ACS 101: chapter 6: supporting materials & contextual reasoning

For example, let's say Andrea is giving a speech about her love for rescue dogs at a fund-raiser for an animal shelter:

"All of us here today know that rescues are not for everyone. Rescue dogs can be challenging to train, but that's why so many of us fall in love with them," says Andrea. "For example, let me tell you about how I met my dog Zoë. I was driving home in my neighborhood when I spied a bull terrier snooping in someone's trash, obviously looking for food. I stopped to pick her up, thinking I would feed her and take her to the shelter — you know, because I already had two rescue dogs. As soon as I opened my car door, Zoë bounded into the passenger's seat and promptly barfed into my very expensive Burberry purse. [Laughter] At that point, I knew it was meant to be: I took her in, and we have been best friends ever since." In this example of an example, Andrea created a vivid image of her dog's quirky character as an example of the special bond people forge with their rescued pets.

The primary function of an example is to create a mental image or picture in the minds of audiences.

. Aristotle considered the example to be a major part of public speaking because he believed — as many do today — that people cannot think without creating mental pictures.18 Of course, in Aristotle's time they didn't know about those who cannot create mental pictures, a rare condition termed "aphantasia." For most people, however, when we listen to someone we often create mental images to help us grasp the meaning of what he or she is saying. Because we tend to think in illustrations of one kind or another, using examples when we speak is often second nature.

· List and define the five types of speech support and offer tips for using each

1) Facts= Verifiable truth or information; often contrasted with opinions and beliefs2) Statistics= Quantitive measures of the amount, size, or number of something3) Testimony= Sharing of viewpoints, perspective, or opinions an individual4) Examples= illustration or claim of fact or opinion5) Stories= Account of real or imagined events or people for purposes of illustration or entertainment

· Know the three questions of speech support

1) What kind of speech is called for?2) What is the setting or mood for speech?3) Who is the audience?

· Offer the two basic questions on should ask about statistics

1) what do the statistics measure? 2) What or who is the source of the statistic

3 questions fo speech support

1. what kind of speech is called for? 2. what is the setting and mood for the speech? 3. who is the audience of the speech?

Personal Experience.

Drawing on expert and lay testimony for speech support is not the whole story, however, because sometimes one's personal experience is good evidence, too. Of course, the things that have happened to you are facts; however, when we draw on personal experience, we are typically sharing our beliefs based on those experiences. When toasting the happy couple at a wedding reception, for example, one draws on his or her own experiences with the couple to celebrate their union. At funerals and wakes, one often shares his or her experiences with the deceased. When informing an audience about how to make smoothies at home, a speaker would be expected to share her personal experiences doing so. The basic guidelines for using personal experience as speech support depend on the particular speaking situation, but in general, one draws on personal experience only very sparingly. Use personal experience as evidence only if it is relevant to your main claims, if it helps establish a sense of rapport with the audience, or if you have expertise and personal knowledge of the subject matter discussed. Personal experience tends to be used as speech support in three ways: (1) when the occasion or speech genre calls for it, especially celebratory speeches (weddings, funerals, award banquets, and so on); (2) when you are speaking as an expert, with special, firsthand knowledge of the topic or event; or (3) when mentioning a personal connection to a speech topic that will help create a sense of interest among the audience, such as in a conclusion or an introduction.

Gerald references a William Faulkner speech what was the different between the two

Faulkner: delivered at nobel prize banquet in 1950 worrying about writers who write about compassion when the us and allies were recovering from ww2 Gerald: fellows would embark on careers in business and urged audience to make the world a better place by helping others which is an example of speech support because it creates a mood and tone for the commencement (graduation) leading them to be optimistic and inspirational to bring them together as a whole

In which speaking situation would a declaration of faith be appropriate?

A speech at a political demonstration

Whether short and anecdotal (as Andrea's example) or longer, examples typically refer to factual events or concrete things. A hypothetical example is the description of an imaginary scenario.

Hypothetical examples paint a picture of a scenario or an event that invites listeners to mentally participate in a speech. "Imagine you are marooned on a desert island" is the beginning of a clichéd example of a hypothetical (and one you should probably avoid). More artfully, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech provides us with a number of hypotheticals, such as the one he closes the speech with: King says he looks forward to "that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" Here King creates the vision of a diverse group of people holding hands and singing together, a powerful image to help illustrate his larger point: that we are all human beings entitled to equality regardless of our respective differences.

Expert Testimony.

