My Favorite Speech

My favorite speech this semester for the class as a whole was definitely the tribute speeches.  I really enjoyed that speech because I felt that everybody in the class really cared about what/who they were talking about.  It helped me to learn about my classmates and to feel as though I know them better.

My favorite speech to give was the last speech, the persuasive speech.  I enjoyed that speech the most because it was my only speech that I thought was actually important.  The other speeches I did in the interest of getting a good grade and hopefully being somewhat entertaining and not too boring for the class.  My persuasive speech was about personal finance and investing for retirement, which is something that I am very passionate about.  As somebody who grew up in a family of six with only one parent working, money was always incredibly tight and my family lived paycheck to paycheck.  I was very aware of our situation and never asked my parents for money for anything.  Most days I didn't even eat a lunch because I didn't want to spend my family's money.  I never wanted that for my kids.  Because of this I have always been very frugal with my money and have always kept a healthy saving account.  Fortunately my wife has congruent views on this subject.

I think that a lot of people are either ignorant about saving/investing or just don't really think about it.  Especially in today's society where we see so many young people with huge debt and many families short-selling their homes or being foreclose upon.  I cared less about my grade with this speech than I did about hopefully inspiring some of my classmates to take the initiative and learn more about personal finance.

"These are my favorite chords, I know you like them too.  When I get a new guitar, you can have this one... and sing me a story I haven't heard yet." -The Weakerthans

Appeals to Logic

In this week's reading the section in Chapter 15 about logos, or appeals to logic, interested me.  I think that there is value to each type of appeal that the book describes and that some are more effective than others in a given situation.  If I were giving a eulogy I certainly would use an appeal to emotion before I would ever consider using an appeal to logic.  That being said, generally speaking I favor the appeal to logic more than any other approach to making an argument.  I think that a well structured argument centered around a very sound appeal to logic can be the most effective way to reach an audience.

I think that in almost any type of speech there is at least a small amount of appealing to logic.  The use of facts and statistics is an example of appealing to logic.  Citing sources and demonstrating your credibility are two other ways of appealing to logic.  The more evidence that you have to support yourself in an appeal to logic, the more likely you are to be successful in your presentation.  Audience's respond well to appeals to logic because by using logic in your claims you show trust in them and their intelligence; trust which they are likely to reciprocate to the speaker.

Homeschool

I fealt that the speaker who was advocating for homeschool used a variety of appeals in her speech.  She started off by using a strong appeal to emotion when she talked about violence in school and even told the anecdote about a child being the victim of violence at school.  I thought that overal she had a good speech, but to be honest she almost completely lost me in the beginning when she was talking about school violence.  I thought that it was a false dilemma falacy to present homeschool as the only way to protect children from violence and I also thought that she greatly exaggerated the level of violence in the school system.  She was good overall at citing sources and gaining credibility, but she leaned too heavily on the fact that the audience agreed with her that public schools are violent and dangerous and gave what I fealt was an insufficient amount of evidence to support the level of her claims.  I thought that later she did a much better job using an appeal to reason when she gave the statistics about how much time the average student is actually learning in school versus how much time they spend attentively learning in homeschool.

The speaker who was against homeschooling did a good job presenting all of the options for educating children and avoided a false dilemma fallacy.  Some of his reasoning was based upon an appeal to cultural beliefs by repeatedly saying that the public school system has worked for so many in the past.  He knew that it was statistically probable that most of his audience had attended public schooling and he exploited that fact by stating that public school had brought himself and a lot of others (his audience included) to a successful adulthood.  He also appealed to logic when he quoted the line from one of his sources that, "a parent's greatest challenge is educating themselves on how and what to teach."  He also went on to say that most people do not have enough all around knowledge to teach their children everything they need to know.  I think it was also a little bit of an appeal to emotion when he asked the audience if they could imagine quitting their jobs and staying at home teaching their children full time.  He also said repeatedly that parents are not teachers.

Overall I think that I learned from the first speaker not to alienate my audience by relying to heavily on one aspect of my argument, because if they don't agree then I could lose them right off.  I thought that the second speaker did a great job of giving a good compromise to oppose his opposition when he said how important it is for parents to be supportive.  He agreed with the importance of the role a parent plays in educating their child, while maintaining a distance from the more extreme view of a parent being their child's only source of education.

