Chapter 8: Supporting Ideas and Building Arguments

What are 3 tips for using numerical support?

1. Clearly state the numbers used and where they came from. 2. Make sure you explain what the numbers mean and how you think they should be interpreted. 3. If the numbers are overly complicated or if you use a variety of numbers within a speech, consider turning this support into a visual aid to enhance your audience's understanding of the numerical support.

What are some questions you can ask yourself to help determine the accuracy of a source?

1. Does the information within one piece of supporting evidence completely contradict other supporting evidence you've seen? 2. If the support is using a statistic, does the supporting evidence explain where that statistic came from and how it was determined? 3. Does the logic behind the support make sense?

What are some questions to ask yourself when evaluating a potential piece of support to detect bias ?

1. Does the source represent an individual's, an organization's, or another group's viewpoint? 2. Does the source sound unfair in its judgment, either for or against a specific topic? 3. Does the source sound like personal prejudices, opinions, or thoughts? 4. Does the source exist only on a website (i.e., not in print or any other format)? 5. Is the information published or posted anonymously or pseudonymously? 6. Does the source have any political or financial interests related to the information being disseminated? 7. Does the source demonstrate any specific political orientation, religious affiliation, or other ideology? 8. Does the source's viewpoint differ from all other information you've read?

What are some questions you can ask to help determine if someone is an expert?

1. Is the person widely recognizable as an expert? 2. Does the person have an appropriate degree/training/certification to make her or him an expert? 3. Is the person a member of a recognized profession in her or his claimed area of expertise? 4. Has the person published articles or books (not self-published) on the claimed area of expertise? 5. Does the person have appropriate experience in her or his claimed area of expertise? 6. Does the person have clear knowledge about her or his claimed area of expertise? 7. Is the person clearly knowledgeable about the field related to her or his claimed area of expertise? 8. When all is said and done, does the person truly have the qualifications to be considered an expert in her or his claimed area of expertise?

What are 4 tips when using Paraphrase's?

1. Paraphrase when you can say it more concisely than the original speaker or author. 2. Paraphrase when the exact wording from the original speaker or author won't improve your audience's understanding of the support. 3. Paraphrase when you want to adapt an example, analogy, or narrative by another speaker or author to make its relevance more evident. 4. Paraphrase information that is not likely to be questioned by your audience. If you think your audience may question your support, then relying on a direct quotation may be more effective.

What are 3 e basic steps you can take to ensure your audience will make the connection between your support and your argument?

1. Summarize the support in your own words (unless you started with a summary). 2. Specifically tell your audience how the support relates to the argument. 3. Draw a sensible conclusion based on your support. We cannot leave an audience hanging, so drawing a conclusion helps complete the support package.

What are 3 tips when using Summaries?

1. Summarize when you need another speaker or author's complete argument to understand the argument within your speech. 2. Summarize when explaining possible counterarguments to the one posed within your speech. 3. Summarize when you need to cite a number of different sources effectively and efficiently to support a specific argument.

What are some suggestions when Sifting Through Your Support?

1. Use a Variety of Support Types (By using a variety of forms of support, you are likely to appeal to a broader range of audience members and thus effectively adapt to your audience. Even if your audience members prefer a specific form of support, providing multiple types of support is important to keep them interested) 2. Choose Appropriate Forms of Support (Depending on the type of speech you are giving, your speech's context, and your audience, different types of evidence may or may not be appropriate.) 3. Check for Relevance (Your support materials should be relevant not only to your topic but also to your audience) 4. Don't Go Overboard (the goal is to support your speech, not to have the support become your speech) 5. Don't Manipulate Your Support (involves a very important ethical area called support-manipulation. Often speakers will attempt to find support that says exactly what they want it to say despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of evidence says the exact opposite. When you go out of your way to pull the wool over your audience's eyes, you are being unethical and not treating your audience with respect.)

What are 5 tips when using quotations?

1. Use a direct quotation if the original author's words are witty, engaging, distinct, or particularly vivid. 2. Use a direct quotation if you want to highlight a specific expert and his or her expertise within your speech. 3. Use a direct quotation if you are going to specifically analyze something that is said within the quotation. If your analysis depends on the exact wording of the quotation, then it is important to use the quotation. 4. Keep quotations to a minimum. One of the biggest mistakes some speakers make is just stringing together a series of quotations and calling it a speech. Remember, a speech is your unique insight into a topic, not just a series of quotations. 5. Keep quotations short. Long quotations can lose an audience, and the connection between your support and your argument can get lost.

What are 5 suggestions for effectively using pictographic support in your speech?

