{"id":168,"date":"2015-08-18T21:17:05","date_gmt":"2015-08-18T21:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/standupspeakoutxmaster\/?post_type=chapter&p=168"},"modified":"2015-08-18T21:18:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-18T21:18:03","slug":"foundations-of-public-speaking","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-fmcc-standupspeakout1\/chapter\/foundations-of-public-speaking\/","title":{"raw":"Foundations of Public Speaking","rendered":"Foundations of Public Speaking"},"content":{"raw":"Every speech has to start somewhere, and one of the most common questions we hear from students in a public speaking course is, \u201cWhere do I start?\u201d Well, your public speaking teacher will definitely give you some specific guidelines for all the speeches in your class, but all speeches start with the same basic foundation: speech purpose, topic selection, and audience analysis.\r\n
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Speech Purpose<\/h2>\r\nThe very first question you\u2019ll want to ask yourself is this: what is the basic purpose of the speech you\u2019re about to give? As far back as the ancient Greeks, scholars of public speaking have realized that there are three basic or general purposes people can have for giving public speeches: to inform, to persuade, and to entertain.\r\n
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To Inform<\/h2>\r\nThe first general purpose people can have for public speaking is to inform. When we use the word \u201cinform\u201d in this context, we are specifically talking about giving other people information that they do not currently possess. Maybe you\u2019ve been asked to tell the class about yourself or an important event in your life. For example, one of our coauthors had a student who had been smuggled out of a totalitarian country as a small child with her family and fled to the United States, seeking asylum. When she told the class about how this event changed her life, she wasn\u2019t trying to make the class do or believe anything, she was just informing the class about how this event changed her life.\r\n\r\nAnother common type of informative speech is the \u201chow-to\u201d or demonstration speech. Maybe you\u2019ll be asked to demonstrate something to the class. In this case, you\u2019ll want to think about an interesting skill that you have that others don\u2019t generally possess. Some demonstration speeches we\u2019ve seen in the past have included how to decorate a cake, how to swing a golf club, how to manipulate a puppet, and many other interesting and creative speeches.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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To Persuade<\/h2>\r\nThe second general purpose that public speakers can have is to persuade. When you persuade another person, you are attempting to get that person to change her or his thought process or behavior. In the first case, you\u2019re trying to get someone to change her or his opinion or belief to what you, as the speaker, want that person to think or believe after the speech. For example, maybe you belong to a specific religious group that doesn\u2019t always get the greatest press. In your speech, you could try to tell your classmates where that negative press is coming from and all the good that your religious sect does in the world. The goal of this speech isn\u2019t to convert people, it\u2019s just to get people to think about your group in a more positive fashion or change their thought process.\r\n\r\nThe second type of persuasive speech, the more common of the two, is to get someone to change her or his behavior. In this case, your goal at the end of the speech is to see your audience members actually do something. When we want an audience to do something at the end of the speech, we call this a \u201ccall to action\u201d because we are actually asking our audience members to act on what we\u2019ve said during the speech. For example, maybe you\u2019re an advocate for open-source (or free) software packages. So you give a speech persuading your classmates to switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice<\/a>. In your speech, you could show how the cost of Microsoft Office is constantly rising and that OpenOffice offers the exact same functionality for free. In this case, the goal of your speech is to have your classmates stop using Microsoft Office and start using OpenOffice\u2014you want them to act.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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To Entertain<\/h2>\r\nThe third general purpose people can have for public speaking is to entertain. Some speeches are specifically designed to be more lighthearted and entertaining for audience members. Quite often these speeches fall into the category of \u201cafter-dinner speeches,\u201d or speeches that contain a serious message but are delivered in a lively, amusing manner that will keep people alert after they\u2019ve finished eating a big meal. For this reason, most speeches that fall into the \u201cto entertain\u201d category are either informative or persuasive, but we categorize them separately because of reliance on humor. Effective speeches in this category are often seen as the intersection of public speaking and stand-up comedy. The speeches themselves must follow all the guidelines of effective public speaking, but the speeches must be able to captivate an audience through interesting and funny anecdotes and stories. Some common entertaining speech topics include everything from crazy e-mails people have written to trying to understand our funny family members.\r\n\r\nNot all entertaining speeches include large doses of humor. Some of the most memorable speakers in the professional speaking world fall into the entertaining category because of their amazing and heart-wrenching stories. The more serious speakers in this category are individuals who have experienced great loss or overcome enormous hurdles to succeed in life and who share their stories in a compelling style of speaking. Audience members find these speakers \u201centertaining\u201d because the speakers\u2019 stories captivate and inspire. In the professional world of speaking, the most commonly sought after form of speaker is the one who entertains an audience while having a serious message but delivering that message in a humorous or entertaining manner.\r\n
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Topic Selection<\/h2>\r\nOnce you have a general purpose for speaking (to inform, to persuade, or to entertain), you can start to develop the overarching topic for your speech. Clearly, some possible speech topics will not be appropriate for a given general purpose. For example, if you\u2019ve been asked to give an informative speech, decrying the ills of social policy in the United States would not be an appropriate topic because it\u2019s innately persuasive.\r\n\r\nIn a public speaking class, your teacher will generally give you some parameters for your speech. Some common parameters or constraints seen in public speaking classes are general purpose and time limit. You may be asked to give a two- to three-minute informative speech. In this case, you know that whatever you choose to talk about should give your listeners information they do not already possess, but it also needs to be a topic that can be covered in just two to three minutes. While two to three minutes may seem like a long time to fill with information, those minutes will quickly disappear when you are in front of your audience. There are many informative topics that would not be appropriate because you couldn\u2019t possibly cover them adequately in a short speech. For example, you couldn\u2019t tell us how to properly maintain a car engine in two to three minutes (even if you spoke really, really fast). You could, on the other hand, explain the purpose of a carburetor.\r\n\r\nIn addition to thinking about the constraints of the speaking situation, you should also make sure that your topic is appropriate\u2014both for you as the speaker and for your audience. One of the biggest mistakes novice public speakers make is picking their favorite hobby as a speech topic. You may love your collection of beat-up golf balls scavenged from the nearby public golf course, but your audience is probably not going to find your golf ball collection interesting. For this reason, when selecting possible topics, we always recommend finding a topic that has crossover appeal for both yourself and your audience. To do this, when you are considering a given topic, think about who is in your audience and ask yourself if your audience would find this topic useful and interesting.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Audience Analysis<\/h2>\r\nTo find out whether an audience will find a speech useful and interesting, we go through a process called audience analysis. Just as the title implies, the goal of audience analysis is to literally analyze who is in your audience. The following are some common questions to ask yourself:\r\n