An expert is the term we use for a person who claims to be, or is widely acknowledged as, an authority in a particular profession or practice. We often see experts in the mass media, especially on television news programs: from professors of economics to legal experts and politically savvy campaign advisers, our mediated culture is awash with experts. As a speaker, you tacitly present yourself as an expert on the topic you are discussing. And you will often need to cite the viewpoints and beliefs of other experts as support for your claims (unless you are already a respected authority on the topic, but let's face it: most of us are not!). Citing the beliefs and informed opinions of experts can lend a speech you deliver added credibility, especially if you are speaking on a topic that extends beyond basic facts or veers into matters open to dispute. If you want to inform or persuade an audience, making a verbal nod to an expert communicates to the audience that your views are more widely shared by authorities in the area of your topic; in effect, by citing an expert, you're saying, "Don't just take my word for it! Here's an expert who agrees." For example, suppose you were giving your speech about the popular music artist Adele, whom you have claimed is among the most popular artists of our time. To bolster your claim, you could cite a respected music critic who has written or spoken about Adele's popularity: "According to the New Yorker's respected music critic, Sasha Frere-Jones, Adele's album 21 is an 'impeccably sung collection of unperturbing soul.' Frere-Jones humorously muses that Adele's popularity will not waver and that her 'career is likely to be long' because 'she is selling to the demographic that decides American elections: middle-aged moms who don't know how to pirate music and will drive to Starbucks when they need to buy it.'

info about Casey Gerald

Before completing his MBA at Harvard Business School, Casey Gerald helped create a nonprofit organization with three other Harvard students called MBAs Across America. Gerald and his colleagues drove across the country to connect with visionary entrepreneurs for mutual learning and innovation. The group helped promote the work of little-known entrepreneurs and assist them with fund-raising and marketing.1 Based on the success of the program, as well as his stellar gifts as a student, Gerald was asked by his fellow MBA graduates to deliver the 2014 commencement address. Like many commencement addresses, Gerald's central message was to inspire his peers to go out and change the world. Gerald's challenge was to deliver an inspirational speech that resisted clichés ("Oh, the places you will go!"). Bucking a common cultural stereotype about business school graduates, in his speech Gerald said that he wanted to devote his "life to a cause greater than myself." He announced that he was beginning his career in finance by deliberately working for a nonprofit start-up, which for many people would seem an atypical choice. Gerald ended his speech with this explanation: Gerald's speech was recorded and posted to YouTube. It quickly went viral and landed him on the covers of various industry magazines, such as Fast Company.3

Consider the speech craft of one of the most gifted speakers of the twentieth century, the late U.S. president Ronald Reagan. Reagan famously used stories as support for his speeches, and this skill at storytelling is frequently mentioned as one of his greatest talents.20 For example, consider his remarks from a Republican Party fund-raiser in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1983. Until the later part of the twentieth century, the southern United States had been solidly democratic for many years. Reagan, a Republican, makes light of this history:

But isn't it wonderful to see so many Republicans in Mississippi? [Applause] Times have changed and for the better. Former Congressman Prentiss Walker, who I understand is here today, tells a story about his first campaign. He dropped in on a farm and introduced himself as a Republican candidate. And as he tells it, the farmer's eyes lit up, and then he said, "Wait till I get my wife. We've never seen a Republican before.'' [Laughter] And a few minutes later he was back with his wife, and they asked Prentiss if he wouldn't give them a speech. Well, he looked around for kind of a podium, something to stand on, and then the only thing available was a pile of that stuff that the late Mrs. Truman said it had taken her 35 years to get Harry to call "fertilizer.'' [Laughter] So, he stepped up on that and made his speech. And apparently he won them over. And they told him it was the first time they'd ever heard a Republican. And he says, "That's okay. That's the first time I've ever given a speech from a Democratic platform.'' [Laughter] Here, Reagan opens his speech by repeating a story that someone told him. As his speech continues, Reagan then reveals the point of telling the story: "Seriously, though, we have to understand the importance of reaching out to Democrats with whom we have fundamental agreement." His opening story is thick with political humor, creating a sense of goodwill among his audience. Once Reagan has used the story to create that feeling, he can then deliver the more serious message: that he believes Republicans should be cooperating more with Democrats. The Reagan example teaches us that because we are born storytellers — and story listeners — a story can often unite an audience despite tensions or disagreements.

You now have a sense of the five major categories of supporting material: facts, statistics, testimony, examples, and stories

But you may be wondering how you can put these materials to best use in supporting your speech.; contextual reasoning

What concerns thinking about the kinds of support you can use for a speech when given the situations for your speech?