Working It

At work I often find myself trying to persuade my bosses in order to get them to agree to doing something that is in my best interest.  When my Postmaster recently changed our start times from 7:00AM to 7:30AM I knew that it would have a negative impact on me personally.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a class at Sierra College that starts at 4:15PM and with our previous start times I could skip my lunch on days that I could finish my route in 8 hours and get off at 3:00PM or if I had to cut mail to make it in time I could still get off by 3:30PM with plenty of time to make it to class.  With a 7:30AM start time if I had to cut mail I would get off at 4:00PM which would not give me enough time to make it to class on time even if I went straight from work and wore my uniform to school (which would be incredibly embarassing.)

All of my bosses know that I have school, so my Postmaster was not surprised when I asked if I could still start at 7:00AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  He was reluctant to let me do so, because if he makes an exception for one employee it could lead to other employees requesting change of schedules and if he doesn't grant their requests than he could be facing grievances for disparity of treatment.  I used a little bit of 3 different persuasive appeals in my attempts to change his mind.  I used a logical appeal by reminding him that before I even registered for my classes I asked him if a 4:15PM class would be manageable and even specifically asked him if there was any chance before December that our starting times could be pushed back.  I also reminded him that at the time he said they would not be pushed back and that they would work with me and I should be fine to have a 4:15PM class.  I appealed to his emotion by reminding him how important school is to me and telling him that it would be hard for me to pass my class if I was getting marked tardy every day for the next 5 weeks of school.  My third and final appeal was an appeal to speaker credibility by reminding him of how good my attendance is, what a hard worker I am, and how in the past I have done anything I could to help him and all of my other bosses out whenever it has been asked of me.  I also made sure that all of my persuasive attempt came from a positive, request for help angle instead of seeming whiny.

In the end my Postmaster said that I could come in at 7:00AM every Tuesday and Thursday until school was out and that if I wanted I could even come in at 6:30AM most Tuesdays since we usually have more mail ready early on Tuesdays.  I was ultimately more persuasive than I had even hoped to be at the onset.

Apathetic Audiences

  I paid particular attention to the section in our chapter about speaking to an apathetic audience because I think that is one of the most common audience types to encounter. It is an especially common audience type to encounter as a student, because in classes you are often required to give presentations to the other students in your class who could probably care less about the subject matter of your speech. Forging the link between yourself as a speaker and an apathetic audience can be challenging, but the reading offered helpful advice toward achieving that end. The first thing the book said is to gain their attention and pique their interest, which is generally a good idea when beginning any speech to any type of audience. I think that the second tip of showing how your topic affects your audience specifically is probably the most useful. It can be hard in a mixed demographic audience, but if you can find a commonality or universal reason why they should find an interest in your topic then you really need to emphasize that point to them after you have gained their interest.

  It also stood out to me that the book said when giving a persuasive speech to an apathetic audience you should take a one-sided approach to the topic. You still have to be fair when presenting the information, but in this type of speech it said you need not address all perspectives on the issue. If you follow those tips as well as gaining credibility, showing that you care about the topic, and using some form of presentation media, you should be successful in creating a good speech.

Sea of Persuasion

  I think that all of us have been immersed in a sea of persuasion lately with the recent election that has taken place and all of the advertising that led up to it.  I am a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service, so I have probably been bombarded by political advertising more than most in the recent weeks.  Not only did I see advertisements when I watched television, see posts on social networking sites regarding politics, and get political advertisements in the mail, I literally handled and looked at hundreds and some days thousands of political advertisements.  Because I work in Sacramento County, but live in Placer County, the advertisements that I had direct contact with every day at work were often for politicians that I was not even able to vote for or against.  I was surprised by the time the election came how much I knew about some of the politicians that I had done absolutely no research on and had no interest in just because of what I had seen in their ads, which I rarely ever made a conscious effort to read.

  I think that Facebook has been another area in which I have been confronted with persuasive messages in regards to politics without ever wanting to be.  I ended up hiding updates from many of my friends and family because I got so sick of seeing their politically charged comments and their links to news stories that I strongly disagreed with or felt were unfairly biased.  At times I was even offended to the point of wanting to confront some of them, but generally I felt it was best to spare the long term relationship from the damage of a political argument.  I think that it is impossible to avoid being subjected to persuasive messages, especially in today's interactive internet culture and with the mass media that many of us expose ourselves to daily.  The best that we can do is to make sure that we remain informed about important issues and try not to make decisions based on a gut reaction or feeling.  Often time our initial feelings are heavily subconsciously effected by the opinions that others (especially advertisers) have pushed on to us.  If we inform ourselves and take time to form our opinions we can be sure that we are making good decisions that we truly believe in.

