Chapter 17: Persuasive Speaking
Learning Objectives
- Define persuasion.
- Define ethos, logos, and pathos.
- Explain the barriers to persuading an audience.
- Construct a clear, reasonable proposition for a short classroom speech.
- Compose an outline for a well-supported persuasive speech using an appropriate organizational pattern such as Monroe’s Motivated Sequence.
- Analyze the audience to determine appropriate emotional and personal appeals.
Key Terms
a psychological phenomenon where people confronted with conflicting information or viewpoints reach a state of dissonance (generally the disagreement between conflicting thoughts and/or actions), which can be very uncomfortable, and results in actions to get rid of the dissonance and maintain consonance
the term Aristotle used to refer to what we now call credibility: the perception that the speaker is honest, knowledgeable, and rightly motivated
logical and organized arguments and the credible evidence to support the arguments within a speech; arguments based on logic
an imagined conversation the speaker has with a given audience in which the speaker tries to anticipate what questions, concerns, or issues the audience may have to the subject under discussion
organizational pattern used for persuasive speeches involving five steps: attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action
the use of emotions such as anger, joy, hate, desire for community, and love to persuade the audience of the rightness of a proposition; arguments based on emotion
symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behavior regarding an issue through the transmission of a message, in an atmosphere of free choice
central idea statement in a persuasive speech; a statement made advancing a judgment or opinion
the decision to expose ourselves to messages that we already agree with, rather than those that confront or challenge us
the members of an audience the speaker most wants to persuade and who are likely to be receptive to persuasive messages
persuasive technique in which a speaker brings up a counter-argument to their own topic and then directly refutes the claim