Contextual reasoning

Visualizing statistical support

Speakers who use statistics often share them with audiences visually, either on posters or with slide software such as Keynote or PowerPoint. More detailed guidelines for using visual aids can be found in chapter 11; however, it's helpful to think about how you might help your audience visualize your statistical support as you research and develop your speech. Let us return to the marriage example again, changing it up a bit: According to the Pew Research Center, 57 percent of U.S. citizens opposed gay marriage in 2001. Since that time, support for same-sex unions has grown substantially to 55 percent in both 2015 and 2016, with a significantly lower opposition of 39 percent in 2015 and 37 percent in 2016. Such statistics are impressive when spoken but perhaps a little difficult for an audience to visualize in their heads. A chart such as the one developed by the Pew Research Center (see below) helps us see the dramatic shift in attitudes toward gay marriage at a glance, visually depicting the reversal around the year 2011. If you are using statistics to support your speech, however, thinking about how you can visually depict them is a good way to go: it's quicker and helps make the abstraction of numbers more concrete.

In addition, the study of statistics is essential to numerous academic fields and professions, including accounting, engineering, health science, psychology, and sociology.

Statistics can be exceptionally powerful as tools to convince listeners of your claims. As a speaker, however, you must be aware of the fairness and appropriateness of your statistics, and be careful in how you use them.

Stories or Narratives

Strictly speaking, all stories — even fictional ones — are examples. Stories are basically extended examples with a familiar pattern: they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The stories we tell can be personal, such as when we are a central character, or they can be impersonal, such as when they describe the experience of someone we have learned about. Stories can be short, such as an anecdote, or they can be much longer, such as a narrative of one's life. Stories hold a potent appeal for most people, including your audience. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that stories are powerful because they comprise the basis of how we see ourselves and our shared lives together. Stories give meaning to the sequence of events in our lives. A human being is, in his or her "actions and practice . . . essentially a story-telling animal," says MacIntyre.19 We are all storytellers because, in our attempt to make our lives meaningful and coherent, we organize our experiences into a chronology with a beginning, a middle, and an end — and hopefully an end that doesn't come too soon! And because each of us embodies a collection of the stories we tell ourselves, these stories are compelling to read and to hear.

what kind of speech is called for?

The types of support you can draw on for supporting your claims depend on the type of speech. Speaking for special occasions, for example, may call for more artful or poetic types of support — as with Gerald's speech — while speaking to inform or persuade may call for facts, statistics, and examples. Remember that using a variety of types of support will make a speech more interesting.

Types of testimony

Thinking about magazine ads or television commercials can help you quickly summarize the types of testimony that are often used for speech support: when a medical expert touts a product, it's expert testimony; when a celebrity describes his or her approval of a product, it's lay testimony; when common folks testify to their personal experience of the effectiveness of a product, it's personal experience (and also lay testimony; the two often overlap); and when an individual confesses spiritual inspiration or the glories of a deity, it's a declaration of faith.

What is a reason for adding supporting material to a speech?

To make a speech more compelling

In this chapter, we have examined the five basic types of speech support you have at your disposal when developing a speech

We also took a closer look at the appropriate use of factual and statistical data, being careful to note that with statistics, in particular, you need to make sure that they measure what you claim they measure and that they are taken from a reliable source or trustworthy expert. We rounded out our tour of speech support by stressing how important the context is for determining what kinds of support are appropriate. Having determined what kinds of support you want to use, the challenge then becomes how to organize it. It is to that topic that we will turn in the next chapter.

The kind of reasoning that most people do in public speaking is often said to depend on what philosopher Douglas Walton refers to as "informal logic" — a term for the rules of thinking that you and I simply call "common sense.

We tend to think about the rules of thinking in respect to the logical order of arguments, whether the claims we make are supported by evidence, whether we contradict ourselves, and so on. But judging when it is appropriate to use a statistic or a story is also a form of reasoning. Contextual judgments do not simply concern how you order your main points or avoid contradictions; it is also a matter of choosing support that is appropriate for the occasion. We will examine the logical reasoning internal to a speech in more depth in chapter 15. Here, however, it is important to underscore that when you select speech materials based on the context of a speech, you are also engaging in a form of reasoning that is as much about figuring out the mood and feeling of a speaking situation as it is about the soundness of what is to be said.

Testimony

We've noted that beliefs are the bedrock of all thinking. Beliefs concern things that we perceive to be true, right, or factual (they may or may not be actually true, right, or factual). We've also discussed how most beliefs reflect a bias of some sort. Now, when a belief — true or untrue, right or wrong, factual or false — also includes a judgment about something, it tends to be described as an opinion. Speech support based on opinion is more complicated than the use of statistics because someone's judgment or considered viewpoint is central. An opinion is a considered or thought-out conclusion about something, alternatively termed a stance, viewpoint, or perspective. We tend to think about opinions as thoughtful decisions about something in the absence of certainty. Opinions are views that someone adopts that can be based on facts or simply educated guesses, and they will vary in degree of conviction. Opinions can be valued forms of speech support when the person holding or sharing them is trusted or considered an expert. In the context of public speaking, opinions often take the form of testimony. While the sharing of beliefs and facts can be included in testimony, more often than not testimony is thought of as the sharing of thoughtful opinions based on one's experience, knowledge, or expertise. Testimony typically refers to the sharing of an individual's viewpoints, perspectives, or opinions, and is used as a form of support or evidence. There are four basic types of testimony: expert testimony, lay testimony, personal experience, and declarations of faith.

