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Persuasive Speaking: Reasoning with Your

Audience

Persuasive Speech

►A speech whose goal is to influence the attitudes, beliefs, values, or behavior of audience members

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Elaboration Likelihood ModelPeople process information in one of two ways:

►Central route

- intense and more time consuming, listen carefully,

think about what is said, mentally elaborate on message.

►Peripheral route

- relies on simple cues, quick evaluation of the

speaker’s credibility, check about what the listener feels about the message.

Elaboration Likelihood Model Cont.

►What determines if we use the central or peripheral route is how important we perceive the issue to be for us.

►We are less likely to change our mind when our attitudes are based on central processing.

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Persuasive Appeals

►Logos – logical appeals, evidence used

►Ethos – speaker’s credibility

►Pathos – emotional appeals, evoke feelings in listeners

Preparing a Persuasive Speech

►Construct a persuasive speech goal

►Identify good reasons and sound evidence

►Avoid fallacies of reason

►Organize your main points into a pattern the audience can follow

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Adapting Your Persuasive Goal to Audience Attitude

►Attitude – a general or enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object, or issue

● Opposed

● No opinion

● In favor

Phrasing Persuasive Speech Goals

►Proposition – a declarative sentence that clearly indicates the position that the speaker will advocate in a persuasive speech

● Proposition of fact

● Proposition of value

● Proposition of policy

● Example: I want to convince my audience that smoking causes cancer.

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Example Propositions

Finding Reasons to Use as Main Points

►Reasons – main point statements that summarize several related pieces of evidence and show why you should believe or do something

● Is the reason directly related to proving the proposition?

● Do I have strong evidence to support the reason?

● Will the reason be persuasive for this audience?

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Selecting Evidence to Support Reasons

►Does the evidence come from a well-respected source?

►Is the evidence recent and, if not, is it still valid?

►Does the evidence really support the reason?

►Will the evidence be persuasive for this audience?

Reasoning with Audiences

►Reasoning – the mental process of drawing inferences (conclusions) from factual information

►Arguments – the process of proving conclusions you have drawn from reasons and evidence

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Basic Elements of Reasoning

►Claim – a conclusion to be proven

►Support – support a claim with reason or evidence

►Warrant – logical statement that connects the support to the claim.

Types and Tests of Arguments

►Arguing from example

● Are enough examples cited?

● Are the examples typical?

● Are negative examples accounted for?

►Arguing from analogy

● Are the subjects being compared similar in every important way?

● Are any of the ways in which the subjects are dissimilar important to the outcome?

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Types and Tests of Arguments Cont.

►Arguing from causation

● Are the events alone sufficient to cause the stated effect?

● Do other events accompanying the cited events actually cause the effect?

● Is the relationship between the causal events and the effect consistent?

Types and Tests of Arguments Cont.

►Arguing from sign

● Do the signs cited always or usually indicate the conclusion drawn?

● Are a sufficient number of signs present?

● Are contradictory signs in evidence?

►Combining arguments in a speech

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Avoiding Fallacies of Reasoning

►Hasty generalization – wrong assumption

►False cause – failed to

relate to the effects

►Either-Or – not two but

more than two

►Straw Man

►Ad Hominem

Organizational Patterns

►Statement of Reasons Pattern

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Organizational Patterns Cont.

►Comparative Advantages Pattern

Organizational Patterns Cont.

►Criteria Satisfaction Pattern

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Organizational Patterns Cont.

►Refutative Pattern

Persuasive Speeches

Click on the box to view the video.

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Websites

►Persuasive appeals

http://www.public.asu.edu/~macalla/logosethospathos.html

►Persuasive fallacies

http://www.iep.utm.edu/f/fallacy.htm