Public Speaking

What makes public speaking distinctive as a from of communication are the relationships among a set of nine elements: speaker, purpose, message, medium, setting, listener, response, interference, and consequences. These elements interact with one another in ways that can affect those who participate and the world around them. They constitute a dynamic, interactive communication process.

In public speaking, speaker and listener roles are clearly defined. There is little doubt as to who the speaker and listeners are. Public speaking spotlights the role of the speaker, but whether speakers can take advantage of Conversations Public Speaking 1. Audience-centered 1. More audience-centered 2. Loosely Organized 2. Organized and planned 3. Off of the top of your head 3.Grounded in responsible knowledge 4. Often no clear purpose 4. Has a clear purpose 5. Informal language 5. More formal language 6. Speaker/listeners change roles 6.Speaker/listeners roles clearly defined 7.Informal environment/small group 7.More formal environment/large group this attention depends on their ability to reward listeners with interesting and useful messages. As Aristotle pointed out more than two thousand year...

People seldom speak in public unless they have some purpose in mind something they wish to accomplish. A purpose can be complex, privet, and psychological. With respect to the public work performed by public speaking, scholars called reroricians have been working to identify major types of purposes for over two thousand years. Aristotle, who lived about 2,400 years ago, near the end of a great era of civilization called the Golden age of Greece, divided purposes into three forms: forensic, deliberative, and ceremonial. The forensic purpose, enacted in speeches before the Athenian courts, satisfied the needs of the justice system. These speeches were concerned largely with past events and with the guilt and innocence of individuals. The deliberative purpose was fulfilled in speeches before the assembly dealing with the formation of public policy. How the future might be shaped and controlled was the business of such speeches. The ceremonial purpose was satisfied by speeches that celeb...

Successful public speaking offers a massage that is designed to serve the speaker’s purpose. It is based on responsible research and careful thought and should be internally consistent and complete. Its aim is to coax an audience to give sympathetic attention to the speaker’s ideas. It has been carefully worded and rehearsed so that it achieves maximum impact. The message is the product of the speaker’s encoding processes-the effort to convey through words, tones, and gestures how the speaker thinks and feels about the subject. Audience members respond by decoding the message, deciding what the speaker mended and determining the value of the message for their lives. Shaping a message is a basic public speaking skill. It begins with a search for supporting material-facts, examples, testimony, and stories-that will help convey your purpose. How you word your message can determine its fate. In the 2,000 presidential elections, George W. Bush used the term compassionate conservatism to...

The medium transmits a speaker’s message. When public speaking takes place in a direct, face-to-face encounter, the medium is the air through which the sound travels. When a speech is presented outside or in a large auditorium, a microphone and amplifiers may be part of the medium. We tend to take the medium for granted until we discover something wrong with it, like poor acoustics. Public speeches can also be transmitted through the electronic media of radio, television, and video-or-audiotapes. The electronic media have major effects on the entire communication process. For example, radio emphasizes the attractiveness, clarity, and expressiveness of a speaker’s voice. Television brings a speaker into a close relationship with viewers, so personality and physical appearance take on added importance. When speakers want news coverage, they must compress important ideas into twenty-second sound bites, and the language must be immediately clear and colorful. Any change in the medi...

A speech occurs within a physical and psychological setting that can determine how well it succeeds. The physical setting in which a speech is presented can include such factors as the time the speech is given; the time allotted for the presentation the pace of the presentation, and the size and arrangement of the audience. For example, when speaking outside, a speaker may need a more forceful presentation than when speaking in a small room. A larger audience may require a more formal manner of presentation than a smaller audience. The very quality of the physical setting can affect the speech. For example, one of the most profound discussions of the ethics of communication, Plato’s Pbaedrus, written in ancient Greece some 2,400 years ago, takes place in a woodland setting that frames and colors its message appropriately. In this setting, Socrates envisions an ideal communication that promotes spiritual growth for both listeners and speakers. One classroom setting in which we ta...

The response to a speech is what happens during and as a result of the speech. Of course you hope that your speeches are well received and that they will affect the lives of your listeners favorably. But whether they achieve that result depends a great deal on what happens during the speech. One of the things that make public speaking dynamic is its interactive quality. While you are speaking, listeners are responding. As they respond, so should you. This makes a speech an interaction in which listeners and speakers constantly adjust to each other. These on-the-spot adjustments lend an unpredictable quality to public speaking that can make it an interesting and exciting form of communication. Note the adjustment that one of our speakers made during a speech on the dangers of global warming; Some of you are frowning, and I can hardly blame you. This is really hard to believe. But let me quote to you the words of Time magazine in a recent survey of all these scientific disc...

Interference can enter at any point in the process to disrupt the effectiveness of communication. Interference, which we discuss further in Chapter 3, can range from physical noise that impedes the hearing of a speech, such as a plane flying over the building, to psychological “noise” within speakers and listeners that prevents them from connecting. Three forms of interference are especially troubling. The first is speaker apprehension. Fear is an understandable reaction to public speaking experiences. The situation may seem strange, and speakers may feel exposed and vulnerable. Listeners may seem distant, unfriendly, or threatening. Beginning speakers will learn to control their fears and to convert them into positive energy that adds sparkle and power to a speech. But at the outset, these feelings can interfere with effective communication. A second form of interference is listener distraction, which imposes a barrier between an audience and a message. Listene...