Because the idea of "context" can include everything from audience expectations to the physical setting of a speech, it is difficult to specify any strict guidelines that will cover all speaking situations.

What we can say is this: what may seem like weak support in one context can be strong support in another. A touching personal story would be inappropriate for a policy report in a boardroom but just right in an informal speech honoring a friend at a family gathering. Only by analyzing context — thinking about it in advance, contemplating the type of speech that is called for, and considering the types of people that will be there — can you figure out how to best support a speech. Because there is no correct or incorrect way to reason contextually, we must consider what is appropriate speech support on a case-by-case basis. Consider, for example, these scenarios: A Persuasive Speech at a Political Fund-Raiser An Informative Speech during a Cooking Class: An Online Informative-Persuasive Speech: Speech of Introduction at a Sorority Meeting:

Don't Cherry-Pick!

When a speaker knowingly points to a specific statistic that confirms his or her position while ignoring data that contradicts it, he or she is "cherry-picking," or guilty of what is termed "the fallacy of incomplete evidence." Because statistics require a lot of contextual information for interpretation, they lend themselves easily to biased use. For example, writing for the British tabloid the Daily Mail, David Rose writes, "The supposed 'consensus' on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. . . . Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997."13 This statistical information sounds convincing, doesn't it? Yet climate expert Dr. Peter Gleick argues that this and similar claims are based on cherry-picking complex, scientific data: "All of the false claims [about global cooling] take advantage of one fundamental truth about the average temperature of our planet: it varies a little, naturally, from year to year. Some years are a bit warmer than average and some are a bit colder than average because of El Niños, La Niñas, cloud variability, volcanic activity, ocean conditions, and just the natural pulsing of our planetary systems. When you filter these out, the human-caused warming signal is clear. But natural variability makes it possible for scurrilous deceivers to do a classic 'no-no' in science: to cherry-pick data to support their claims."

What do the statistics measure?

When you discover a statistic to use in a speech, the source will typically identify how the number was determined, and this will tell you what the statistic is measuring. Let's return to the example of marriage: according to the Pew Research Center, 51 percent of U.S. citizens eighteen years and older were married in 2011, which is significantly less than the 72 percent reported in 1960.10 This information was released in a report on the center's website, as well as in a press release sent to many news media outlets, in December 2011. In both the report and the press release, Pew researchers identify their source as coming from the survey data compiled by the 2010 U.S. census. From this we can deduce that the marriage rate actually measures, or counts, the self-reports of people participating in the census — that is, the number of admissions people have made on a form distributed by the U.S. government in 2010. The measure is a sum or a tally — not an average, median, or mode — of people surveyed in the previous U.S. census. Because the Pew Research Center has taken its data from a highly trusted source, widely regarded as providing accurate data (the U.S. Census Bureau), and because the number is a direct count and not extrapolated or projected, we can trust that the data is solid. Whether or not self-reports are trustworthy is another question, but the figures based on the self-report are sound. Another example: when we argued that Adele was among the most popular music artists of our time, we drew on a statistic from Billboard magazine: more than 124,000 copies of her album 21 were sold in 2012. What, however, does this number actually measure? According to Billboard, this number is an aggregate (or combination) of many different kinds of album sales, including physical albums bought in stores and digital downloads from services such as iTunes and Amazon.com. These numbers are not actually compiled by Billboard, however, but by Nielsen Media Research — a company it pays to provide the statistics. Nielsen Media Research got its start in the 1950s by measuring the number of households that had television and what these audiences watched, gradually expanding its studies to measuring all types of media consumption. According to Nielsen, album sales are determined by compiling the sales data shared by major music retailers. It's improbable that the 124,000-plus number reported by Nielsen is an exact measurement of the total number of albums sold. For example, there's no way Nielsen could know the exact number of Adele albums peddled by small mom-and-pop record stores or merchandise booths at her concerts. The number is a rough estimate used by the music industry as a guide. What the 124,000-plus actually represents is an estimate of the number of Adele albums sold from the album's release date until 2012. Even so, the number probably measures what Billboard says that it measures; it's a reliable ballpark figure. The Adele album sales statistic is an estimate, whereas the numbers relied on for marriage statistics by the Pew Research Center study is based on a direct count. The latter is certainly a stronger statistic than the estimated one, but both are reliable as statistics as long as they are used and reported responsibly. Unfortunately, whether an estimate or a direct count, statistics are routinely used inappropriately and are often reported by speakers to measure something that they do not in fact measure. We are perhaps most familiar with misleading statistical support in political rhetoric. For example, in its opposition to national health care reform in 2009, a conservative, nonprofit group called the Independent Women's Forum (IWF) ran a television advertisement claiming that if certain health-care legislation passed in Congress, it would establish a national health-care program similar to that of England, resulting in the breast cancer deaths of hundreds of thousands of women. "England already has government run healthcare, and their breast cancer survival rate is much lower. . . . Government control of healthcare here could have meant that 300,000 American women with breast cancer might have died," claims a speaker in the commercial. In the advertisement, the source of this figure is cited as the British medical journal Lancet and the American Cancer Society (ACS), a respected U.S. fund-raising and research-sponsoring organization. The ACS, however, denies that the statistic is legitimate The researchers at FactCheck.org, a "fact-tank" sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, report that the figure was arrived at by "applying the difference between the U.S. and England five-year survival rates in a 2008 report to the 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the U.S., as estimated by the American Cancer Society." In other words, the idea that "300,000 . . . might have died" is based on a crude and unscientific calculation comparing 2008 breast cancer survival data from the United States and Britain; this number came from neither Lancet nor the ACS. "The ad implies, intentionally or not, that we did come up with that figure," said a senior director of media relations at the ACS. "In addition to the fact that the figure is not a reliable figure, it's not one that we have ever cited."11 The 300,000 figure doesn't measure what it purports to measure; in fact, it doesn't measure anything real or verifiable because it is the result of faulty calculations.. Most of us, of course, are not trained statisticians and would not have recognized that the IWF commercial used statistics inappropriately. It's possible that the organization simply made a mistake interpreting the data; it's also possible, however, that it deliberately misused the data to advance a political agenda. Individuals, organizations, and companies do, in fact, manipulate statistics to advance agendas or for marketing purposes. As a speaker, you should always try to make sure that when you use statistics, the numbers actually measure what they purport to measure. If you cannot determine with certainty that a statistic is reliable based on the data available to you, there is another question you can answer to help ease your conscience.

