Chapter 23 Takeaways

Chapter 23 is about persuading an audience through public speaking. Changing listeners’ views is a challenging task, but this chapter explains the use of persuasive appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos. Appealing to emotions, credibility, and reason is key to successfully persuading the audience’s opinion. I found these appeals to be useful in starting an outline for my speech this week. Before I prepared the speech, I brainstormed ways to include ethos, pathos, and logos into my outline. I also noticed that the three appeals were all included in the speeches we were assigned to watch this week. It was helpful to see how Mbubi and de Vos used persuasive appeals and apply their methods to my own persuasive speech. This chapter also explains how to appeal to needs and motivations. I think this is essential in a persuasive speech because the audience needs to feel connected to the issue in order to change their views.

Chapter 24 Takeaways

Chapter 24 explains how to construct a persuasive speech. The main elements to a persuasive speech are the claim, evidence, and warrant. Speeches may contain one or multiple claims of fact, value, or policy. Evidence can be shown through secondary sources or personal expertise. There are many types of warrants to justify a link between the claims and the evidence. The author explains how to include the counter argument in a persuasive speech which I thought was important to consider. Discussing the opposing view will make the argument stronger because it’s clear that both sides have been considered. This chapter also explains the importance of organization and considering which pattern is useful for the topic. Organization is also key to developing a strong persuasive speech because the audience must receive clear claims and evidence to understand the argument. Depending on the intended outcome of the speech, there are different patterns to organize the argument.