journal 9

Right off the bat, I cringe when I see the title of the chapter being Principles of Persuasive Speaking or Constructing a Persuasive Speech. I know that as a kid and even as a teenager, being persuasive towards something I was or am passionate about is easy, but as soon as it comes to a speech or research that I am not familiar with, I tend to lose confidence in myself and my abilities. I think that after reading this chapter I can strongly say I have many takeaways while walking away from these two chapters. A few big things that I took away from this chapter were the “behind the scenes” work for a persuasive speech. Smaller things such as making your message relevant to your audience, using stories, and having credibility behind what you’re talking about are key aspects to a successful speech. I think it is important to note the part of this chapter where it talks about appealing reason, emotion, and credibility. Having all of these in a speech is clearly required or you will lack the ability to engage your total audience throughout your persuasion. On top of all of this, is constructing your persuasive essay in the correct way. Supporting an argument, you feel strongly about is very difficult if not organized correctly. Remembering the claim, evidence, and warrant is very important and will keep your speech in line throughout your presentation. Knowing the variety of claims is a good start to your speech and picking one specific and sticking with it will also allow you to stay on track. In turn, using convincing evidence to back up your claim is helpful for not only the speaker but also for the audience to stay engaged. I thought it was really interesting when they mentioned different warrants and how each effected a speech and made them unique. Knowing that there are motivational, authoritative warrants, and warrants by analogy could really have the potential to allow me to dive deeper behind the meaning of my speeches and allow me to further elaborate on what I am talking about. Overall, after learning about each of these new concepts I feel that I could be more confident about persuading people through a speech and am excited to get to use these new techniques throughout different speeches.