strategies for Organizing Persuasive Messages 17.5 399
and last.^35 In speaking to his fraternity about the dangers of drunk driving,
Frank wisely began his speech with his most powerful evidence: The lead-
ing cause of death among college-age males is alcohol-related automobile
accidents. He got their attention with this sobering fact.
• If you want your listeners to take some action, it is best to tell them what you want
them to do at the end of your speech. If you call for action in the middle of your
speech, it won’t have the same power it would have in your conclusion.
You should also tailor your calls to action to the cultural preferences of your
audience. In some high-context cultures, such as Japan and China, you can
imply what you’d like your listeners to do rather than spell out the precise
action explicitly. In a low-context culture such as the United States, listeners
may generally expect you to state more directly the action you’d like them
to take.
• When you think your listeners are well informed and are familiar with the disadvan-
tages of your proposal, it is usually better to present both sides of an issue, rather
than just the advantages of the position you advocate. If you don’t acknowledge
arguments your listeners have heard, they will probably think about them
anyway.
• Make reference to counterarguments and then refute them with evidence and logic.
It may be wise to compare your proposal with an alternative proposal,
perhaps one offered by someone else. By comparing and contrasting your
solution with another recommendation, you can show how your proposal
is better.^36
• Adapt organization to the culture of your audience. Most North Americans tend to
like a well-organized message with a clear, explicit link between the evidence
used and the conclusion drawn. North Americans are also comfortable with
a structure that focuses on a problem and then offers a solution or a message
in which causes are identified and the effects are specified. Audiences in the
Middle East, however, would expect less formal structure and greater use
of a narrative style of message development. The audience either infers the
point or the speaker may conclude by making the point clear. Being indirect
or implicit may sometimes be the best persuasive strategy.
We discussed ways of organizing speeches in Chapter 9, but there are spe-
cial ways to organize persuasive speeches. Here we present four organizational
patterns: problem–solution, refutation, cause and effect, and the motivated
sequence.
Problem–Solution
The most basic organizational pattern for a persuasive speech is to make the
audience aware of a problem and then present a solution that clearly solves
it. Almost any problem can be phrased in terms of something you want more
of or less of. The problem–solution pattern works best when a clearly evident