1. Use pictographic support when it would be easier and shorter than orally explaining an object or process. 2. Use pictographic support when you really want to emphasize the importance of the support. Audiences recall information more readily when they both see and hear it than if they see or hear the information. 3. Make sure that pictographic support is aesthetically pleasing. See Chapter 15 "Presentation Aids: Design and Usage" on using visual aids for more ideas on how to make visual aids aesthetically pleasing. 4. Pictographic support should be easy to understand, and it should take less time to use than words alone. 5. Make sure everyone in your audience can easily see your pictographic support. If listeners cannot see it, then it will not help them understand how it is supposed to help your speech's specific purpose.

What are some of the basic principles in argumentation?

1. all arguments are based on a series of statements that are divided into two basic categories: premises and conclusions. A premise is a statement that is designed to provide support or evidence, whereas the conclusion is a statement that can be clearly drawn from the provided premises. 2. How, then, does this ultimately matter for you and your future public speaking endeavors? Well, a great deal of persuasive speaking is built on creating arguments that your listeners can understand and that will eventually influence their ideas or behaviors. In essence, creating strong arguments is a fundamental part of public speaking. When creating logical arguments (unless you are a noted expert on a subject), you must provide support to ensure that your arguments will be seen as credible.

What are three things you can do to avoid misusing statistics when you speak in public?

1. be honest with yourself and your audience 2. run a few basic calculations to see if a statistic is believable 3. evaluate sources

What are some points to consider when evaluating if an eyewitness testimony is reliable?

1. consider how you received the testimony 2. consider whether your witness has anything to gain from his or her testimony 3. consider whether your witness' account was recent or something that happened some time ago.

Lexical Definitions

A lexical definition is one that specifically states how a word is used within a specific language. Are useful when a word may be unfamiliar to an audience, and you want to ensure that the audience has a basic understanding of the word. Our ability to understand lexical definitions often hinges on our knowledge of other words that are used in the definition, so it is usually a good idea to follow a lexical definition with a clear explanation of what it means in your own words.

Positive Examples

Are used to clarify or clearly illustrate a principle, method, or phenomenon. The purpose of a positive example is to show a desirable solution, decision, or course of action.

Setup

The setup is a sentence or phrase in which you explain to your audience where the information you are using came from. Note that if you found the information on a website, it is not sufficient to merely give your audience the URL. Depending on the source of your support, all the following information could be useful: name of source, location of source, date of source, name of author, and identification of author. First, you need to tell your audience the name of your source. Second, if your source comes from a larger work, you need to include the location of the source. Third, you need to specify the date of the source. Depending on the type of source you are using, you may need to provide just a year or the day and month as well. You should provide as much information on the date as is provided on the copyright information page of the source. When discussing the author, you need to clearly explain not only who the author is but also why the author is an expert (if appropriate). Some sources are written by authors who are not experts, so you really don't need to explain their expertise. In other cases, your audience will already know why the source is an expert, so there is less need to explain why the source is an expert. The more information we can provide our audiences about our support, the more information our audiences have to evaluate the strength of our arguments.

Testimony

When we use the word "testimony" in this text, we are specifically referring to expert opinion or direct accounts of witnesses to provide support for your speech. Notice that within this definition, we refer to both expert and eyewitness testimony.

Facts and Statistics

a fact is a truth that is arrived at through the scientific process. Speakers often support a point or specific purpose by citing facts that their audience may not know. Many of the facts that speakers cite are based on statistics.

What are four characteristics to evaluate when looking at support options?

accuracy authority currency objectivity

Authority

building your credibility is to cite authoritative sources—those who are experts on the topic. To be an expert, someone needs to have considerable knowledge on a topic or considerable skill in accomplishing something.

Literal Analogies

compare two objects or ideas that clearly belong to the same class. The goal of the literal analogy is to demonstrate that the two objects or ideas are similar; therefore, they should have further similarities that support your argument. When using literal analogies related to ideas, make sure that the ideas are closely related and can be viewed as similar. You are basically asking your audience to confirm the logic of your comparison, so if they don't see the comparison as valid, it won't help to support your message.

Expert Testimony

expert testimony expresses the attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors recommended by someone who is an acknowledged expert on a topic.

What are the two different types of analogies that speakers can employ?

figurative literal

Currency

t to build your credibility is how current the information is. Some ideas stay fairly consistent over time, like the date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or the mathematical formula for finding the area of a circle, but other ideas change wildly in a short period of time, including ideas about technology, health treatments, and laws. We recommend that information be less than five years old. Obviously, this is just a general guideline and can change depending on the topic.

