1. Introducing Public Speaking
Chapter 1
Introducing Public Speaking

2. Introducing Public Speaking: Introduction
Effective public speaking can inspire, persuade, educate, and entertain.
Because of this, public speaking is a required course at many colleges.
Despite this, many employers report a lack of public speaking skills among job candidates.
You can learn to overcome speech anxiety and master public speaking just like you can learn to read, ride a bicycle, or use the Internet.

3. Introducing Public Speaking: Introduction

4. Introducing Public Speaking: An Overview
This introduction to public speaking reviews:
What is public speaking? What distinguishes it from other types of speech?
Why study public speaking?
Public speaking: a great tradition
Public speaking: a dynamic discipline

5. What Is Public Speaking?
Public speaking features communication between a speaker and an audience.
The speaker does most of the talking.
The audience listens and gives feedback.

6. What Is Public Speaking?
Public speaking is audience centered.
Good speakers:
Consider audience's interests and needs
Adapt to the occasion

7. What Is Public Speaking?
Public speaking emphasizes the spoken word.
Visual aids should supplement the speech.
Good speakers spend their time speaking to their audience.
Good speakers heighten their words with other forms of communication.

8. What Is Public Speaking?
Public speaking is usually a prepared presentation.
The best speakers spend significant time preparing.
Even impromptu speeches typically piece together a string of relevant ideas.

9. Why Study Public Speaking?
Studying public speaking can help you deliver effective presentations in the classroom, on the job, and in your community.

10. Why Study Public Speaking?
Using public speaking as a student
Many courses require speeches.
Strong speeches make a better impression on the professor and the class.
Extracurricular groups often have a public speaking component.

11. Why Study Public Speaking?
Using public speaking in your career
Employers cite communication skills as the most important quality for a job candidate.
Workers report that communication is important in their jobs.

12. Why Study Public Speaking?
Using public speaking in your community
Membership in community organizations may require speaking.
Community leadership will require speaking.
Other special occasions may require speaking.

13. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition

14. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition
There is a great tradition of the study of speaking in antiquity.
In fifth-century B.C.E. Greece, speaking at assembly gave rise to the first formal studies of rhetoric, the craft of public speaking.
Aristotle formalized the analysis of rhetoric.
His work influences the study of public speaking today.

15. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition
In first-century B.C.E. Rome, vigorous debate took place in the Senate.
Cicero was a senator and famous orator who wrote prolifically on rhetoric.
Quintilian emphasized the notion of the ethical orator—the good person speaking well.

16. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition
Historically, public speaking has been important across the globe.
From the fifth through third centuries B.C.E., traveling scholars debated philosophies throughout ancient China.
Traveling storytellers and Islamic scholars spoke throughout Africa in the fifteenth century.
Many Native Americans prized oratory over bravery in battle.

17. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition

18. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition
The tradition of public speaking flourished in colonial American history.
The Great Awakening of the 1730s-1740s was an oratorical religious revival.
George Whitefield spoke in fields because churches weren't big enough.
Jonathan Edwards made worshippers shriek in fright with “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in 1741.

19. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition
There were many key speaking opportunities in revolutionary America.
The Boston Tea Party is a well-known instance of colonists speaking out in protest of taxation.
Numerous political debates arose around the framing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The Lincoln-Douglas debates before the Civil War drew massive crowds.

20. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition
The antislavery movement was one of great oratory.
Frederick Douglass moved audiences with accounts of life under slavery.
Women joined the abolitionist movement and spoke out publicly.
Abolitionist Angelina Grimké won adherents with her tales of slave abuse in South Carolina.

21. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition
The women's suffrage movement emerged at the same time.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and others led the movement.
They used oratory to persuade Americans that women deserved the vote.

22. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition
Public address flourished in the twentieth century.
After World War I President Wilson traveled through the U.S. to promote his League of Nations idea.
In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. brought 250,000 to the Capitol with his march on Washington and his “I have a dream” speech.
In the mid-1990s, activists participated in the Million Man and Million Woman marches.

23. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition
Today, it may seem as if speaking is less important.
We are more likely to communicate now by cell phone or text message than to listen to a speech.
Yet public speaking remains a potent leadership tool.
Presidents still speak directly to the people in various ways.

24. Public Speaking: A Great Tradition

25. Public Speaking: A Dynamic Discipline
From linear to transactional: Evolving views of the public speaking process
The linear model emphasized a source encoding a message through a channel impeded by noise to a decoding receiver.

26. Public Speaking: A Dynamic Discipline
From linear to transactional: Evolving views of the public speaking process
Recent models stress the idea of transaction: both parties are in communication, sending and receiving messages and feedback, and creating shared meaning.

27. Public Speaking: A Dynamic Discipline
Awareness of audiences’ cultural diversity
The United States is culturally diverse.
Culture is the traditions, values, and rules for living that people pass from generation to generation.
Increasingly, Americans come from other countries, bringing cultural diversity.
Speakers must consider these differences.

28. Public Speaking: A Dynamic Discipline
Awareness of audiences’ cultural diversity
Because of cultural diversity, it is unlikely people you interact with share the same worldviews and values.
We must adapt the way we use humor.
We must adjust our understandings of how audiences express feedback.
The recent immigration debates illustrate the complexity of this issue.

29. Public Speaking: A Dynamic Discipline
Emphasis on critical thinking
You should feel confident that all the ideas you present to an audience are reasonable.
You should always evaluate the truth claims you make.

30. Public Speaking: A Dynamic Discipline

31. Public Speaking: A Dynamic Discipline
A focus on free and ethical communication
Freedom of expression is vital in a democracy.
Speakers have a responsibility to express ideas ethically.
Unethical communication seems to have increased in the United States.

32. Public Speaking: A Dynamic Discipline
A focus on free and ethical communication
It is thus even more important that we treat our audiences ethically.
The persuasive power of public speaking comes with responsibilities.
Always tell the truth.
Provide balanced, accurate information.
Avoid manipulative reasoning.
Supply proper support for your argument.