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Speech is power; speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Getting Started

In earlier stages of preparation for a speech, you have gained a good idea of who your audience is and what

information you want to focus on. This chapter will help you consider how to organize the information to cover

your topic. You may be tempted to think that you know enough about your topic that you can just “wing it”

or go “freestyling.” Your organization might be something like this: “First, I’ll talk about this, then I’ll give

this example, and I’ll wrap it up with this.” While knowledge on your topic is key to an effective speech, do

not underestimate the importance of organization. You may start to give your speech thinking you’ll follow the

“outline” in your mind, and then suddenly your mind will go blank. If it doesn’t go blank, you may finish what

was planned as a five-minute speech with three minutes remaining, sit down, and then start to remember all the

things you intended to say but didn’t. To your listeners, your presentation may have sounded like the first of the

Note 12.1 “Introductory Exercises” for this chapter—a bunch of related ideas that were scattered and unorganized.

Organization in your speech is helpful both to you and to your audience. Your audience will appreciate hearing

the information presented in an organized way, and being well organized will make the speaking situation much

less stressful for you. You might forget a point and be able to glance at your outline and get back on track. Your

listeners will see that you took your responsibility as a speaker seriously and will be able to listen more attentively.

They’ll be able to link your key points in their minds, and the result will be a more effective speech.

An extemporaneous speech involves flexibility and organization. You know your material. You are prepared

and follow an outline. You do not read a script or PowerPoint presentation, you do not memorize every single

word in order (though some parts may be memorized), but you also do not make it up as you go along. Your

presentation is scripted in the sense that it is completely planned from start to finish, yet every word is not

explicitly planned, allowing for some spontaneity and adaptation to the audience’s needs in the moment. This

extemporaneous approach is the most common form used in business and industry today.

Your organization plan will serve you and your audience as a guide, and help you present a more effective

speech. If you are concerned with grades, it will no doubt help you improve your score as well. If you work in

a career where your “grades” are sales, and a sales increase means getting an “A,” then your ability to organize

will help you make the grade. Just as there is no substitute for practice and preparation, there is no substitute for

organization and an outline when you need it the most: on stage. Do yourself and the audience a favor and create

an outline with an organization pattern that best meets your needs.

In the 1991 film What about Bob? a psychiatrist presents the simple idea to the patient, played by actor Bill

Murray. If the patient takes whatever he needs to do step by step, the process he once perceived as complex

becomes simple. In this same way, your understanding of giving business presentations will develop step by step,

as the process and its important elements unfold. Read and reflect on how each area might influence your speech,

how it might involve or impact your audience, and how your purpose guides your strategies as you plan your

speech.

If you take it step by step, presenting a speech can be an exhilarating experience not unlike winning a marathon

or climbing a high peak. Every journey begins with a first step, and in terms of communication, you’ve already

taken countless steps in your lifetime. Now we’ll take the next step and begin to analyze the process of public

speaking.

12.1 Rhetorical Situation

In the classical tradition, the art of public speaking is called rhetoric; the circumstances in which you give your

speech or presentation are the rhetorical situation. By understanding the rhetorical situation, you can gauge the

best ways to reach your listeners and get your points across. In so doing, you’ll make the transition from your

viewpoint to that of your audience members. Remember that without an audience to listen and respond to you,

it’s really not much of a speech. The audience gives you the space and time as a speaker to fulfill your role and,

hopefully, their expectations. Just as a group makes a leader, an audience makes a speaker. By looking to your

audience, you shift your attention from an internal focus (you) to an external (them/others) emphasis. This “other orientation” is key to your success as an effective speaker.

Several of the first questions any audience member asks himself or herself are, “Why should I listen to you?”

