Cookbook_Notes_9_10_04 - Comm 201 Notes from...

Comm 201 Toni Russo
Notes from Lectures
(Revised September 8, 2004)
The following information should be useful in structuring all your speeches. I call this lecture:
The Cookbook Ingredients for Giving a Good Speech.
Aristotle defines ALL COMMUNICATION AS PERSUASION. Communication is a process
in which the speaker seeds to alter perceptions, attitudes and actions of his receiver through
speech.
Aristotle believed that we are concerned with outcome….getting the audience to do think, do or feel
the way we want them to .
You can think of ALL communication as being persuasion in that you are trying to get the audience to
attend to your message and understand what you are saying. If we ask them to “close the window” we
hope that that they will perform that action. If we are giving a speech on Genetically Modified foods,
we are asking the audience to listen, and by learning more about GMS’s, we are very likely affecting
there attitudes and opinions on the topic.
PURPOSES OF SPEAKING
The general purposes of speaking are TO INFORM, TO PERSUADE, TO ENTERTAIN.
In an informative speech, we try to:
- Increase or provide knowledge about a topic
- Provide a basis or foundation for a belief (You have to know something about a topic before you
develop an opinion about it.)
- Instruct or demonstrate (how to speeches)
To persuade: To influence the attitude(s) and action(s) of others.
Your book speaks about persuasion in terms of the following categories
- to convince: affect attitudes and beliefs
- to actuate: Move audience to action
- to inspire: Affect audience feelings / emotions toward the speech topic
To entertain: Audience enjoys and relates to, and is interested in, what is being said.
For the next two assignments we are going to concern ourselves with speeches TO INFORM.

The purpose of giving an informative speech is to convey clear factual information that is concise,
accurate and specific as objectively as possible. In an informative speech we keep the information
balanced and unbiased.
Your goal in an informative speech is to
BE CLEAR
BE OBJECTIVE AND ACCURATE
MAKE IT INTERESTING
There are three parts of any speech: Intro, body and conclusion.
Each speech has a clear SPECIFIC PURPOSE and a clear CENTRAL IDEA
The specific purpose of a speech is what you want the audience to learn as a result of listening . It
is the specified outcome, objective or response your speech is suppose to achieve.