Monroe's Motivated Sequence

  For my persuasive speech I think that I would prefer to use Monroe's Motivated Sequence for my organizational patter rather than the Problem/Solution pattern.  I think that Monroe's Motivated Sequence fits my topic of encouraging people to save money and invest for retirement.  It would be a bit hard for me to boil it down to something as simple as their being a problem that people can't afford to retire comfortably and the solution is to save money.  Monroe's Motivated Sequence seems like it would be a much more interesting way to keep my audience engaged and get them, as a mostly young group that is not anywhere near retirement, to buy in to my premise that they should be sacrificing now for a reward later in life.

  I have never used Monroe's Motivated Sequence before, but it seems to have a very natural flow to its steps.  Without having started my outline, I can already very easily imagine the overall direction my speech would go and can even visual specific things I would like to communicate within each step.  I think that my biggest issue will be fitting all five steps in to a limited time frame, when time management has been my biggest problem all semester.  Although it does seem that the Attention is a natural fit for the Introduction and Action (the last step) is a natural fit for the Conclusion, so it would make sense for the other three steps to be broken down in to my three body paragraphs.  I am looking forward to the challenge of putting this newly gained knowledge in to action and successfully achieving an interesting and well-structured speech.

Sexism in Language

  I found the section of Chapter 10 regarding Language and Gender to be quite interesting and informative.  As someone who doesn't consider themself to be at all sexist, I would never have thought that certain specific things can be construed so differently when heard by women versus men, or when spoken by a woman as opposed to a man.  I was not all that surprised, but I would not have expected that the tag question of "don't you think?" would be interpreted so differently based upon the gender of the speaker or audience.  It said that men interpret that phrase as uncertainty while women interpret it as an invitation for others to give their opinion.  If I were to hear that phrase in a speech I think that my most likely reaction to it would be to think that the speaker was trying to engage the audience and subtly make them think a little bit more about what they had just said.  It also said that when a woman speaker uses hedges or tag questions it causes listeners to view them as less competent, whereas if a male counterpart did the same it would have little effect on how their audience perceived their competence.

  In a way I think these inequalities in how men and women are judged when speaking have less to do with language and more to do with the continuing sexism and sexual bias perpetuated in our society.  Kelly Oxford, a comedian I follow on Twitter, once made the joke that "If men could get pregnant their would be an abortion clinic in every Starbucks."  On the same topic my wife recently commented that whenever she drives by the Planned Parenthood near our house and their are picketers protesting abortion they are always old men.  I am not trying to take a stance on abortion, I just think that it is interesting that the sex who is less impacted by abortion (men) seems to be the one who has the most outspoken opinions about it.  Maybe I have gotten off topic, but I think that it relates in that many men seem to have a subconcious belief that they have a right to dominantly impress their opinions and feelings on to women.

  I also liked the part where it said if you refer to a "female doctor" it is sexist because you are implying that a doctor would be more likely to be a man so it is necesarry to say the doctor was female.  I think that a lot of people do the same thing with race, which has always bothered me.  When describing someone a lot of people will say they are black, Indian, Asian, etc. but will not usually describe someone as white.  I don't actually think they should describe someone as white, rather I would think that race could be left out of someone's description unless it is for a police sketch or something of that nature where it is actually relevant/necessary to identify them.

Pace Yourself

  I think that the speech buddy videos for this week were some of the most helpful ones to date.  There were a few things that they emphasized that I will do my best to utilize in improving my next speech.  My biggest issue so far when giving speeches has been my time management.    The advice from Chapter 10 about being concise as well as in Chapter 12 when they said not to be married to the wording in your speech should help me with that issue.  I liked when they said that you don't need to give the exact same speech every time, just a good version of that speech.  I will also be making a point in my next speech to make use of inclusive language.  I want the speech to not just be about me, what I know, and what I think; I want the audience to feel that the speech was written for them, for their benefit.  I will also try to build repetition in to my speech if possible, as that seems like a good way to emphasize more important aspects of the speech.  In the past I have done that in the conclusion, but there is no reason to only use it there.

  In the video about delivery and speech patterns the part that I felt pertained to me the most was in regards to pacing, or rate of speech.  This also goes back to my time management issue.  I tend to try and cram too much information in to a speech and rather than self-edit I sometimes end up rushing through my speech, especially in the case of the second half of my most recent speech.  It is better to give less information while making sure that my audience is absorbing it, than to give a ton of information, but have only a small portion of it be absorbed because my frantic rate of speech loses my audience.