PERSUADING SPEECH
Purpose of speech to persuade is to change.
Create or reinforce attitudes or behavior.
Persuasion is the process of changing listener’s beliefs or moving a listener to action.
Persuasion is a form of influence; it’s the process or guiding people towards the adoption of an idea attitude or action by rational and symbolic means.
It’s a strategy of problem solving relying on appeals rather than force.
Techniques of persuasion
1. Thinking
To be our effective persuasive speaker, you need to develop a number of different types of thinking skills related to making judgment and decision. Thinking skills.
- Perceiving – Ability to listen and observe to compare and contrast your observation so as to organize and interpret them to understand how you own point of view influences your perceptions.
- Arranging – Your ability to group your perceptions classify them discover pattern in them and place them in order of importance.
- Enquiring – Your ability to ask questions about and analyze meaning of your perceptions.
- Interring your ability to recognize, underlying assumptions to make generalizations to understand cause effect relationship and make predictions.
- Reasoning – your ability to make decisions and arrive at judgement.
2. Using appeals to logic
Start by clarifying the specific purpose of the speech. This is position of your speech. Support your speech with logical argument.
The arguments should rely an objective information instead of personal preference or opinions. Each logical argument must be supported by evidence, factual examples, statistics, exports, testimony or other specific details about the argument logical arguments are made using.
- Inductive reasoning
We begin particular facts and proceeds to larger general conclusions based on these facts. E.g. if we taste a number of hard greed apples and find that they are sour, we are likely to conclude that apples are green and are also sour. - Deductive reasoning
We begin with general statement know to be accepted as true and proceed to particular facts that logically follow form these general statements e.g. All citizens have the right to vote women are citizens, they have the right to vote. Make general statement is true, then make sure the 2nd part fits into the generalization made by 1st statement.
Preparing a persuasive speech based on logical appeals.
- Select a topic narrow enough to be covered within allotted time.
- Find out what positions people hold in this topic.
- Research the arguments supporting and opposing each position.
- Decide on your position and write it as a thesis statement.
- Analyze your audience, its background interests and prejudices.
- Complete your research using a variety of reliable resources.
- Decide which arguments and what kinds of supporting evidence will be most effective with your audience.
- Outline the main arguments of your speech and evidence you will use to support each argument.
- Outline the arguments and evidence you will use to counter position others may take.
- Decide what visual aid will make your speech more effective.
- Prepare introduction and conclusion of your speech.
- Prepare notes for your speech and practice it alone.
- Practice your speech before at least one other person, ask the person for his response.
- Revise your speech in accordance with the person’s response.
3. Using Appeals to Emotion
Use your body language to emphasize appeals to listeners emotions.
Emotional appeals are based on.
- Physical needs
Involve the life and health of individual’s body e.g. need for food and need for physical pain. - Psychological needs
Involves an individual’s inner life e.g. need for love and need for self respect. - Social needs
Involves an individual relationship with a group e.g. need for freedom, need for status and power and need for acceptance by others. You need to consider your specific purposes and you want to be certain that each appeal you choose will lead your listeners to accept the position stated by your thesis rather than formulate arguments against it. You need to know your audience most important needs, their interests and fears. If you misjudge your audience, your appeals to their emotions will not be persuasive then use a contest and statement that appeal to specific emotions and that will sway your listeners in favor of your position. Use vivid language and a more intense tone of voice and gestures. Avoid unfair and dishonest persuasive techniques such as telling lies or half truths, calling names, using absentees and making irrelevant personal attacks.
4. Using identification
When you give a persuasive speech you should encourage your listeners to regard it as a person who can be trusted and believed.
You will want them to belief that you are a person like them, at other times you will want them to know that you are an expert in the topic whose knowledge will benefit them. Ethical appeal (ethics is an appeal to an audience to identify with and trust the speaker)
Guidelines to identification with the audience
- Establish your own credibility
At the opening part of your speech is on need to make it clear that you have been well informed about the topic e.g. what you have done to establish your expertise or you simply let your words talk on your behalf. - Evoke the good will of your listeners
Persuade them that you share common interests with them and that you are sincerely committed to those interests. You can also evoke goodwill by complimenting the audience on its positive varieties and by identifying with a person the audience
admires. - Speak with genuine self confidence and enthusiasm
Your voice, posture, gestures and other non verbal areas communicate your enthusiasm as much as your words do.
5. Using identification with appeals to logic and appeals to emotion. To use the 3 combined you need to keep the following points in mind.
- Be sure each logical argument directly supports your thesis and will be understandably by convincing to your audience.
- Use appeals to emotion in presenting main points based on basic human, physical, psychological or social needs.
- Be sure each appeal to emotion directly supports your position and will be understandable by and convincing to your audience.
- Use specific techniques that will encourage your audience to identify with you.
- Consider how you can appear best credible and self confident and how you can best evoke your listener’s goodwill.
If you establish their identification with you at an early stage, your listeners will be particularly willing to be persuaded by the speech.