Orally Referencing Your Sources

When you read a news article or research in a scholarly journal, sources are often directly referenced. Academic papers — including your written speech materials — frequently have a bibliography or list of works cited that outlines all the sources consulted for support. When you are speaking to your audience, however, they will not have a bibliography at their disposal, so you'll have to refer to your important sources orally. There is no right or wrong way to refer to sources in a speech, and how you do so depends on the type of speech you are giving and the context for it. In general, your goals when orally citing sources are similar to those for a written version; the sources will just appear in a more abbreviated manner. Give your listeners enough information to track your source if they want to, and also to impart a sense of your sources' credibility. When orally citing sources, consider including the following information: Author (with credentials if appropriate) Type of source (book, article, interview, speech) Title or description of source Date of source Depending on the speech situation, you may not need to include all of the source information. To get a real-world sense of how people generally cite sources orally, listen to how a radio journalist reports a news story. You'll notice that they typically follow the preceding guidelines when they reference facts or testimony, beginning with the author and the source type or source title — a newspaper, a book, a study published in this or that medical journal. If a publication, statistics, or other numerically based evidence is referenced, the journalist will often give the date of the information. For example, on National Public Radio's All Things Considered program on July 29, 2015, a reporter led a story on debt this way: "At some point most of us will face this four letter word: 'debt.' A new study out today by the Pew Charitable Trusts says that 80 percent of Americans carry some form of debt, from student loans to credit card balances." In one short sentence, the reporter alerts the listener to a statistic, its source (the Pew Charitable Trusts), and the date of the information (a "study out today," which was July 29, 2015). Television reporters do not generally cite their sources orally because that information is often given to the viewer in a graphic (an option that is not available to most public speakers). Although your instructor will give you guidelines on how to orally cite your sources during a speech, radio news reports — not television or Internet videos — will provide you with the best concrete examples of how sources are orally cited in our culture today.

what is the setting and mood of the speech?

Where, when, and why you are giving your speech determines the situation or setting that it will be delivered in. Knowing that setting will help you better discern the tone or mood of the moment and guide your selection of support materials. For example, eulogies can be both somber and humorous. Persuasive speeches about public policy may demand more serious forms of support and quantitative forms of evidence, such as statistics.

Is Bias Always Bad or Avoidable?