“What does what you are saying have to do with me?” and “How does this help me?” We communicate through

the lens of personal experience and it’s only natural that we would relate what others say to our own needs and

wants, but by recognizing that we share in our humanity many of the same basic motivations, we can find common

ground of mutual interest. Generating interest in your speech is only the first step as you guide perception through

selection, organization, and interpretation of content and ways to communicate your point. Your understanding of

the rhetorical situation will guide you as you plan how to employ various strategies to guide your listeners as they

perceive and interpret your message. Your awareness of the overall process of building a speech will allow you to

take it step by step and focus on the immediate task at hand.

The rhetorical situation involves three elements: the set of expectations inherent in the context, audience,

and the purpose of your speech or presentation (Kostelnick, C. and Roberts, D., 1998). This means you need to

consider, in essence, the “who, what, where, when, why, and how” of your speech from the audience’s perspective.

Context

As we consider the rhetorical situation, we need to explore the concept in depth. Your speech is not given in a

space that has no connection to the rest of the world. If you are going to be presenting a speech in class, your

context will be the familiar space of your classroom. Other contexts might include a business conference room, a

restaurant where you are the featured speaker for a dinner meeting, or a podium that has been set up outdoors for

a sports award ceremony.

The time of your speech will relate to people’s natural patterns of behavior. If you give a speech right after

lunch, you can expect people to be a bit sleepy. Knowing this, you can take steps to counter this element of the

context by making your presentation especially dynamic, such as having your audience get up from their seats or

calling on them to answer questions at various points in your speech.

You can also place your topic within the frame of reference of current events. If you are presenting a speech

on the importance of access to health care for everyone, and you are presenting it in October of an election year,

the current events that exist outside your speech may be used to enhance it. Your listeners might be very aware

of the political climate, and relating your topic to a larger context may effectively take into consideration the

circumstances in which your readers will use, apply, or contemplate your information.        

Audience

The receiver (i.e., listener or audience) is one of the basic components of communication. Without a receiver,

the source (i.e., the speaker) has only himself or herself in which to send the message. By extension, without

an audience you can’t have a speech. Your audience comes to you with expectations, prior knowledge, and

experience. They have a purpose that makes them part of the audience instead of outside playing golf. They have

a wide range of characteristics like social class, gender, age, race and ethnicity, cultural background, and language

that make them unique and diverse. What kind of audience will you be speaking to? What do you know about

their expectations, prior knowledge or backgrounds, and how they plan to use your information? Giving attention to this aspect of the rhetorical situation will allow you to gain insight into how to craft your message before you present it.

Purpose

A speech or oral presentation may be designed to inform, demonstrate, persuade, motivate, or even entertain. You

may also overlap by design and both inform and persuade. The purpose of your speech is central to its formation.

You should be able to state your purpose in one sentence or less, much like an effective thesis statement in an

essay. You also need to consider alternate perspectives, as we’ve seen previously in this chapter. Your purpose

may be to persuade, but the audience after lunch may want to be entertained, and your ability to adapt can make

use of a little entertainment that leads to persuasion.

References

Kostelnick, C., & Roberts, D. (1998). Designing visual language: Strategies for professional communicators.Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

12.2 Strategies for Success

Given the diverse nature of audiences, the complexity of the communication process, and the countless options

and choices to make when preparing your speech, you may feel overwhelmed. One effective way to address this

is to focus on ways to reach, interact, or stimulate your audience. Humans share many of the same basic needs,

and meeting those needs provides various strategies for action.

Charles Kostelnick and David Roberts outline several cognate strategies, or ways of framing, expressing, and

representing a message to an audience, in Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators

(Kostelnick C. and Roberts, D., 1998). The word “cognate” refers to knowledge, and these strategies are

techniques to impart knowledge to your audience. Kostelnick and Roberts’s strategies are cross-disciplinary in

that they can be applied to writing, graphic design, and verbal communication. They help the writer, designer, or speaker answer questions like “Does the audience understand how I’m arranging my information?” “Am I emphasizing my key points effectively?” and “How does my expression and representation of information contribute to a relationship with the audience?” They can serve you to better anticipate and meet your audience’s basic needs.

