The document provides guidance on delivering an effective persuasive speech, noting it should be 5 minutes long, have an outline and reference sources, and discuss understanding the audience, developing a controversial topic and thesis, using ethos, logos, and pathos appeals, supporting the thesis with facts, testimony, and statistics, addressing counterarguments, and practicing delivery with attention to organization, content, and nonverbal communication.

1. Persuasive Speaking

2. Persuasive Speech Assignment
Five minutes in length
Speech outline required
Must reference at least two sources
Site sources in written outline using APA style
Does not require a visual aid
Dress appropriately

3. Persuasion
Verbal and nonverbal messages that
shape, reinforce and change
people’s responses
Move audience to action, to
change/alter their behaviors

4. Persuading Your Audience
Understanding your audience’s disposition – must
provide a good reason to listen
 Receptive audience
 Hostile audience
 Neutral audience

5. Developing a Persuasive
Topic & Thesis
Your topic…
 Should be somewhat controversial
 Must allow you to develop a message to bring about
change in the audience

6. The Balance of Three
Content
Delivery
Organization

7. Three cornerstones of persuasion:
 Ethos
 Logos
 Pathos

8. Ethos
 Perceived personal character of the speaker
 High ethos if speaker is perceived as having integrity
and can be trusted
 Passionate about topic
 Trustworthiness
 Goodwill
 Examples of people with high Ethos?

9. Logos
 Rational or logical proofs
 Inductive reasoning
 Deductive reasoning
 Evidence to support claims

10. Pathos
 Appeals to listeners’ emotions
 We are influenced by our feelings of
passion, personal values and
perceptions
 Should be combined with logical
appeals for lasting effect

11. Different types of appeals:
Motivational appeals – based on perceptions. Audience
moved to do something because it’s reasonable
Emotional appeals – based on emotions. Personal
stories, pictures that tug on heartstrings
Logical appeals – reasoning and evidence

12. Supporting your thesis
Facts – consensus concerning existence
Testimony – statements and quotations from accepted
authorities, people with high levels of credibility
Inference – reason from an already accepted position to
another position that seems to follow from the already
accepted one
Statistics – collection, classification, description, and
interpretation of data collected from surveys and
experiments

13. Types of Credibility
Initial credibility – titles, positions, experiences, etc.
Derived credibility – listeners recognize expertise and
trustworthiness from speakers during a presentation
through the organization of logic, convincing evidence
and speaking dynamically.
Terminal credibility – cumulative expertise, goodwill and
trustworthiness listeners recognize in a speaker.

14. Building Credibility
 State qualifications
 Show listeners you care about them
 Appeal to listeners’ emotions, but don’t be too dramatic
 Reason carefully and avoid reasoning fallacies
 Use ethical supporting materials
 Use congruent verbal and nonverbal communication and
show listeners you care about the topic

15. Counterarguments
Presenting the “other side”
Helps build credibility by presenting a different
view/perspective

16. The Balance of Three
Content
Delivery
Organization

17. Practicing Your Speech
BREATH!
Practice, and then practice again and again
Practice using presentation aids
Practice your delivery with nonverbal cues
Look at your audience
Stand still and bend knees
Practice again

18. Discuss:
What is your thesis?
How will you develop credibility?
What kind of appeals will you make as a
speaker?
What kind of evidence and counter arguments
will be used?
What organizational pattern will be used?