LISTENING
Listening is a very important aid to communication. Listening is not the same as hearing. Hearing is an automatic reaction of the senses and nervous system. Listening is hard and requires effort. You have to choose to listen or not to.
Kinds of Listeners
- Passive Listeners
Do not pay attention to what is being said they pay more attention to the persons speaking. - Active Listeners
Guide the speaker towards a common interest. Listening is the most important skill in management.
IMPORTANCE
Advantages of Listening
- Listening helps you keep things in perspective.
- Listening is critical for success in family life and among friends
- Good listening will help you do well in school
- It will help you to know the relationships at work.
- Listening helps to know the organization, especially to grapevine will help you to know what the members of staff think of the Co. policies and activities.
- Listening helps to make better policies. You listen to subordinates carefully. You will know which policies are suitable for your organization.
- Listening mollifies complaining patients and sympathetically, their anger will subside and they will leave mollified.
- Listening helps to spot sensitive areas before they become explosive.
- Listening is important for the open-door policy. If managers listen then the open-door policy will make meaning.
WAYS TO EFFECTIVE LISTENING
- Know when to listen. Intensity of listening should vary through out the session.
- Concentrate on what a person is saying rather than on how he looks.
- Repeat the key ideas to yourself particularly while listening to along lecture.
- Try to relate the speaker’s remarks to your personal background and experience.
- Do not let your mind wander away from what the speaker is saying. Do not think of the pleasant or unpleasant experiences of your own.
- Listen with a positive attitude. Many listeners fail to listen because they are mentally unprepared to listen.
Listening ‘Spare time’ How to use it to your advantage.
Stray thoughts may take you away from the speaker briefs, so you keep jumping out and jumping back, these excursions away from the speaker are dangerous.
During such times try to do the following:
- Explore
Try to anticipate what the speaker will say next – you are likely to understand the next point more. - Analyze
Analyze the speaker’s message as he makes arguments and defends assertions; - Review
When a speaker pauses try to review what he/she has just said. This will help you remember & understand. - Search for hidden meanings.
Listen between the lines for hidden meaning as the speaker progresses.
E – Explore
A – Analyze
R – Review
S – Search for hidden meanings
Bad Listening habits
- Turning out dull topics
Some listeners decide early on that a topic is not interesting, these decision leads to lack of attention and concentration. - Faking Attention
We pretend to pay attention to listeners who fake attention look like they will wake up with a jerk of the head and a dazed look good listeners lean forward with interest and good eye contact and react in a natural way with smiles nods & questioning looks. - Yielding to distractions
Peripheral noises or movements often affect our concentration a sneeze or a fall of a book may cause distraction. Avoid yielding to such distractions. - Criticizing delivery or physical appearance
A listener may abandon their good listening habits by being overly critical of the speaker’s physical appearance or delivery. - Jumping to conclusions
Try to be patient even if you think you know what the other person is going to say. Many listeners are quick to judge before they have carefully heard what the speaker meant. - Overreacting to emotional words
If a speaker says a great point, you might experience a strong emotional reaction. This may block your ability to listen. - Interrupting
Many people more of what they are going to say than what is being said.
Contributions listeners make:
- Process of listening involves paying attention organizing what you hear and remembering for both the short term and the long term.
- Listeners may add a vital element to communication feedback by listening responsively; you tell the speaker how to behave such as; to continue talking, back-up, to slow down, repeat, explain or stop.
- It is the responsibility of the listener to show the speaker what you think.
How to contribute to listening
- Providing encouragement.
Silence may be soothing at times among close friends but to most speakers it means boredom. You can add ‘uh – huh’ or oh? Or I see” - Asking for Explanations.
When you ask questions you help the speaker make his message more understandable. You may ask ‘would you please clarify that?” “would you say that again?” – “I don’t understand what you mean?” - Paraphrasing the message:
You repeating in your own words e.g. what I hear you saying is ——- In other words your view is ——-etc. - Summarizing the message
You condense the important points into a brief comment e.g. “What you have said so far is ………..”
Your key ideas as I understand it, are………….” - Putting it down on paper.
Taking notes automatically improves our attentiveness. It helps you focus on the highlights of what is being said.
FIVE WAYS TO LISTEN:
- Appreciate Listening:
We listen appreciatively when we enjoy music A bird’s song or the murmur of a brook (river) - Discriminative listening
when we want to single out one particular sound from a noisy environment e.g. when listening for a friend’s voice in a crowded room. - Comprehensive listening
When we want to understand. When we listen to directions or instructions we use comprehensive listening. - Therapeutic Listening
The style practiced by counselors psychiatrists and good friends, encourages people to talk freely without fear embarrassment. Friends act as our sounding boards. When we just want someone to listen. The therapeutic listener in conversation with a troubled friend accepts what is said and tries hard to understand and above all makes no judgments. - Critical Listening
These are the most active of all listeners. Try hard to decide whether what someone else says makes sense.
Critical listeners evaluate what they hear and decide if another person’s message us logical, worthwhile, or has valve.