Aristotle outlined three main forms of rhetorical proof: ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos involves the speaker’s

character and expertise. Logos is the logic of the speaker’s presentation—something that will be greatly enhanced

by a good organizational plan. Aristotle discussed pathos as the use of emotion as a persuasive element in the

speech (Wisse, J., 1998), or “the arousing of emotions in the audience.” We don’t always make decisions based

on clear thinking. Sometimes we are moved by words, by a scene in a movie, or by other mediated forms of

communication. As the speaker, you may create a message by selecting some aspects and rejecting others. A

close-up picture of a child starving to death can capture attention and arouse emotions. If you use pathos in a

strategic way, you are following Aristotle’s notion of rhetorical proof as the available means of persuasion. If logic

and expertise don’t move the audience, a tragic picture may do so.

The cognate strategies are in many ways expressions of these three elements, but by focusing on individual

characteristics, can work towards being more effective in their preparation and presentation. Many of these

strategies build on basic ideas of communication, such as verbal and nonverbal delivery. By keeping that in mind,

you’ll be more likely to see the connections and help yourself organize your presentation effectively.

Here we adapt and extend Kostelnick and Roberts’ strategies in order to highlight ways to approach the

preparation and presentation of your message. Across the cognate strategies, we can see Aristotle’s rhetorical

elements through a range of strategies to communicate better with our audience. There is a degree of overlap, and

many of the strategies draw on related elements, but by examining each strategy as a technique for engaging your

audience, you can better craft your message to meet their expectations.

Tone

From the choice of your words, to the choice of your dress, you contribute to the tone of the speech. Tone,

or the general manner of expression of the message, will contribute to the context of the presentation. First,

consider your voice. Is it relaxed, or shaky and nervous? Your voice is like a musical instrument that, when played

expressively, fulfills a central role in your ability to communicate your message to your audience. Next consider

how your tone is expressed through your body language. Are your arms straight down at your sides, or crossed in

front of you, or are they moving in a natural flow to the rhythm and cadence of your speech? Your dress, your use

of space, and the degree to which you are comfortable with yourself will all play a part in the expression of your

message.

Emphasis

If everyone speaks at the same time, it’s hard for anyone to listen. In the same way, if all your points are equally

presented, it can be hard to distinguish one from another, or to focus on the points that are most important. As

the speaker, you need to consider how you place emphasis—stress, importance, or prominence—on some aspects

of your speech, and how you lessen the impact of others. Perhaps you have a visual aid to support your speech

in the form of a visually arresting picture. Imagine that you want to present a persuasive speech on preventing

skin cancer and you start with a photo of two people wearing very little clothing. While the image may capture

attention, clearly placing emphasis on skin, it may prove to be more of a distraction than an addition. Emphasis as

a cognate strategy asks you to consider relevance, and the degree to which your focal point of attention contributes

to or detracts from your speech. You will need to consider how you link ideas through transitions, how you repeat

and rephrase, and how you place your points in hierarchical order to address the strategy of emphasis in your

presentation.

Engagement

Before you start thinking about weddings, consider what key element is necessary for one to occur? If you

guessed a relationship you were correct. Just as a couple forms an interpersonal relationship, the speaker forms a

relationship with the audience members. Eye contact can be an engaging aspect of this strategy, and can help you

form a connection—an engagement—with individual audience members. Looking at the floor or ceiling may not

display interest to the audience. Engagement strategies develop the relationship with the audience, and you will

need to consider how your words, visuals, and other relevant elements of your speech help this relationship grow.

Clarity

As a speaker, you may have excellent ideas to present, but if they are not made clear to the audience, your speech

will be a failure. “Clarity strategies help the receiver (audience) to decode the message, to understand it quickly

and completely, and when necessary, to react without ambivalence” (Kostelnick, C. and Roberts, D., 1998). Your

word choices, how you say them, and in what order all relate to clarity. If you use euphemisms, or indirect

expressions, to communicate a delicate idea, your audience may not follow you. If you use a story, or an arresting

image, and fail to connect it clearly to your main point or idea, your audience will also fail to see the connection.