Why do we stress the importance of controlling for bias instead of finding statistics that are completely unbiased? As human beings, it's difficult for us to avoid bias, which can be defined as a preference for something — including beliefs, ideas, and values — that benefits you or others unequally. While many think of bias as unfair, it's hard to say bias is always wrong or unethical. In fact, many scholars have come to adopt the position that one cannot avoid bias.12 For example, many of us are biased toward our friends and family; we often interpret factual information in ways that reinforce our feelings for, and interests in, our loved ones. The important thing to know about biases is that you have them and that you should keep them in check so as not to mislead others. When using statistics (or any kind of evidence, for that matter), making sure your data both measures what you claim it does and is from a reliable source are the best ways to keep your biases in check. A similar bias dynamic generally holds true for institutions — companies, political parties, garage bands, and campus clubs — which tend to promote beliefs, attitudes, and values that are biased toward their own continued existence. We can expect, for example, any recognized world government to issue statements about world affairs that are biased toward itself: the United States issues briefings and statements that are biased toward the United States inasmuch as North Korea or Iceland does the same. The question of bias is not whether an individual or an institution has it; it is whether or not that individual or institution distorts the truth, alters facts, or promotes misinformation. Here are some questions you can ask to identify possible bias from a speaker: Does the data support the ethical, political, or religious goals of a person or an organization? If so, do those goals stand to hurt or disadvantage others? Does the data support the financial gains of a person or an organization? Would such gains hurt or disadvantage others? Does the data represent what the speaker claims it represents? How do you know? What or who is the source of the information? Is the source trustworthy and reliable?

A Persuasive Speech at a Political Fund-Raiser:

You are a political candidate running for a seat in city government and will be giving a speech detailing your platform at a community-center building. The room seats seventy-five people, and you expect about fifty attendees. Your speech goal is to raise money for your campaign by detailing your projects (e.g., building a new animal shelter). Appropriate speech support might include personal anecdotes and stories about who you are to create a feeling of goodwill and familiarity with the audience. The use of facts and statistics (e.g., about the need for a new animal shelter) are also appropriate, as they are common in political speeches.

An Informative Speech during a Cooking Class:

You are a seasoned chef and routinely offer cooking classes. Your class tonight takes place in a cooking kitchen at the local culinary institute. The class will have a total of twelve adults and will focus on making sushi. Appropriate support for your opening speech would include factual information about the history of sushi and the different ways of preparing it, visual examples of sushi you have prepared in advance, and your expert testimony about tips and tricks for making sushi quickly and safely.

An Online Informative-Persuasive Speech:

You recently saw director Lee Hirsch's documentary Bully (2011), which chronicles the lives of a number of young people who suffered bullying in secondary schools. After watching the film, you came to realize that you bullied others when you were younger. You were so moved by the film that you want to create a YouTube video that informs others about bullying behaviors that may not seem like bullying but are and that persuades others not to bully. Because online speeches of this sort are typically intimate, appropriate support for your speech might include stories about seeing the film Bully, memories of your personal experiences, statistics about the prevalence of bullying, and accounts of its consequences (see chapter 18 for more guidelines for online presentations).

You don't need to be a statistical expert to draw on and interpret statistical information for a speech.

You want to make sure, however, that your source is trustworthy and that the use of statistics is appropriate and fair. You can determine this by asking yourself two guiding questions: (1) What do the statistics measure? and (2) What or who is the source of the statistics? In most cases, answering these two simple questions will help you decide if a given statistic is trustworthy and appropriate to use in your speech. Let's discuss each question in turn.

bias

a preference for something or even for beliefs, ideas, and values that benefit you or others unequally.

what is context

a process that we describe as contextual reasoning

facts can also be

a subset of beliefs

stories

accounts of real or imagined events or people for the purpose of illustration and/or entertainment.

stories

are extended examples that follow a pattern that includes beginning, middle, and the end

Both facts and opinions are types of beliefs,

but a fact is the only kind of belief that can be empirically verified. Even so, much of the time we act on our beliefs as if they were facts to simply get along in the world. When in doubt about the difference between facts, opinions, and beliefs, just remember that facts have been, or can be, verified by others. Although both types of beliefs are appropriate for speech support, facts are generally regarded as the most basic and reliable type.

the different kinds of supports used for speeches span from what

casual (commonsense observations and personal stories) to formal (statistics or scrupulously researched studied on technical topics) ex: celebratory speeches most common ( early understood examples and stories, clear and digestible facts

opinions are

conclusions or judgement based on facts, which in speeches are regarded as "testimony".

opinion

considered or thought out conclusion about something

key to understanding what KIND of supporting material is appropriate for a speech is knowing what?

context

· Explain contextual reasoning and why it is important for speeches

contextual reasoning= concerns thinking about the kinds of support you can use for a speech given its contextual demands and constraintsit is important because it ensures the appropriateness of your material

example

descriptive representations used to illustrate claims. is the illustration of a claim. Examples are descriptive representations that speakers can use to make what they mean to say clearer.