Support Your Claims

you need to make sure that every claim you make within the speech can be supported within the speech. When you go through your speech, you need to make sure that each and every claim that you make is adequately supported by the evidence you have selected to use within the speech

Objectivity

you should ask yourself when examining support is whether the person or organization behind the information is objective or biased. Bias refers to a predisposition or preconception of a topic that prevents impartiality. Although there is a certain logic to the view that every one of us is innately biased, as a credible speaker, you want to avoid just passing along someone's unfounded bias in your speech.

What are some very important guidelines to consider to avoiding support-manipulation?

• Do not overlook significant factors or individuals related to your topic. • Do not ignore evidence that does not support your speech's specific purpose. • Do not jump to conclusions that are simply not justified based on the supporting evidence you have. • Do not use evidence to support faulty logic. • Do not use out-of-date evidence that is no longer supported. • Do not use evidence out of its original context. • Do not knowingly use evidence from a source that is clearly biased. • Make sure you clearly cite all your supporting evidence within your speech.

Nonexamples

A nonexample is used to explain what something is not.

Use a Reverse Outline

A reverse outline is a tool you can use to determine the adequacy of your speech's support by starting with your conclusion and logically working backward through your speech to determine if the support you provided is appropriate and comprehensive. In essence, we recommend that you think of your speech in terms of the conclusion first and then work your way backward showing how you get to the conclusion. This technique is not only helpful for analyzing the overall flow of your speech, but it can also let you see if different sections of your speech are not completely supported individually

Examples

An example is a specific situation, problem, or story designed to help illustrate a principle, method, or phenomenon. Examples are useful because they can help make an abstract idea more concrete for an audience by providing a specific case.

Quotations

Direct quotations occur when Speaker A uses the exact wording by another speaker or writer within his or her new speech. Quotations are very helpful and can definitely provide you a tool for supporting your speech's specific purpose.

Definitions

In order for your speech to be effective, you would need to define what a veto is and what it does. Making sure everyone is "on the same page" is a fundamental task of any communication. As speakers, we often need to clearly define what we are talking about to make sure that our audience understands our meaning. The goal of a definition is to help speakers communicate a word or idea in a manner that makes it understandable for their audiences. There are four types of definitions.

Negative Examples

Negative examples, by contrast, are used to illustrate what not to do. The purpose of a negative example is to show an undesirable solution, decision, or course of action.

Accuracy

One of the quickest ways to lose credibility in the eyes of your audience is to use support that is inaccurate or even questionably accurate. If you are not an expert, it is hard to determine the accuracy.

Paraphrases

Paraphrasing involves taking the general idea or theme from another speaker or author and condensing the idea or theme in your own words. When paraphrasing you need to understand the other speaker or author's ideas well enough to relate them without looking back at the original.

Persuasive Definitions

Persuasive definitions are designed to motivate an audience to think in a specific manner about the word or term. (Ex: "oil drilling" may have negative connotations among citizens who are concerned about the environmental impact of drilling, whereas "energy exploration" may have much more positive connotations among the same group)

Why We Use Support

Speakers use support to help provide a foundation for their message. Without support, a speech is nothing more than fluff. Audience members may ignore the speech's message, dismissing it as just so much hot air. Support also helps us clarify content, increase speaker credibility, and make the speech more vivid.

Execution

The execution of support involves actually reading a quotation, paraphrasing a speaker or author's words, summarizing a speaker or author's ideas, providing numerical support, or showing pictographic support. Effective execution should be seamless and flow easily within the context of your speech. While you want your evidence to make an impact, you also don't want it to seem overly disjointed.

To Clarify Content

The first reason to use support in a speech is to clarify content. Speakers often choose a piece of support because a previous writer or speaker has phrased something in a way that evokes a clear mental picture of the point they want to make

To Add Credibility

The less an audience perceives you as an expert on a given topic, the more important it is to use a range of support. By doing so, you let your audience know that you've done your homework on the topic. At the same time, you could hurt your credibility if you use inadequate support or support from questionable sources. Your credibility will also suffer if you distort the intent of a source to try to force it to support a point that the previous author did not address.

Oral Presentation

To help you think about using support, we recommend a three-step process: setup, execution, and analysis

What are ways to ensure your support is adequate?

Use a Reverse Outline Support Your Claims Oral Presentation

Analysis

While we don't want to "talk down" to our listeners, audiences often need to be shown the connection between the support provided and the argument made.

Summaries

a summary involves condensing or encapsulating the entire text as a form of support. Summaries are helpful when you want to clearly spell out the intent behind a speaker's or author's text.