Depending on the rhetorical situation, the use of jargon may clarify your message or confuse your audience. You’ll

also need to consider the visual elements of your presentation and how they clarify your information. Is the font

sufficiently large on your PowerPoint slide to be read in the back of the room? Is your slide so packed with words

that they key ideas are lost in a noise of text? Will it be clear to your listeners how your pictures, motion clips, or

audio files relate to topic?

Conciseness

Being clear is part of being concise. Conciseness refers to being brief and direct in the visual and verbal delivery

of your message, and avoiding unnecessary intricacy. It involves using as many words as necessary to get your

message across, and no more. If you only have five to seven minutes, how will you budget your time? Being economical with your time is a pragmatic approach to insuring that your attention, and the attention of your audience, is focused on the point at hand.

Arrangement

As the speaker, you will gather and present information in some form. How that form follows the function

of communicating your message involves strategically grouping information. “Arrangement means order, the

organization of visual (and verbal) elements (Kostelnick, C. and Roberts, D., 1998) “in ways that allow the

audience to correctly interpret the structure, hierarchy, and relationships among points of focus in your

presentation. We will discuss the importance of hierarchy, and which point comes first and last, as we explore

arguments and their impact on the perception of your message.

Credibility

Here we can clearly see Aristotle’s ethos—character and expertise. You will naturally develop a relationship with

your audience, and the need to make trust an element is key to that development. The word “credibility” comes

from the word “credence,” or belief. Credibility involves your qualities, capabilities, or power to elicit from the

audience belief in your character. Cultivating a sense of your character and credibility may involve displaying

your sense of humor, your ability to laugh at yourself, your academic or profession-specific credentials, or your

personal insight into the topic you are discussing.

For example, if you are going to present a persuasive speech on the dangers of drinking and driving, and start

with a short story about how you helped implement a “designated driver” program, the audience will understand

your relationship to the message, and form a positive perception of your credibility. If you are going to persuade

the audience to give blood, practice safe sex, or get an HIV test, your credibility on the subject may come from

your studies in the medical or public health field, from having volunteered at a blood drive, or perhaps from

having had a loved one who needed a blood transfusion. Consider persuasive strategies that will appeal to your

audience, build trust, and convey your understanding of the rhetorical situation.

Expectation

Your audience, as we’ve addressed previously, will have inherent expectations of themselves and of you

depending on the rhetorical situation. Expectations involve the often unstated, eager anticipation of the norms,

roles and outcomes of the speaker and the speech. If you are giving an after-dinner speech at a meeting where the

audience members will have had plenty to eat and drink immediately before you get up to speak, you know that

your audience’s attention may be influenced by their state of mind. The “after-dinner speech” often incorporates

humor for this very reason, and the anticipation that you will be positive, lighthearted and funny is implicit in

the rhetorical situation. If, on the other hand, you are going to address a high school assembly on the importance

of graduating from high school and pursuing a college education, you may also be motivational, funny, and lighthearted, but there will be an expectation that you will also discuss some serious issues as a part of your speech.

Reference

No one person knows everything all the time at any given moment, and no two people have experienced life in

the same way. For this reason, use references carefully. Reference involves attention to the source and way you

present your information. If you are a licensed pilot and want to inform your audience about the mistaken belief

that flying is more dangerous than driving, your credibility will play a role. You might also say “according to the

Federal Aviation Administration” as you cite mortality statistics associated with aviation accidents in a given year.

The audience won’t expect you to personally gather statistics and publish a study, but they will expect you to state

where you got your information. If you are talking to a group of children who have never flown before, and lack

a frame of reference to the experience of flying, you will need to consider how to reference key ideas within their

scope of experience.

