concluded her speech by exclaiming, “I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina but no means no.”[i] This statement might be shocking for some of you, and it certainly shocked members of the Michigan House of Representatives. After making this statement, Lisa Brown was notified that her closing remarks had violated 64 the expectations for civility and decorum for debate on the House floor; she would no longer be allowed to speak on the floor of the House of Representatives for the remainder of that congressional session. Regardless of whether or not you agree with Lisa Brown’s statement, you can learn much about the importance of knowing what audience members might expect from speakers and the potential repercussions for speakers who violate those expectations. People who hear speeches react to them based on their own beliefs and previous experiences. Violations of audience expectations might cause audience members to view the speaker with skepticism or even with open hostility. As a result, learning about your audience and thinking about what they might expect from you is an important element of public speaking. For instance, when you graduate, someone will deliver a commencement speech to your graduating class, and it would likely violate your expectations if that speaker called the graduating class lazy and uneducated. After all, you will put in a lot of effort to reach that day. Anyone who disregarded all of the work you put into reaching your graduation day would likely anger, sadden, or offend you. They would certainly violate the expectations for what you thought you would hear the commencement speaker say. This example highlights that the effectiveness of speakers depends on their understanding of the audience members. Speeches do not happen in vacuums. Just because you want to say something does not mean that it will be appropriate or effective in a speech. Speakers give speeches to persuade, inform, or entertain others. Those others—the audience—have the power to accept, reject, and respond to your speech in the manner that they deem S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 65 fit. Moreover, because each time you give a speech your audience will be different, you always need to tailor your speech to each different audience. To craft an effective message, never forget about your audience. This chapter will equip you with the tools necessary to craft speeches that take the importance of audience into account. First, this chapter explores necessary ethical considerations and discusses why speakers should work to foster cooperative relationships with their audience members. Then, you will learn about the concept of the target audience and that most speeches focus on attempting to convince a specific part of the total number of people in the audience. This chapter also discusses ways in which you could analyze your audience to discover information that might help you craft a more effective speech. Finally, you will learn about how your speech can craft a specific role for your audience that might make your audience more likely to accept the main point of your speech. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS When you give a speech, your audience members should have the power to decide whether or not they want to believe what you are saying. You can be certain that you are saying is correct. However, your job as a speaker is to work to convince your audience that you are correct, not trick or force them into doing what you want them to do. In 1972, Wayne Brockriede articulated a theory about what constitutes ethical argument, and his theory offers us much about how we should understand what counts as an ethical relationship between speakers and audience members. Brockriede stated that there are three ways to convince your audience to agree with you. You could force them to agree, you could trick them into 66 Valerie Everett – Questions? – CC BY-SA 2.0. agreement, or you could foster a bilateral and cooperative relationship with them in which they choose to agree with you.[i] Those who seek agreement by force might threaten, attack, or demean their audience and those who disagree with them. According to Brockriede, those who attempt to persuade through the use of force create a unilateral relationship with their audience wherein the speaker views themselves as more important and superior than their audience. Speakers who use force are only concerned with getting what they want. Those who use tricks in order to get their audience to agree with them also seek a unilateral relationship with their audience. These speakers attempt to get agreement through charm, lying, or deceit. For example, a trickster might take evidence out of context or misuse evidence to make an argument seem stronger than it actually is. Tricksters might use logical fallacies to distract their audience members from the actual substantive issues in a debate. S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 67 A unilateral relationship works in one direction. The speaker has power over their audience and does not have a cooperative relationship with the audience. Both of these ways of attempting to persuade your audience are unethical and often ineffective. They are unethical because they attempt to limit the audience’s ability to make an informed choice. Also, if you earn the reputation of someone who uses tricks or forces others, potential audience members may become skeptical of you and avoid interactions. If you heard about a store that lies to customers about the condition of their products and often yells at or dismisses costumers for asking questions about their products, I imagine that you would not want to shop at that store any time soon. Furthermore, if you enjoyed a presentation given by a speaker but later found out the facts were made up, you probably be more hesitant to accept the claims of that speaker in the future. As an ethical speaker, you should avoid tactics that attempt to trick or force your audience to agree with you. Ethnical speakers seek cooperative and bilateral relationships with their audience—what Brockriede called a loving relationship. People who want bilateral relationships with their audience members view themselves as equal to their audience and recognize the audience should have the power to make informed choices. In this form of cooperative relationship, you, as a speaker, concern yourself with what is good for your audience, not merely your own best interests. You do not attempt to force or trick your audience into agreement. Instead of using force or tricks to get agreement, you work to earn agreement from your audience by showing them that you care about what is best for them and let them ultimately make an informed decision. As such, you 68 should view your role as a speaker as one that attempts to create and sustain a cooperative relationship with your audience members.