Public Speaking

Choose Your Purpose and Focus (^61)
A mind map is a good way to let your ideas flow. Figure 5.2 illustrates how to create
a mind map by starting with a broad subject such as food and narrowing it to a series
of more realistic classroom topics, including personal, national, or international aspects
of the topic. If you select and narrow your topic early, you will have plenty of time to
gather and organize your materials and rehearse well enough to feel the confidence that
a last-minute scramble won’t produce.

Choose Your Purpose and Focus

Public speeches aren’t “accidental”; instead, you speak to accomplish specific goals or

purposes,^10 so carefully clarify what you want to achieve by identifying your general

purpose and tentatively formulating a specific purpose for your talk. Continue to refine

your specific purpose as you go along. A thesis statement helps both you and your

listeners understand your central idea, and a preview lays out your major points.

Identify Your General Purpose

Past teachers of rhetoric have consistently pointed out a few general goals for public

speaking. In the fourth century, St. Augustine, who was originally a rhetoric professor,

identified three general purposes: to teach, to please, and to move.^11 In the eighteenth

century, George Campbell^12 identified four purposes: to enlighten the understanding,

to please the imagination, to move the passions, and to influence the will. In the last

century, Alan Monroe^13 said we attempt to inform, to entertain, to stimulate through

emotion, or to convince through reasoning. Today’s speech instructors commonly

describe the following four general purposes (Table 5.1):

•   To inform. The goal here is to increase your audience’s understanding by explaining,

describing, or teaching about your subject. Lectures, how-to speeches, reports,

general purposes four gen-

eral purposes are to inform,

to persuade, to entertain, or

to commemorate

Figure 5.2

This mind map shows

several food-related topics.

You could find dozens more.

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