Public Speaking

Choose a Specific Purpose (^241)
Generally, attitudes change incrementally, so expect change to be gradual. Each
new encounter with the subject may bring about only a slight alteration in attitude, but
eventually, the small changes can add up.

Choose a Specific Purpose

After you better understand your audience’s attitude and how that affects your strate-

gies, consider the specific response you want from your listeners. Do you want them to

mentally accept your ideas? Do you want to motivate them to act? Each specific purpose

requires different strategies.

Persuasive Goal: To Convince

Often, audience members don’t believe your claim or accept your value judgment, either

because they hold a different viewpoint or because they haven’t thought much about the

subject. Consequently, when you want mental agreement with your claim—whether it is

a claim of fact, value, or policy—you design a speech to convince.

Convincing about Facts

Some general strategies are effective when your goal is to convince listeners to believe

a disputed fact, accept a causal relationship, or agree that your prediction is probable.

•   Define important terminology and provide a history of the issue.

•   Build your case carefully, using only high-quality evidence that passes the tests for

credible supporting material. Research studies show that statistics are particularly

useful for this goal.^16

•   Rely more on logical appeals than on emotional appeals.

•   Prove your competence by being knowledgeable about the facts and by citing your

sources.

•   Show respect for your listeners’ intelligence and divergent beliefs.

For example, Kelli decided to argue a factual claim of causation: Playing with fashion

dolls leads to poor body images in young girls. Many audience members disagreed mildly;

the females who grew up playing with these dolls didn’t feel particularly harmed. The

males hadn’t thought much about it. So most of her audience was neutral or moderately

opposed to her causal claim. Her burden was to prove the link, and her best strategies

were logos or rational proofs. Here is how she built her case:^17

•   First, she provided a brief history of the most famous fashion doll of all: Barbie.

•   She countered a common myth (“Barbie’s body would be bent in half constantly if

she were alive because her lower body could not support her upper body”) by report-

ing, “I couldn’t find any facts to support this, but I did find a study in Sex Roles Journal

of 1996 that discussed the proportions of Barbie’s body.”^18

•   Next, she explained a study reported by developmental psychologists in the journal

Adolescence that showed the importance of toys in children’s development.^19

•   Following this, she reported that a study from the journal Developmental Psychology^20

explained that children internalize images from dolls and become aware of their body

image at around age 6, and some 6-year-old girls already have body dissatisfaction.

The study also compared girls who played with Barbie to girls who played with Emme,

a larger-sized fashion doll, and found the former had more negative body images.

•   Her final point was a finding that adolescent females believed fashion dolls were

images of perfection, and both males and females believed they affected girls’ self-

image. Most said they were bad role models.^21

convince a persuasive pur-

pose that targets audience

beliefs

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