Public Speaking

Use Examples (^103)
She gave additional details about her friend throughout her speech.
Examples from your personal experiences can be very powerful. For example,
Carrie spoke on the importance of making a grief support specialist available to students
on her campus, based on her own experience. (You can read her speech in Appendix B.)
Here’s how she began:^24
The phone rings. You answer it, and suddenly the world stops. You have just become
one of the hundred of thousands of college students experiencing the grief of losing
a loved one. September 13, 2006, my life changed forever when it was my phone that
rang. My dad was gone. I was eighteen.
Personal stories are indispensable in some cultures. Focus group participants in a
study of Kenyan public speaking rated personal stories as the most convincing type of
example. One Kenyan said, “We believe you only really know about something if you’ve
experienced it.”^25 In fact, some Kenyans thought personal narratives should be placed in
a separate category because their impact is so different from other types of narratives.
Consider Hypothetical Examples for Sensitive Topics
Hypothetical examples do not actually happen, but they seem plausible because they
commonly borrow elements from several true-to-life stories woven together to create
believable characters and situations. Our cultural value on privacy makes hypotheti-
cal examples more appropriate than real ones for sensitive topics like mental illness or
sexual behaviors, so speakers whose work involves confidentiality, such as physicians,
members of the clergy, therapists, and teachers, often use them. Family counselors who
present parenting workshops, for instance, might tell hypothetical stories of bad par-
enting skills because they would never reveal confidential information about identifi-
able clients. To distinguish hypothetical examples from true-life events, introduce them
something like this: “Let’s say there’s a 16-year-old girl named Carly; let’s put her in a
close-knit family in rural Oregon... ”
hypothetical example not
a real incident or person, but
true-to-life
© iStockphoto.com/MachineHeadz
Speakers whose work
involves confidentiality, such
as counselors, often describe
hypothetical characters
whose predicaments typify
the problems that they
encounter.
Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.