A good way to visualize this is as a frame, where some information you display to the audience is within the

frame, and other information (that you do not display) lies outside the frame. You focus the information to improve

clarity and conciseness, and the audience will want to know why the information you chose is included and where

you got it. That same frame may also be related to experience, and your choice of terms, order or reliance on

visual aids to communicate ideas. If you are giving a speech on harvesting crops on an incline, and your audience

is made up of rural Bolivians who farm manually, talking about a combine may not be as effective as showing one

in action in order to establish a frame of reference.

You’ll want to consider the cognate strategies and how to address each area to make your speech as effective as

possible, given your understanding of the rhetorical situation.

References

Kostelnick, C., & Roberts, D. (1998). Designing visual language: Strategies for professional communicators.

Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Wisse, J. (1989). Ethos and pathos: From Aristotle to Cicero. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Adolph M. Hakkert.

12.3 Building a Sample Speech

As you begin to investigate your topic, make sure you consider several sides of an issue. Let’s say you are going

to do a speech to inform on the history of the First Transcontinental Railroad. At first you may have looked at just

two sides, railroaders versus local merchants. Railroad tycoons wanted to bring the country together—moving

people, goods, and services in a more efficient way—and to make money. Local merchants wanted to keep out

competition and retain control of their individual markets.

Take another look at this issue and you see that several other perspectives have bearing on this issue. Shipping

was done primarily by boat prior to the railroad, so shippers would not want the competition. Recent Chinese

immigrants were in need of work. Native Americans did not want to lose their culture or way of life, and a railroad

that crossed the country would cut right through the buffalo’s migration patterns. We now have five perspectives

to the central issue, which makes the topic all the more interesting.

The general purpose is to inform the audience on the First Transcontinental Railroad and its impact on a young

but developing United States. The thesis statement focuses on shipping, communication, and cultures across

America.

• Topic. First Transcontinental Railroad

• General purpose statement. I want the audience to be more informed about the impact of the First Transcontinental Railroad.

• Thesis statement. The First Transcontinental Railroad changed shipping, communication, and cultures across America.

With the information we have so far, we can now list three main points:

1. Change in shipping

2. Change in communication

3. Change in cultures

Think of each one of these main points as a separate but shorter speech. The point is to develop each of these main

points like you have developed your overall speech. What do you want to focus on? The major types of shipping

at the time of the First Transcontinental Railroad? One aspect you may want consider is to what degree is your

audience familiar with this time in history. If they are not very familiar, a little background and context can help

make your speech more meaningful and enhance its relevance to your thesis statement. By taking time to consider

what you want to accomplish with each point, you will help yourself begin to address how you need to approach

each point. Once you have thought about what you want to focus on for each point, list each subheading next to

the main points. For example,

1. Change in shipping

1. Navigating the waterways via barges and boats

2. Overland stagecoaches

3. Timetables for modes of travel

2. Change in communication

1. Letters in the days of the Pony Express

2. How the Morse Code telegraph system followed railroad lines

3. Bringing people together across distances

3. Change in cultures

1. Pre Railroad immigration

2. Impact on Native Americans

3. Territories become States

By now you’ve identified your key points and are ready to start planning your speech in more detail. While your

organizational structure will vary from speech to speech, there are nonetheless five main parts of any speech:

attention statement, introduction, body, conclusion, and residual message. These are basic to the rhetorical process

and you will see time and time again, regardless of audience or culture, these same elements in some form utilized

to communicate in public. They will serve to guide you, and possibly even save you should you get a last minute

request to do a speech or presentation.

Place your hand on the table or desk and you’ll more likely see a thumb and four fingers. Associate your hand

with these five elements. Each digit is independently quite weak, but together they make a powerful fist. Your

thumb is quite versatile and your most important digit. It’s a lot like your attention statement. If you don’t gain the

audience’s attention, the rest of the speech will be ineffective.

