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24
The Persuasive Speech
<A> OBJECTIVES
To select a persuasive purpose for
your speech based on your specific
goal(s).
To increase the odds of achieving
your persuasive speech goal.
To recognize classical persuasive appeals using logos, pathos, and ethos.
To appeal to what motivates audience members.
To appeal to audience members’ needs.
To encourage mental engagement.
To change behavior, stress positive outcomes.
To use
your own credibility as a tool of persuasion.
To build your credibility
throughout the speech.
<A> CHAPTER CONTENT OUTLINE
I.
What is a persuasive speech?
A.
Persuasion is a deliberate process of influencing
others to share
your beliefs. A
persuasive speech is a form of speech that is intended to influence the attitudes,
beliefs, values, and/or
behavior of others by
appealing to some combination of their
needs, desires, interests, or fears.
B.
Like informative speeches, persuasive speeches seek to increase understanding and
awareness. Unlike informative speeches, persuasive speaking seeks to influence
an
audience’s choices, whether the goal is a slight shift in opinion or action or a
wholesale change in behavior.
C.
Any issue that would constitute the topic of a persuasive speech represents at least
two points. Persuasive speakers attempt to limit alternatives to the side the speaker
represents, showing that side to be of
greater value or usefulness to the audience than
alternatives.
D.
Persuading people to change their minds even a small amount is a difficult task,
requires considerable skill, and is rarely immediate. Changes tend to be small, or even
imperceptible at first. The odds of influencing the audience in your direction can be
increased by the following:
1. Setting modest goals
2. Establishing
your credibility
and building
common bonds
3. Making the message personally relevant
4. Addressing an audience
whose position is only moderately different than
yours
5. Asking the audience
for its support while demonstrating positive
consequences
6. Considering using narratives
II.
Classical persuasive appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos
A. Aristotle believed that persuasion could be brought about through the use of three
types of persuasive appeals, or proofs. The first (logos) concerns the reasoned and
logical arguments of the
message; the second (pathos), the audience’s feelings; the
third (ethos), the credibility of the speaker to further the persuasive aims. According
to Aristotle, you can build an effective
argument
with one or a combination of these
appeals or proofs.
B.
Logos
refers to persuasive appeals directed at an audience’s rational thinking or
systematic reasoning on a topic. Logos requires listeners to draw inferences or
conclusions from the evidence
a speaker presents, and makes use of arguments for or
against an idea or issue through two main types of appeal.
C.
Pathos
refers to persuasive appeals directed at the audience’s emotions.
1.
Feelings such as pride, love, compassion, anger, shame, and fear provide the
foundation for many of our actions. Appealing to such emotions in speech can
help establish a personal connection between speaker and audience.
2.
Emotion can be evoked through vivid description, emotionally charged words,
compelling stories appealing to shared values, and the use of repetition and
parallelism to create drama and rhythm.
D.
Speakers should realize that relying
solely on pathos will fail; it must be combined
with sound reasoning.
1.
Emotional appeals in speech should also be done
ethically, avoiding
propaganda
and irresponsible use of fear appeals.
E.
Ethos, which refers to the nature of the speaker’s moral character and personality,
consists of three elements:
1.
Competence is the speaker’s knowledge and experience with the subject
matter.
2.
Moral character is reflected in the speaker’s straightforward and honest
presentation of the message.
3. Goodwill is demonstrated in the speaker’s interest in and concern for the
welfare of the audience.
III. Contemporary persuasive appeals: needs and motivations
A. Current research confirms the persuasive power of ethos, pathos, and logos, as seen in
today’s advertising messages, which attempt to evoke an emotional response, imply
credibility, or make reasoned arguments.
B. Winning over the audience to your point of view requires paying attention to their
motivations. Motives develop from the needs and desires that we seek to satisfy.
1. Speakers can attempt to demonstrate how an attitude or behavior might either
satisfy or keep listeners from being satisfied.
C. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has long been a basis for motivation-oriented
persuasive speeches. Maslow suggested that each person has a set of needs
(physiological, safety, social, self-esteem, self-actualization) that are hierarchically
embedded. An individual’s needs at the lower, essential level must be fulfilled before
the higher levels can become important and motivating.
1. Recent studies suggest that persuasive attempts to boost or increase threatened
social needs and self-esteem are more successful than those that ignore these
needs.
D. Audience members will process messages based upon the degree of involvement with
the message. The principles of the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (ELM)
can be helpful in this regard.
make the message relevant to listeners,
1. The elaboration likelihood model is a theory of persuasion that suggests that
people process persuasive messages by one of two routes.
a. People who are motivated and able to think critically about a message
are said to engage in central processing. Central processing produces
more long-lasting changes in audience perspective.
b. People who see the message as irrelevant or too complex and, thus,
don’t pay close attention are said to engage in peripheral processing.
Those using such processing are unlikely to meaningfully change their
attitudes or behavior.
2. According to ELM, people pay less attention to messages they perceive as
irrelevant, uninteresting, or too complex; thus the speaker’s task is to:
a.
b. ensure it is presented at the appropriate level of understanding, and
c. that the speaker’s credibility is established.
E. Audiences are comprised of rational, thinking, and choice-making individuals,
directed primarily by their own volition. The principles of the expectancy value
theory are helpful in appealing to these aspects of your audience.
1. Expectancy-outcome values theory maintains that people consciously evaluate
the potential costs and benefits, or value, associated with taking a particular
action.
2. According to this theory, when a speaker wants to persuade listeners to change
their behavior, he or she should try to identify these expected outcomes and
use them to appeal to the audience.
3. When conducting audience analysis, you should seek out (1) your listeners’
attitudes about the behavior you are proposing that they change, (2) their
beliefs about the consequences associated with that behavior, and (3) what
audience members believe other significant people in their lives think about
the behavior in question.
F. Yet another way to persuade an audience is to appeal to the listeners’ relationship with
the speaker. Speaker credibility is made up of the following components.
1. Trustworthiness is probably the most important speaker attribute; any loss in
perceived trustworthiness is a significant loss in credibility.
2. Speaker expertise contributes to the persuasive outcomes of a speech when
audience members are relatively unmotivated or unable to fully grasp a
message, and when audience members themselves are well informed about the
message. Speaker similarity involves listeners’ perceptions of how similar the
speaker is to themselves, especially in terms of attitudes and moral character.
a. Generally, we are most likely to respond favorably to persuasive
appeals when the speaker is like us.
b. Sometimes we attach more credibility to people who are actually
dissimilar to us, as when an expert emphasizes facts and testimony.
3. Speaker credibility builds in phases as the speaker progresses through the
speech, beginning with impressions the audience members form even before
the speech begins.
a. Initial credibility is based on factors such as reputation, nonverbal
behavior, and physical appearance. Listeners respond most positively
to speakers who dress appropriately and establish eye contact.
b. The actual message of the speech assigns the speaker more or less
credibility, based on the quality of the
evidence and the skill of
delivery. This is called derived credibility, and is where competence or
expertise plays a major role.
c.
Audience members continue to make judgments about credibility until
and even after the conclusion of the speech. Terminal credibility
encompasses the totality
of the audience’s impressions, including their
impression of the strength of the speaker’s conclusion as well as the
overall speech performance.
<A> KEY
TERMS
persuasion
the deliberate process of influence, or convincing others to share
your beliefs.
persuasive speech
a speech meant to influence audience members’ attitudes, beliefs, values,
and/or behavior by
appealing to some combination of their needs, desires, interests, and
even fears.
persuasive appeals (“proofs”) three types of appeals identified by
Aristotle: logos (proof
by reason), pathos (proof by emotion), and ethos (proof through speaker character).
logos
an appeal to the audience’s reason and logic.
argument a stated position, with support, for or against an idea or issue.
pathos the appeal to an audience’s emotions.
demagogue an unethical speaker who relies heavily
on irrelevant emotional appeals to short-
circuit listeners’ rational decision making process.
fear appeal a persuasive appeal to audience members that deliberately arouses their fear
and anxiety.
ethos the Greek word for “character.”