[ii] In these relationships, both parties work to foster trust with each other, and that trust allows both parties to listen to and learn from each other. A bilateral relationship connects speaker with audience. The speakers works to enable the audience to make an informed choice about what is best for them. Those who communicate based on Brockriede’s principle of cooperation also understand that they should be willing to change their own minds. Just as you, as the speaker, are attempting to persuade you audience on a particular matter, you should also be willing to change your mind and be persuaded by others.[iii] Only in these moments when we are willing to change our mind and work to change the minds of others can genuine personal growth occur. Moreover, fostering a bilateral relationship can lead to a long term relationship where you might be more likely to alter another person’s perceptive on an issue long after the first time you attempted to persuade them of something. When we approach public speaking through an ethical and cooperative relationship between speakers and audiences, there is a possibility of personal and social growth. In order to ensure that you are establishing an ethical relationship with your audience, remember this: Let your research determine your argument. Do not let your argument determine your research. This is a part of being willing to change your own mind. If you are certain about something but find study after study shows the opposite is true, do not ignore those studies. Instead, change your mind and modify the argument of your speech, tell your S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 69 audience that studies exist that might disagree with what you believe, or explain to your audience why those studies do not necessary disprove your point of view. Similarly, do not ignore alternative viewpoints. If you are giving a speech on a controversial topic, acknowledge the differences in opinion exist and try to find a common ground. If you ignore and dismiss other viewpoints, audience members who hold those points view might think that you are ignoring them and, in turn, ignore you. With these ethical consideration in mind, let’s turn our attention to how we might define and understand those who comprise your audience. THE LITERAL AND TARGET AUDIENCES Thinkmedialabs – Audience – CC BY-NC 2.0. We might understand your empirical audience (or those who you actually speak to) with two terms: the 70 literal audience and the target audience. The literal audience comprises of anyone who hears the speaker’s message. If you are speaking to your class, then your literal audience is your classmates and your teacher. If you upload your speech to YouTube, then your audience would be anyone who views your upload. For Lisa Brown’s speech, mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, her literal audience included those who heard her speech on the House floor as well as those who later saw her speech on the news or on YouTube. The literal audience is simply those who hear the speech or message. The literal audience members are anyone who hears a message. The target audience is a subsection of your literal audience and constitutes the people for whom you tailored your message. The target audience has two additional characteristics. First, members of the target audience are those capable of being impacted or persuaded by the speaker’s message. Second, members of the target audience are capable of creating the change that the speaker seeks. In certain speaking situations, some people may not be open to persuasion on particular issues. Similarly, some people in your audience may be incapable of acting or address a problem you identify. Imagine for a moment that you would like to give a speech that attempts to persuade your class that they should donate blood to the Red Cross. Someone in your class might be so afraid of needles that no matter how compelling your speech is they will never give blood. If this is the case, then that person in your class is not persuadable and would not be a part of your target audience. In addition, you might have a few classmates who are not allowed to give blood—maybe they recently S TAND UP, S PEAK OUT 71 got a tattoo or have been traveling outside of the United States. Even if you convince these people that they should give blood, they simply cannot. As such, they are not a part of your target audience. The target audience comprises anyone (1) capable of being persuaded and (2) capable of creating the change the speaker wants. When you give a speech, you might not be able to persuade everyone to be involved in your solution. People might be unpersuadable or unable to act. When this occurs (and it often does), you want to tailor your message and focus your efforts on convincing those who actually can change their minds and can do the change that you seek—the target audience. This definition of target audience is based off of Lloyd F. Bitzer’s definition of the rhetorical audience. For more reading see: Lloyd F. Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 1–14. AUDIENCE ANALYSIS In order to determine who comprises your target audience, you might want to engage in a process called audience analysis. Audience analysis is a process in which you examine who your audience members are and how to best connect your beliefs with them. Based on a definition of rhetoric provided by Donald C. Bryant, we might think of public speaking as the act of “adjusting ideas to people and of people to ideas.”[i] The first part of Bryant’s definition exp...
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If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!I added many page numbers to cite the information was coming from the book and not just a random google website, you can take them out if you choose! 😊
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Reading Worksheet 2
Structure and Organization!
D2L Structure Reading, Chapters 8, 9, & 10
1. Several of the readings for today deal with structure! Discuss two concepts about
structure that were new or interesting to you. (Please feel free to quote the book or tell
me which exact page your concept was on)
I thought the concept of parallel structure was interesting (pg. 235). I didn’t know that by using
parallel structure, the audience will retain more information from the speech. I was also
interested to see there were so many organizational patterns in speeches. I think categorial and
comparison/contrast will help me the most. Although t...


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