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Chapter 17
Persuasive Speaking
What you’ll know:
• How people listen to and evaluate persuasive messages
• Three types of persuasive speaking goals or propositions
• How the target audience’s initial attitude toward your topic affects your proposition
• Several common fallacies to avoid when developing arguments
What you’ll be able to do:
• Incorporate logos, pathos, and ethos effectively in your persuasive speeches
• Organize your persuasive speeches using an appropriate pattern
• Evaluate persuasive messages from others
Chapter Outline
II. Persuasive Speech Goals: a declarative sentence that clearly indicates the speaker’s position on
the topic
A. Types of propositions
1. Proposition of fact: designed to convince an audience that something is or is not true or
does or does not exist
2. Proposition of value: designed to convince your audience that something is good, bad,
desirable, undesirable, fair, unfair, etc.
3. Proposition of policy: designed to convince that they should take or support a specific
course of action
B. Tailoring your proposition to your audience
1. Opposed
a. Strong opposition: move the audience closer to your position, but don’t expect a
complete change in your direction
III. Rhetorical Appeals to Logos
A. Finding reasons: main point statements that summarize several related pieces of evidence and
show why you should believe or do something
1. Support: evidence offered as grounds to accept the claim
2. Warrant: reasoning process that connects the support to the claim
3. Claim: the conclusion the speaker wants the audience to agree with
4. Inductive reasoning: arriving at a general conclusion based on several pieces of evidence
5. Deductive reasoning: arguing that if something is true for everything in a certain class,
then it is true for a given item in that class
B. Types of logical arguments: proving conclusions drawn from reasons and evidence
1. Arguing by sign: support a claim by citing information that signals the claim
2. Arguing by examples: support a claim by providing one or more individual examples
a. Are enough instances or examples cited so that listeners understand they are not
isolated or handpicked examples?
b. Are the examples typical and representative?
c. Are negative examples really atypical?
3. Arguing from analogy: support a claim with a single comparable example that is
significantly similar to the subject of the claim
a. Are the subjects being compared similar in every important way?
b. Are any of the ways in which the subjects are dissimilar important to the conclusion?
4. Arguing from causation: support a claim by citing events that have occurred to bring about
the claim
a. Are the events alone sufficient to cause the stated effect?
b. Do other events accompanying the cited events actually cause the effect?
c. Is the relationship between the causal events and the effect consistent?
IV. Rhetorical Appeals to Ethos
A. Conveying good character
1. Understand the audience
2. Empathizes with audience
3. Respond to the audience
B. Empathy: the ability to see the world through the eyes of someone else
C. Be responsive: show care about the audience by acknowledging feedback from the audience,
especially subtle negative cues.
D. Conveying competence and credibility
1. Explain your competence.
2. Use evidence from respected sources.
3. Use nonverbal delivery to enhance your credibility.
4. Use vocal expression to enhance your credibility.
V. Rhetorical Appeals to Pathos
VI. Persuasive Speech Patterns
A. Statement of reasons pattern: a straightforward organization in which you present the best-
supported reasons you can find
B. Comparative advantages pattern: pattern used when a proposed change is compared to other
solutions and highlighted as superior
C. Criteria satisfaction pattern: an indirect organization that first seeks audience agreement on
criteria that should be considered when they evaluate a particular proposition and then shows
how the proposition satisfies those criteria
D. Refutative pattern: organize your main points by refuting other arguments and bolstering your
own
E. Problem-solution pattern: an organization that provides a framework for clarifying the nature
of the problem and for illustrating why a given proposal is the best one
F. Problem-cause-solution pattern: similar to the problem-solution pattern but also explains
causes of the problem and the provides a solution that addresses those causes
G. Motivated sequence pattern: an organization pattern that combines the problem solution
pattern with explicit appeals designed to motivate the audience to act
Discussion and Assignment Ideas
I. Write a list of popular speech topic areas on the board, such as increasing gun control, legalizing
marijuana, legalizing gay marriage, assessing higher penalties for drunk driving, or eliminating
performance enhancing drugs in sports. Go over each topic, asking the following questions:
1. Why is this such a popular topic choice?
2. Are your classmates likely to be interested in this topic?
3. Are they more likely to process the speech through the central route or through the peripheral
route?
4. What kind of attitude do you think this class has on this topic: opposed, neutral, or in favor?
5. How should a speaker take the information gained from asking questions 1-4 into account
when preparing a persuasive speech?
