62 CHAPTER^5 Selecting Your Topic and Purpose
announcements, and introductions fall into this category. When you’re assigned to
give an informative speech, focus on discovering and presenting factual material that
will increase your audience’s knowledge or understanding of your topic.
• To persuade. Persuaders attempt to convince, motivate, or reinforce cultural ideals.
You might speak to sell products, argue for ideas, request donations, campaign for
candidates, and promote policy changes, among other things. When you have a per-
suasive assignment, select convincing and motivating materials that will influence
your listeners to believe and act in the ways you advocate.
• To entertain. Here you want listeners to laugh at your humorous portrayal of a
subject. Obviously, this purpose is common in comedy routines but it’s also useful for
special occasions such as after-dinner speeches. (See Chapter 18.) If you’re asked to
be entertaining, choose an event or situation that you find amusing and use strate-
gies such as exaggeration and creative wording to highlight humorous aspects of the
topic. Although giving a speech to entertain is less common in the classroom, each
speech should always be interesting, regardless of its purpose.
• To commemorate. Special occasion speeches highlight and reinforce cultural ideals.
Tributes, toasts, awards, eulogies, and other types of speeches described in Chapter 18
fall into this category. For a commemorative speech assignment, choose a worthy
subject and develop it around cultural values.
Speech purposes often overlap because audiences are comprised of listeners with
various levels of information and motivation. Take the example of Microsoft’s Bill Gates,
who recently vowed to work for the eradication of polio worldwide. In a single speech,
he must tell uninformed listeners about polio’s extent and effects globally; he must
motivate informed listeners to get involved by donating money to worthy organizations.
Throughout, he must hold their interest. Although his talk might not be specifically
commemorative, he is reinforcing cultural beliefs about science and health and uphold-
ing cultural values on helping others.Identify Your Specific Purpose*
Linnea became convinced that workers in a coffee-producing company were being
exploited by her morning cup of coffee, so she chose to speak about “Fair Trade certi-
fied coffee.” Her next step was to decide what she wanted her listeners to know or do
about Fair Trade products. She needed a tool^14 to guide her research and organization—
a specific purpose statement in the form of a phrase or sentence stating the cognitive,
affective, or behavioral responses she desired from the audience.^15
• Cognitive effects relate to the audience’s beliefs, thoughts, or understandings.
To achieve cognitive effects, Linnea should focus on providing information or on
changing her listeners’ beliefs about some aspect of coffee production.
• Affective effects are the feelings or emotions aroused in the listeners. Fair trade is a
potentially emotional topic, and Linnea might hope to instill anger and perhaps guilt
feelings over the treatment of workers in the coffee industry.Build Your Outline
specific purpose the cogni-
tive, affective, or behavioral
response a speaker desires
cognitive effects influences
on beliefs, understandings,
and other mental processes
affective effects influences
on listeners’ feelings
Table 5.1
General Purposes
To inform To persuade To entertain To commemorate
curries avoid trans fats midnight snacks a chef
sushi take antioxidants grazing a franchise’s values
franchises childhood obesity causes caterer moments tribute to farmers*Excerpts from Linnea’s sample student speech: Used by permission of Linnea Strandy.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.www.ebook3000.com