Chapter 15: Speaking to Persuade
Speaking to Persuade
Persuasion Defined
Motivating Your Audience
Selecting and Narrowing Your Persuasive Presentation
Topic
Organizing Your Persuasive Messages
Strategies for Persuading Your Audience
How to Adjust Ideas to People and People to Ideas
Chapter 15: Speaking to Persuade
Persuasion Defined
Persuasion is the process of attempting to
change or reinforce attitudes, beliefs, values,
or behavior.
The persuasive speaker invites the listener to
make a choice, rather than just offering
information about the options.
The persuasive speaker intentionally tries to
change or reinforce the listeners’ feelings,
ideas, or behavior
Chapter 15: Speaking to Persuade
Motivating Your Audience
Motivating with Dissonance
cognitive dissonance occurs when you
are presented with information that is
inconsistent with your current thinking or
feelings
Self-actualization
Motivating with Needs
Self-esteem
Maslow’s Hierarchy
Social
Safety
Physiological
Chapter 15: Speaking to Persuade
Motivating Your Audience
Motivating with Fear Appeals
threat to family members
credibility of speaker
perceived “realness” of the threat
Motivating with Positive Appeals
promising that good things will happen if the
speaker’s advice is followed
Chapter 15: Speaking to Persuade
Identifying Your Persuasive Purpose
General Purpose
Persuade
Specific Purpose
attitude (learned predisposition to
respond favorably or unfavorably)
belief (sense of what is true or false)
value (enduring conception of right or
wrong)
Chapter 15: Speaking to Persuade
Developing Your Central Idea as a
Persuasive Proposition
A proposition is a statement with which the
speaker wants their audience to agree.
Proposition of Fact
true/false
Proposition of Value
judge worth or importance of something
Proposition of Policy
advocates specific action, includes should
Chapter 15: Speaking to Persuade
Strategies for Persuading Your Audience
Ethos: Establishing Your Credibility
an audience’s perception of a speaker’s
competence, trustworthiness, dynamism
Strategies for Persuading Your Audience
Logos: Using Evidence and Reasoning
proof consists of both evidence and the conclusions
you draw (reasoning)
inductive reasoning
arrives at a general conclusion from specific
instances
deductive reasoning
reasoning from a general statement to reach a
specific conclusion
Chapter 15: Speaking to Persuade
Strategies for Persuading Your Audience
Logos: Using Evidence and Reasoning
causal reasoning
relate two or more events in such a way as to
conclude that one or more of the events
caused the others
Chapter 15: Speaking to Persuade
Logical Fallacies
Causal Fallacy
Bandwagon Fallacy
Either-Or Fallacy
Hasty Generalization
Personal Attack
Red Herring
Appeal to Misplaced Authority
Non Sequitur
Strategies for Persuading Your
Audience
Pathos: Using Emotion
emotion-arousing verbal messages
concrete illustrations and descriptions
nonverbal messages
How to Adjust Ideas to People and
People to Ideas
The Unreceptive Audience
don’t immediately announce your
persuasive purpose
advance your strongest arguments first
acknowledge opposing points of view
be realistic