Contextual reasoning is important for developing supporting materials for a speech because it allows you to

ensure the appropriateness of your materials.

Keep in mind that people put a lot of faith in numbers

even though this faith is sometimes unwarranted.6 The phrases "seeing is believing" and "numbers don't lie" express a naive trust in pictures and numbers. Just as pictures can be altered and distorted (with tools like Photoshop, cropping, or other forms of digital manipulation), statistics can be misused and abused — and often are. For example, in 1994 the Associated Press reported on a Harvard Medical School study that concluded that angry tantrums can double the chance of heart attacks, based on the statistic that "anger was associated with 2.3 times the usual (heart attack) risk."7 However, as MIT statistician Arnold Barnett points out, the data for the Harvard study was collected from only those who suffered heart attacks and survived. The AP story was misleading, because it's also possible that those who have angry outbursts could reduce their "overall long-term risk" for heart attacks; there's no way to know because individuals who did not suffer heart attacks were not included in the study.8 To avoid misleading your audience — however unintentionally — you should always strive to present the proper interpretation and use of statistics.9

types of testimony

expert testimony, lay testimony, personal experience, and declarations of faith.

Although both types of beliefs are appropriate for speech support,

facts are generally regarded as the most basic and reliable type.

types of speech support

facts, statistics, testimony, examples, and stories

contextual reasoning

how you go about determine when and what kinds of support are appropriate for a speech by considering its context

Declaration of Faith

individual confesses spiritual inspiration

opinion

judgments that may or may not depend on facts or knowledge.

speech support

material that a speaker selects to back up his/her claims

Statictics

numerical facts or measurements about a large group or collection -refer to forms of quantitative evidence, or a kind of measurement based on numbers, like the median age for marriage -widely used as a form of factual support in speeches because they can deliver facts speedily. -average, mean. ,median and mode -"average" or the "mean" (such as how your course grades are usually calculated, or how many hours you spend texting in an average week). Other common statistics include the "median" (the middle value of a grouping) and the "mode" (the most frequent number in a grouping).

Speech of Introduction at a Sorority Meeting:

ou are a sister in your campus chapter of the Alpha Pi Omega Sorority, the oldest Native American sorority in the country. Your friend happens to be the grand president of the national organization, and she is visiting your campus house. Your job is to introduce her as the keynote speaker at your annual chapter banquet. Appropriate support for your speech of introduction might include factual information about your friend's biography, statistical information about the sorority's membership, examples of the kind of philanthropy work your chapter has done under her leadership, and even personal stories or anecdotes about the kindness and charity work of the grand president.

beliefs

refer to the perception or conviction that something is true -basic building blocks of thoughts -an idea that we hold to be true

in our culture facts are

straightforward and dispassionate, while beliefs are often associated with feelings, attitudes, and values.

every speech requires what

support

expert testimony

testimony from people who are recognized experts in their fieldsex: when medical expert touts a product

supporting material

the facts, statistics, testimony, examples, and stories that bolster your claims

lay testimony

the opinion of someone who experienced an event or situation firsthandexample: when celebrity describe his or her approval

Facts are also often contrasted with "beliefs," which refer to

the perception or conviction that something is true.

testimony

the sharing of an individual's viewpoints, perspectives, or opinions. typically refers to the sharing of an individual's viewpoints, perspectives, or opinions, and is used as a form of support or evidence. There are four basic types of testimony: expert testimony, lay testimony, personal experience, and declarations of faith.

Contextual Reasoning

thinking about the kinds of support you can use for a speech given its contextual demands and constraints. which is just what it sounds like: reasoning your selection of supporting materials, tailored to the context in which you're speaking. Contextual reasoning is thinking about what kinds of support you can use to bolster your major claims in respect to the speech situation, including the occasion, the genre of speaking, the setting, and the mood of the event.

The latest census report shows tha

three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population.

facts and opinions are

types of beliefs, but a fact is the only kind of belief that can be empirically verified.

facts

verifiable truths or information; often contrasted with opinions and beliefs -verifiable or info, that is independent of opinion.

In our culture, we tend to think about "facts" as relatively straightforward and dispassionate,

while beliefs are often associated with feelings, attitudes, and values.4 Despite these common assumptions, facts are actually a subset of beliefs.

facts are often contrasted with what?

with opinions and beliefs

personal experience

your own life as a source of informationexample: when someone tells about there weight loss journey

In each of these scenarios, the occasion, audience, and kind of speech you are giving — not to mention the mood — help guide what types of speech support you use.

