Public Speaking Handbook

How to develop Your Persuasive speech 16.4 361

message that anticipates, as best you can, what your audience may be think-
ing and feeling when they listen to you. The audience analysis and adaptation
techniques discussed in Chapter 6 can help you anticipate and plan to overcome
objections your audience may have to your persuasive message.

consiDEr auDiEncE DivErsity Researchers have discovered no uni-
versal, cross-cultural approach to persuasion that is effective in every culture.
Persuasion works differently for different cultural groups. North Americans,
for example, tend to place considerable importance on direct observations and
verifiable facts. Our court system places great stock in eyewitness testimony.
People in some Chinese cultures, by contrast, consider such evidence unreliable
because they believe that what people observe is always influenced by personal
motives. In some African cultures, personal testimony is also often suspect; it
is reasoned that if you speak up to defend someone, you must have an ulterior
motive and therefore your observation is discounted.^12 Although your audience
might not include listeners from Africa or China, given the growing diversity
of Americans, it is increasingly likely that it may. Or you might have listeners
from other cultures with still different perspectives. Our point: Don’t design a
persuasive message using strategies that would be effective only for those with

Deliver

Speech

Generate

Main Ideas

Develop

Central

Idea

Gather

Supporting

Material

Select and

Narrow

Topic

Rehearse

Speech

Determine

Purpose

Organize

Speech

CONSIDER

THE

AUDIENCE

Figure 16.3 considering the audience is central to all

speechmaking, especially persuasive speaking.

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