Entertaining Narratives

are stories designed purely to delight an audience and transport them from their daily concerns. Some professional speakers make a very good career by telling their own stories of success or how they overcame life's adversities. While entertaining narratives may be a lot of fun, people should use them sparingly as support for a more serious topic or for a traditional informative or persuasive speech.

Theoretical Definitions

are used to describe all parts related to a particular type of idea or object. These definitions are frequently ambiguous and difficult to fully comprehend. These definitions are considered theoretical because the definitions attempt to create an all-encompassing theory of the word itself. Effective speakers strike a balance between using definitions where they are needed to increase audience understanding and leaving out definitions of terms that the audience is likely to know. (Ex: if you attempted to define the word "peace" in a manner that could be used to describe all aspects of peace, then you would be using a theoretical definition)

Numerical Support

citing data and numbers within a speech. The most common reason for using numerical support comes when a speaker needs to cite statistics. When using data to support your speech, you need to make sure that your audience can accurately interpret the numbers in the same way you are doing.

Figurative Analogies

compare two ideas or speakers often overly rely on figurative analogies when they really don't have any other solid evidence. For the purposes of understanding analogies, a "class" refers to a group that has common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits. Figurative analogies are innately problematic because people often hear them and immediately dismiss them as far-fetched. While figurative analogies may be very vivid and help a listener create a mental picture, they do not really help a listener determine the validity of the information being presented. Speakers often overly rely on figurative analogies when they really don't have any other solid evidence.

What are the three general purposes of speaking?

informative persuasive entertaining

Informative Narratives

informative narratives as those that provide information or explanations about a speaker's topic. Informative narratives can help audiences understand nature and natural phenomena.

Stipulative Definitions

is a definition assigned to a word or term by the person who coins that word or term for the first time. You cannot argue with this definition; it simply is the definition that was stipulated

Analogies

is a figure of speech that compares two ideas or objects, showing how they are similar in some way. Analogies, for public speaking purposes, can also be based in logic. The logical notion of analogies starts with the idea that two ideas or objects are similar, and because of this similarity, the two ideas or objects must be similar in other ways as well.

Best Examples

is called the best example because it is held up as the "best" way someone should behave within a specific context. While positive examples show appropriate ways to behave, best examples illustrate the best way to behave in a specific context.

Eyewitness Testimony

is given by someone who has direct contact with the phenomenon of your speech topic. Using eyewitness testimony as support can be a little tricky because you are relying on someone's firsthand account, and firsthand accounts may not always be reliable. The more detail you can give about the witness and when the witness made his or her observation, the more useful that witness testimony will be when attempting to create a solid argument.

Statistics

is the mathematical subfield that gathers, analyzes, and makes inferences about collected data. Data can come in a wide range of forms—the number of people who buy a certain magazine, the average number of telephone calls made in a month, the incidence of a certain disease. Much of our daily lives are governed by statistics. Everything from seat-belt laws to the food we eat. Statistics are probably the most used—and misused—form of support in any type of speaking

What are the four different types of definitions that may be used as support?

lexical persuasive stipulative theoretical

Pictographic Support

more commonly referred to as visual aids. Pictographic support is any drawn or visual representation of an object or process. For the purposes of this chapter, we call visual aids pictographic support in order to stress that we are using images as a form of support taken from a source. While all forms of pictographic support are visual aids, not all visual aids are pictographic support.

Narratives

narratives, or stories that help an audience understand the speaker's message. Narratives are similar to examples except that narratives are generally longer and take on the form of a story with a clear arc (beginning, middle, and end). You have an ethical responsibility as a speaker to clearly identify whether the narrative you are sharing is real or hypothetical.

What are four common types of examples used as support?

positive negative nonexamples best examples

What are the different types of speech support?

quotations paraphrases summaries numerical support pictographic support

Persuasive Narratives

s are stories used to persuade people to accept or reject a specific attitude, value, belief, or behavior. Religious texts are filled with persuasive narratives designed to teach followers various attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors. Parables or fables are designed to teach people basic lessons about life.

What is a drawback to examples?

some audience members may dismiss them as unusual cases that do not represent what happens most of the time. Even if a speaker has a specific example of an accident where this was true, many audience members would see this example as a rare case and thus not view it as strong support. An effective speaker needs to consider how the audience will respond to the example and how the example fits with what else the audience knows.

To Add Vividness

support helps make a speech more vivid. Vividness refers to a speaker's ability to present information in a striking, exciting manner. The goal of vividness is to make your speech more memorable.

Understanding Arguments

using a definition for the word argument that goes back to the ancient Greeks, who saw arguments as a set of logical premises leading to a clear conclusion.