According to the ancient Greek rhetorician
Aristotle, audiences listen to and trust speakers if they
exhibit competence (as
demonstrated by the speaker’s grasp of the subject matter) and good moral character.
motive
a predisposition to behave in certain ways.
hierarchy of needs a model of human action based on the principle that
people are motivated to act on the basis of their needs.
elaboration likelihood
model of persuasion (ELM) a model of persuasion developed
by Richard Petty
and John Cacioppo that states that people process persuasive messages
by one of two routes—either central processing or peripheral processing—depending on
their degree of involvement in the message.
central processing a mode of processing
a persuasive message that involves thinking
critically
about the contents of the message and the strength and quality of the speaker’s
arguments. People who seriously
consider what the speaker’s message means to them are
most likely to experience a relatively enduring change in thinking.
peripheral processing a
mode of processing
a persuasive message that does not consider
the quality of the speaker’s message but is influenced by such noncontent issues as the
speaker’s appearance or reputation, certain slogans or one-liners, or obvious attempts to
manipulate emotions. Peripheral processing of messages occurs when people lack the
motivation or the ability to pay
close attention to the issues.
expectancy value theory a theory of persuasion developed by
Icek
Ajzen and
Martin Fishbein positing
that audience members act according to the perceived costs and
benefits (“value”) associated with a particular action; useful when developing a
persuasive speech targeting behavior.
speaker credibility the quality that reveals that a speaker has a
good grasp of the subject,
displays sound reasoning skills, is honest and nonmanipulative, and is genuinely
interested in the welfare
of audience members; a
modern version of
ethos.
CHAPTER STUDY GUIDE
I. SUMMARY QUESTIONS
What is a persuasive speech? How does it differ from an informative speech?
Persuasion
is a deliberate process of influence, of convincing others to share
your beliefs.
How can knowledge of
persuasive speaking help you outside of the public speaking
classroom?
Knowledge of public speaking helps individuals critically assess the persuasive messages and
What are some key factors or principles that, when heeded, will increase the odds that
efforts at persuasion
will succeed?
Paying attention to the following principles will increase the odds that persuasive efforts will
By what three means did classical rhetoricians such as Aristotle teach that a speaker could
persuade an audience?
In his classical treatise on rhetoric, Aristotle explained that persuasion could be brought about by
What are the three
elements included in
ethos?
How can Abraham Maslow’s five-level hierarchy of needs be used to appeal to an
audience’s needs and interests?
Maslow’s model of needs has long been a basis for motivation-oriented persuasive speeches.
Physiological needs manifest our very sense of survival and require regular, if not daily,
fulfillment. Part of
your planning for a speech is to know the physical surroundings in which the
How can the principles of the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion be used to
increase the likelihood that audience members will understand the speaker’s message and
modify their beliefs on an issue?
The ELM offers a theory of how listeners receive and interpret persuasive messages. The model
suggests that people “hear” messages by means of one of two routes (central and peripheral
How can the
principles of the expectancy-outcome values theory model be used to effect a
change in an audience’s behavior?
Members of an audience
are rational, thinking, choice-making individuals. Thus, to convince
How can the principles of speaker credibility be used to increase the persuasive appeal of a
message?
The speaker-audience relationship provides another area of appeal on which persuasive speakers
II. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What are some important things to consider when using emotional appeals in persuasive
speaking?
Review the information in the section entitled “Ethically Speaking: Using
Emotions Ethically,”
which discusses the implications of using emotional appeals to influence audiences. Speakers act
What is the difference between a persuasive speech and an informative
speech?
Both types of speech are
similar in that they serve
to share information with the audience.
