Public Speaking Handbook

Analyzing and evaluating speeches 5.5 87

a fundamental criterion for determining whether the message is a good one is

whether you understand the message.

DOES THE MESSAGE ACHIEVE ITS GOAL? When you communicate with an

audience, you want to achieve a goal or accomplish something. Typical general

goals of public speaking are to inform, to persuade, and to entertain. The chal-

lenge in using this criterion in evaluating speeches is that you might not always

know the speaker’s true intent. Often, the best you can do is try to determine the

purpose by being a careful listener.

THE MESSAGE SHOULD BE ETHICAL If a speaker’s message is clearly

understood by the audience and gets the reaction the speaker desired, but the

speaker has used unethical means to achieve the goal, the message may be an

effective message, but it is not an appropriate message. A good speaker is an ethical

speaker, one who tells the truth, gives credit for ideas and words where credit is

due, and doesn’t plagiarize.

You will probably speak to audiences that have a wide array of cultural back-

grounds. Regardless of their cultural tradition, each of your listeners holds an

underlying ethical code. Although, as we noted in Chapter 4, not all cultures have

the same ethical rules, many cultures adhere to precepts that, in essence, state the

value of being audience-centered by considering how other people would like to

be treated. An ethical public speaker focuses not only on achieving the goal of the

message but also on doing so while being sensitive and responsive to listeners.

Identifying and Analyzing Rhetorical Strategies

Rhetorical strategies are methods and techniques that speakers employ to

achieve their speaking goals. Recall that rhetoric is the use of symbols to achieve

goals. Symbols can be words, images (a flag, a cross, a six-pointed star), and

behaviors that create meaning for others. Whether you use them in an interview

to convince an employer to hire you for a job or hear them in a pop-up Inter-

net ad to persuade you to buy something, words and images that symbolically

inform and persuade are all around you. Public speakers are rhetoricians who

use symbols to achieve their goals.

One way to enhance your listening skills and become more mindfully aware

of how messages influence your behavior is to analyze the rhetorical strategies

a speaker is using. It’s especially important to be aware of how some speakers

may use unethical strategies—such as misusing evidence, relying too heavily on

emotion to persuade, or fabricating information—to deceive or manipulate you.

Rhetorician Robert Rowland suggests that, to analyze rhetorical messages,

listeners must be conscious of (1) the goal of the message, (2) its organiza-

tion, (3) the speaker’s role, (4) the overall tone of the message, (5) the intended

audience, and (6) the techniques the speaker uses to achieve the goal.^31 Whether

it’s a speaker in your public-speaking class, the president delivering a State of

the Union address, a member of the clergy delivering a sermon, or a parent

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