If you have a specific scenario in mind, you can also quickly determine what would be inappropriate support, too: at the political fund-raiser, overly technical statistics and data would not be appropriate for a general audience coming to hear your policy proposals. At the sorority banquet, funny yet potentially embarrassing personal anecdotes about the guest of honor may not be the best idea (save that for a more informal gathering). Ultimately, the point of contextual reasoning is to keep in mind that the process of selecting speech support is not simply a matter of cold, rational logic. It depends on the physical setting of the speech, the kind of speech one is delivering, and the people who are hearing it. Contextual reasoning is as much about feeling as it is thinking. The remainder of this book is designed to help you develop and hone your skills of contextual reasoning.

examples

In addition to facts, statistics, and testimony, a speech is often supported with examples. Simply put, an example is the illustration of a claim. Examples are descriptive representations that speakers can use to make what they mean to say clearer. In the roughly two thousand years that human beings have studied the art of oratory, Aristotle's idea that public speaking fundamentally concerns examples has rarely been disputed. The ancient thinker originally held that public speaking concerned only two things: informal logic (which we'll discuss in depth in chapter 15) and the use of examples.17 The challenge of using examples — and why we sometimes might not take them as seriously as we should — is that they are so familiar to us that we often simply assume their use as a fact of life.

Lay Testimony.

In addition to sharing the beliefs and opinions of experts, sometimes a discussion of the experience of everyday folks is also useful support. For example, at a fund-raising event for a foundation dedicated to providing support for cancer victims, you might share the experiences of folks battling with cancer. The experiences of others are used when a speech calls for common, everyday experiences or the unique perspectives of nonexperts, including celebrities.

examining testimony

In general, "faith" refers to a strong conviction in a belief without certain knowledge. We can have faith in a person we hold up as a role model, faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, or faith that our beat-up Volkswagen will make it to the next town. When speaking about declarations of faith as a form of speech support, however, faith takes on an inspirational or even a spiritual connotation. And frequently we are moved by the spiritual faith of others. In civic culture, one of the most famous uses of a declaration of faith was by Martin Luther King Jr. in his much studied and quoted "I Have a Dream" speech. The "dream" (or faith) that King shares with his immediate audience on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 still has the power to inspire us today. Consider how King ends his speech: From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! King was a Baptist minister of the Christian faith; throughout his speech to end racial inequality, he invokes his and his audience's faith in God. Because King does not evoke the specific tenets of his religious faith, the speech has the power to inspire all who listen to it. Whether or not one believes in divine intervention, King's declaration of faith in his speech — faith in God and in the human spirit — helped change the world.

who is the audience of the speech?

Knowing who will make up your audience will also help you determine what kinds of support to use in a speech. Do not use overly technical evidence for an audience who may not have an in-depth understanding of the topic. Use quotes that will be interesting and easy for your audience to follow.

In general, statistics are a powerful and useful form of support for speeches and can help you convey a factual observation quickly.

Let's suppose you were giving an informative speech on the popular music star Adele. In order to establish her cultural significance, you might say something like, "Adele is among the most popular music artists of our time. According to the leading music industry magazine Billboard, Adele's album 21 was the best-selling full-length album in 2012, selling over 124,000 copies. The last album to achieve this kind of popularity was the soundtrack to the film Titanic back in 1998." In this example, basic sales statistics are drawn on as facts to support the claim that Adele is popular. Statistics are an important part of our culture, our financial well-being, and our educational system. Civil engineers rely on statistics to design, plan, and build the places where we live and travel. Politicians rely on statistics — especially from polls — to make policy decisions and run for office. Economists and businesspersons rely on statistics to determine supply and demand. Educators not only teach statistics but also rely on them to assign grades and assess what students are learning.

What or who is the source of the statistics?

Many of us simply do not have the training or the resources to arrive at our own statistical information, which is why we turn to others for this data. Because we often put our trust in the expertise of others for statistical information, it is vital that the information comes from a reliable or respected source that has made some effort to control for bias. When using statistics we should always ask what the source has to gain by advancing or publishing the statistical data. Is the source committed to fairness and accuracy? Does the source try to minimize its own bias? Does the source stand to profit, financially or otherwise, by pushing favorable statistics? What, in other words, does a source have to gain from its statistics? For example, in the 1960s, a sugarless gum company began to advertise its product by claiming "four out of five dentists surveyed would recommend sugarless gum to their patients." For decades, various cultural critics and commentators have pressed the gum company to produce the source of this statistic; the company has consistently refused, citing the survey data as proprietary research, presumably because it is part of the company's trade secrets. Perhaps the secret is that the company asked only five dentists — all of whom worked for the gum company? We simply don't know. We do know, however, that the gum company is biased toward selling more gum — a concern less important than the verification of fact. Hence, the "four out of five dentists" statistic is dubious at best.