404 17.5 Using PersUasive strategies
II. Myth number 2: If I donate my organs, my family will be charged for the
surgical costs.
Refutation: If you donate your organs, there will be no charge to your family.
III. Myth number 3: I can’t have an open casket funeral if I’m an organ donor.
Refutation: The donor’s body is clothed for burial, so there are no
visible signs of donation.
IV. Myth number 4: I can’t donate my organs because I am too old.
Refutation: There is no specific age cut-off for organ donation. The final
decision is based on overall organ health, not age.
Tasha could have used the refutation strategy to organize her entire speech,
or the refutation technique could be used as a portion of a larger organizational
strategy such as problem–solution.
If your persuasive presentation using a refutation strategy will be followed
by a question-and-answer forum, you should be prepared to answer questions.
Credible evidence, facts, and data will be more effective than will emotional
arguments alone when you are attempting to persuade an audience that you
know is not in favor of your persuasive objective. In your postspeech session,
you can use your refutation skills to maintain a favorable audience response to
your message in the face of criticism or attacks on the soundness of your logic.Cause and Effect
Like the problem–solution pattern to which it is closely related, the cause-and-
effect approach was introduced in Chapter 9 as a useful organizational strategy.
You can use two basic approaches to this strategy:
• From effect to cause. One way to use the cause-and-effect method is to begin
with an effect, or problem, and then identify the causes of the problem in an
effort to convince your listeners that the problem is significant. A speech on
the growing problem of gangs might focus on poverty, drugs, and a finan-
cially crippled school system.
• From cause to effect. You could also organize a message by noting the problem
and then spelling out the effects of the problem. If you identify the problem
as too many unsupervised teenagers roaming your community’s streets af-
ter 11 p.m., you could organize a speech around the effects this problem is
having on your fellow citizens.
The goal of using cause-and-effect organization for a persuasive speech
is to convince your listeners that one event caused another. For example, you
may try to reason that students in your state have low standardized test scores
because they had poor teachers. Of course, you must prove that no other factors
are responsible for the low test scores. It may not be the teachers who caused the
low test scores; perhaps it was the lack of parental involvement or one or more
of a number of other factors.