Each successive digit can represent the remaining four parts of any speech. One day you will be asked to speak

with little or no time for preparation. By focusing on this organizational model, and looking down at your hand,

you can quickly and accurately prepare your speech. With the luxury of time for preparation, each step can even

be further developed. Remember the five-finger model of public speaking, as summarized in Table 12.3 “Five-

Finger Model of Public Speaking”, and you will always stand out as a more effective speaker.

12.4 Sample Speech Outlines

Chances are you have learned the basic principles of outlining in English writing courses: an outline is a

framework that organizes main ideas and subordinate ideas in a hierarchical series of roman numerals and

alphabetical letters. The center column of Table 12.4 “Speech Outline A” presents a generic outline in a classical

style. In the left column, the five main structural elements of a speech are tied to the outline. Your task is to fill in

the center column outline with the actual ideas and points you are making in your speech. Feel free to adapt it and

tailor it to your needs, depending on the specifics of your speech. Next, fill in the right column with the verbal and

visual delivery features of your speech.

.

12.5 Organizing Principles for Your Speech

There are many different ways to organize a speech, and none is “better” or “more correct” than the others. The

choice of an organizing principle, or a core assumption around which everything else is arranged, depends on

the subject matter, the rhetorical situation, and many other factors, including your preference as speaker.

The left column of Table 12.6 “Sample Organizing Principles for a Speech” presents seventeen different

organizing principles to consider. The center column explains how the principle works, and the right column

provides an applied example based on our sample speech about the First Transcontinental Railroad. For example,

using a biographical organizing principle, you might describe the journey of the Lewis and Clark expedition in

1804; the signing of the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862, and the completion of the first Transcontinental Express

train trip in 1876. As another example, using a spatial organizing principle, you might describe the mechanics of

how a steam locomotive engine works to turn the train wheels, which move on a track to travel across distances.

As you read each organizational structure, consider how the main points and subheadings might change or be

adapted to meet each pattern.

References

Ayres, J., & Miller, J. (1994). Effective public speaking (4th ed., p 274). Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark.

Maslow, A. (1970). Motivation and personality (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Shutz, W. (1966). The interpersonal underworld. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books.

12.6 Transitions

By now you have identified your main points, chosen your organizational model, and are ready to begin putting

your speech together. If you were going to build a house, you would need a strong foundation. Could the columns

and beams hold your roof in place without anything to keep them from falling down? Of course not. In the same

way, the columns or beams are like the main ideas of your speech, and identifying them is one important step.

Another is to consider how to position them securely to rest on a solid foundation, have sufficient connection to

each other that they become interdependent, and to make sure they stay where you want them to so your house, or

your speech, doesn’t come crashing down.

Transitions are words, phrases, or visual devices that help the audience follow the speaker’s ideas, connect the

main points to each other, and see the relationships you’ve created in the information you are presenting. They are

often described as bridges between ideas, thought or concepts, providing some sense of where you’ve been and

where you are going with your speech. Transitions are used by the speaker to guide the audience in the progression

from one significant idea, concept or point to the next issue. They can also show the relationship between the main

point and the support the speaker uses to illustrate, provide examples for, or reference outside sources. Depending

your purpose, transitions can serve different roles as you help create the glue that will connect your points together

in a way the audience can easily follow.

12.7 Additional Resources

The commercial site from Inc. magazine presents an article on organizing your speech by Patricia Fripp, former president of the National Speakers Association. http://www.inc.com/articles/2000/10/20844.html

Read a straightforward tutorial on speech organization by Robert Gwynne on this University of Central Florida site. http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~rbrokaw/organizing.html

View an eHow video on how to organize a speech. How does the advice in this video differ from organizing advice given in this chapter? http://www.ehow.com/video_4401082_organizing-speech-parts.html

Read more about how to outline a speech on this site from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. http://www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/research/outlining.html

Learn more about how to outline a speech from the Six Minutes public speaking and presentation skills blog. http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/2008/02/29/speech-preparation-3-outline-examples

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